"Profanity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sound of a heavy fall, followed by a volley of profanity, and the next instant something flew against the wall, and was shivered to fragments that fell ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... pecuniary reward, he has only to lock his door and draw his curtains, to accomplish his object without the slightest difficulty. Thus, their ostensible employment of selling fruit is nothing but a cloak for their real trade of prostitution and thieving. The profanity and obscenity of their conversation alone, is a sufficient evidence of their ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... he could stand. He had to do murder or get out. He slammed the coffee-pot down on the floor and bolted out of the open door. His arms whirled in violent gestures as he strode away. An unbroken stream of profanity floated back to mark ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... important and somewhat curiously conducted controversy respecting the Resurrection, to which Sherlock's 'Tryal of the Witnesses' gave both the impulse and the form. Annet, like Woolston, was prosecuted for blasphemy and profanity; and if the secular arm should ever be appealed to in such matters, which is doubtful, he deserved it by the coarse ribaldry of his attacks upon ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... strong enough for an amateur to begin on. It stuck in my throat and nearly choked me. My friend laughed and looked both amused and ashamed. Reader, if you have lived to maturity and never indulged in profanity, you can't imagine how awkward it will be for you to turn out your first piece of swearing. You can't do it justice. With no disposition to want to sermonize on the matter I would say, don't begin. I have seen several women—or rather females—who could ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs
... unable to understand that such a jest sounded to her like profanity. She hid her face against him, and whispered the words that would have enraptured her had they but come from his lips. The young man found it pleasant enough to be worshipped, but he could not reply as she desired. A few phrases of tenderness, and his love-vocabulary was exhausted; he even grew ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... camp in his younger days and he never got over it—the habit of swearing, I mean. It would have made your blood run cold, my dear, to have heard him go on at times. And yet he was a real good old man every other way. He couldn't help it someway. He tried to, but he used to say that profanity came as natural to him as breathing. It used to mortify his family terribly. Fortunately, none of them took after him in that respect. But he's dead—and one shouldn't speak ill of the dead. I must go and get Mattie Penhallow to do my hair. I would burst these sleeves ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... prosper, thrive, flourish, triumph. Succession, sequence, series. Supernatural, preternatural, superhuman, miraculous. Suppose, surmise, conjecture, presume, imagine, fancy, guess, think, believe. Surprise, astonish, amaze, astound. Swearing, cursing, profanity, blasphemy, execration, imprecation. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... most trying year. Her husband sometimes tormented her until it seemed as though she could not stand it any longer. The very air became polluted by his vile talk and profanity, so that the home was like a hell. Karin begged the Storms to keep little Ingmar with them also during the holidays; she did not want her brother to be at home with her for a day, not ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... as he lay, coughing and weeping with smoke, that there was something splendid and large in the other's rage. Vanrevel was ordinarily so steady and cool that this was worth seeing, this berserker gesture; worth hearing, this wonderful profanity, like Washington's one fit of cursing; and Crailey, knowing Tom, knew, too, that it had not come upon him because Carewe had a daughter into whose eyes Tom had looked; nor did he rage because he believed that Crailey's life and his were in the ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... my limited vocabulary. I kept a stiff backbone for a while, but presently a futile rage against circumstances bubbled up and boiled over. I climbed each succeeding canyon wall oozing perspiration and profanity, and when the top was reached took fresh breath and damned the Northwest by sections in a large, fluent manner of speech. In time, however, the foolishness of this came home to me, and I subsided into spasmodic ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... came, stamping and shaking his head steerlike. One expected every moment to hear him bellow. When he came up to Mr. B., it really did seem that the man must fall in a fit. When he could speak, he burst into vituperation and profanity. He d——d the city, its founders, and its present occupants. He d——d Mr. B., his ancestors, his relatives near and distant, by blood and by law; but he was exceptionally florid when he came to tell Mr. B. how many kinds of a ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... grass, the roots of which cause much profanity in this country, there are some 250,000 pounds annually imported at from three to ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... country which was the West a generation ago, a farm was old when the stumps had rotted in the fields, and the land was improved when the trees were cut. New ground was that which had not been ploughed. Once a man of varied experiences accounted to a pious woman for an unhappy bit of profanity by saying that when a boy he had ploughed new ground, and the plough caught in the roots, and the horses balked, and his feet were torn with splinters and thorns, and the handles of the plough kicked ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... El Hassan organization, which claims rule of all North Africa, consists of six men and one dame ... ah, that is, one lady. Just so the lady won't continually feel that she's being a drag on the conversation, you are hereby allowed in moments of stress such shocking profanity as an occasional damn or hell. But only if said lady is also allowed such expletives during ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... flying around the ring; but there is many a man on that stand whose honor and domestic happiness and fortune—white mane, white foot, white flank—are in the ring, racing with inebriety, and with fraud, and with profanity, and with ruin—black neck, black foot, black flank. Neck and neck they go in ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... him whether he would look into his crystal for me. With a burst of profanity, as unexpected as it was vivid, he cursed "dem boys" that had stolen from him a priceless crystal which once had belonged to his old royal mother, who, before him, had had the same gift of the spirit. But, he added—turning to a table by his side, and lifting from it a large ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... less a hero because he yielded to a great temptation; but he remains a hero in spite of the stain on his fame. It is much better not to be profane under any circumstances, but when Washington swore fiercely at Charles Lee on the battle field of Monmouth his profanity was the expression of the righteous wrath of a good man. In judging the hero one must take into account the age in which he lived, the differences in moral standards between the past and the present, and the force of the temptations which come with strength ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... copy pencil-marked with corrections by Jeffrey or Gifford: indeed, they are nearly as wretched as the touchings-up of the 'Siege of Corinth' by the latter. If ever diabolic agency was caught at tricks with 'apostolic' achievement (see page 9)—and 'apostolic', with no 'profanity' at all, I esteem these poems to be—surely you may bid it 'aroint' 'about and all about' these desecrated stanzas—each of which, however, thanks to your piety, we may hail, I trust, with ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... Tabs misjudged the room that he had to spare. He felt a jolt, guessed what had happened, and jammed on his brakes. A policeman in front of him was holding up a magisterial hand. Behind him a stream of familiar trench profanity was gathering in volume; under other circumstances he would have found a certain enjoyment in the sound. He looked back and saw what he expected: the barrow overturned; the flowers scattered, the donkey surprised out of its ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... political affairs, save in cases of imminent danger. Their duties, grave, tranquil, and solemn, held them aloof from the stir of temporary agitation. They were the last great refuge of the state, to which, on common occasions, it was almost profanity to appeal. Their very demeanour was modelled to harmonize with the reputation of their virtues and the dignity of their office. It was forbidden to laugh in their assembly—no archon who had been seen in a public tavern could be admitted to their order [208], and for an areopagite ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and Evelyn Brydon, standing on the narrow deck, felt the grip of the place and the season. Even the captain's picturesque language, as he directed the activities of the "rousters" who pulled the boat ashore, seemed less like profanity and more ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... proportions when you study it, but he was no mere steel engraving of copy-book perfection. When he got through with that particular session, he turned to Knox as he went out, and said he would be damned if he would come to the Senate again. Now I do not approve of profanity generally, but somehow or other I rather like that story because it lets in a little light on Washington and shows he was a man with ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft
... charge fell into so unseemly a rage that I deemed it wise not to insist. He, indeed, bluntly threatened a nameless violence to the barber if he were so much as touched with the iron, and revealed an altogether shocking gift for profanity, saying loudly: "I'll be—dashed—if you will!" I mean to say, I have written "dashed" for what he actually said. But at length I had ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... the stages of this process of purification (the word is Professor Dowden's) is impossible here; and there are scenes, such as that of the meeting of Lear and Cordelia, which it seems almost a profanity to touch.[159] But I will refer to two scenes which may remind us more in detail of some of the points just mentioned. The third and fourth scenes of Act III. present one of those contrasts which speak as eloquently even as Shakespeare's words, and which were ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... a sanctity about her,—a divinity which made it almost a profanity to have talked about her at all to such a one as Dolly Longstaff. She was his Holy of Holies, at which vulgar eyes should not even be allowed to gaze. It had been a most unfortunate interview. But this was clear; that, as he had announced his engagement to such a one as Dolly Longstaff, ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... the asseverance that his own mother should not have it for a farthing less, supplementing the assertion with an oath and 'Now, I have put my soul to it.' The book was the 'Queen Like Closet,' which, it is scarcely necessary to say, Elia rescued from the man of profanity. Soho has long been more or less of a bookselling quarter. John Paul Manson, who was in King Street, Westminster, in 1786, and issued from thence 'A Summer Catalogue' in 1795, subsequently removed to Gerard Street, Soho, and died in ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... another ugly face and indulged himself in a piece of profanity that was inexpressibly disgusting and mean in the mouth of a man who was used to cross himself when alarmed and swear by the saints. But perhaps he knew, even better than I, how little he had to expect from Providence. He filled his pipe, ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... detachment of soldiers, one attempting to explain a position and the grounds therefor so peculiar as ours to junior, petty officers, possessing liberally the characteristics of these: pride, vanity, conceit, and an arbitrary spirit, impatience, profanity, and contempt for holy things, must needs find the opportunity a very ...
— The Record of a Quaker Conscience, Cyrus Pringle's Diary - With an Introduction by Rufus M. Jones • Cyrus Pringle
... depends upon formal apologetics. We can all feel the self- evidential force of the Gospel story; but who shall present it adequately in words? We are reminded of the fate of him who thought the ark of God was falling and put out his hand to steady it—and, for his profanity, died. It can hardly be said that good intentions would be a sufficient justification, because that a man should think himself fit for the task would be in itself almost a sufficient sign that he was ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... language in my presence?" roared the old gentleman, growing purple to the neck. "Have you, also, been fighting for barmaids and taking up with gaol-birds? It is what I have to expect, I suppose, and I may as well accustom my ears to profanity; but damn you, sir, you must learn some decency;" and going into the hall he shouted to Congo to bring ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... to Gertrude that she had a chance. To have calculated chances would have seemed to her the last profanity, so consecrated was her attitude to Brodrick and to all that was Brodrick's. Her chance was, and it always had been, the chance of serving him. She had it. What more, she said to ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... much more distinctly; they were made up of the oddest mixture of invocations to the Supreme Power and the name of his beloved Annette that it is possible to conceive; and, in short, though their evident earnestness saved them from profanity, were, to say the least, very remarkable. Taking up a paddle I managed to drive it into his ribs, whereon he, thinking that the end had come, howled louder than ever. Then I slowly and cautiously raised myself on my knees ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... could improve upon them, too, with imagination and wit and a natural gift for terms. That Samuel Clemens maintained his promise as to drink and cards during those apprentice days is something worth remembering; and if he did not always restrict his profanity to moments of severe pressure or sift the quality of his wit, we may also remember that he was an extreme example of a human being, in that formative stage which gathers all as grist, later to refine it for the uses ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... listened. Altercations went on with clangorous fury. Almost every party was in division. Some enthusiastic individual had made a find, or had seen some one else who had. His cackle reached other groups, and out of the dark hulking figures loomed to listen or to throw in hot missiles of profanity. Phrases multiplied, mingling inextricably. ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... with an outburst of profanity. "Not sunset! why, it's well-nigh dark now, sir, and every man in the troop had side-lined his horse half an hour ago. D—n your insolence, sir! your excuse is worse than your conduct. Mr. Billings, see to it, sir, that ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... to develop these divine germs called the senses? for individuals and states to deal magnanimously with the rising generation, leading it not into temptation,—not teach the eye to squint, nor attune the ear to profanity. But where is the instructed teacher? Where are the ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... situation created by the conditions of war. Here are multitudes of men far from home, shut out from the society of all good women, taken away from their church and its surroundings, weary and wet with marching and drilling, often lonely and dejected, in an atmosphere of profanity and obscenity in the cheerless barrack rooms, and tempted by the animal passions which are always loosed in war-time. The men need all the help we can give them now, ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... blunt, grim humour, their stoicism under stress, their adventures, their treasures found in a day and gambled in a night, their direct, crude speech, their generosity and cruelty, their heroism and bestiality, their religion and profanity, their self-sacrifice and obscenity—a true and fearless setting forth of a passing phase of history, un-compromising, sincere; each group in its proper environment; the valley, the plain, and the mountain; the ranch, the range, and the mine—all ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... now he is gone—and what a hole! Other men can do his work as well, if not as quickly. The paper still goes to press and the public sees no change; but we, who worked beside him, see it nightly. By twelve o'clock on a busy night, nervous, drawn faces surround the central desk, and profanity is snapped crossly back and forth. There is no alleviation of cheerful inanity. Presently somebody looks up, remarking, "I wish Bobbie Barton was back." And somebody else replies with profane asperity and lax grammar, "I wish he was!" Bobbie, meanwhile ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... swear when they were in a passion, and one or two when they were not; but that a woman should deliberately preface her words with oaths was something new and shocking to her. Lady Enville's strongest adjurations were mild little asseverations "by this fair daylight," or words no nearer profanity. However, startled as she was, Clare came out of ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... was thrust savagely back against his seat. His tongue tried to slide back into his throat. There was an enormous oppression on his chest. He found himself thinking panicky profanity. ...
— Sand Doom • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... open. She whispered the word as if it were profanity. Suddenly she turned and ran down the rim corridor, screaming ...
— The Guardians • Irving Cox
... election in Wilkes County, and a delegation, in spite of the lateness of the hour, went to Mr. Toombs' residence, awoke him, and asked for an authoritative denial of what they considered a damaging charge. Mr. Toombs listened to the delegation, and then declared with emphasis, not free from profanity, that it was so. "I have responded to their calls just as I have those of other denominations. You can tell the people that the distribution of my money ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... with Art. Hence religious reformers are mystics, enthusiasts: this is the look of Luther, even of the hard-headed Calvin, as seen from the Roman-Catholic side. Hence, also, every epoch of revolution in Art seems to the preceding like an irruption of frivolity and profanity. Christian Art would have seemed so to the ancients; the Realism of the fourteenth century must have seemed so to the Giotteschi and the Renaissance, to both. The term Pre-Raphaelitism, though it seems an odd collocation to bring ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... quick and heavy tramp. It was the Chancellor, followed by four of Otto's valets and a litter. The servants, when they were admitted, stared at the dishevelled Princess and the wounded man; speech was denied them, but their thoughts were riddled with profanity. Gondremark was bundled in; the curtains of the litter were lowered; the bearers carried it forth, and the Chancellor followed ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... off the table, Romeo strolled over to the window. Five of the dogs were gathered about some small object and the yard was littered with bits of white. Under his breath Romeo said something that sounded like profanity, and Juliet pricked ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... happy silver laugh like the light on the Ridge cataracts. Somehow, the one-armed stage driver with his unconscious heroism and equally unconscious profanity gave her a sense of the big wholesome unconscious outdoor world, just as the lavender silks and undertaker's plumes and tallow smile inside smothered her with a drugged sense of heavy unwholesome musk. The one-time miner did not know it; but what Eleanor was saying ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... everything said to him. An obstinate or lazy horse is called a variety of names the reverse of endearing. I have heard him addressed as 'sabaka,' (dog); and on frequent occasions his maternity was ascribed to the canine race in epithets quite disrespectful. Horses came in for an amount of profanity about like that showered upon army mules in America. It used to look a little out of place to see a yemshick who had shouted chort! and other unrefined expressions to his team, devoutly crossing himself before a holy picture as soon ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... 'confound!' every thing, so I proposed that he should whistle instead; and now he sometimes pipes up so suddenly and shrilly that it makes me jump. How would that do, instead of swearing?" proposed Miss Celia, not the least surprised at the habit of profanity, which the boy could hardly help learning among his ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... held himself bound not to leave them unchecked in their evil courses, they thought themselves aggrieved. Nor was his manner likely to gain them. Grave and earnest, he had never in his life known sportiveness, and his distress and horror at the profanity and blasphemy that rang in his ears made him doubly sad and stern. From the first his Sunday service was by most treated as an infliction, and the officers, both of the ship and of the military, had so little sense of decency as to sit drinking, smoking, and talking within earshot. ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... fog there rose a great hubbub of engine room gongs, the banging of the Bodega's Lyle gun, and much profanity. Presently this ceased, so Scraggs and Gibney knew Dan Hicks was being hauled off at last. While they waited for further developments, Scraggs sucked at his old pipe and Mr. Gibney munched a French carrot. "If you hadn't canned McGuffey," the ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... burst of spiritual enthusiasm, the charms of the rearward part of certain men; and what a royal ecstatic felicity there is in indisputable survey of the same." "He rises," adds Carlyle, "to the heights of Anti-Biblical profanity, quoting Moses on the Hill of Vision." To Soubise and Company the poet of ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... his English profanity, he called the Jury names in French, German and Spanish. The German stuck, but came out at last like a cork out of a ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... indistinctly a white phenomenon fluttering to and fro along the opposite wall. Instantly he grabs a boot and hurls it with ferocious force at the goblin. A roar was heard followed by a salvo of blue profanity. It was a fellow-traveller—a lumber-dealer—who was to occupy the other bed in the room. He had undressed and was disporting himself in nocturnal attire before reposing, when Jonas Lie's well-aimed missile hit him in the stomach and doubled him up ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... been very much modified in the Folio, and this strengthens our belief that the manuscript from which the Quarto was printed was written about 1604, for shortly after that date an act was passed against the use of profanity ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... born in East Tennessee, went into the United States Navy at the early age of eleven. He was the youngest midshipman in the service. "Before I had reached the age of sixteen," he says, "I prided myself on my profanity, and could drink ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... of the rural community do not differ greatly from those of the town. The most common rural vices are profanity, drunkenness, and sexual immorality. Profanity is often a habit rather than a defect in moral character, and is due sometimes to a narrow vocabulary. It is a mark of ignorance and boorishness. In many localities it is less common ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... had invited K. Le Moyne to take her to walk, Max Wilson came down to breakfast rather late. Dr. Ed had breakfasted an hour before, and had already attended, with much profanity on the part of the patient, to a boil on the back of Mr. ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... time it takes a watch to tick she stood startled and amazed, and then, like a flash, she was speeding down the street. A roar of rage, a burst of unbridled profanity went up from Rough Rorke behind her; it was mingled with equally angry vituperation in the young man's voice. She looked behind her. The two men were swaying around crazily in each other's arms. She ran on—faster than she had ever run in her life. The corner was not ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... the way, a loafer hanging about in the store, and having paid only attention to the dram counter, the necessary concomitant of the village center, became garrulous, but unfortunately more than seasoned the flow with a profanity tolerably rich in variety if not distinguished for refinement; he was of the Clary's Grove genus. As there was a crowd at the "ladies' department," that is, the dry-goods and finery, where it happened Lincoln was commonly ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... "since the pure old religion was destroyed, profanity and covetousness have got the upper hand; so every church where even a single pious relic of the wealth of the good old times remains, must be guarded, as you see, by dogs. [Footnote: It is an undeniable fact, that the immorality of the people fearfully ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... a voice," said Turnbull, who snatched at every chance of cheap profanity. "As a matter of fact, MacIan, it isn't the voice of God, but it's something a jolly sight more important—it is the voice of man—or rather of woman. So I think we'd better scoot in ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... two years together now, Joe, and this is the only thing I've ever asked you to do or done myself that wasn't square and aboveboard. But look here"—here, for some half-minute, Captain Dave Liardet launched into profanity—"I tell you that the owners of this ship wouldn't care a single curse if you and I and every living soul aboard had had our livers cut out at La Vandola as long as they didn't lose money over it, and haven't to pay our wages to our wives ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... make them understand that the lax discipline of the march cannot be permitted here. You will instruct them to shave every day, not every week. You will impress on them particularly that there must be an end to the profanity and blasphemy of singing Christian hymns on the march. I have to reprimand you, Centurion, for not only allowing this, but actually ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... London daily paper wrote to his editor not long ago to complain that there was a wave of profanity passing over the country. Jimmy added a silent but heartfelt contribution ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... thirty thousand spectators. Judging from contemporary accounts, the circumstances of the execution were not edifying. "We are more than ever convinced," said the Albany Gazette, "of the bad effect of public executions. Scenes of the most disgraceful drunkenness, gambling, profanity, and almost all kinds of debauchery, were exhibited in the vicinity of the gallows, and even at the time the culprit was suffering. We do most sincerely hope that some law may be enacted requiring that executions shall be performed in private." The Albany Argus ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... postponed, on account of the protection of a powerful Cardinal; but on the death of Pius IV. Francus sharpened his pen afresh, and sorely wounded the memory of his deceased foe. In one of his satires the words of St. John's Gospel, verbum caro factum est, were inserted; and the charge of profanity was brought against him. At length Pius V. condemned him to death. Some historians narrate that the poor poet was hung on a beam attached to the famous statue of the Gladiator in front of the Palace of the Orsini, called the Pasquin, to which the deriders and enemies of the Pope were accustomed ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... "He rebukes MacLachan for past drunkenness. He mourns for Schepstein, who occasionally helps out a friend at ten per cent, as a usurer. He once accused old Madame Tallafferr of pride, but he'll never do that again. He calls the Little Red Doctor, our local physician, to account for profanity, and gets a fresh sample every time. Even against the Bonnie Lassie, whose sculptures you can just see in that little house near the corner"—I waved an illustrative hand—"he can quote Scripture, as to graven images. We all revere and respect and ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... himself, he was sober, he would overreach a Spaniard when he could, but when he had given his word he kept it; he burned incense before joss, he read the analects of Kung Foo Too and Mang Tse, and worshipped his ancestors; he never stole or used any kind of profanity that moral Spaniards could understand. For all this he was nagged and worried constantly, and could hardly take a walk without being pursued by friars who requested alms for their charities in so pointed a manner that he contributed with celerity, ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... the spirit of religion. The worship of God formed one of the most important duties of the Swedish army wherever located. "Twice every day the roll of the drum assembled the soldiers to prayer. The usual vices of soldiers, like profanity and drunkenness and gambling, were uniformly punished. Death was inflicted on any soldier who assaulted a citizen in his house. Even a certificate was required of the chief citizens of any place where troops were quartered, that their conduct had been orderly. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... for a commanding officer stated that his men were more contented and more easily handled since the unprecedented innovation of women in the camp than they had been within the experience of the old Regular Army officers. Profanity practically ceased in the vicinity of the hut and was never indulged in in ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... Thorlakson muttered profanity as he stared out the window. The big Swede looked up with mild enquiry, at the same time reaching for another slice of bread, while the other two men stopped eating altogether and gazed expectantly at ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... overside. Last came a man who might be Arab, or part-Arab, part-Swahili, whom I did not recognize at first, fat, black, dressed in the white cotton garments and red fez of the more or less well-to-do native, and voluble with rare profanity. ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... That he was then as thorough-paced an infidel as virulent an opposer of our holy religion, as he is now: That he was doing discredit to the Bible then, or to adopt your own phrase, was undeceiving mankind as actively as at any time since: That you was acquainted with the open profanity of his conversation, and if we may take your word for it, was an earwitness of his oaths and execrations: Why did you not commence a champion in the cause of christianity some months earlier? it would have ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... workingwoman, whose ideas were limited to those of a savage and who was a woman only in sex. Her ideas of morality, decency, conjugal happiness, children, education, were limited by quarrels, profanity, blows, fights. At that time brandy was the sole consolation for those women; it supplied their moral force and their moral resistance, making them forget cold, hunger, fatigue, evil, and giving them courage and patience; it was the fire that sustained, ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... discriminate between good and bad slang rather than to forbid it entirely. Emerson calls it language in the making, its crude, vital, material. It is often an effective school of moral description, a palliative for profanity, and expresses the natural craving for superlatives. Faults are hit off and condemned with the curtness sententiousness of proverbs devised by youth to sanctify itself and correct its own faults. The pedagogue objects that it violates good form and established usage, ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... In his autobiographical book, Grace Abounding, B. describes himself as having led an abandoned life in his youth; but there appears to be no evidence that he was, outwardly at any rate, worse than the average of his neighbours: the only serious fault which he specifies is profanity, others being dancing and bell-ringing. The overwhelming power of his imagination led him to contemplate acts of impiety and profanity, and to a vivid realisation of the dangers these involved. In particular he was harassed by a ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... probably ever been the home of high swearing: the expression in French of 'ton de garnison' is an amiable way of referring to that habit of speech; and we all know ancient warriors whose conversation is thickly larded with oaths and profanity. This habit Joan of Arc seems to have held in great abhorrence. We have seen how she got La Hire to swear only by his stick; to another officer of high rank, who had been making use of some strong oaths, she said: 'How can you thus blaspheme your Saviour ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... loungers drawn away from saloon doors where they are as surely to be found as certain coarse weeds in foul, neglected corners—a ragged, unkempt, repulsive jumble of humanity, that filled the street with gibes, slang, and profanity. Laura was about to retreat into the shop in utter disgust, when her aunt exclaimed in a ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... the tradition—the oldest people tell me that they heard it in their youth—that anciently the Indians were holding a pow-wow upon a hill here, which rose as high into the heavens as the pond now sinks deep into the earth, and they used much profanity, as the story goes, though this vice is one of which the Indians were never guilty, and while they were thus engaged the hill shook and suddenly sank, and only one old squaw, named Walden, escaped, and from her ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... never have been mistaken for any other than a good Norman. He was endowed with the gift of oratory peculiar to the country; and his profanity was enriched with all the flavor of the provincial's elation in the committing of sin. From the earliest moment of our starting, the stream of his talk had been unending. His vocabulary was such as to have excited the envy and despair of ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... company was shot in the hand. He began to swear so wondrously that a nervous laugh went along the regimental line. The officer's profanity sounded conventional. It relieved the tightened senses of the new men. It was as if he had hit his fingers with a tack ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... there went up an almost universal yell of indignation from that vast crowd. Women tore their bonnets from their heads, and trampled them on the ground; men stamped and swore as only infuriated Rebels can, and called for all known misfortunes to settle upon the heads of their invaders. The profanity was not entirely ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... best to run them down, and actually rasped sides with the sailing-vessel as she tore past into the night; but nobody made an attempt to jump for safety on to her decks, nobody even took the trouble to swear at her with any thing like heartfelt profanity. ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... Goethe, "all is good which is written by so great a genius as Voltaire, though I cannot excuse all his profanity. But you are right to give so much time to those little poems addressed to persons; they are unquestionably among the most charming of his works. There is not a line which is not full of thought, clear, bright, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... battle. Of course, as soon as we opened upon the flanking rebels, several batteries of the enemy gave us special attention. The shells burst fast and furious all around us, but it did not interfere with our shelling the woods. I heard deep and loud profanity, and turning around saw my two mule teams start towards each other, and when they met they began to climb up ...
— Campaign of Battery D, First Rhode Island light artillery. • Ezra Knight Parker
... was in a most ungodly state. The college church was almost extinct. Most of the students were skeptical, and rowdies were plenty. Wine and liquors were kept in many rooms; intemperance, profanity, gambling, and licentiousness were common. I hardly know how I escaped.... That was the day of the infidelity of the Tom Paine school. Boys that dressed flax in the barn, as I used to, read Tom Paine and believed him; I ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... Profanity appeared to be a common evil in the institution, not only among the convicts, but also with many of those who were over them. A prisoner said to me one day, with no little emotion, "Chaplain, I am in a hard ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... was a bid for him to raise the ante, Morgan was starting off on a lame leg, he said. Ten dollars a night was as much as the friendship of any man that ever wore the collar of the law was worth to him. Take it or leave it, and be cursed to him, with embellishments of profanity and debasement of language which were new and astonishing even to Morgan's sophisticated ears. Peden turned his back to the new officer after drenching him down with this deluge of abuse, setting his face about the business of ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... was persuaded into wearing them, and stiffly sidled off, a badgered biped, my head swinging round the circle, and my voice hanging on the verge of profanity all ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II. No. 38, Saturday, December 17, 1870. • Various
... pronounced it innocent and delectable. It became the book of the day, and passed through countless editions and endless commentaries; and yet it is agreed on all hands that there exists not another work, admitted as literature, that would bear a moment's comparison with it, for indecency, profanity, and repulsive and disgusting coarseness. His work is now a mere curiosity for the ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... becomes far more complicated when evil is socialized. The simplest and most familiar form of that is the boys' gang. Here is a group of young humans who get their fun and adventure by pulling the whiskers of the law. They idealize vice and crime. Leadership in their group is won by proficiency in profanity, gambling, obscenity, and slugging. The gang assimilates its members; there is regimentation of evil. It acts as a channel of tradition; the boy of fifteen teaches the boy of twelve what he has learned from ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... thunderclap the prizefighter broke loose in a turbid stream of profanity. It boiled from his lips like molten lava from a crater. The raucous words poured forth from a heart furious with rage. The man was beside himself. He raved like a madman—and the object of his invective ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... effigie on a Souldiers back, to the publick market-place, there to be sported withall, a Crew of Souldiers going before in procession, some with surplices, some with organ pipes, to make up the solemnity." This monument, as it was left after this profanity, is still to be seen exactly as it remained when the soldiers had done their work. The brasses in the floor, the bells in the steeple, were regarded as lawful plunder. The same would not be said of the stained glass, of which there was a great ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... accepted all her tastes; he was rather becoming her mistress than she his. She had tender words and kisses that thrilled his soul. Where could she have learnt this corruption almost incorporeal in the strength of its profanity and dissimulation? ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... ask questions. It was different in the case of Marengo Todd, driver of the pole-horse, and entitled to "protection." He pulled "Maria M." to a snorting halt under the wire and poured forth the vials of his artistic profanity in a way that piqued Cap'n Sproul's professional interest, he having heard more or less eminent efforts ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... doubtless absurd in the intensity of the worship paid to the fox by hunting communities. The animal becomes sacred, and his preservation is a religion. His irregular destruction is a profanity, and words spoken to his injury are blasphemous. Not long since a gentleman shot a fox running across a woodland ride in a hunting country. He had mistaken it for a hare, and had done the deed in the presence of keepers, owner, and friends. His feelings ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... destined to behold, broke from its pen and ran bellowing to its mother. The dogs bayed, the niggers yelled, the Mexican swore in his delightful tongue; and the stuttering Michigander remained silent, simply from his inability to pronounce the profanity of ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... not," interpolated Abel Day, piously. "Entomology must be an awful interest-in' study, though I never thought of observin' words myself, kept to avoid vulgar language an' profanity." ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... After a helpless, profanity-filled second, Kirby scratched behind his ear again. As certain as the fact that almost his sole hope of getting back to civilization depended upon the stallion, was the fact that the brute did not intend to stop running ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... the draught-oxen to drag it whither they would. They made straight for the Judaean hills, and in the first little village were welcomed by the inhabitants at their harvest, as they saw them coming across the plain. But again death attended the Presence, and curiosity, which was profanity, was punished. So the villagers were as eager to get rid of the ark as they had been to welcome it, and they passed it on to the little city of Kirjath-jearim,'the city of the woods,' as the name means, or, as we might ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... dear aunt," exclaimed Emily, with glowing cheeks and eyes dancing with pleasure, "he would hardly dare to be so very base. It would be profanity." ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... mourner punished him for what he thought his fiendish wish, and bade him say, "Pray God, send the soul to heaven!" which he was bawling when he met a he and a she-dog going to be hanged. The good people who heard him were greatly shocked at his seeming profanity, and striking him, strictly charged him to cry, "A he and a she-dog going to be hanged!" On he went, accordingly, repeating this new cry, till he met a man and a woman going to be married. When the bridegroom heard what the booby said, he gave ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston |
