"Pernicious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... since nothing can be more oppos'd to the ancient Tragedy, than the modern Tragedy in Musick, because the one is reasonable, the other ridiculous; the one is artful, the other absurd; the one beneficial, the other pernicious; in short, the one natural and ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... he is participant in the ideas. But we should do better to follow up this thought and, where this admirable thinker leaves us without assistance, employ new efforts to place it in clearer light, rather than carelessly fling it aside as useless, under the very miserable and pernicious pretext of impracticability. A constitution of the greatest possible human freedom according to laws, by which the liberty of every individual can consist with the liberty of every other (not of the greatest possible ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... often observed foreign liquors drank in preference to those of domestic manufacture, though really of bad quality, possessing pernicious properties acquired from ingredients used by those in our commercial towns, who brew and compose brandies, spirits, and wines, often from materials most injurious to health, and this owing to so much ...
— The Practical Distiller • Samuel McHarry
... affectionate kind, has been suffered almost without disturbance, to usurp to itself the epithet of rational. But let not this claim be too hastily admitted. Let the position in question be thoroughly and impartially discussed, and it will appear, if I mistake not, to be a gross and pernicious error. If amputation be indeed indispensable, we must submit to it; but we may surely expect to be heard with patience, or rather with favour and indulgence, while we proceed to shew that there is no need to have recourse to so desperate an enemy. The ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... was told that a telephone message had come from her late the previous evening to say that she was spending the night at the apartment of Mrs. Lora Delane Porter. The hated name increased Bailey's indignation. He held Mrs. Porter responsible for the whole trouble. But for her pernicious influence, Ruth would have been an ordinary sweet American girl, running as, Bailey held, a girl should, ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... is dry in the season of great heat, and the Indians themselves are unable to resist the miasmata rising from the mud. The complete absence of wind contributes to render the climate of this country more pernicious. ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... think,' observed the Countess, 'it must indeed be pernicious for any youth to associate with that class of woman. A deterioration ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... knew them, and thought them pernicious for the conduct of the Foreign Affairs, but at the Exchequer they would have less play; he himself would undertake to control him. His greatest indiscretion—that in the Kossuth affair—must have been with a view to form a Party; that if left excluded from office, he would become ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... originate in the extensive rice-beds which cause a stagnation in the water; the constant evaporation from the surface acting on a mass of decaying vegetation must tend to have a bad effect on the constitution of those that are immediately exposed to its pernicious influence. ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... the present era of enlightenment. But our business in studies of any kind is, of course, with truth, as we are often told, not with the consequences, however ruinous to our most settled convictions, or however pernicious to society. ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... Micmac poem it amounts to this: A certain woman causes the whelp to lick the hero's hand. This causes forgetfulness. The hero marries her, and thereby loses his first wife. In the Edda, Brynhild, who has morally the first claim to Sigurd, says of Crymhild, "She presented to Sigurd the pernicious drink, so that he no more remembers me." In the saga of Thorstein, Viking's son the hero, is made by the witch Dis to utterly forget his ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... this rule, because it keeps the nurse unemployed, who otherwise may be doing it the greatest mischief, by cramming and stuffing its little bowels, till ready to burst. And, if I am right, what an inconsiderate and foolish, as well as pernicious practice it is, for a nurse to waken the child from its nourishing sleep, for fear it should suffer by hunger, and instantly pop the breast into its pretty mouth, or provoke it to feed, when it ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... any time his warriors were believed to waver, his voice could be heard above the din of arms, exclaiming in his native tongue, "Be strong! Be strong;" and when one near him, by trepidation and reluctance to proceed to the charge, evinced a dastardly disposition, fearing the example might have a pernicious influence, with one blow of the tomahawk he severed his skull. It was perhaps a solitary instance in which terror predominated. Never did men exhibit a more conclusive evidence of bravery, in making a charge, and fortitude in withstanding an onset, than ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... of unconsenting fondness. Lastly, the faults were all embraced in a more generous view; I saw them in their place, like discords in a musical progression; and accepted them and found them picturesque, as we accept and admire, in the habitable face of nature, the smoky head of the volcano or the pernicious thicket of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with his usual commentaries of 'How CAN you be so ridiculous, Eugene!' and 'What an absurd fellow you are!' but when his laugh was out, there was something serious, if not anxious, in his face. Despite that pernicious assumption of lassitude and indifference, which had become his second nature, he was strongly attached to his friend. He had founded himself upon Eugene when they were yet boys at school; and at this hour imitated him no less, admired him no less, loved him no ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... were alarmed at this resolution of James, and they employed every expedient in order to prevent the execution of it. They represented the danger of innovation; the pernicious consequences of aggrandizing the nobility, already too powerful; the hazard of putting himself into the hands of the English, his hereditary enemies; the dependence on them which must ensue upon his losing the friendship of France, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... house, by an adherent of the Guises. He was wounded, but not killed. Charles was incensed. At a visit made to the wounded chief, the king was warned by him, as Catherine quickly learned, against her pernicious influence in the government. Thereupon she arranged with her confederates for a general slaughter of the Huguenots, and almost coerced the half-frantic and irresolute king to acquiesce in the plan. Perhaps, in gathering them into the city, she had foreseen the possible expediency of a ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... started. Bishop Wayneworth was only democratic when delivering addresses on the signers of the Declaration of Independence. The democracy of the past was sanctified; the democracy of the present, pernicious and uncouth. Thought of her uncle put Katie on the outside, eyes dancing with the ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... hear. There is a law to control the spiritual, and a law for the material, and it is by observance of these two laws, that man's first estate is to be regained. He must, therefore be temperate, and sober, and wise in the regulation of his appetites and passions, banishing those pernicious inventions, whereby he degradeth and engendereth disease in a glorious structure that ought to be the temple of the Holy Ghost, and must diligently cultivate all noble aspirations, weeding out selfishness ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... should be beneficial to society. But the real design in the Iliad was directly the reverse. Its obvious tendency was to inflame the minds of young readers with an enthusiastic ardor for military fame; to inculcate the pernicious doctrine of the divine right of kings; to teach both prince and people that military plunder was the most honorable mode of acquiring property; and that conquest, violence and war were the best employment of nations, the most ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... the whole as a calumny; and when shown the absolute certainty that Mark was at Paris, daily calling on Mrs. Finch, remained persuaded that his cousin had perverted him from the first, and was now trying to revive her pernicious influence when he might have been saved; or that perhaps he was driven to an immediate wealthy marriage by his honourable feeling and his necessities. It was all her own fault for not having taken him at once. ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... (O something pernicious and dread! Something far away from a puny and pious life! Something unproved! something in a trance! Something escaped from ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... myself up as a prophet at most things," he replied, "but I'd like to say right here, the fixin' of that all-fired chu'ch is jest about the limit fer the morals of this doggone city. Standin' right here I seem to sort o' see a vision o' things comin' on like a pernicious fever. I seem to see all them boys—good boys, mind you, as far as they go—only they don't travel more'n 'bout an inch—lyin', an' slanderin', an' thievin', an' shootin', an'—an' committin' every blamed sin ever invented since ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... will of a bare majority, and we hear this argument at the very moment we are called upon to assign reasons for proposing a Constitution which puts it in the power of nine States to abolish the present inadequate, unsafe, and pernicious confederation! In the first case, he asserts that a majority ought to have the power of altering the government, when found to be inadequate to the security of public happiness. In the last case, he affirms that even three fourths ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... we fondly believed was, in spite of all, nearing its end. Our errand was to ask that in a regiment about to be raised in two western counties the men might have the privilege of electing the officers, a pernicious practice which had been in vogue, and always done much harm. But in those days our ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... the professor, 'are the pernicious results of a classical training, the absence of a spirit of scientific research and a ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... racer. In England these races have been multiplied to abuse. There are signs of a reaction, however, in France, where several owners of racing-stables, following the example set by M. Lupin, have found their advantage in refusing to take part in the pernicious practice. For, after all, these first trials really prove nothing at all. They are found to furnish no standard by which any accurate measure can be taken of the future achievements of the horse. In fact, if one will take the trouble to examine the lists of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... gradually taper off on dogs? They ought not to stop all of a sudden, but they could leave off a dog at a time until at last they overcame the pernicious habit. ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... was something of an event to all the inhabitants, for he was willing to stop everywhere and anywhere and tell the latest news. Old Andrew considered him a most pernicious individual and a breeder of evil in the Glen, and for that reason as well as on general principles, Coonie took a particular delight in libelling the ruling elder. He pulled up as he reached Duncan's gate. He never passed ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... and the common question, whether it was pernicious in its effects, having been introduced;—JOHNSON. 'As to this matter, which has been very much contested, I myself am of opinion, that more influence has been ascribed to The Beggar's Opera, than it in reality ever had; for I do not believe that any man was ever made a rogue by ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... impulse—it may be the torture—of appetite; the other is a cool, mercenary speculator, thriving on the frailties and vices of others. He is a man selling for gain what he knows to be worthless and pernicious; good for none, dangerous for all, and deadly to many. He has looked in the face the sure consequences of his course, and if he can but make gain of it, is prepared to corrupt the souls, embitter the lives, and blast the prosperity of an indefinite number of his fellow-creatures. By the selling ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... it was resolved, 'That the establishment of a rendezvous, falsely denominated a school, was designed by its projectors as the theatre to promulgate their disgusting theory of amalgamation, and their pernicious sentiments of subverting the Union. These pupils were to have been congregated here from all quarters under the false pretence of educating them, but really to scatter firebrands, arrows and death among brethren ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike
... cleared, weeding should commence, and it is astonishing how little it will cost if care is taken that no weed be allowed to run to seed. The bulk of Hawaiian coffee lands is situated in the forests where the land is covered with a dense undergrowth of ferns and vines and there are no pernicious weeds to bother. But soon after clearing, the seeds of weeds are dropped by the birds and are carried in on the feet and clothing of the laborers and visitors. We have no weeds that run to seed in less than thirty days, and if the fields are gone over, once a month, and any weed that can ...
— The Hawaiian Islands • The Department of Foreign Affairs
... has been taken of the destructive effects of the grub-worm, and they were now as troublesome as ever. These pernicious vermin are generated from the eggs of a fly, which are left on the leaves of plants: here they come to life, and daily gathering strength and vigour, they destroy the leaves; and afterwards, falling on the ground, they cut off the roots and stalks. The surgeon, who, with great perseverance and ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... differ in premises from the other gentlemen with whom he acts on this occasion, yet, in supporting this bill, he obliterates every vestige of distinction between him and them, saving only that, professing the principles of '98, his example will be more pernicious than that of the most open and bitter opponent of the rights of the States. I will also add, what I am compelled to say, that I must consider him (Mr. Rives) as less consistent than our old opponents, whose conclusions were fairly drawn from their premises, while his premises ought to have led ...
— Remarks of Mr. Calhoun of South Carolina on the bill to prevent the interference of certain federal officers in elections: delivered in the Senate of the United States February 22, 1839 • John C. Calhoun
... questions, which is to challenge and analyze the assertion before us and seek its basis in human nature. Before this is done, we should run the risk of expanding a natural misconception or inaccuracy of thought into an inveterate and pernicious prejudice by making it the ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... patriotic eloquence, hoping to touch their hearts, and reckoning on the respect inspired by his "persecution." He did not attempt to dispute the uselessness and absurdity of the word "fatherland," acknowledged the pernicious influence of religion, but firmly and loudly declared that boots were of less consequence than Pushkin; of much less, indeed. He was hissed so mercilessly that he burst into tears, there and then, on ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... person of the age of discretion, which is accounted fourteene yeares, who shall wittingly and willingly make, or publish, any lye which may be pernicious to the publique weal, or tending to the dammage or injury of any perticular person, to deceive and abuse the people with false news or reportes, and the same duly prooved in any courte, or before any one magistrate, who hath hereby power granted ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... at publishing the most damaging and unclean story. The only question is: "Will it pay?" And there are scores of men who, day by day, bring into the newspaper offices manuscripts for publication which unite all that is pernicious; and, before the ink is fairly dry, tens of thousands are devouring with avidity the impure issue. Their sensibilities deadened, their sense of right perverted, their purity of thought tarnished, their taste for plain life despoiled—the printing-press, with its iron ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... religion which we defend. Take the twofold Hierarchy of the martyr Dionysius, what classes, what sacrifices, what rites does he teach? This fact struck Luther so forcibly that he pronounced the works of this Father to be "such stuff as dreams are made of, and that of the most pernicious kind." In imitation of his parent, an obscure Frenchman, Caussee, has not hesitated to call this Dionysius, the Apostle of an illustrious nation, "an old dotard." Ignatius has given grievous offence to the Centuriators ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... again, we began at once to talk over our plans for joining Mr. Washington; I made sure that now there was no greater obstacle in my way than my father's opinions. Alas! in November my aunt took what Dr. Rush called a pernicious ague, and, although bled many times and fed on Jesuits' bark, she came near to dying. In January she was better, but was become like a child, and depended upon me for everything. If I but spoke of ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... explanation be the true one, the mystery is solved, and that which seemed scarcely credible becomes more intelligible, though not less pernicious. This is not the only case that history records in which a false theory, disguising itself as loyalty to a State or to a Church, has perverted the conception of duty and become a source ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... In worst extreams, and on the perilous edge Of battel when it rag'd, in all assaults Their surest signal, they will soon resume New courage and revive, though now they lye Groveling and prostrate on yon Lake of Fire, 280 As we erewhile, astounded and amaz'd, No wonder, fall'n such a pernicious highth. He scarce had ceas't when the superiour Fiend Was moving toward the shore; his ponderous shield Ethereal temper, massy, large and round, Behind him cast; the broad circumference Hung on his shoulders like the Moon, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... found in all cases to be obnoxious, and this particular mode, I apprehend, is calculated to produce very pernicious effects. The laws of a republic should all tend to establish and support, as far as is practicable, the principle of equality, and any act that has a contrary tendency must be injurious to the community. Now this act draws a direct line of demarcation between citizens, ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... was limited to the sphere of portraiture. The crowning impediments finally, which hindered the progress of German art, and perverted it from its true aim, were the Reformation, which narrowed the sphere of ecclesiastical works, and the pernicious imitation of the great Italian masters ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... reconsider his demeanour towards Christianity, and it is on record that before leaving Osaka for Kyushu he publicly stated, "I fear much that all the virtue of the European priests is merely a mask of hypocrisy and serves only to conceal pernicious designs against the empire." Then, in Kyushu, two things influenced him strongly. One was that he now saw with his own eyes what militant Christianity really meant—ruined temples, overthrown idols, and coerced converts. Such excesses had not disgraced Christian propagandism ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... sober and not opposed. I have known several such, who have for years deceived their owners and others on shore, led by outward appearance, till some fearful catastrophe has been the result of their pernicious habits. ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... people even when they doubted the plea of their Government that their national safety was in peril. The victors, although they had fought the war with the announced purpose of proving the falsity of this pernicious doctrine and of emancipating the oppressed nationalities subject to the Central Powers, revived the doctrine with little hesitation during the negotiations at Paris and wrote it into the Covenant of the League ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... be transitory. To seek for a secret that would render it constant, would be as wild a search as for the philosopher's stone, or the grand panacea; and the discovery would be equally useless, or rather pernicious to mankind. The most holy band of society is friendship. It has been well said, by a shrewd satirist, "that rare as true love is, true friendship ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... Would that fantastic vision of careless, pleasure-loving monarch and butterfly Court ever be realised again? Angela thought not. It seemed to her serious mind that the glory of those wild years since his Majesty's restoration was a delusive and pernicious brightness which could never shine again. That extravagant splendour, that reckless gaiety had borne beneath their glittering surface the seeds of ruin and death. An angry God had stretched out His ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... contemporaries have occasionally introduced into their metrical compositions; and I acknowledge that this defect where it exists, is more dishonorable to the Writer's own character than false refinement or arbitrary innovation, though I should contend at the same time that it is far less pernicious in the sum of its consequences. From such verses the Poems in these volumes will be found distinguished at least by one mark of difference, that each of them has a worthy purpose. Not that I mean to say, that I always began to write with a distinct purpose formally conceived; but I believe that ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... however—what she understood by love—could be felt by the lower orders, the people who "walked together" and "kept company" before mating, was too incredible. Even if driven by evidence to admit the fact she would have set it down to the pernicious encroachment of Board School education, and remarked that a little knowledge is ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... East Indiamen, and Captain Cocke as a merchant to be joined with him, and Sir J. Minnes for the other, and Sir G. Smith to be joined with him. But I did order it so that my Lord Bruncker and Sir J. Minnes were ordered, but I did stop the merchants to be added, which would have been a most pernicious thing to the King I am sure. In this I did, I think, a very good office, though I cannot acquit myself from some envy of mine in the business to have the profitable business done by another hand while I lay wholly imployed in the trouble of the office. ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... all this is the production of a feeling of bondage most unfavourable in its influence towards the lessees themselves, and most pernicious in its influence over ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... of God, whom the Father has chosen for Himself, have learned, through the trials and losses of life, the lessons of peace and detachment which crosses are intended to teach. They have learned, by exclusion and retirement from worldly festivities and pernicious delights, to draw near to God, out of love for His beauty and mercy, or if only to ease their breaking hearts and dispel the loneliness of their forsaken lives. In the words of the Psalmist, they have tasted and seen that the Lord is sweet, and that there is no one like unto ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... shall be addressed to the meanest capacity present As a chain can be no stronger than its weakest link, so nothing said by the speakers at a political convention must be above the intellectual reach of the most pernicious idiot having a seat and a vote. I don't know why it is so. It seems to be thought that if he is not suitably entertained he will not attend, as ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... she, 'I hope you will be convinced that my enemies are those whom I have long considered as the most pernicious of Your Majesty's Councillors—your own Cabinet Ministers—your M. de Calonne!—respecting whom I have often given you my opinion, which, unfortunately, has always been attributed to mere female caprice, or as having been biassed by the intrigues of Court favourites! This, I hope, Your ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Democracy. As for the Reformation of Laws and the Places of Judicature, whether to be here, as at present, or in every county, as hath been long aimed at, and many such proposals tending no doubt to public good, they may be considered in due time, when we are past these pernicious pangs, in a hopeful way of health and firm constitution. But, unless these things which I have above proposed, one way or other, be once settled, in my fear (which God avert!), we instantly ruin, or at best become the servants of one ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... long exposed a fresher colour, and a more attractive appearance; but repeated waterings are highly pernicious, as they neutralize the natural juices of some, render others bitter, and make all others vapid ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various
... adventure, summoned to the West Indies by Hugh. An agent had proved unfaithful on a serious scale; and it used to be told me in my childhood how the brothers pursued him from one island to another in an open boat, were exposed to the pernicious dews of the tropics, and simultaneously struck down. The dates and places of their deaths (now before me) would seem to indicate a more scattered and prolonged pursuit: Hugh, on the 16th April 1774, in Tobago, within sight of Trinidad; Alan, so late as May 26th, and so far away as "Santt Kittes," ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... guarantee to liquidate the Bolshevik forces in two months and establish a monarchy satisfactory to the Russian officers. This propaganda had reached the front, and had been referred to as assuming very serious importance by his front-line generals in their dispatches. To counteract this pernicious influence, he was proposing to visit the front himself to point out the impossibility of Japan, as one of the Entente Allies, being able herself to execute such a programme. I asked him how this propaganda began and who engineered it. He answered: "General ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... the invasion our Navy had indeed reached a low ebb. Living always in barracks, under the pernicious system gradually forced upon the country by "The Destroyers" in the name of economy, our bluejackets had fallen steadily from their one high standard of discipline and efficiency into an incompetent, sullen, half-mutinous state, due solely to the criminal ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... years ago are reduced before our eyes into their real pettiness. The first Reform Bill still retains its importance for as a measure which for good or bad revolutionised the constitution; its beneficial or pernicious effects are still traceable in the England of to-day; but its evils are not lessened by the acknowledged virtues of Lord Althorpe, nor are its good effects marred by the ambition of Brougham or the violence of O'Connell. It is no slight recommendation of any mode of reasoning if it ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... not the true one, nor had her imagination ever engaged in a search for any other; but the people of her tribe seemed to suspect that she was of different blood, for they evidently regarded her with aversion. Preserved from the pernicious counsels and examples of those around her by some secret instinct, she had remained pure. With the aid of a book picked up on the roadside, she had learned to read and to speak a few French words. This was more than enough to convince her companions that she was haughty and ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... in the American mind; that it helped to keep alive the sacred sentiments of obedience, and reverence, and justice, of the supremacy of the calm and grand reason of the law over the fitful will of the individual and the crowd; that it helped to withstand the pernicious sophism that the successive generations, as they come to life, are but as so many successive flights of summer flies, without relations to the past or duties to the future, and taught instead that all—all the dead, the living, the unborn—were one moral person-one for action, one for ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... magistrate, or officer in the so-called voluntary militia. It was ordered that throughout Spain a solemn service should be celebrated in expiation of the insults offered to the Holy Sacrament; that missions should be sent over the land to combat the pernicious and heretical doctrines associated with the late outbreak, and that the bishops should relegate to monasteries of the strictest observance the priests who had acted as the agents of an impious faction. [341] Thus the war of revenge was openly ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... unmediated mercy. But as many, not thinking from the understanding about things of the church or of religion, believe that they are saved by immediate mercy and hence that salvation is instantaneous, and yet this is contrary to the truth and in addition is a pernicious belief, it is important that it be considered in ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... genial, spiritually comfortable feelings of ordinary life. His real place is with the genre painters; only his genre was of the soul, as that of others—of Benozzo Gozzoli, for example—was of the body. Hence a sin of his own, scarcely less pernicious than that of the naturalists, and cloying to boot—expression at ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson
... first came to the colony, nothing surprised me more than the extent to which this pernicious custom was carried, both by the native Canadians, the European settlers, and the lower order of Americans. Many of the latter had spied out the goodness of the land, and BORROWED various portions of it, without so much as asking leave of the absentee owners. ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... exclude ardent spirits wholly from the Chippewas and Ottowas, the latter of whom have, by a recent order, been placed under my charge. I am fully satisfied that ardent spirits are not necessary to the successful prosecution of the trade, that they are deeply pernicious to the Indians, and that both their use and abuse is derogatory to the character of a wise and sober government. Their exclusion in every shape, and every quantity, is an object of primary moment; and it is an object which I feel it a duty to persevere ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... the ravages made by the savages on the back settlements, and by unanimous vote entreated the lieutenant governor "to use the most pressing instances with Colonel Montgomery not to depart with the king's troops, as it might be attended with the most pernicious consequences." Montgomery, warned that he was but giving the Cherokees room to boast among the other tribes, of their having obliged the English army to retreat, not only from the mountains, but also from the province, shunned the path of duty, and leaving four companies of the ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... ills they saw, and, as their duty bound, They show'd the King the danger of the wound; That no concessions from the throne would please, But lenitives fomented the disease: That Absalom, ambitious of the crown, Was made the lure to draw the people down: That false Achitophel's pernicious hate Had turn'd the Plot to ruin church and state: 930 The council violent, the rabble worse: That ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... to act thus, and to teach their children to imitate their own pernicious examples, I have made it a study to demolish, if possible, the foundation of their positions. The success attending my efforts to trace them out, assures me, that I am correct when I affirm that two-thirds of all opposers are influenced in their conduct by the ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... which proposes to give him land at an almost nominal price out of the property of the Government, will go far to demoralize the people and repress this noble spirit of independence. It may introduce among us those pernicious social theories which have proved ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... taken up by the Goupils, knew Meissonier and worked occasionally with Gerome. His rococo pictures, his Oriental work set Paris ablaze. He married the daughter of the Spanish painter Federigo Madrazo, and visited at Madrid, Granada, Seville, Rome, and, in 1874, London. He contracted a pernicious fever at Rome and died there, November 21, 1874, at the age of thirty-six. His funeral was imposing, many celebrities of the world of art participating. He was buried in ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... are the absolute and ultimate law-giver here. And I for my part cannot but consider the talk of the contemporary sociological school about averages and general laws and predetermined tendencies, with its obligatory undervaluing of the importance of individual {262} differences, as the most pernicious and immoral of fatalisms. Suppose there is a social equilibrium fated to be, whose is it to be,—that of your preference, or mine? There lies the question of questions, and it is one which no study ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... between use and abuse. There is a useful, praiseworthy, moral competition, a competition which enlarges the heart and the mind, a noble and generous competition,—it is emulation; and why should not this emulation have for its object the advantage of all? There is another competition, pernicious, immoral, unsocial, a jealous competition which hates ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... absolutely pernicious and is as dangerous to society as the cholera microbe," Von Koren went on. "To drown him ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Bellicist says that discussions of this sort, these attempts to find out the truth, are but the encouragement of pernicious theories: there is, according to him, but one way—better rapiers, more and better ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... equally to all parts of Government, and in all forms. The virtue, spirit, and essence of a House of Commons consists in its being the express image of the feelings of the nation. It was not instituted to be a control upon the people, as of late it has been taught, by a doctrine of the most pernicious tendency. It was designed as a control for the people. Other institutions have been formed for the purpose of checking popular excesses; and they are, I apprehend, fully adequate to their object. If not, they ought to be made so. The ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... for their movement, depending upon a sort of poetic construction. A pity it is that we must content ourselves with empty descriptions of this nature. Here, doubtless, if anywhere, opium was an auxiliary to Coleridge. For a laudanum negus, whatever there may be about it that is pernicious, will, to a mind that is metaphysically predisposed, open up thoroughfares of thought which are raised above the level of the gross material, and which lead into the region of the shadowy. Show us the man who habitually carries pills of any sort ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... stronger be said in praise of a profession, such as merchandize or manufacture, than to observe the advantages which it procures to society; and is not a monk and inquisitor enraged when we treat his order as useless or pernicious to mankind? ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... that their religion demands that they should wear garments manufactured in India only and eat food only grown in India, decline to wear any other clothing or eat any other food. Lord Curzon set the fashion for tea-drinking. And that pernicious drug now bids fair to overwhelm the nation. It has already undermined the digestive apparatus of hundreds of thousands of men and women and constitutes an additional tax upon their slender purses. Lord Hardinge can set the fashion for Swadeshi, and almost the ...
— Third class in Indian railways • Mahatma Gandhi
... Historye, of Promos and Cassandra: Deuided into two Commicall Discourses. In the fyrste parte is showne, the vnsufferable abuse, of a lewde Magistrate: The vertuous behauiours of a chaste Ladye: The vncontrowled leawdenes of a fauoured Curtisan. And the vndeserued estimation of a pernicious Parasyte. In the second parte is discoursed, the perfect magnanimitye of a noble Kinge, in checking Vice and fauouringe Vertue: Wherein is showne, the Ruyne and ouerthrowe, of dishonest practises: with the aduauncement ...
— Catalogue of the Books Presented by Edward Capell to the Library of Trinity College in Cambridge • W. W. Greg
... be of the very best kind. In putting away pickles, use stone, or glass jars. The lead which is an ingredient in the glazing of common earthenware, is rendered very pernicious by the action of the vinegar. Have a large wooden spoon and a fork, for the express purpose of taking pickles out of the jar when you want them for the table. See that, while in the jar, they are always completely covered with vinegar. If you ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... all this knavery was devised, or winked at, not only by low class politicians but by statesmen of renown. The maxim salus populi suprema lex was relied upon not for the first or last time as a sufficient excuse for a crime far more pernicious than that of a private forger. But we have not yet realized, in our minds or in our penal codes, that public vices ought to be punished at least as vigorously as ...
— The Paper Moneys of Europe - Their Moral and Economic Significance • Francis W. Hirst
... individuals charged with such a grand mission should be competent effectually to fulfil it, it was necessary that they should themselves have been always free from the pernicious influence of the errors and corruption, which had already spread almost throughout the world; it was necessary that their minds should have remained unpolluted by the notions of the extravagant and degrading idolatries, which were ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... economize in cost of manufacture, certain of the organ-builders, chiefly in America and in Germany, have adopted the pernicious practice of making the combination pedals, pistons or keys bring the various ranks of pipes into or out of action without moving ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... you a few extracts from the rest of the letter, for I was permitted to keep this also—perhaps, as an antidote to all pernicious ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... journey. And a Father's care Gives each sweet odors and most lovely hues. And they throughout the darkest days diffuse A balmy fragrance strikingly delicious! Yet we, vain mortals, oft these sweets refuse And choose instead that which is most pernicious,— Thus wandering far from God, who always ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... held the cynical view that human nature will always breed a great many persons having a propensity to licentious or violent habits; that laws were made to check and punish these persons, and that they might go their pernicious ways unmolested if the Police took no notice of them. So the Police established a system of immunity which anybody could enjoy by paying the price. Notorious gambling-hells "ran wide open" after handing the required sum to the high police official who extorted it. Hundreds of houses ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... attracted to the sea, and the story of a shipwreck known to be true easily tempts the sixpences from their pockets. Dream-books and ballads sell as they always did sell, but for the rest the pedlar's bundle has nothing in it, as a rule, more pernicious than may be purchased at any little shop. Romantic novelettes, reprints of popular and really clever stories, numbers of semi-religious essays and so on—some only stitched and without a wrapper—make up the show he spreads open before ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... Arnold declares, "More and more mankind will discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us. Without Poetry our science will appear incomplete." "Incomplete" is a right word, though a very weak one; "incomplete," not untrue, not pernicious, but terribly inadequate. For there are two manners of looking at the universe and at the life of men, and human nature demands that we should exercise and enjoy them both. "The words poetry, philosophy, art, science," says Renan, ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... impossible," says a recent writer, "not to deplore so pernicious a tendency to high-flown language, because all classes of society indulge in it more or less; and because, as we have already said, it proceeds in every instance from mental deficiencies and moral defects, ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... another prominent and unsightly feature of such societies; they do harm by the cliquerie which they generate, collecting little knots of little men, no individual of whom can stand his own ground, but a group of whom, by leaning hard together, can, and do, exercise a most pernicious influence; seeking petty gain and class celebrity, they exert their joint-stock brains to convert science into pounds, shillings, and pence; and, when they have managed to poke one foot upon the ladder of notoriety, use the other to kick furiously at the poor aspirants ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... goes on with unabated energy between Germany and the U.S.A. At home a brief period has been set to the pernicious activities of importunate inquisitors by the adjournment of the House till mid-September. "Dr. Punch" is of opinion that the Mother of Parliaments is sorely in need of a rest and needs every hour of a seven weeks' holiday. In the Thrift campaign, ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... Webster's life. But that he had gazed long and earnestly into the mirror held up by that enchantress of the nations in his age, is certain. Aghast and fascinated by the sins he saw there flaunting in the light of day—sins on whose pernicious glamour Ascham, Greene, and Howell have insisted with impressive vehemence—Webster discerned in them the stuff he needed for philosophy and art. Withdrawing from that contemplation, he was like a spirit 'loosed out of hell to speak of horrors.' Deeper than ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... pronounced upon the author, he exposed himself to the retort which he had recorded in his Life of Boerhaave (Works, vi. 277). 'As Boerhaave was sitting in a common boat, there arose a conversation among the passengers upon the impious and pernicious doctrine of Spinosa, which, as they all agreed, tends to the utter overthrow of all religion. Boerhaave sat and attended silently to this discourse for some time, till one of the company ... instead of confuting the positions of Spinosa by argument ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... speculations, but on the practical side, in the application to life, not in the philosophy on which it might be grounded. In that direction, he could see nothing but a "milking of the bull"—a fruitless or rather a pernicious waste of intellect. An intense conviction of the supreme importance of a moral guidance in this difficult world, made him abhor any rash inquiries by which the basis of existing authority ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... same—viz: to gain wealth, so that they may obtain a high standing and influence in society. Thousands thus driven into crime, are detected, lose their reputation, and abandon themselves to intemperance. Their evil example has a pernicious influence on the morals of those children and youth, who may, by various circumstances, be placed in their society, and thus the pestilence, in all its frightful horrors, gathers force ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods
... fellow with all the world before him, too. Hang it, Mr Milvain, is there no less pernicious work you ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... that told us that wee should not find what wee thought to find, and that he had put a good order, and that it was not well done to distroy in that manner a Country, and to wrong so many Inhabitants. He advised me to leave my Brother, telling me that his designs were pernicious. Wee see ourselves frustrated of our hopes. My Brother told me that wee had store of merchandize that would bring much profit to the french habitations that are in the Cadis. I, who was desirous of nothing but new things, made ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... we have more insects than formerly, but they can not be responsible for all the great falling off. It is traceable mainly to poverty of the soil in certain ingredients imperatively needed by the crop for its best development, and to the pernicious effect of enriching with nitrogenous manures. Any one who will plant on suitably dry soil, enriched only with forest-leaves, sea-weeds, or by plowing under green crops until the whole soil to a proper depth is completely filled with ...
— The $100 Prize Essay on the Cultivation of the Potato; and How to Cook the Potato • D. H. Compton and Pierre Blot
... warmth, and which buttoned straight up from the knee to the neck. I thought Turkey would appreciate the favor, and abate his rashness and obstreperousness of afternoons. But no; I verily believe that buttoning himself up in so downy and blanket-like a coat had a pernicious effect upon him—upon the same principle that too much oats are bad for horses. In fact, precisely as a rash, restive horse is said to feel his oats, so Turkey felt his coat. It made him insolent. He was a man ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... Pernicious habit! One becomes a worse than senseless block, A bard that no one dares to praise and fewer care to knock; A sentence by a mossy stone, of quaint and curious lore, An apt quotation is to one and it is ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... inherited habit of obedience reconciled them to the absence of any share in the direction and control of the colony in which their lot was thrown, but such a system of administration deprived them of the possibility of acquiring experience in the management of public affairs. Its effects were pernicious and far-reaching, for when the colonies outgrew the bonds that linked them to Spain, their people, ignorant of the meaning of true liberty, and untrained in self-government, followed their instinct of blind submission ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... of gaming seemed to have devoured all their other faculties, and to have equalled the rash enthusiasm of the inhabitants of Malacca in the East Indies, who are so possessed with that pernicious spirit, that they sacrifice to it not only their fortunes, but also their wives and children; and then letting their hair down upon their shoulders, in imitation of the ancient Lacedaemonians when they devoted themselves ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... in his conduct, he derived the advantage, not only of enriching himself with a plentiful crop of fruit, but also of getting rid of bad and pernicious habits. His father was so perfectly satisfied with his reformation, that the following season he gave him and his brother the produce of a small orchard, which they ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... how Miss Mott would come to her room and expound to her most beautifully the doctrine of Unitarianism, and then Mrs. Worthington would come and pray with her long and earnestly to counteract the pernicious effect of Miss Mott's heresies. While she was accustomed to the liberal theology of the Hicksite Quakers, this was the first time she ever had heard the more scholarly interpretation of the ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... indulgently than my friend; certainly, at any rate, it appeared to me that no man could have walked straighter in the given circumstances. These were almost always awkward. Half the women of his time, to speak liberally, had flung themselves at his head, and out of this pernicious fashion many complications, some of them grave, had not failed to arise. He was not a woman's poet, as I had said to Mrs. Prest, in the modern phase of his reputation; but the situation had been different when the man's own voice was mingled with his song. That voice, by ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... enforcement of the law in this case would have the most pernicious effect, not only upon the commerce of the colony, but would retard, if not prevent, the accomplishment of those schemes of reform that His Excellency ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... a fair, pernicious creature, endowed too richly with the art of pleasing, and quite devoid of principle. Few bad men knew right so well, and went so wrong. Ina buried her face for hours on his bed, and kissed his cold features and hand. She had told him before he died she would recall all her resolutions, ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... other day. It isn't of very much use to a Jack-in-the-Pulpit; so I hand it over to you, my chicks. It strikes me that it has the gist of some of Deacon Green's remarks, and that somehow it doesn't come under the head of what is called "pernicious reading": ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... of the bear; it might be that careful talk had not had its due effect in convincing the Indians that the journey looked merely to the establishment of new winter posts; Sam was not disinclined to attribute it to pernicious activity on the part of the Ojibway. It might spring from any one of these. Nor could he quite decide its quality;—whether friendly or inimical. Merely persisted the fact that he and his companion were watched curiously by the men and fearfully by the women; that ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White |
