"Pernicious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... proper, but through usury and rapine alone: all this is made to revive again through the instrumentality of the national-economic disease called a paper crisis, in a less violent form, indeed, but in one which is much more insidious and scarcely less pernicious. ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... 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. Thence back again ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... research. It is idle to provide channels for scientific research later if it is to be choked at the source. That source is an enquiring and free intellect unhampered by iron dogma. Beneficial to artistic and emotional development therefore, the teaching of Communism as a faith may well be most pernicious to the scientific and intellectual side of education, and will lead direct to the pragmatist view of knowledge and scientific research which the Church and the capitalist already find it so convenient ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... 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 ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... dramatic singing—the style which he preferred—is dangerous to the vocal organism; particularly when one practices the shriek or scream, which produces a fine effect when skilfully employed, but is most pernicious in excess. ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... people together, and endeavouring to induce them to love and marry each other, without there being between them any true congeniality or fitness for such a relation! Of all assumed social offices, that of the match-maker is one of the most pernicious, and her character one of the most detestable. She should be shunned with the same shrinking aversion with which we shun a ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur
... hold fast that which is good." By this the apostle implies, according to Archbishop Secker's commentary, all things which may be right or wrong according to conscience. And by "proving them" he means, not that we should try them by experience, which would be an absurd and pernicious direction, but that we should examine them by our faculty of judgment, which is a wise and useful exhortation.] Credulity was one of the most prominent engines of the Romish Church, but there was a trace of sense in their application of it. They taught ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... their ancestors' virtue; and of the Gentiles, because they would not allow them their meed of reward even though they attain to the highest excellence of conduct, simply because they have not commendable ancestors. I know not if there could be a more pernicious doctrine than this: that there is no punishment for the wicked offspring of good parents, and no reward for the good offspring of evil parents. The law judges each man upon his own merit, and does not assign praise or blame according to ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... Bacchus' black servant, negro fine, Sorcerer that mak'st us doat upon Thy begrim'd complexion, And, for thy pernicious sake More and greater oaths to break Than reclaimed Lovers take 'Gainst women: Thou thy siege dost lay Much too in the female way, While thou suck'st the labouring breath Faster than kisses; ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... obnoxious people. In their room it was necessary to offer some other victims, and it might easily be suggested that, although the genuine followers of Moses were innocent of the fire of Rome, there had arisen among them a new and pernicious sect of Galilaeans, which was capable of the most horrid crimes. Under the appellation of Galilaeans, two distinctions of men were confounded, the most opposite to each other in their manners and principles; the disciples ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... the blind," said Mr Lerew. "The pernicious principles of such men are calculated to produce the overthrow of our Holy Church, and ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston
... means of raising money for the public service. Taught by experience—for Fox was at this time reduced to a miserable state of embarrassment and dependence, from his love of the gambling table—he delivered an impressive harangue on the vice of gambling, and declared that lotteries were the most pernicious of all species of gaming inasmuch as they immediately affected the morals, habits, and circumstances of the lower orders of society. Lord North defended both the loan and the lottery, and asserted that the L12,000,000 could not have been obtained ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... laws of social evolution, he [the ethnologist] must assuredly discover them," but at any rate, and first of all, "his duty is to ascertain the course civilization has actually followed.... To strive for the ideals of another branch of knowledge may be positively pernicious, for it can easily lead to that factitious simplification which ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... a flavor of stale tobacco smoke in the room this morning when I entered, and ashes on the carpet. I KNOW that young Mr. Alexander has abandoned the pernicious habit. See that it does ...
— Two Men of Sandy Bar - A Drama • Bret Harte
... be forgotten that this was the monarchical, secular, and immemorial policy of France as the disturber of European peace; continued by the republic, it was rendered more pernicious and exasperating to the upholders of the balance of power. Not only was the republic more energetic and less scrupulous than the monarchy, her rivals were in a very low estate indeed. Great Britain had stripped France and Holland of their colonies, but these new possessions ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... pernicious influence of the House is gradually tingeing the high priests of the bell-bottomed ballottee ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... assembled at Malton, in Yorkshire, in order to renew their licenses to retail beer, the worthy magistrate addressed one of them (an old woman), and said he trusted she did not put any pernicious ingredients into the liquor; to which she immediately replied: "I'll assure your worship there's naught pernicious put into our barrels that I know of, but ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... hand and staring for a weary while out of the car window at a reeling and moonsmitten landscape. He yawned exhaustively, his thoughts astray between a girl garbed all in grey, Bannerman's earnest and thoughtful face, and the pernicious activities of Mr. Daniel Anisty, at whose door Maitland laid the responsibility for this most ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... Mrs. Pickle had plucked a peach with her own hand, and was in the very act of putting it between her teeth, Mrs. Grizzle perceived the rash attempt, and running up to her, fell on her knees in the garden, entreating her, with tears in her eyes, to desist such a pernicious appetite. Her request was no sooner complied with, than recollecting, that if her sister's longing was balked, the child might be affected with some disagreeable mark or deplorable disease, she begged as earnestly that she would swallow the fruit, and in the mean ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... he distinctly saw in what manner alone this end could be attained. There was, in truth, about all his notions a clearness, a coherence, a precision, which, if he had not been pursuing an object pernicious to his country and to his kind, would have justly entitled him to high admiration. He saw that there was one instrument, and only one, by which his vast and daring projects could be carried into execution. That instrument was a standing army. To the forming ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... what on earth is the good of saying to a child, "The world is a flattened sphere, like an orange." It is simply pernicious. You had much better say the world is a poached egg in a frying pan. That might have some dynamic meaning. The only thing about the flattened orange is that the child just sees this orange disporting itself in blue air, and never bothers to associate ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... be pressed into the service when great ones do not volunteer. With this poem begins the long series of Dryden's prefaces, of which Swift made such excellent, though malicious, fun that I cannot forbear to quote it. "I do utterly disapprove and declare against that pernicious custom of making the preface a bill of fare to the book. For I have always looked upon it as a high point of indiscretion in monster-mongers and other retailers of strange sights to hang out a fair picture over the door, drawn after the life, with a most eloquent description underneath; ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... trade should not be accounted most pernicious wherein the balance is most against us? And whether this be not the trade ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley
... cleared and laid out, and soon produced all kinds of vegetables. In our stock we were rather unfortunate, for of six sheep that were landed for the purpose of breeding, five died, supposed from the effect produced by eating some pernicious herb in the woods: pigs, ducks, and fowls seemed however in a fair way of doing well, and had increased considerably since they were landed; but great inconvenience was experienced for want of some horses or draught oxen, which would not only have ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... sea-voyage. One's geography improves apace, and numberless incidents occur pregnant with interest to a landsman; moreover, there are sure to be many on board who have travelled far and wide, and one gains a great deal of information about all sorts of races and places. One effect is, perhaps, pernicious, but this will probably soon wear off on land. It awakens an adventurous spirit, and kindles a strong desire to visit almost every spot upon the face of the globe. The captain yarns about California and the China seas—the doctor about Valparaiso and the Andes—another raves about Hawaii ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... O Thou most pernicious traitor. [Aside.] Damn him, coward! He will tell all, unless I ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... notwithstanding the deepened color which age had given to the bricks, it was as well preserved as a choice old picture, or some rare book cherished by an amateur, which would be ever new were it not for the blistering of our climate and the effect of gases, whose pernicious ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... telling the history of the first man and his exile; "Sefer-Jezira," (Book of Creation), telling by pictures of the origin of the world; "Ka-arat Kezef," in which Ezobi warns the Israelites against the pernicious influence of secular science; "Schiur-Koma," a plastic description of God, instructing the reader regarding his physical appearance—the gigantic size of the head, feet, hands, and especially God's beard, which, according to the book, ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... seven horse nearly; and the estimate for consumption of acid and use of zinc is twenty cents for each horse-power per day of twenty-four hours. The escape of acid vapours from the batteries is an evil that will have to be guarded against, to prevent the pernicious effects produced in several electro-plating establishments, where the health of the workmen has been seriously injured by the liberated gases. This defect being overcome, Professor Page's electro-magnetic engine may become highly valuable in engineering and manufacturing processes. To quote the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... AF., II., 36. Letter of the Committee of Public Safety to Le Carpentier, on mission in l'Orne, Brumaire 19, year II. "The administrative bodies of Alencon, the district excepted, are wholly gangrened; all are Feuillants, or infected with a no less pernicious spirit.... For the choice of subjects, and the incarceration of individuals, you can refer to the sans-culottes: the most nervous are Symaroli and Preval.—At Montagne, the administration must be wholly removed, as well as the collector of the district, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... John Mortimer, when they were gone. "I had no notion that child had been neglected and left to pick up these pernicious superstitions, though I never liked his mother from the first moment I set my eyes ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... minds. As the case now is, looking at your colleague and yourself, a man of such character, my address will be solely to you; who, I feel convinced, will prove yourself a good man and a worthy citizen in vain, if the state on the other hand should halt. Pernicious counsels will have the same authority and influence as those which are sound. For you are mistaken, Lucius Paulus, if you imagine that you will have a less violent contest with Caius Terentius than with Hannibal. I know not whether the ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... Maelius, of the equestrian order, extremely rich considering these times, set about a project useful in itself, but having a most pernicious tendency, and a still more pernicious motive. For having, by the assistance of his friends and clients, bought up corn from Etruria at his private expense, (which very circumstance, I think, had been an impediment in the endeavour to reduce the price of corn by the exertions ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... that I determined to make abstinence a permanent rule, and have stuck to my determination ever since, with decided benefit. I shall certainly never resume smoking. I never use any stimulants whatever when writing, and believe the use of them to be most pernicious; indeed, I have seen terrible results from them. When a writer feels dull, the best stimulant is fresh air. Victor Hugo makes a good fire before writing, and then opens the window. I have often found temporary dulness removed by taking ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... between his interview with Harwood in the upper room of the Whitcomb and the primaries, Bassett had quietly visited every congressional district, holding conferences and perfecting his plans. "Never before," said the "Advertiser," "had Morton Bassett's pernicious activity been so marked." The belief had grown that the senator from Fraser was in imminent peril; in the Republican camp it was thought that while Thatcher might not control the convention he would prove ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... place does not extinguish the duties or the rights of men; but it often renders their exercise impracticable. The same circumstance of distance renders the noxious effects of an evil system in any community less pernicious. But there are situations where this difficulty does not occur, and in which, therefore, those duties are obligatory and these rights are to be asserted. It has ever been the method of public jurists ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... coaxing the crusty old gentleman who owns the estate into granting permission. He doesn't like orphans, he says, and if he once lets them get a start in his grounds, the place will be infested with them forever. You would think, to hear him talk, that orphans were a pernicious ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... Peristyle peristilo. Peritoneum peritoneo. Periwig peruko. Periwinkle (plant) vinko. Perjury jxurrompo. Permanent konstanta, dauxra. Permeable penetrebla. Permission permeso. Permissive permesa. Permit permesi. Permutation intersxangxo. Pernicious pereiga. Perpendicular perpendikulara. Perpetrate elfari. Perpetual eterna. Perpetuate dauxrigi. Perplex konfuzi, cxagrenegi. Perplexity konfuzeco, sxanceligxo. Perron perono. Perruquier perukisto. Persecute persekuti. Persecution persekutado. Perseverance ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... is mostly of our own People, showing the Triumph of a resourceful Dealer over two Critics and a Captain of Industry. To which seven stories are added some Reflections upon Art Collecting, setting forth Excuses and Palliations for a Practice usually regarded as Pernicious. ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... middle of April or 1st of May. The walls may, to the touch, appear dry in three or four weeks; but shut up any room for twelve or twenty-four hours, and enter before it be aired, you will meet an offensive, and, as I believe, a pernicious effluvia; an air totally unfit for respiration, unelastic, and which, when inhaled, leaves the lungs unsatisfied. This is the air you will breathe if you inhabit the house. I could, perhaps, show chymically how the atmosphere of the closed rooms becomes thus azotic, but I ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... experiment: and though it did carry off the fit, yet it rather contributed to weakening me; for I had frequent convulsions in my nerves and limbs for some time. I learned from it also this, in particular, that being abroad in the rainy season was the most pernicious thing to my health that could be, especially in those rains which came attended with storms and hurricanes of wind; for as the rain which came in the dry season was almost always accompanied with such storms, so I found that rain was much more dangerous than the rain which ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... rare thing to have to reprove the world for too much docility. It is a natural vice like credulity, and as pernicious. Superstition. ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... obtained at the very period of the Reformation. The conquerors adopted one religion, while the conquered retained the other, and thus a new and most enduring barrier was raised between the two nations in Ireland, and a pernicious antagonism was ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... savagery in his eye. Should he curse this mountain of pernicious humor—curse him and die? Why ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... what had happened, he went in quest of them himself, only to find that having partaken of the lotus they were dead to the calls of home and ambition. Seizing these men, Ulysses conveyed them bound to his ship, and, without allowing the rest to land, sailed hastily away from those pernicious shores. ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... of May he moved in, and for some evenings Political Economy and History and Travel and the rest gave way to anxious cuttings and fittings of wall paper, and a pungent odor of paint. The old house took on new life and activity, the latter sometimes pernicious, as when Willy Cameron fell down the cellar stairs with a pail of paint in his hand, or Dan, digging up some bricks in the back yard for a border the seeds of which were already sprouting in a flat box in the kitchen, ran ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... have elsewhere said, one of the "fads" of the day is to hold that liberalism of mind is always characterised by being a friend to every country and race but your own. Exact truth is as illusive to discovery by that as other pernicious methods. That there may have been one or two instances of cruelty practised on the battle-field is possible. Something of the kind always takes place in warfare as in everyday life. But only the amateur would magnify a few instances into a catalogue of charges. Alas! you cannot eliminate from ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... 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 ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... liturgy to which she had been accustomed, and was probably as worthy of the Being to whom they were addressed as they could well be made by human powers. They produced their full impression on the hearers; for it is worthy of remark, that, notwithstanding the pernicious effects of a false taste when long submitted to, real sublimity and beauty are so closely allied to nature that they generally find an ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... on. At his last lecture he thought to impress them with 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 platform. Varvara Petrovna took him home more dead than alive. "On m'a ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... uneasy all her life for a misinterpreted word or action; nay, a good, a temperate, and a just man shall be put out of countenance by the representation of those qualities that should do him honour; so pernicious a thing is wit when it is not tempered with ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... for England has not its life and being in pernicious textbooks. To really believe that would be an insult to our intelligence—even grudges cannot live without real food. Should England become helpless tomorrow, our animosity and distrust would die to-morrow, because we would know that she had it no longer in her power to injure us. Therein lies ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... privileges of the people could only be maintained by the observance of laws; and if no account were made of the rights of the sovereign, it could less be expected that any regard would be paid to the property and freedom of the subject: that it was never too late to correct any pernicious precedent; an unjust establishment, the longer it stood, acquired the greater sanction and validity; it could, with more appearance of reason, be pleaded as an authority for a like injustice; and the maintenance of it, instead of favoring ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... God, above all powers. Whom the Samaritans worship as the Father, and wickedly extol as the founder of their heresy, and strive to exalt him with many praises. Who having been baptized by the blessed apostles, went back from their faith, and disseminated a wicked and pernicious heresy, saying that he was transformed supposedly, that is to say like a shadow, and thus he had suffered, although, he says, he ...
— Simon Magus • George Robert Stow Mead
... That was on the Tuesday before the 'Varsity match, or a full fortnight after his mysterious disappearance. The telegram was from Carlsbad, of all places for Raffles of all men! Of course there was only one thing that could possibly have taken so rare a specimen of physical fitness to any such pernicious spot. But to my horror he emerged from the train, on the Wednesday evening, a cadaverous caricature of the splendid person I had ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... giving up all other lines, crossed James River to Petersburg. Lee is said, we know not with what truth, to have coolly recommended an evacuation of Richmond. But this met with no favor. A powerful party, including both the friends and enemies of the Executive, spoke of the movement as a "pernicious idea." If recommended by Lee, it was speedily abandoned, and all the energies of the Government were concentrated upon the difficult task of holding the enemy at arm's length south of the Appomattox and ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... 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 ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... applied wherever there is soil enough for a human being to stand on and thank God for making him a man. Is conservatism applicable only to property, and not to justice, freedom, and public honor? Does it mean merely drifting with the current of evil times and pernicious counsels, and carefully nursing the ills we have, that they may, as their ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... them were at best lukewarm about movements for the improvement of the conditions of toil and life among men and women who labor under hard surroundings, and were positively hostile to movements which curbed the power of the great corporation magnates and directed into useful instead of pernicious channels the activities of the great corporation ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... supposition of the antagonistic spirit of her writings to Christianity and marriage vanishes in proportion to the reader's acquaintance with her works. But against certain doctrines and practices of the Roman Catholic Church which she believed to be pernicious in their influence, she from the first declared war, and by her frank audacity made bitter enemies. M. Renan relates that when he was a boy of fifteen his ecclesiastical superiors showed him George Sand, emblematically portrayed for the admonition of the youth under their ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... "Freemantle the Privateersman," and similar works, not often found at the present time on the shelves of the booksellers, though I am sorry to say that their places have been filled with books hardly less pernicious. The hero of these stories was a pirate, a highwayman, a smuggler, or a bandit. He was painted in glowing colors; and in admiring his boldness, my sympathies were with this outcast and outlaw. These books were bad, very bad; because they brought the reader into sympathy with evil and ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... himself, to whose sudden decision he owed its fruits—the acknowledgment of his feudal superiority. He blamed the archbishop for concealing the movements of the barons from him, and for having, perhaps, even encouraged them, though knowing their pernicious nature: with what view was he stirring questions of which no mention had been made either under the King's father or brother? He censured the barons for refusing the scutage, which had been paid from ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... a certain meddlesome spirit, which, in the garb of learned research, goes prying about the traces of history, casting down its monuments, and marring and mutilating its fairest trophies. Care should be taken to vindicate great names from such pernicious erudition.—WASHINGTON IRVING. ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... conclusion, and a sufficient answer to the denunciations and arguments of the rest of the article, so far as philosophy and natural theology are concerned. If a writer must needs use his own favorite dogma as a weapon with which to give coup de grace to a pernicious theory, he should be careful to seize his edge-tool by the handle, and ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... in so far as concerns its primary causes and its immediate commencement, was one of the incidents of that pernicious agitation on the subject of the condition of the colored persons held to service in some of the States which has so long disturbed the repose of our country and excited individuals, otherwise patriotic and law abiding, to toil with misdirected zeal in the attempt to propagate their ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson
... my dear father and mother, of what force example is, and what is in the power of the heads of families to do: And this shews, that evil examples, in superiors, are doubly pernicious, and doubly culpable, because such persons are bad themselves, and not only do no good, but much harm to others; and the condemnation of such must, to be sure, be so much the greater!—And how much the greater ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... mean! And canst thou hope from me to screen Thy foolish heart, and o'er it spread A veil to cheat th' omniscient dead? And canst thou hope, as once on Earth, Applause to gain by specious worth; Like those that still by sneer and taunt Would prove pernicious what they want; And claim the mastership of Art, Because ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... 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 ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... intelligence among the people would render them unfit for their station, and discontented with it; would excite them to insubordination and arrogance toward their superiors; and make them the more liable to be seduced by the wild notions and pernicious machinations of declaimers, schemers, and innovators.—Observations in answer.—Special and striking absurdity of this objection in one important particular.—Evidence from matter of fact that the improvement of the popular understanding has not the tendency ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... maiden had said concerning her was true. The very next day he convoked an assembly of clerks and nobles to judge the two women. Both of them were condemned to be burnt. The mistress contrived to escape, but promises and persuasions having failed to turn the maiden from the pernicious error of her ways, she was delivered up to the executioner. She died without shedding a tear, without ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... numbers of the tribes within the limits of the States and Territories has been most rapid. If they be removed, they can be protected from those associations and evil practices which exert so pernicious and destructive an influence over their destinies. They can be induced to labor and to acquire property, and its acquisition will inspire them with a feeling of independence. Their minds can be cultivated, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Martin van Buren • Martin van Buren
... my son, and I shall relinquish it. The true superiority of man over the inert or passive creatures that surround him, lies in his power to free himself, at will, from those, pernicious servitudes which are termed the laws of nature. Man, if he will it, need not grow old: the lion must. Reflect, my son, upon this text, for all human power lies ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... matters last night; and, as usual, differed—and I think more than ever. He affects to patronise a system of criticism fit only for the production of mediocrity; and, although all his finer poems and passages have been produced in defiance of this system, yet I recognise the pernicious effects of it in the Doge of Venice; and it will cramp and limit his future efforts, however great they may be, unless he gets rid of it. I have read only parts of it, or rather he himself read them to me, and gave me the plan of ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... and safe in my own pocket, instead of handing it over to a toll collector. Let us not expect too much from poor human nature! I defy any man—Aristides Redivivus himself, to ride toll free through, or rather over, a turnpike defunct in this manner, and not feel a pernicious pleasure at his heart, a sort of slyly triumphing satisfaction, spite of himself, as of a dog that gets his adversary undermost; in short—without becoming for the moment, under the Circean chink of the saved "coppers," a rank Rebeccaite! The ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... sixth point is that they speak of the permit which is given to the Sangleys to gamble during the fortnight of their festival. [10] They allege that it is a pernicious thing for the community. I, Sire, have been even more strict in this than were my predecessors, who introduced it at petition of the Sangleys themselves, in order to keep them quiet and in order to avoid greater troubles, as that ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... but very severe upon the unfrugal manner it was carried on, in which he addressed himself principally to the C[hancellor] of the E[xchequer], and laid on him terribly.... Legge answered Beckford very rationally and coolly. Lord K. spoke long. Sir F. D[ashwood] maintained the German war was most pernicious.... Lord B[arrington] at last got up and spoke half an hour with great plainness and temper, explained many hidden things relating to these accounts in favour of the late K., and told two or three conversations ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... tax not you, you elements, with unkindness, I never gave you kingdom, called you children, You owe me no obedience; why then let fall Your horrible pleasure; here I stand your slave, A poor, infirm, weak and despised old man; But yet I call you servile ministers, That have with two pernicious daughters joined Your high-engendered battles 'gainst a head So old as this! I am a man more sinned ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... 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
... absurd. Love, from its very nature, must 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]
... a nation recognises as the most eminent for virtue, talents, and property, and, if you please, birth and standing in the land. They guide opinion; and, therefore, they govern. I am no leveller; I look upon an artificial equality as equally pernicious with a factitious aristocracy; both depressing the energies, and checking the enterprise of a nation. I like man to be free, really free: free in his industry as well as his body. What is the use of Habeas Corpus, if a man ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... dear happiness to women: they would else have been troubled with a pernicious suitor. I thank God and my cold blood, I am of your humour for that. I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... then lets in the interest of the community as a limiting principle, and ends by saying: "We may then allow frankly and without demur, that if he (the millionaire) maintains more horses than he needs or can use, his expenditure thereon is strictly pernicious and indefensible, precisely in the same way as it would be if he burnt so much hay and threw so many bushels of oats into the fire. He is destroying human food." Now Mr. Greg has only to determine whether a man who is keeping a score or more ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... nearer they are to nature, the more does kindness hold sway in their character; it is only when they are cooped up in towns, it is only when they are changed by cultivation, that they become depraved, that certain faults which were rather coarse than injurious are exchanged for pleasant but pernicious vices. ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... midst of his agricultural improvements, and at the very moment when their cessation would undo all that he had hitherto accomplished, was compelled either to desist for want of ready money, and throw his labourers on the parish, or to have recourse to the pernicious system of discounting bills at a ruinous rate of interest. The manufacturer, in despair, was reduced to close his works, and the operatives went forth to combine, or starve, or burn; for the hand of the ministry was upon them likewise, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... truer political prophet than Wolsey would have been found in the most ignorant of those poor men for whom his police were searching in the purlieus of London, who were risking death and torture in disseminating the pernicious volumes ...
— Froude's History of England • Charles Kingsley
... inconceivable that he should not be able in very short order to bring about the release of the fair guest of Green Fancy. He realised that the conspiracy in which she appeared to be a vital link was far-reaching and undoubtedly pernicious in character. There was not the slightest doubt in his mind that international affairs of considerable importance were involved and that the agents operating at Green Fancy were under ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... of tribal commerce were not so disastrous, though pernicious enough. The trade drew off into the wilderness the vigorous blood of the colony. It cast its spell over New France from Lachine to the Saguenay. Men left their farms, their wives, and their families, they mortgaged their property, and they borrowed from their ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... Lake citizens must send their moribund into hasty exile, or give them rough on rats, so that they may not "die in the house." As for the "strangers within our gates" who raise the rate over 50 per cent. by their pernicious activity in perishing, the implication is clear: either Salt Lake City is one of the deadliest places in the world to a stranger, or else the newcomers simply commit suicide in large batches out of a malevolent desire to vitiate the mortality ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... thousand crowns which he had given to his soldiers. He was pledging his jewels and furniture like a bankrupt, but all was now in vain to stop the mutiny at Courtray. If that went on it would be of most pernicious example, for the whole army was disorganised, malcontent, and of portentous aspect. "These things," said he, "ought not to surprise people of common understanding, for without money, without credit, without provisions, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... too) that their greatest Fame consisted in their skilful handling their Bows and Arrows, & were deservedly reckon'd the best Archers in the World, having the Art of Shooting backwards, and making their Retreat and Flight more pernicious and terrible, than their Charge and Onset. So that when Marcus Crassus in his expedition against them, was told by an Astrologer, that having found an ill Aspect in Scorpio, he presaged his Enterprize would prove unsuccesseful, Tush Man (quoth he) ...
— The School of Recreation (1684 edition) • Robert Howlett
... descends to the level of the crowd.—He would have described this decent, the gradual diffusion, the growing power of the new Idea, the active ferment which it contains after the manner of a dogma, beneficent or pernicious according to the minds in which it lodges, capable of arming men and of driving them on to pure destruction when not fully comprehended, and capable of reorganizing them if they can grasp its ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... This is the pacifism of the socialist who holds that the ties of common labor and economic state are fundamental, and divisions into nationality are secondary and unimportant; and that militarism belongs to the pernicious state of society which perpetuates capitalism and privilege and to government as a function ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... Sorrows." Only twenty years before the outbreak of King Philip's war, the government of England was asked to provide a law "to prevent the importation of Irish Papists and convicts that are yearly pow'rd upon us and to make provision against the growth of this pernicious evil." And the colonial Courts themselves, on account of what they called "the cruel and malignant spirit that has from time to time been manifest in the Irish nation against the English nation," prohibited "the bringing over ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... a little before the Sun and precedes him in his course, 'shedding sweet influences.' The ancients believed that the good or evil influences of the stars were exercised not in the night but during the day, when their rays mingled with those of the Sun. The pernicious influence of the Dog-star is mentioned by Latin writers as being most pronounced during the dog-days, at the end of summer and commencement of autumn, the time of the heliacal rising of ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... anaemia, with striking resemblance to the pernicious type in some of its features, is especially interesting for the ease and rapidity of improvement under rest and massage without electricity or excessive ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... Plain the day before. For upward of a year, Ware had enjoyed great peace of mind as a direct result of his absence from west Tennessee, and when he thought of him at all he had invariably put a period to his meditations with, "I hope to hell he catches it wherever he is!" It had really seemed a pernicious thing to him that no one had shown sufficient public spirit to knock the captain on the head, and that this had not been done, utterly destroyed his faith in the good intentions ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... contented themselves with glorifying a vanished society which, when the veil is stripped, was not heroic in all its phases, for it was based upon an institution so squalid as human slavery, and to those even more pernicious books which, by luridly portraying the unquestioned vices of reconstruction and the frightful consequences which resulted from giving the Negro the ballot, simply aroused useless passions and made the way out of the existing wilderness still more difficult. So the best public opinion, North ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... I started down the little creek, hunting for some first flowers of spring. I had scarcely got out of sight of camp, when the firing toward the front, though faintly heard, seemed too steady to be caused by the pernicious habit which prevailed of the pickets firing off their guns on returning from duty, preparatory to cleaning them. A sense of apprehension took possession of me. Presently artillery was heard, and then I turned toward camp, getting ...
— "Shiloh" as Seen by a Private Soldier - With Some Personal Reminiscences • Warren Olney
... allied to the fox. Never has the science of war been more skilfully pursued among men than it is pursued by these beasts, not even in our present century. They have their advanced out-posts, their sentinels and spies; their ambuscades, their expedients, and a thousand other inventions of the pernicious and accursed science Warfare, a hag born, herself, of Styx,[10] but giving birth ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine
... boils down to the fact that the greatest feat of the submarine was in its success in slowing up oversea freight traffic and in keeping neutral freighters in port. In this respect the submarine most certainly was dangerously pernicious. But as a positive agency, as said, the undersea craft was not a ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... satirical review of the history of New Wanley, signed by Comrade Roodhouse. He read in one place: 'Undertakings of this kind, even if pursued with genuine enthusiasm, are worse than useless; they are positively pernicious. They are half measures, and can only result in delaying the Revolution. It is assumed that working-men can be kept in a good temper with a little better housing and a little more money. That is to aid the capitalists, to smooth over huge ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... histories. But there is a magic in beautiful buildings which exercises an irresistible influence over the mind of man. One of the reasons urged for the destruction of the monasteries after the dispersion of their inhabitants, was the pernicious influence of their solemn and stately forms on the memories and imagination of those that beheld them. It was impossible to connect systematic crime with the creators of such divine fabrics. And so it was with Mowbray Church. When manufactures were introduced into this district, which ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... used. But what appears still more conclusive, a physician who had received several wounds in separating the flesh, continued his operations, having only touched the injured parts with caustic. A drunken invalid having also wounded himself, had an abscess, which doubtless showed the pernicious action of the dead flesh, but the cholera morbus did not attack him. In fine, foreign Savans, such as Moreau de Jonnes and Gravier, who have recognized, in various relations, the contagious nature of the cholera morbus, do ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... part of their calling—when they shunned the domestic ties and actually held that the consummate artist is able to love nothing but the creations of his fancy. It is such men as Thomas Sandys who have exploded that pernicious fallacy.... ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... extinction of his pernicious brilliance, and intrigued for his recall. She made no attempt to conceal her hostility, nor did she love him any the better because he met her frigid haughtiness with an ironical urbanity that seemed ever to put her in the wrong. And then one day he permitted ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... followed; and before any plan that should be approved of in Spain could be carried into execution, the situation of the parties, and the circumstances of affairs, might alter so entirely as to render its effects extremely pernicious." ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... Of Allan Mor of Moy the son; He brought to me a sonsy vessel To satiate my thirsty whistle. The poet proved himself unwise When him he did not eulogise. The bards—I own it with regret— Are a pernicious sorry set, Whate'er they get is soon forgot, Unless you always wet ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various
... hanging without the mercy of trial. A due observance of Sunday, and especially the English country observance of Sunday, is one of the saving graces of our national constitution. In the large towns, a growing laxity concerning the 'keeping of the seventh day holy,' is plainly noticeable, the pernicious example of London 'smart' society doing much to lessen the old feeling of respect for the day and its sacredness; but in small greenwood places, where it is still judged decent and obedient to the laws of God, to attend Divine worship ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... 2,164 grains of oxygen per hour. In bad air he would, if breathing at the same rate, get little over 2,000 grains of oxygen an hour—that is, a loss of 5 per cent.; and this diminished quantity of oxygen is replaced with other, and in almost all cases, pernicious matters. The oxygen is the hard-working, active substance that keeps up the fire, cooks the food, and purifies the blood; and, of course, as the proportion of oxygen in the air breathed diminishes, the lungs must ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... vegetables 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 ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various
... women of Greece and Rome through the exercise of family limitation, and in a considerable degree of voluntary motherhood, was swept away by the rising tide of Christianity. It would seem that this pernicious result was premeditated, and that from the very early days of Christianity, there were among the hierarchy those who recognized the creative power of the feminine spirit, the force of which they sought to turn to their own uses. Certain it is that the hierarchy created ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... miraculous and sacrificial character of the Lord's Supper (Mass) was reaffirmed. Belief in the invocation of saints, in the veneration of images and of relics, in purgatory and indulgences was explicitly stated, but precautions were taken to clear some of the doctrines of the pernicious practices which at times had been connected with them. The spiritual authority of the Roman See was confirmed over all Catholicism: the pope was recognized as supreme interpreter of the canons and ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... 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 hand against the wicked city where sin and profaneness sat in the high ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... 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 of ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... divinations from birds, chiefly regard the vulture, though Herodorus Ponticus relates that Hercules was always very joyful when a vulture appeared to him upon any occasion. For it is a creature the least hurtful of any, pernicious neither to corn, fruit-tree, nor cattle; it preys only on carrion, and never kills or hurts any living thing; and as for birds, it touches not them, though they are dead, as being of its own species, whereas eagles, owls, and hawks mangle ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch |
