"Libertine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as we passed between them, with a fair wind and studding sails set alow and aloft. Their tropical charms seemed more glowing, the water bluer, the palm trees statelier, the vegetation more libertine than ever. On the south the land rises gradually from the shore to a range of lofty mountains. Immediately behind Honolulu - the capital - a valley with a road winding up it leads to the north side of the island. This valley is, or was then, richly cultivated, principally with TARO, a large root ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... various subjects of Christian's apprehension, he was never visited by any long or permanent doubt that the virtue of his niece might prove the shoal on which his voyage should be wrecked. But he was an arrant rogue, as well as a hardened libertine; and, in both characters, a professed disbeliever in the ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... the more an object of reverence; albeit I have to confess that she would touch me rather more potently, if she had a little more of loveliness and a little less of awfulness. And it is remarkable that even Lucio, light-minded libertine as he is, whose familiar sin it is to jest with maids, "tongue far from heart," cannot approach her, but that his levity is at once awed into soberness, and he regards her as one "to be talk'd with in sincerity, as with ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... promiscuously admitted, but only such as Mrs. Cole was previously satisfied with their character and discretion. In short, this was the safest, politest, and, at the same time, the most thorough house of accommodation in town: every thing being conducted so, that decency made no intrenchment upon the most libertine pleasures; in the practice of which, too, the choice familiars of the house had found the secret so rare and difficult, of reconciling even all the refinements of taste and delicacy, with the most gross ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... administration, there would have been a great relaxation of manners. Before the Restoration many signs indicated that a period of license was at hand. The Restoration crushed for a time the Puritan party, and placed supreme power in the hands of a libertine. The political counter-revolution assisted the moral counter-revolution, and was in turn assisted by it. A period of wild and desperate dissoluteness followed. Even in remote manor-houses and hamlets the change was in some degree felt; but in London the outbreak of debauchery was appalling; and ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... exposes it to the public hatred and resentment. By flattering no irregular passion, it gains few partizans: By opposing so many vices and follies, it raises to itself abundance of enemies, who stigmatize it as libertine profane, ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... those with whom her days must be spent. There is no election day in her year, and but the ghost of a Fourth of July. She must live not with those she likes, but with those who want her; she is not always safe from libertine insult in what serves her for a home; she knows no ten-hour rule, and would not dare to claim its protection if one were enacted. Though not a slave by law, she is too often as near it in practice as one legally free ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... to roll, Proclaimed the sullen habit of his soul. Heavy and phlegmatic he trod the stage, Too proud for tenderness, too dull for rage. When Hector's lovely widow shines in tears, Or Rowe's gay rake dependent virtue jeers, With the same cast of features he is seen To chide the libertine and court the queen. From the tame scene which without passion flows, With just desert his reputation rose. Nor less he pleased when, on some surly plan, He was at once the actor and the man. In Brute he shone unequalled: ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... libertine will think he has a right to insult her with his licentious passion; and should the unhappy creature shrink from the insolent overture, he will sneeringly taunt her ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... endowed with a greater degree of curiosity than man. It occured to me to place myself in a contiguous apartment, where I could observe if this libertine priest was accustomed to take similar liberties with the nuns. I did so, and was fully convinced that only the old left him ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... coster. "Pull up, you devil, pull up," he cries, and shouts to the ragged urchins and scatters halfpence that they may tumble once more in the dirt. See the great Muchross, the clean-shaven face of the libertine priest, the small sardonic eyes. Hurrah for the great Muchross! Long may he live, the singer of "What cheer, Ria?" the type and epitome of the life whose outward signs are drags, brandies-and-soda, ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... indifference. This holds especially true of politics. This is a matter upon which I feel easier in my mind than upon any other, and yet a great many people look upon me as being very lax. I cannot get out of my head the idea that perhaps the libertine is right after all and practises the true philosophy of life. This has led me to express too much admiration for such men as Sainte-Beuve and Theophile Gautier. Their affectation of immorality prevented me from seeing how incoherent their philosophy was. ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... the heart of me, My blood sings in the breeze; The mountains are a part of me, I'm fellow to the trees. My golden youth I'm squandering, Sun-libertine am I; A-wandering, a-wandering, Until the day ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... always wonder why a woman of a "thousand loves" assumes a kind of "halo," when a man of equal passion only gets called a "libertine," if not worse things. I suppose we think it must have been so clever of her. We speak of her as inspiring love, though a man who inspires the same wholesale affection isn't considered nice for young women to know. It is, ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... her body, and as her eyes met mine, I, for the first time in my life, felt a sudden tenderness for her, something that I never before felt when any woman's eyes had looked into mine. And I had never been a saint, though never a libertine; but between the two courses, I think, I had had as much experience of women as falls to most men, and I had never yet met a woman who seemed to so hold and possess my moral sense as did this semi-savage ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... of satisfaction as, looking above and beneath and all about him, he saw that they were folded in an almost impenetrable net of foliage, through which nothing could steal into their sanctuary, save "the chartered libertine, the air," and a few stray beams of the setting sun, filtering through the multitudinous leaves, from which they caught a green ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... to use a familiar example, far more unwise, would it be for me, were I a woman, to think of marrying a man who is a drunkard or a libertine, thinking that because I may love him I shall be able to reform him. In the first place, I should find that the desired results could not be accomplished in this way, or rather, no results that could not be accomplished, and ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine
... the Libertine seated on the throne of England, when the Frenchmen, in 1660, settled on the southern shore of Newfoundland, at a place which they called La Plaisance ...
— Newfoundland and the Jingoes - An Appeal to England's Honor • John Fretwell
... instances it is the pious ignorance of clerical parents which precipitates the tragedy. Ragni's deliverance is, however, only an apparent one. Society, which without indignation had witnessed her sale to the corrupt old libertine, is frightfully shocked by her marriage to Dr. Kallem, and manifests its disapproval with an emphasis which takes no account of ameliorating circumstances. The sanguinary ingenuity in the constant slights and stabs to which she is exposed makes her life a martyrdom and finally kills her. "Contempt ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... dream blissfully over his fat salary and his luxurious supper. The ballet-girl takes up her solitary walk for the humble home in which perhaps an infirm mother is anxiously waiting her return, exposed to such libertine insults as the midnight appearance of a young girl on the street is sure to invite. It is many hours since she dined; she is fatigued and hungry, but she sups upon a crust, or the cold remains of what ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... the groundwork of the "Tempest" and the earliest of Manx records. Mannanan-beg-Mac-y-Lear, the magician who surrounded the island with mists when enemies came near in ships; Maughold, the robber and libertine, bound hand and foot, and driven ashore in a wicker boat; and then Bridget, the virgin saint. Moreover, the stories of Little Man-nanan, of St. Patrick, and of St. Maughold were printed in Manx in the sixteenth century. Truly that is not enough, ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... "Your libertine friends named you well; you would bewitch God the Father.—A few days more must pass, and then you ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... thing only he had discovered during the night's reflections: That those who scouted belief in the principle of Liberty made no greater mistake than to suppose that Liberty was dangerous because it made a man a libertine. To those with any decency, the creed of Freedom was—of all—the most enchaining. Easy enough to break chains imposed by others, fling his cap over the windmill, and cry for the moment at least: I am unfettered, free! Hard, indeed, to say the same to his own unfettered ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... a libertine of the lowest class of the people, half monk and half soldier, who had carved his way through the world by murder, rapine, and abject submission to his superiors, soon began to stretch an iron hand over the town's-people. The Montereyans will bear much, yet under their ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... said, "that however gross and innumerable my errors and backslidings, I am no libertine." (Here Endicott's eyes flashed, but he contented himself with stroking, in a musing manner, the long tuft of hair on his chin.) "The evil we are called upon by the united voice of the suffering saints in this wilderness to suppress," continued Dudley, "demands, I trow, sharper practice ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... I would not have come to you if I had not had evidence. You take exception to Lans and his ways of life, I have been informed that you have even called him a—a—libertine!" ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... feebly to release herself; but that libertine masker held her firmly; that is, as firmly as possible, for he was not very ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... justice of the conscienceless, bespectacled cadis under the palm-tree, Maw-worms of the Koran and Law, who dream languidly of promotion and sell their decrees, as Esau did his birthright, for a dish of lentils or sweetened kouskous. Drunken and libertine cadis are they, formerly servants to some General Yusuf or the like, who get intoxicated on champagne, along with laundresses from Port Mahon, and fatten on roast mutton, whilst before their tents the whole tribe waste away with hunger, and fight with the harriers ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... written for Faustina Mancina, a celebrated courtesan, whose empire lay till the day of her death over the papal city. The wealth of sensuality and wit that made a fatal seduction of Rome for Molza, scholar and libertine, is reflected as it were in the rich cadences and overwrought adornment of his verse. Such compositions as these had a powerful influence over the tone of idyllic poetry. I have mentioned only a few out of a considerable ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... Lot who was troubled greatly by the libertine course of the wicked. Was it not a great aggravation that they not only rushed publicly and shamelessly into whoredom and adultery, but into such sins as may not be mentioned,—insomuch that they did not even spare the angels who came to Lot, and they rushed ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... years of womanhood, Eliza had given her affections to one who sought her love under the guise of a "gentleman of fortune." He proved to be what such characters usually are—a libertine, whose only motive in seeking to win her confidence and young affections was to gratify his hellish passions in the ruin of virtue and a good name. Under the most solemn assurances of deep, abiding, unalterable love for her, ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison
... be loved—have an instinctive aversion for men who are devoted to an absorbing occupation; in spite of superiority, they are all women in the matter of encroachment. Lousteau, a poet and journalist, and a libertine with a veneer of misanthropy, had that tinsel of the intellect, and led the half-idle life that attracts women. The blunt good sense and keen insight of the really great man weighed upon Dinah, who ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... spread all over the community, and proved a theme of delightful and never-ending interest to all the ladies of the station. They were unanimous in supporting her. Not one voice was raised in favour of Hamilton. He was a monster, a heartless libertine, given over to all sorts of terrible vices. Tales of the fearful doings in the desert bungalow, where Hamilton and Saidie lived the gay, bright, joyous life of two human beings, happily mated, as Nature intended ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... became his Patronus, a kind of father (for Patronus is derived from Pater, father): the slave was called the Patron's Libertus, freedman; and all Liberti were included in the class Libertini. Libertinus is another example of a word which we use (libertine), though not in the Roman sense. But the old Roman relation of Patron and Client was not this. Originally the heads of distinguished families had a number of retainers or followers who were called their Clients, a word which perhaps originally meant those who were bound to ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... have witnessed and borne all this, and the blessed memory of her virtues would have consoled him in his bereavement and his sorrow. But to reflect that she was trampled down into guilt and infamy by the foot of the licentious libertine, was an event that cried for blood; and blood he had, for he murdered the seducer, and that with an insatiable rapacity of revenge that was terrible. He literally battered the head of his victim out of all shape, and left him a dead and worthless ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... no spot on earth where one is so well known by his neighbors as at Paris, it was not long before people of my acquaintance who had seen me with Desgenais began to accuse me of being a great libertine. In that I admired the discernment of the world: in proportion as I had passed for inexperienced and sensitive at the time of my rupture with my mistress, I was now considered insensible and hardened. Some one had just told me that it was clear I had never loved that woman, that I had doubtless ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... the wild, despairing look of some frightened young slave girl, passing under the lustful gaze of some lordly libertine, who declares himself "in search of a fancy article for his ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... the gambler—the austere would call her the chartered libertine—of the group of pretty country towns which encircle Paris; for Lacville is in the proud possession of a Gambling Concession which has gradually turned what was once the quietest of inland watering-places into ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... without appearing to notice him; but they halted before Gillian, regarding her with insolent admiration. Evidently she was the object that had brought them forth. The poor damsel was terribly confused by their ardent glances and libertine scrutiny, and blushed to her very temples. As to Dick Taverner, he trembled with rage and jealousy, and began to repent having brought his treasure into such ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... has been mutilated by Henry Ward, a York comedian, and actually printed by him as his own production, in the collection of plays and poems going under his name, published in 1745, 8vo., a copy of which I purchased at Nassau's sale, many years since. (2.) The Doating Lovers, or the Libertine Tamed, a comedy in five acts; acted in Lincoln's Inn Fields. It is dedicated to the Duchess of Hamilton and Brandon, whose "elegant taste and nice judgment in the most polite entertainments of the age," as well as ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 68, February 15, 1851 • Various
... the infernal flame of gambling; and it soon became as necessary to restrain their use as it had been that of dice. The two held a joint empire of ruin and desolation over their devoted victims. A king of France set the ruinous example—Henry IV., the roue, the libertine, the duellist, the gambler,—and yet (historically) the Bon Henri, the 'good king,' who wished to order things so that every Frenchman might have a pot-au-feu, or dish of flesh savoury, every Sunday for dinner. The money that ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... the flocks and herds that graze upon a thousand hills.... For extreme license in criticism of administrations and of everybody connected with them, broad arguments can no doubt be found in the files of the journal made famous by the pencil of Nast. But a convention may not deem itself a chartered libertine of ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... call on her, he told me, and took occasion to reprove her for such excessive grief over so unworthy an object. 'He was not an upright man, Matty, and you know it,' he began quite boldly; 'he was a libertine, and a gambler, and an open scoffer at religion.' But Matty went on sobbing harder than ever, and at last, getting angry, he said sternly: 'And more than this, ma'am, he was, as you know, a faithless and disloyal husband!' Then the poor girl drew out a pocket handkerchief with a three-inch ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... connoisseur, allow him that title?" "No, my dear; in my opinion he falls far below it, since he is deficient in one of the great essentials of the character; and that is virtue." "I am surprised," said I; "but how has he incurred so severe a censure?" "By being a professed libertine; by having but too successfully, practised the arts of seduction; by triumphing in the destruction of innocence and the peace of families." "O, why was I not informed of this before? But perhaps these ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... Rasputin. A Siberian peasant by birth, immoral, filthy in person, untrained in mind, he had early received the nickname of Rasputin, which means "ne'er-do-well," on account of his habits. A drunkard, and a libertine always, he posed as a sort of saint and miracle worker, let his hair grow long, and tramped about ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... books, I had recourse to the advice of my landlord, Mons. B—. He is a handsome young fellow, about twenty-five years of age, and keeps house with two maiden sisters, who are professed devotees. The brother is a little libertine, good natured and obliging; but a true Frenchman in vanity, which is undoubtedly the ruling passion of this volatile people. He has an inconsiderable place under the government, in consequence of which he is permitted to wear a sword, a privilege which he does not fail to use. He is likewise receiver ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... he began, without further explanation, "I am a man of the world, and I know the utmost capabilities of human wickedness. I don't believe you are a real libertine. But I know Grey Town. Many a dog has been hanged here because of his bad name. You ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... shone the stainless radiance that had dazzled her young eyes. That was all that mattered. It was easy to convert the outer man to convention. It was the simplest thing in the world to make the chartered libertine of talk accept the Index Expurgatorius of subjects mete for discussion: to regulate the innate vagabond by the clock: to bring the pantheistic pagan of wide spiritual sympathies (for Paragot was by no means an irreligious man) into the narrowest ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... unlucky previous expressions had been, and, like them, entirely misinterpreted by the hearers. It struck like a dagger into the wounded and tender heart of Helen; it pierced Laura, and inflamed the high-spirited girl with scorn and anger. "And it was to this hardened libertine," she thought—"to this boaster of low intrigues, that I had given my heart away." "He breaks the most sacred laws," thought Helen. "He prefers the creature of his passion to his own mother; and when he is upbraided, he laughs, and glories in his crime. 'She gave me her all,' I heard him say ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... strong was the impress made on his own soul by his training as a priest that personally he had lived a pure life, "although," he adds, with an easy shrug of his shoulders, "it is very possible that the libertine has the best of it!" Another renegade priest, also eminent in literature, bears exactly the same testimony. Indeed, when we remember the argus-eyed hatred with which the French priesthood is watched by the anti-clerical party, and the few scandals that appear in the ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... the man who insists on premarital sexual necessity has two roads open to him—one that of the libertine and seducer, the most contemptible of creatures; the other that of the whore-follower, whom nature perpetually menaces with vile and pestilential plagues, making him a misery to himself and menace to all clean persons who associate with him, especially his future wife ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... discourse of war, and you shall hear A fearful battle rendered you in music. Turn him to any cause of policy, The Gordian knot of it he will unloose Familiar as his garter; that, when he speaks, The air, a chartered libertine, is still, And the mute wonder lurketh in men's ears To steal his sweet and ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... 6. The Libertine, a Tragedy; acted by his royal highness's servants, printed in London 1676, in quarto, and dedicated to the duke of Newcastle. In the preface Mr. Shadwell observes, that the story from which he took the hint of this play, is famous all over Spain, Italy, and France. It was first ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... take his part, my dear," said Mr. Ayrton. "I think that he's a bit of a fool to run his head into a hornet's nest because he has come to the conclusion that Abraham's code of morality was a trifle shaky, and that Samson was a shameless libertine. Great Heavens! has the man got no notion ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... that sort, Clopper—no, no—'pon honor—little Bob Stubbs is no LIBERTINE; and the story is very simple. You see that my father has a small place, merely a few hundred acres, at Sloffemsquiggle. Isn't it a funny name? Hang it, there's the naval gentleman staring again,"—(I looked terribly fierce as I returned this officer's stare, and continued ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray
... bright Minister on High, Command the throbbing Breast, and watry Eye, And, as our captive Spirits ebb and flow, Smile at the Tempests you have rais'd below: The Face of Guilt a Flush of Vertue wears, And sudden burst the involuntary Tears: Honour's sworn Foe, the Libertine with Shame, Descends to curse the sordid lawless Flame; The tender Maid here learns Man's various Wiles, Rash Youth, hence dread the Wanton's venal Smiles— Sure 'twas by brutal Force of envious Man, First Learning's base Monopoly began; He knew your Genius, and refus'd his Books, Nor thought your ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... justice; discontented nobles, and peasants ground down with taxes. In the midst of this rottenness, the Calvinistic churches, patient and stern, were fast gathering to themselves the better life of the nation. Among and around them tossed the surges of clerical hate. Luxurious priests and libertine monks saw their disorders rebuked by the grave virtues of the Protestant zealots. Their broad lands, their rich endowments, their vessels of silver and of gold, their dominion over souls,—in itself a revenue,—were all imperiled by the growing heresy. Nor ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... of truth and a king of truth were objects of fairyland or castles in the air. "What is truth?" he asked; but, as he asked, he turned on his heel, and did not wait for an answer. He asked only as a libertine might ask, What is virtue? or a ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... as soon as his passion cooled and a more advantageous social connection presented itself. Towards the handsome young soldier Iglesias was, it must be owned, somewhat merciless. Why should he go to the rescue of this young libertine's family, and indirectly facilitate his marriage, and increase its promise of happiness, by helping to secure him an otherwise vanishing fortune? Let him pay the price of his illicit pleasures and become a pauper. Such ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... and the modern french were antipodes, but they are now converging, under a government, which, in point of security, and even of mildness, has no resemblance, since the first departure from the ancient establishments. The french, like the libertine son, after having plunged in riot and excesses, subdued by wretchedness, are returning to order and civilization. Unhappy people, their tears have almost washed away their offences—they have suffered to their heart's core. Who will not ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... hand, which she was extremely ready to give him; but while the crowd made their passage difficult, Albany, following and stopping her, said, "What is it you fear? a miserable old man, worn out by the sorrows of that experience from which he offers you counsel? What, too, is it you trust? a libertine wretch, coveting nothing but your wealth, for the gift of which he will repay you by ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... to Bothwell had not yet given occasion for scandal, though his character as an adventurous libertine was as notable as his reputation for military hardihood; but as the summer advanced, his insolence increased with his influence at court and the general aversion of his rivals. He was richly endowed by Mary from the greater and lesser spoils of the Church; and the three wardenships of the border, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... overstimulated desire. The poor are growing poorer, and to "keep in the ring," to live and dress beyond their means as many do, it is necessary to have an unexacting standard of morals. In this way the promiscuous libertine is evolved,—the most insidious and dangerous product of present day civilization, and the most pernicious factor in the spread of immoral impulses ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... gravely, "do you know that I have often heard that Caesar is a wicked libertine, who wishes to make himself tyrant? What have ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... necessary to make him a leader of thought. He laboured at it all his life, and his mental qualifications enabled him to keep pace with the public desires in all their branches. The age was frivolous, and he excelled in fugitive pieces; it was libertine, and he had obscene verses at command; the esprits forts had a leaning to incredulity, and he put himself at the head of the movement, and made use of it to turn into ridicule all that men had been most accustomed to revere. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... like a garment, laid bare the eternal monotony of passion, that has always the same forms and the same language. He did not distinguish, this man of so much experience, the difference of sentiment beneath the sameness of expression. Because lips libertine and venal had murmured such words to him, he believed but little in the candour of hers; exaggerated speeches hiding mediocre affections must be discounted; as if the fullness of the soul did not sometimes overflow ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... as hostler often furnished the major with a carriage, in which to make some of his private expeditions, and this was another and final disgrace which the cowman perceived and commented upon. To assist an old libertine like the major in concealing his night journeys was the nethermost deep of "self-discipline," but when the pretty young wife of his employer became the object of the major's attention Kelley was ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... For lack of all word of command, of all higher control, hostile tendencies accommodating themselves to reign alternate, sharing the individual in distinct halves, till he becomes like unto that hero of Gautier's witch story, who was a pious priest one-half of the twenty-four hours and a wicked libertine the other: all power of selection, of reaction gone in this passive endurance of conflicting tendencies; all identity gone, save a mere feeble outsider looking on at the alternations of intentions and lapses, of good and bad. And the soul of such a person—if, indeed, we ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... With the popish emissary it is otherwise: his portrait is the creation of Borrow's most studied hatred. Yet it must be admitted that the man in black is a triumph of complex characterisation. A joyous liver and an unscrupulous libertine, sceptical as Voltaire, as atheistic as a German professor, as practical as a Jew banker, as subtle as a Jesuit, he has as many ways of converting the folks among whom he is thrown as Panurge had of eating the corn in ear. For the simple and credulous—crosses and beads; for the hard-hearted and ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... most noble Festus," he replied, "but speak forth the words of truth and soberness;" and then, turning to the royal stranger, vigorously pressed home his argument. "King Agrippa," he exclaimed, "believest thou the prophets? I know that thou believest." [140:3] The King, thus challenged, was a libertine; and at this very time was believed to be living in incestuous intercourse with his sister Bernice; and yet he seems to have been staggered by Paul's solemn and pointed interrogatory. "Almost," said he, "thou persuadest me to be a Christian." [140:4] It has been thought by ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... lips, narrow, but red and pouting, with the upper one short and slightly projecting over the lower,—and her small, delicately rounded chin, indicated both decision and sensuality: but the insolent gaze of the libertine would have quailed beneath the look of sovereign hauteur which flashed from those ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... high and refined, such as become the Father of a nation. Were he a libertine, his influence would soon vanish; for men will never trust the important concerns of society to one they know will do what is hurtful to society for his own pleasures. He told me that his father had brought him up with great strictness, and that he had very seldom ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... general, wheeling round upon his new antagonist, "Mr. Pendragon! And do you suppose, Mr. Pendragon, that because I have had the misfortune to marry your sister, I shall suffer myself to be dogged and thwarted by a discredited and bankrupt libertine like you? My acquaintance with Lady Vandeleur, sir, has taken away all my appetite for the other members ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... anomaly of a man scrupulously honorable in regard to his own sex, and absolutely codeless in regard to the other. He was what modern nomenclature calls a "contemporaneous varietist." He was, in brief, an offensive type of libertine. Woman, first and foremost, was his game. Every woman attracted him. No woman held him. Any new woman, however plain, immediately eclipsed her predecessor, however beautiful. The fact that amorous ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... by his brother Richard, the great-grandfather of William, the 5th lord, who outlived son and grandson, and was [v.04 p.0898] succeeded by his great-nephew, the poet. Admiral the Hon. John Byron (q.v.) was the poet's grandfather. His eldest son, Captain John Byron, the poet's father, was a libertine by choice and in an eminent degree. He caused to be divorced, and married (1779) as his first wife, the marchioness of Carmarthen (born Amelia D'Arcy), Baroness Conyers in her own right. One child of the marriage survived, the Hon. Augusta ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... missionary or an enthusiast, nor that you should take up a controversial cudgel against whoever attacks the sect you are of; this would be both useless and unbecoming your age; but I mean that you should by no means seem to approve, encourage, or applaud, those libertine notions, which strike at religions equally, and which are the poor threadbare topics of halfwits and minute philosophers. Even those who are silly enough to laugh at their jokes, are still wise enough to distrust and detest their characters; for putting moral virtues at the highest, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... unpleasant appearance are his companions in solitude, and intrude even upon his hours of society: and when by an alteration of habits, the mind is cleared of these frightful ideas, it requires but the slightest renewal of the association to bring back the full tide of misery upon the repentant libertine. ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... very little while (for, as I expected, I got my fellowship) the boy became the favourite of the whole College—where, all orders and regulations to the contrary notwithstanding, he was continually in and out—a sort of chartered libertine, in whose favour all rules were relaxed. The offerings made at his shrine were simply without number, and I had serious difference of opinion with one old resident Fellow, now long dead, who was usually supposed to be the crustiest man ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... energy to the pursuit of what I may call private and personal ends. Thus the man of business lives for the acquisition of riches; the scholar and the scientist, of knowledge; the statesman, of power; the speculator, of excitement; the libertine, of pleasure; and so forth. Few are they who ever dream of devoting life as a whole to the pursuit of an end which is potentially attainable by all men, and which is therefore worthy of Man as Man. The idea of there being ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... become synonymous with vice, a dissolute and fearless assassin of private character, of domestic comfort, and of social happiness; when he is known to be the bosom friend and supporter of the profligate and abandoned libertine, who, from the vulgar debauches of night, hastens again to the invasion of private property. Who, through the robbery of the public revenue, and the violation of private seals, hurries down the precipice ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... then, let the libertine now make reparation, and claim a wife. [Running to MARY, and ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... resolution depicted on Meroe's face that the Roman general for an instant remained motionless. Then, urged either by compunction for his violence; or by the certainty that, if he attempted force, he would have but a corpse in his possession; or, as the unscrupulous libertine later pretended, by a generous impulse that had guided him throughout;—whatever his motive, Caesar stepped back several paces, and raised his hand to heaven as if to call the gods to witness that he would respect his prisoner. Still suspicious, the Gallic ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... portrayals of acts of lewdness,—such a one is not a virtuous man. Though he may never have committed an overt act of unchastity, if he cannot pass a handsome female in the street without, in imagination, approaching the secrets of her person, he is but one grade above the open libertine, and is as truly unchaste as the ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... proposition was the hope of seeing a few of these much vaunted beauties, and that I had been cruelly disappointed in not having seen the shadow of a woman. At this frank avowal the Emperor, who had expected it in advance, laughed heartily, and took his revenge on my ears, calling me a libertine: "You do not know then, Monsieur le Drole, that your good friends the Greeks have adopted the customs of those Turks whom they detest so cordially, and like them seclude their wives and daughters in order that they may never appear before bad men ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... the personal character of Epicurus, opinions have been divided both in ancient and modern times. By some the garden has been called a "sty." Epicurus has been branded as a libertine, and the name "Epicurean" has, in almost all languages, become the synonym of sensualism. Diogenes Laertius repels all the imputations which are cast upon the moral character of his favorite author, and ascribes them to the malignity and falsehood of the Stoics. "The most ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... Captain Wybrow, who knew that it would be ridiculous to dream of his marrying Caterina, must have been a reckless libertine to win her affections in this manner! Not at all. He was a young man of calm passions, who was rarely led into any conduct of which he could not give a plausible account to himself; and the tiny fragile Caterina was a woman who touched the imagination and ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... General Agnew, an Englishman, and General Nash, an American, were killed. The Americans had some dragoons under Pulaski, the only one of the confederated Poles who had refused to accept a pardon. He was an intrepid knight, a libertine and devotee, and a better captain than general; he insisted on being a Pole on all occasions, and M. de Lafayette, after having contributed to his reception in the army, often exerted himself to effect a ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... "Jansenistes du Salon" who prided themselves on the fashionable rigor of their doctrine but insisted on the practical impossibility of living up to it in the absence of efficacious grace. In my interpretation, Mandeville was both intellectually and temperamentally a "libertine" patently putting on the mask of rigorism in order to be able at the same time to attack the exponents of austere theological morality from their rear while making a frontal attack on less exacting and more humanistic systems of morality. The phenomenon ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville
... years younger, made her acquaintance. Like Lucretia, Giulia had golden hair, and her beauty won for her the name La Bella. It was in Adriana's house that this tender, lovely child became ensnared in the coils of the libertine Rodrigo. She succumbed to his seductions either shortly before or soon after her marriage to the young Orsini. Perhaps she first aroused the passion of the cardinal, a man at that time fifty-eight years old, ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... for Laurent in the mocking and libertine sense that one gives to this word in love. It was by an act of her will, after nights of sorrowful meditation, that she said to him—"I wish what thou wishest, because we have come to that point where the fault to be committed is the inevitable reparation of a series of committed faults. I have ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... parks, temples, pools, and fountains, and he should be mad enough to commit such a crime—and for a mere trifle? [Wrathfully.] You offspring of a loose wench, you brother-in-law of the king, Sansthanaka, you libertine, you slanderer, you buffoon, you gilded monkey, say it before me! This friend of mine does n't even draw a flowering jasmine creeper to himself, to gather the blossoms, for fear that a twig might perhaps be injured. How should he commit a crime like this, which heaven ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... court, but whose acquaintance she had never made, and who had been absent when the scandalous occurrence which led to her disgrace came to light. He was a man of from twenty-five to twenty-six years of age, who idled his life away: his courage was undoubted, and being as credulous as an old libertine, he was ready to draw his sword at any moment to defend the lady whose cause he had espoused, should any insolent slanderer dare to hint there was a smirch on her virtue. Being deaf to all reports, he seemed one of those men expressly framed by heaven to ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... way. The state of affairs in which a great body of public men, not only ministers, but noble men and worthy persons of every degree, could personally address the Queen, and that almost in the form of an accusation couched in the most vehement terms, because of a libertine raid made by a few young gallants in the night, on a house supposed to be inhabited by a woman of damaged character, is inconceivable to us—a certain parochial character, a pettiness as of a village, thus comes into the great national struggle. The Queen's uncle, who had accompanied ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... unusually enviable. She shares the immunities of her husband. Curfew in Butaritari sounds for her in vain. Long after the bell is rung and the great island ladies are confined for the night to their own roof, this chartered libertine may scamper and giggle through the deserted streets or go down to bathe in the dark. The resources of the store are at her hand; she goes arrayed like a queen, and feasts delicately every day upon tinned ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to reclaim her libertine husband, and to call him to a sense of his situation when he was on his death-bed. Louis XIV. sent the Marquis de Dangeau to convert him, and to talk to him on a subject little thought of by De Grammont—the world to come. After the Marquis had been talking for some time, De Grammont turned to ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... description appearing high-flown and exaggerated. It bore an impress of loftiness, totally removed from pride; a moral superiority, which impressed all. With this was united an innate purity, that seemed her birthright; a purity that could not for an instant be doubted. If the libertine gazed on her features, it awoke in him recollections that had long slumbered; of the time when his heart beat but for one. If, in her immediate sphere, any littleness of feeling was brought to her notice, it was met with ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... above them, and without any kind of philosophy. It's a great frankness on his part to call himself an atheist. His ungodliness is without malice, and will disappear with the exuberance of his sensuality. In his soul God has no other enemies than horses, cards and women. In the mind of a real libertine, like M. Bayle for example, truth has to meet more formidable and malicious adversaries. But, my dear boy, I give you a character sketch instead of the plain narrative you wish to have ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... the heart of me, My blood sings in the breeze; The mountains are a part of me, I'm fellow to the trees. My golden youth I'm squandering, Sun-libertine am I, A-wandering, a-wandering, Until the ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... once pounced upon the unfortunate Irish, and sought to bury her merciless fangs, with one deadly and final crash, in their already bleeding and lacerated vitals. The coarse, cruel fibre of an apostate and libertine father, and the impure blood of a lewd mother, had done their work in her case. From the first to the last moment of her reign, she combined the courtesan with the assassin. She was the murderer of Essex, said to have been her own son and paramour; and was, at the ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... and fell on her knees before the old libertine.—Young and innocent as she was, a dark suspicion of his purpose came like a shadow over her soul, and she ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... meantime she considered herself free as the wind, and permitted herself all the innocent gaieties which that "chartered libertine," a coquette, can take. She flirted with all the bachelors, widowers, and married men, in a manner which did extraordinary credit to her years: and let not the reader fancy such pastimes unnatural ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... treated by Molire, Goldoni, Mozart, Byron, and Zorrilla, to mention but a few of the hundreds of writers who have utilized it. In the hands of non-Spanish writers the character of Don Juan loses the greater part of its essential nobility. To them Don Juan is the type of libertine and little more. He was a prime favorite with those Romanticists who, like Gautier, felt "Il est indcent et mauvais ton d'tre vertueux." But as conceived in Spain Don Juan's libertinage is wholly subsidiary and incidental. He is a superman ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... because it develops the obsession of licentious and obscene thoughts, the victim alternating between temporary victory over "sin" and the remorse of defeat. But the seeker of purely physical pleasure, the libertine or the average sensualist, is no less a pathological case, living as one-sided and unbalanced a life as the ascetic, for his conduct is likewise based on ignorance and lack of understanding. In seeking pleasure without the exercise of responsibility, ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... three distinct sets or social castes at the court of France: the pious and virtuous band about the good Queen Claude; the lettered and elegant belles in the coterie of Marguerite d'Angouleme, sister of Francis I.; and the wanton and libertine young maids who formed a galaxy of youth and beauty about Louise of Savoy, and were by her used to fascinate her son and thus distract ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... see, then, how far you are right—how far suitability is a question of rank. A gentleman may be, and frequently is, a drunkard, a gambler, a libertine, ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... is it not practically certain that what I have done for twenty years I shall repeat to-day? What are the chances for a man who has been lazy and indolent all his life starting in to-morrow morning to be industrious; or a spendthrift, frugal; a libertine, virtuous; a profane, foul-mouthed man, ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... his throne, as well as his heart, with the woman whose beauty of person and dignity of character seemed so well to entitle her to both. The marriage was privately celebrated at Grafton; the secret was carefully kept for some time; no one suspected that so libertine a prince could sacrifice so much to a romantic passion; and there were, in particular, strong reasons which at that time rendered this step, to the highest degree, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... visitors he received, his frequent and prolonged absences from home, were all imputed to a very unreasonable inclination to gallantry. His concierge was deceived as well as his friends, and laughing at his supposed infatuation, disrespectfully called him an old libertine. It was only the officials of the detective force who knew that Tirauclair and Tabaret were one and the ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... please you by his praise of her! You were the first to mention her name. You owned to an old admiration of her. You were hot and cold, and red and white, all at once when I spoke to you of her. What could I think—what DID I think—but that you were a young libertine in everything but experience, and had fallen into hands that had experience enough, and could manage you (having the fancy) for your own good? Oh! oh! oh! They were afraid of my finding out the truth,' exclaimed Miss Mowcher, getting off the fender, and trotting up and down the kitchen with ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... if not virtuous, at least innocent; and might still have continued blameless and easy, but for the arts and insinuations of those whose rank, fortune, or education, furnished them with means to corrupt or to delude them. Let the libertine reflect a moment on the situation of that woman, who, being forsaken by her betrayer, is reduced to the necessity of turning prostitute for bread, and judge of the enormity of his guilt by the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... young northern woman until the day she marries, and wakes to torment her like a biblical devil if she does not. There is no miser like a reformed spendthrift, and no ascetic will go to such extremes of self-mortification as a converted libertine; in the same way, there are no such portentously virginal old maids as those who might have been the most womanly wives; the opposite is certainly true also, for the variety 'Hemiparthenos,' studied after nature by Marcel Prevost, generally makes an utter failure of ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... prince,—in a tone into which, despite his awe of that terrible man, THE FIRST GRAND INQUISITOR OF SPAIN, his libertine spirit involuntarily forced itself, in a half latent raillery,—"sorcery of eyes like those bewitched the wise son of a more pious sire ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book II. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... not knowledge, but a series of attitudes, the attitude of virtue, the attitude of pruriency, the attitude of good taste, the attitude of the theoretic libertine, the attitude of the satyr's vulgarity. All these poses, of course, have supplied not an iota to an understanding of the foundations of the problems of sex, biologically considered. Thus, a masculine master has coined that immortal phrase, the Eternal Feminine. And in a matriarchate we should undoubtedly ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... name of liberty invoking the tyranny of terror! An assassin—shouting fraternity and committing fratricide! A libertine—claiming equality with the good, while ravishing the pure! A monster—part vulture, part toad—who, in the holy name of progress, makes our Country and our Cause revolting ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Paul Kauvar; or, Anarchy • Steele Mackaye
... traitor with me, I'll tell you the whole truth. I am mad with love for Cenni; and then, too, she has a million florins from her grandfather, and this money would come in well to help me carry out my plans. But my aunt does not consent to give the girl to me. She says I am a libertine, a frivol viveur, etc., and she won't take the responsibility of trusting me ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... of a conquering temperament—a kiss-snatching, door-bursting type of libertine. In the very act of straying from the path of virtue he remained a respectable merchant. It would have been perhaps better for Flora if he had been a mere brute. But he set about his sinister enterprise in a sentimental, cautious, almost paternal manner; and thought he would ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... inconsistent was Henry the Third. In most instances he was "constant to one thing—his inconstancy." Like his father, he possessed two virtues: but they were not the same. Henry was not a lover of cruelty for its own sake—which John was: and he was not personally a libertine. Of his father's virtues, bravery and honesty, there was not a trace in him. He covered his sins with an embroidered cloak of exquisite piety. The bad qualities of both parents were inherited by him. To his ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... Constantine to Justinian, appear to fluctuate between the custom of the empire and the wishes of the Church, and the author of the Novels too frequently reforms the jurisprudence of the Code and Pandects. In the most rigorous laws, a wife was condemned to support a gamester, a drunkard, or a libertine, unless he were guilty of homicide, poison, or sacrilege, in which cases the marriage, as it should seem, might have been dissolved by the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... novelty. It is not your wife you are seeking now, but a woman with whom you have formerly had a rupture, and with whom you now desire to make up. To speak the truth you are simply playing the game of a libertine. ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant |
