"Profligate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... those ancient governments of Europe in particular, which were founded upon the ruins of the Roman empire, the administration of justice appears for a long time to have been extremely corrupt; far from being quite equal and impartial, even under the best monarchs, and altogether profligate under the worst. ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... and were thrown of necessity amongst those who had been cast out. But the standards of life vary with those who live, and I never could see that a man was less of a thief because he thieved from a throne, or less a profligate because he debauched a princess. I was, no doubt, in advance of my time; these are the ideas of Monsieur Voltaire. I believe that I saw a great deal of iniquity, for the taverns and gaming-dens to which I sometimes resorted for shelter or entertainment were filled ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... obtain in passing the examination. But the moment I entered Halle, the university town, all my resolutions came to nothing.—Being now more than ever my own master, and without any control as long as I did not fight a duel, molest the people in the streets, &c., I renewed my profligate life afresh, though now a student of divinity. When my money was spent, I pawned my watch and a part of my linen and clothes, or borrowed in other ways. Yet in the midst of it all I had a desire to renounce this wretched life, for I had no ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, First Part • George Mueller
... repaid with such meekness and beneficence as never failed to gain his very enemies. A lewd wretch, exasperated against him for his zeal against a wicked harlot, forged a letter of intrigue in the holy prelate's name, which made him pass for a profligate and a hypocrite with the duke of Nemours and many others: the calumny reflected also on the nuns of the Visitation. Two years after, the author of it, lying on his death-bed, called in witnesses, publicly justified the saint, and made an open confession ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... existing laws for the suppression of the African slave trade, and recommend all such alterations as may give to them greater force and efficacy. That the American flag is grossly abused by the abandoned and profligate of other nations is but too probable. Congress has not long since had this subject under its consideration, and its importance well justifies ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... double outrage on the memory of her mother, by witnessing the marriage of her father, by special license, to Lady Olivia Lovel, that very evening, in the Harwold great hall, and herself to commit the monstrous act of being married to a nephew of that profligate woman. To avoid such horrors, she had flown for refuge to the only persons she knew on earth likely to shield her from so great ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... then we shall punish him, to make him go on. And so will God do with us. He will strike us then; and sharply too. Much more, if a man gives himself up to sinful pleasure; if he gives himself up to a loose and profligate life, and, like many a young man, wastes his substance in riotous living, and devours his heavenly Father's gifts with harlots- -then God will strike that man; and all the more sharply the more worth and power there is in the man. The more God has ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley
... hundred years which have elapsed since Dante looked for its fulfilment do not seem to have brought us very much more forward in that direction. Still, we can give him the honour due to a lofty standard of political and social conduct in a violent and profligate, if brilliant, age; and we can still read with interest and profit that wonderful repertory of political wisdom, dialectical argument (after the manner of the schoolmen), and passionate pleading for good government, which he calls ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... provincial towns of Central America. Morality is at a low ebb, and most of them live as mistresses, not as wives, for which they do not seem to suffer in the estimation of their neighbours. This is greatly due in Nicaragua, as it is throughout Central and South America, to the profligate lives led by the priests, who, with few rare exceptions, live in concubinage more or less open. The women have children at an early age, and ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... get along, but at snail's pace. There followed five years of economy so rigid as to make the past seem profligate. Etta, the acid-tongued, the ferret-faced, was not the sort to go off without the impetus of a dowry. The man for Etta, the shrew, must be kindly, long-suffering, subdued—and in need of a start. He was. They managed a very decent ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... of the Revolution, justified their conduct by all those profligate sophisms which are called Jesuitical, and which are commonly reckoned among the peculiar sins of Popery, but which, in fact, are everywhere the anodynes employed by minds rather subtle than strong, to quiet those internal twinges which they cannot but feel and which ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of the law into effect upon a criminal, the innkeeper was compelled to perform his functions: therefore the innkeepers, like usurers and other persons, who follow a pursuit hostile to public opinion, were profligate and rapacious. Don Quixote teems with instances to this effect; and there are other allusions to the same circumstance in Gil Blas. It must be observed that if M. Le Sage stumbled by accident upon ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... annals of legislation, and you will find no precedent for such a profligate act of tyranny, exercised by a majority over their fellow legislators, nor for such an impudent contempt of the rights ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... direction; to an infidelity so subversive of the commonest principles of morality, that I expect, weekly, to hear of some unblushing and disgraceful outrage against decency, committed by him under its fancied sanction. And you know, as well as myself, the double danger of some profligate outbreak, which always attends the miseries of a disappointed ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... that at the present day the remnants of that same aristocracy exhibit a certain severity of morals; whilst laxity of morals appears to have spread amongst the middle and lower ranks. So that the same families which were most profligate fifty years ago are nowadays the most exemplary, and democracy seems only to have strengthened the morality of the aristocratic classes. The French Revolution, by dividing the fortunes of the nobility, by ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... man is—what trade he followed yonder, on his native island—this Spanish hidalgo—this all-accomplished gentleman—lineal descendant of the Cid—fine flower of Andalusian chivalry? It was not enough for him to cheat at cards, to float bubble companies, bogus lotteries. His profligate extravagance, his love of sybarite luxury, required a larger resource than the petty schemes which enrich smaller men. A slave ship, which could earn nearly twenty thousand pounds on every voyage, and which could make two runs in a year—that was the trade for Don Gomez ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... was extreme when there appeared in the next issue of the county paper a full description of the contest, from which it appeared that his favourite son had been beaten in a public trial of skill by Jim Jarrocks, well-known all over the county as the most reckless poacher and unblushing profligate anywhere about, and had thus given encouragement to a man who was constantly before the magistrates for all sorts of minor breaches of the law. However, he felt that he must make the best of it, and he therefore spoke of it among his friends as a bit of foolish practical joking ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... demoralize, brutalize; corrupt &c (degrade) 659. Adj. vicious; sinful; sinning &c v.; wicked, iniquitous, immoral, unrighteous, wrong, criminal; naughty, incorrect; unduteous^, undutiful. unprincipled, lawless, disorderly, contra bonos mores [Lat.], indecorous, unseemly, improper; dissolute, profligate, scampish; unworthy; worthless; desertless^; disgraceful, recreant; reprehensible, blameworthy, uncommendable; discreditable, disreputable; Sadistic. base, sinister, scurvy, foul, gross, vile, black, grave, facinorous^, felonious, nefarious, shameful, scandalous, infamous, villainous, of a deep ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... course, O Queen, 700 Thou shalt thyself far more commodious find, To hold thy conf'rence with the guest, alone. Then answer thus Penelope return'd. The stranger, I perceive, is not unwise, Whoe'er he be, for on the earth are none Proud, insolent, and profligate as these. So spake the Queen. Then (all his message told) The good Eumaeus to the suitors went Again, and with his head inclined toward Telemachus, lest others should his words 710 Witness, in accents wing'd him thus address'd. Friend and kind master! I return to keep My herds, and to attend ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... he gets, he wants to know when I mean to yield. I am, for the sake of business experience, resorting to all sorts of strategy; then, when I qualify, I can afford to snap my fingers in the face of this profligate. You've no idea how much the honor of business young ladies is menaced, Mrs. Roberts. I'm not by any means the only one. The trouble is, very few have the backbone to resist these propositions, ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... For it is plain that a man will never learn God's will if he takes counsel from ungodly men who care nothing for God's will, and do not believe that God's will governs the world. Neither must he, as the Psalm says, 'stand in the way of sinners'—of profligate and dishonest men who break God's law. For if he follows their ways, and breaks God's law himself, it is plain that he will learn little or nothing about God's law, save in the way of bitter punishment. For let him but break God's law a little ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... it will be folly to expect peace or tranquillity while that pestilent body is in existence; smite it "hip and thigh," and you at once cut off the fruitful sources of discontent and crime. Stop the rent, and at one blow you annihilate the profligate press, which turns the minds of the people from their legitimate avocations, which panders to their prejudices, and excites them to outrage. Of what use will it be to confine the peasant to his house by night, if you allow him to be beset during the day by the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... fact, it was by his influence that I was enabled to conclude this affair, and Aliverdi Khan allowed him to retain all the profit from it, so I can say that I had no bad place in the heart of Siraj-ud-daula. It is true he was a profligate, but a profligate who was to be feared, who could be useful to us, and who might some day be a good man. Nawajis Muhammad Khan[71] had been at least as vicious as Siraj-ud-daula, and yet he had become the ...
— Three Frenchmen in Bengal - The Commercial Ruin of the French Settlements in 1757 • S.C. Hill
... fair actress, and endeavored to lift her from the carriage. But the Signora Pisani was not an ordinary person; she had been before exposed to all the dangers to which the beauty of the low-born was subjected amongst a lawless and profligate nobility. She thrust back the assailant with a power that surprised him, and in the next moment the blade of a dagger gleamed before his eyes. "Touch me," said she, drawing herself to the farther end of ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... high-backed desk paused in his task of checking a list of typewritten names, and motioned Durkin to a seat. The visitor could see that he was with an official who would countenance no profligate waste of time. So he plunged straight into ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... consulting their own taste and inclinations, they blindly adopt whatever those with whom they chiefly converse, are pleased to call by the name of pleasure; and a man of pleasure in the vulgar acceptation of that phrase, means only, a beastly drunkard, an abandoned whoremaster, and a profligate swearer and curser. As it may be of use to you. I am not unwilling, though at the same time ashamed to own, that the vices of my youth proceeded much more from my silly resolution of being, what I ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... 1621, was succeeded by his son Philip IV. As in the reign of his father worthless favorites ruled, while a profligate king squandered the money of the people in lavish entertainments and luxuries. Much has been written about the visit of Charles, Prince of Wales (afterward Charles I.), accompanied by the Duke of Buckingham, at his court; whither the young Prince had come disguised, to see the Infanta, ...
— A Short History of Spain • Mary Platt Parmele
... situation of which is pleasing, and the fish there excellent. I was glad to see Boulogne, though I can scarcely tell why; but one is always glad to see something new, and talk of something old: for example, the story I once heard of Miss Ashe, speaking of poor Dr. James, who loved profligate conversation dearly,—"That man should set up his quarters across the water," said she; "why Boulogne would be a seraglio ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... but the town, that gives you praise to-day, Next week can snatch it, if it please, away, As in elections it can mend mistakes, And whom it makes one year, the next unmakes. "Lay down the fasces," it exclaims; "they're mine:" I lay them down, and sullenly resign. Well now, if "Thief" and "Profligate" they roar, Or lay my father's murder at my door, Am I to let their lying scandals bite And change my honest cheeks from red to white? Trust me, false praise has charms, false blame has pains But for vain hearts, long ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... here: he lived with Africanus. I would inquire of him which of his family the nephew of Africanus's brother was like? Possibly he may in person have resembled his father; but in his manners he was so like every profligate, abandoned man, that it was impossible to be more so. Whom did the grandson of P. Crassus, that wise and eloquent and most distinguished man, resemble? Or the relations and sons of many other excellent men, whose names there is no occasion to mention? But what are we doing? Have we ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... on," he continued, "is that there is no real job for me here. This city has no water problem that cannot be worked out by an engineer's office clerk. Why are they holding me here, paying me a profligate salary, for a job that is a joke for a grown-up man? There's something behind it that is not apparent on ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... them.' I wonder how many Christian professors there are who would be least easily believed by those who live in the same house with them, if they said that Jesus had cast their devils out of them. It is a great mistake to take recent converts, especially if they have been very profligate beforehand, and to hawk them about the country as trophies of God's converting power. Let them stop at home, and bethink themselves, and get sober and confirmed, and let their changed lives prove the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... by carrying the viaticum to some sick man. I felt very much inclined to laugh, but I had seen enough of Spanish manners to refrain. All the religion of the Spaniard is in outward show and ceremony. A profligate woman before yielding to the desires of her lover covers the picture of Christ, or the Virgin, with a veil. If the lover laughed at this absurdity he would run a risk of being denounced as an Atheist, and most probably by the wretched ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... principles may be more relaxed on some points than ours, but I doubt much whether a Frenchman would not be as much disgusted in England as an Englishman could possibly be in France; we call them a profligate race and condemn them in toto—something ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... said a new voice thoughtfully, "I think he recognized the worthlessness of his profligate son, and planned to sink his whole fortune in this institution? Money has been the curse of Robson Danbury's life, and his father knew that the only hope of making anything like a man out of him was the cutting him off without a cent, but the Death Angel ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... of the innumerable instances in which profligate and idle men live upon the earnings of industrious wives; or if the wives leave them, and take with them the children, to perform the double duty of mother and father, follow from place to place, and threaten to rob them of the children, if deprived of the rights of a husband, as they call them, ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Lady of the Pillar," "our Lady of the Crypt." It may perhaps be excusable to resort to such expedients as these in the conversion of savages; but there is something singularly repulsive in the picture (drawn apparently from life) of a profligate man of letters seeking salvation in a Christianity which has lowered itself far beneath educated paganism. At any rate, let not the name of Mysticism be given to ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... the death of Gracchus until the first consulship of Marius, Rome was governed by a venal and profligate oligarchy, formed from a coalition of the most powerful families. Shame was unknown to this body; the offices of state were openly sold to the highest bidder, redress of grievances was to be obtained only ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... her. Try and make her believe that love is only a simple physical need, like the need of food or clothes; that it doesn't mean the end of the world if wives and husbands are unsatisfactory; that a man may be a profligate and a libertine, and yet a man of honour and a genius; and that, on the other hand, one may abstain from the pleasures of love and at the same time be a stupid, vicious animal! The civilised man of to-day, even among the lower classes —for ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... some of the more striking particularities of the Marquesas. It rests upon no authority; it is in no sense, like "Rahero," a native story; but a patchwork of details of manners and the impressions of a traveller. It may seem strange, when the scene is laid upon these profligate islands, to make the story hinge on love. But love is not less known in the Marquesas than elsewhere; nor is there any cause of suicide more common ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... vessel cruising in the tropics or rounding the Horn in winter. Of the relationship between the sea-rovers and the fair sex it would be best, perhaps, to draw a discreet veil. The pirates and the buccaneers looked upon women simply as the spoils of war, and were as profligate with these as with the rest of their plunder. I do not know if I am disclosing a secret when I mention that my friend Mr. Hyatt Verrill, who is an authority on the subject of the lives of the pirates, is about to publish a book devoted to the love ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... She grew up beautiful and profligate; she coined her rare Italian charms, first into gold and velvet, then into silver and brocade, and at last into copper and rags. When her charms faded entirely, she began to practise the forbidden arts of her mother and father, but without their boldness ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... but who has abused my confidence, and fled from my house, doubtless to some paramour; carrying off with her all the jewels and money on which she could lay her hands. It is possible madame may have heard or seen something of her; she was accompanied in her flight by a base, profligate woman from Paris, whom I, unhappy man, had myself engaged for my wife's waiting-maid, little dreaming what corruption I ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... hand of an avenging Providence had conducted this unfortunate mother to take a step so fatal to her son. She told the viceroy that she had in vain attempted to check him, that his days and nights were spent with profligate companions in gambling-houses and in cock-pits, and that she feared some mischief would come some day from his fighting and swearing and drinking; that but a few days since he had come home late, and that she had observed that his stockings were dabbled in blood; ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... leave the accidental death of the soldier boy to the will of God; to declare all the Jews, against whom the charge of murder has been brought on mere surmises, free from all suspicion; to turn over the soldier woman Terentyeva, for her profligate conduct, to ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... Ctesipho Was present with his brother at this riot. This is the sum of all my miseries, If he, even he, a sober, hopeful lad, May be seduc'd into debaucheries. —But where shall I inquire for him? I warrant They have decoy'd him into some vile brothel. That profligate persuaded him, I'm sure. —But here comes Syrus; he can tell me all. And yet this slave is of the gang; and if He once perceives that I'm inquiring for him, He'll never tell me any thing; a rogue! I'll not discover ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... away either—that while things go on rightly, and governments, and clergy, and people do right, Christ is there then, filling them all with His Spirit and guiding them all to their duty; but that when evil times come, and rulers are idle, and clergy dumb dogs, and the rich tyrannous, and the poor profligate, and men are crying for work and cannot get it, and every man's hand is against his fellow, and no one knows what to do or think; and on earth is distress of nations with perplexity, men's hearts failing them for fear, and for dread of those things ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... slackened their pace, the stranger's was in proportion accelerated or diminished. The matter would have been of very little consequence had Simon Glover been alone; but the beauty of his daughter might render her the object of some profligate scheme, in a country where the laws afforded such slight protection to those who had not the means ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... of calling this tone of levity to his aid, he felt it to be profligate and worthless, ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... Industrious, giving no Scandal or Bad Example, at least by any Open and Public Vices. By which excellent Qualities they had much the Advantage of the Southern Colony, who thought their being Members of the Establish't Church sufficient to Sanctifie very loose and Profligate Morals. For this reason New England improved much faster than Virginia, and in Seven or Eight Years New Plymouth, like Switzerland, seemd too narrow a Territory for ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... I might be a block of wood! I'll make him listen to me. (Aloud.) Ahem! My Lord, I've just been telling my niece here the latest scandal in high-life. I daresay your Lordship has heard of that titled but brainless young profligate, the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 18, 1893 • Various
... concession to them was inevitable. No matter whether it was the Puritan who complained of the rags of popery, or the judge who questioned the prerogative of the sovereign, or the patriot who bewailed the profligate expenditure of James's polluted court, or the pamphleteer whom one of our dramatists has described so admirably, or the hoarse murmur of the crowd execrating the pusillanimous murder of Raleigh—whosesoever the voice might be, whatever shape it might assume, petition, controversy, remonstrance, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... and despised it; but the monarchy was stronger than they. The same gloom overshadows the end of these two long reigns. Sentences of death or banishment fell thick among the leaders of that gay and profligate society; to later historians it seemed that all the result of the imperial policy had been to add hypocrisy to profligacy, and incidentally ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... whose name is not essential to our existence, was, it was said, the chief hero and Saviour of the Mesopotamian ethical scheme. Then followed a paragraph giving other examples of such heroes and Saviours being born of some profligate intercourse between God and mortal. Then followed a paragraph—but Evan did not understand it. He read it again and then again. Then he did understand it. The glass fell in ringing fragments on to the pavement, and Evan sprang over the barrier into ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... this paternal aspect he was supposed, like other gods of fertility, to bless men and women with offspring, and that the processions at his festival were intended to promote this object as well as to quicken the seed in the ground. It would be to misjudge ancient religion to denounce as lewd and profligate the emblems and the ceremonies which the Egyptians employed for the purpose of giving effect to this conception of the divine power. The ends which they proposed to themselves in these rites were natural and laudable; only the means they adopted ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... first one and then another to be dishonest, drunken, licentious, I was disposed to regard them as exceptions to the general rule. To the last; nay, for some time after my entire separation from the party, I supposed the profligate, unprincipled, abandoned ones to be the few, and the honest and virtuous ones to be the many. And when at length I was convinced past doubt of my mistake, the effect was terribly painful. But it was salutary. ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... which he placed under the command of his brother-in- law. The arrival of this fresh band of emigrants had proved a fruitful source of trouble and annoyance to the first settlers, for they were chiefly idle and profligate vagabonds, who had no settled occupation at home, and no characters to sustain. Weston himself described them in a letter to Bradford, as 'tolerably rude and profane.' And a friend of the Pilgrims wrote from ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... when her royal lover was residing here.—Her death was generally attributed to poison; nor did the people hesitate in whispering that the fatal potion was administered by order of the Queen. Her son, the profligate tyrant Louis XIth, detested his father's concubine; and once, forgetting his dignity and his manhood, he struck the Dame de Beaute.—The statue placed upon the mausoleum represented Agnes kneeling and offering her heart to the virgin; but this effigy had been removed before the late ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... my father would hardly ever give me one poor shilling; the people with whom I lived hardly ever had a shilling among them. I became the mistress of a rich man—a married man; his wife and children were living there before my eyes—a profligate man; his sins were the talk of the countryside. I hated him; he was old, deformed, revolting; but he chained me to him by money. Then I enjoyed money for a while; I kept that purse in my hand; I laid it down so as my ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... virtue and true nobility were there; could he but find them. He looked at the blow his happiness had sustained, and thought it afforded a fair sample of human nature. Oliver Delancey became a selfish and a profligate man. ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... betray his trust for money, is for him to stand on the same intellectual level with a monkey that scalds its throat with boiling water because it is thirsty. A drunkard is one who exchanges ambrosia and nectar for garbage. A profligate is one who declines an invitation to banquet with the gods that he may dine out of an ash barrel. What blight is to the vine, sin is to a man. When the first thief appeared in Plymouth colony a man was withdrawn from the fields to make locks for the houses; when ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... debauchee, many a feeble frame wasted with disease, may have been pointed out by these simple moralists to their awe-struck disciples as a fearful example of the fate that must sooner or later overtake the profligate who indulges immoderately in the seductive habit of mentioning his ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... was, notoriously, one of the most worthless men of his day; which circumstance never prevented his being perfectly well received by the men and women of the best English society. That he was an unprincipled profligate made him none the less welcome to his male associates, or their wives, sisters, and daughters; but when Lord de Ros cheated his fellow-gamblers at the Club, no further toleration of his wickedness was, of course, possible; and then every infamous story, which, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... Discourse on the Origin and Foundation of the Inequality of Mankind, which was then only a few months out, and in which, Smith says, Rousseau, "by the help of his style, together with a little philosophical chemistry," has made "the principles and ideas of the profligate Mandeville seem to have all the purity and simplicity of the morals of Plato, and to be only the true spirit of a republican carried a little too far." He gives a summary of the book, translates a few specimen passages, and concludes by saying, "I shall only add that the dedication to the ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... desperate and profligate schemes and ideas fell to nought before the inexorable in her nature. And the inexorable in her nature was highly exclusive and selective, an inevitable negation of looseness or prostitution. Hence men were afraid of her—of her power, once they had committed themselves. She would involve ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... who passed one day were two fine young men, Wedig von Schwetzkow, and Johann Appelmann, son of the burgomaster at Stargard. They were both handsome; but Johann was a dissolute, wild profligate, and Wedig was not troubled with too much sense. Still he had not fallen into the evil courses which made the other so notorious. "Who is that handsome youth?" asked Sidonia as Johann passed; and when they told her, "Ah, a gentleman!" she exclaimed, ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... while with eyes, and voice, and gesture. He compelled us scorn the gay, heartless selfishness of the young fool setting forth so jauntily from the broken home; he moved our pity and our sympathy for the young profligate, who, broken and deserted, had still pluck enough to determine to work his way back, and who, in utter desperation, at last gave it up; and then he showed us the homecoming—the ragged, heart-sick tramp, with hesitating steps, stumbling along the dusty road, and then the rush of the ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor
... reality it was a mild gratification of envy; for by this means, whoever was offended at the growing greatness of another, discharged his spleen, not in anything cruel or inhuman, but only in voting a ten years' banishment. But when it once began to fall upon mean and profligate persons, it was for ever after entirely laid aside; Hyperbolus being the last ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... occasions; and, pursuant to this resolution, about thirty men were landed, in order to make an attack upon the fort, which must be ascended to by a steep hill against the mouth of the cannon. These men were headed by one Kennedy, a bold, daring fellow, but very wicked and profligate; they marched directly up under the fire of their ship guns, and as soon as they were discovered, the Portuguese quitted their post and fled to the town, and the pirates marched in without opposition, set fire to the fort, and threw all the guns off the hill into ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... and his political enemies did not fail to make the most of his well-known immorality. In his Notes to Macky's Characters Swift described Wharton as "the most universal villain that ever I knew." On his death in 1715 he was succeeded by his profligate son, Philip, who was created Duke of Wharton ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... sex the most ill-fitted by nature for such an existence. Her second resort to the stage in 1847, her fortunes at Manchester and in London, her return to America, her public readings of Shakspeare here, her divorce, and the very curious and unexplained circumstance of her translation of a profligate French play, and disposal of it as a piece of her own original composition, are all matters of too late occurrence to ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... Driscoll, an old and respected citizen, was assassinated here about midnight by a profligate Italian nobleman or a barber on account of a quarrel growing out of the recent election. The assassin will ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to dispose of the accumulating proceeds of slave-labour? In ancient Egypt a single king kept 200,000 men busy for thirty years building his sepulchre, the great pyramid of Ghizeh. This same Pharaoh probably built also splendid palaces and temples with a no less profligate expenditure of human labour, and amassed treasures in which infinite labour was crystallised. Contemporaneously with him, there were other Egyptian magnates, priests, and warriors in no small number, who sought and found in similar ways employment for the labour of their slaves. If the luxury ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... the tent of the preacher, in the sunny hours of June, listening to his eloquence, or partaking of the mystic bread and wine; but in these our latter days, when discipline is relaxed, along with the sedate and the pious come swarms of the idle and the profligate, whom no eloquence can edify and no solemn rite affect. On these, and such as these, the poet has poured his satire; and since this desirable reprehension the Holy Fairs, east as well as west, have become more decorous, if not ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... discourses of people not so far off, we should have too much reason to fear, that many, in more civilized countries, have no very strong and clear impressions of a Deity upon their minds, and that the complaints of atheism made from the pulpit are not without reason. And though only some profligate wretches own it too barefacedly now; yet perhaps we should hear more than we do of it from others, did not the fear of the magistrate's sword, or their neighbour's censure, tie up people's tongues; which, were the apprehensions of punishment or shame taken away, would as openly ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... raised the indignation and the compassion of the Christian world; how, when the lieutenants of Malek Shah got possession of Asia Minor, they profaned the churches, subjected Bishops and Clergy to the most revolting outrages, circumcised the youth, and led off their sisters to their profligate households;—how, when the Ottomans conquered in turn, and added an infantry, I mean the Janizaries, to their Tartar horse, they formed that body of troops, from first to last, for near five hundred years, of boys, all born ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... Sunday these ten year past," answered Jerry with the insolence of the ancient habitue. "Ere, one o' you kids, fetch me a bit o' chalk. I 'ate to see you idlin' your time away, gamblin' and dicin', like the Profligate Son when he broke the bank ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... Finches went to the Continent; and she thought Georgina deserved credit for not having again seen Mark, when, as it now appeared, there had lurked in her heart affection sufficient to induce her to bestow herself, and all her wealth, upon him, spendthrift and profligate as she must know him to be. Miserable must be her future life; and Theodora's heart ached as she thought of wretchedness unaided by that which can alone give support through the trials of life, and bring light out of darkness. She could only pray that the once gay companion of her girlhood, ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... no better test of the popular opinion of a man than the character assigned to him on the stage; and till the close of the sixteenth century Sir John Oldcastle remained the profligate buffoon of English comedy. Whether in life he bore the character so assigned to him, I am unable to say. The popularity of Henry V., and the splendour of his French wars served no doubt to colour all who had opposed him with a blacker shade than they deserved: but it is almost certain that Shakspeare, ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... the French revolutionists had reached its height; the excitable population, intoxicated with power, and maddened by the vague dread of the retribution of despair, goaded on by profligate, ferocious, or insane leaders, was plunging into the most revolting and sanguinary excesses. The son of St. Louis had ascended to heaven, the beautiful and unfortunate Marie Antoinette had laid her head upon the block, the baby heir of the throne ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... heard a most second-rate performance," said she. "But really being unlaced by that Thing, that great fat profligate beery Prussian was almost too much for me. And the duet! But it was very polite of you to come, and I will do better next time. Siegfried! Brunnhilde! Siegfried! Miaou! Miaou! Bring on the next lot of cats! Darling Georgie, wasn't ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... his strong feelings in the matter of his son. "He is a disgrace to his name! He always has been. When a boy, he was a liar and a thief, and had he had his deserts he had been lodged in Newgate long ago—or worse. Now that he's a man, he's an abandoned profligate, a brawler, a drunkard, a rakehell. So much I have long known him for; but to-day he has shown himself for something even worse. I had thought that my ward, at least, had been sacred from his villainy. That is the last drop. I'll not condone it. Damn me! I can't condone ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... published in Writing (nor do I conceive that one fragile part of 1000 that is here contained can be fully displayed) I will only add one remark more of the prementioned Wars, in lieu of a Corollary or Conclusion, and aver upon my Conscience, that notwithstanding all the above-named Injustice, profligate Enormities and other Crimes which I omit, (tho sufficiently known to me) the Indians did not, nor was it in their power to give any greater occasion for the Commission of them, than Pious Religioso's Living in a well regulated ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... to multiply, and but for the energies of a remarkable man, Capt. John Smith, the colony must soon have perished through anarchy. But even Capt. John Smith with all his commanding powers, and love of justice and of law, could not prevent the idle and profligate young men from insulting the natives, and robbing them of their corn. With the autumnal rains sickness came, and many died. The hand of well-organised industry might have raised an ample supply of corn to meet ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... in the hands of good and industrious characters, they would have produced abundant crops, and enriched their owners. But every day's experience evinced, that the people thus fortunately situated were, unluckily, some of the most profligate wretches in the colony; and their distance from the immediate seat of government added much to the inconvenience. Such of these farms as were situated on the low grounds were often overflowed after very heavy falls ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... a great favourite among the women in my time, Tom," said the profligate old debauchee; "hundreds of fine women have sat in my lap for hours together. What do you think of that, you dog, eh!" The old gentleman was proceeding to recount some other exploits of his youth, when he was seized with ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... not seem possible that this could ever end, that any act of nature could blot this from his mind as though it had never been. It was unthinkable that through an eternity he should never know again the meaning of blue sky, of blossoms, of such profligate pictures as now met his eye at every step, but above all, that he should be blind to the girl herself and all for which she stood. No matter how long the journey he was about to take, no matter through what new spheres, these things must remain if anything at all of him remained. So ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... nobler result of the religious revival was the steady attempt, which has never ceased from that day to this, to remedy the guilt, the ignorance, the physical suffering, the social degradation of the profligate and the poor. It was not till the Wesleyan impulse had done its work that this philanthropic impulse began. The Sunday Schools established by Mr. Raikes of Gloucester at the close of the century were the beginnings of popular ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... them to the corner for prayer, and poured forth a confession of sin for them and for herself, such as left little that could have been added by her own profligate son, had he joined in the prayer. Either there are no degrees in guilt, or the Scotch language was equal only to the confession of children and holy women, and could provide no more awful words ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... to the ears. "Does it serve any purpose to relate? He was very charming, very accomplished; how was my sister, at eighteen, to know that he was also very callous, very profligate, very cruel? These things happen every day in ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... De Rohan probably needed purging by fire, for the order to burn them indicates that they contained evidence derogatory to his position as a dignitary of the church. The prince cardinal was a vain and profligate man, full of vicious inclinations, and credulous to a degree that had made him the victim of the unscrupulous schemer, Madame de La Motte Valois, a woman as adroit and unscrupulous as she was daring. Of low birth, brought up ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... in the seventeenth century, was celebrated for an excrescence which grew upon her head, and finally parted into two horns; the great Algernon Sidney; Pope; Ramsay's portrait of the celebrated Earl of Chesterfield, who, according to Dr. Johnson, "taught the morality of a profligate, and the manners of a dancing master," and a landscape by Wilson. At the northern door of this gallery are, a painting of Stonehenge, and one of the cromlech at Plas Newydd, ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... knows this, beyond doubt; everyone feels it in his whole being. Yet at the same time everyone sees all round him the division of men into two castes—the one, laboring, oppressed, poor, and suffering, the other idle, oppressing, luxurious, and profligate. And everyone not only sees this, but voluntarily or involuntarily, in one way or another, he takes part in maintaining this distinction which his conscience condemns. And he cannot help suffering from the consciousness of this contradiction and ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... become a psalter. But what was Alan's astonishment to read on the title page the following words:—'Merry Thoughts for Merry Men; or Mother Midnight's Miscellany for the Small Hours;' and turning over the leaves, he was disgusted with profligate tales, and more profligate songs, ornamented with figures corresponding in ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... exalted station appears, both in his own eyes and in those of other people, polluted and defiled by the baseness of the means through which he rose to it. Tho by the profusion of every liberal expense; tho by excessive indulgence in every profligate pleasure—the wretched but usual resource of ruined characters; tho by the hurry of public business, or by the prouder and more dazzling tumult of war, he may endeavor to efface, both from his own memory and from that of other people, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... Girolamo Savonarola was a trifler, a spendthrift and a profligate. Yet he proved a potent teacher for his son, pressing his lessons home by the law of antithesis. The sons of dissipated fathers are often ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... came to Pharsalus. When he was just arrived, Alexander the tyrant appeared with his army. Pelopidas and his friends supposed that he had come to establish his innocence, and went to meet him, knowing him to be profligate and bloodthirsty, yet fearing no harm, because of the name of Thebes and their own personal prestige. But he, when he saw them approaching him unarmed and alone, at once secured them and took Pharsalus, striking fear and terror into all his subjects; for they expected ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... men begin to lose their individuality of conviction the moment they begin life's business. Many a young man has sacrificed his individuality on the altar that a profligate companion has built for him. Many a young man who knew right, has allowed some empty-headed street-corner loafer to lower his own high moral tone lest he should seem singular in the little world of society ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... remarks, "This is a noble declaration, worthy of any Prince who rules over a free people. It is lamentable to reflect how little it comports with the domestic persecutions authorized by the same monarch during his profligate reign. It is still more lamentable to reflect how little a similar spirit of toleration was encouraged, either by precept or example, in other of the New England Colonies." (Commentaries, etc., Vol. I., Chap, ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... confession! Wretched, deluded girl! Is this a return for your parent's love and assiduous care; for your friends' solicitude and premonitory advice? You are ruined, you say! You have sacrificed your virtue to an abandoned, despicable profligate! And you live to acknowledge and bear your infamy!" "I do," said she; "but not long shall I support this burden. See you not, Julia, my decaying frame, my faded cheek, and tottering limbs? Soon shall I be insensible to censure and reproach. Soon shall I be sequestered in that mansion ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... was the same Essex who afterwards figured in the civil war—a grave, conscientious, earnest man, who could have had little sympathy with a woman so giddy and unprincipled. She suited better with the profligate Somerset; but had it not been that the king's favourite demanded it to be dissolved, the original union ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... in the records of this period. They were not wanted in this city but were tolerated as a negligible factor. D. B. Warden, a traveler through the West in 1819, observed that the blacks of Cincinnati were "good-humoured, garrulous, and profligate, generally disinclined to laborious occupations, and prone to the performance of light and menial drudgery." Here the traveler was taking effect for cause. "Some few," said he, "exercise the humbler trades, and some appear to have ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... great things, he must first perfect his character by simplicity's stern law; he must care naught for the haughty frown of the fierce tyrant that lords it in his palace, nor seek client-like for invitations to the board of the profligate, nor deliver himself over to the company of debauchees and drown the fire of his understanding in wine, nor sit in the theatre the hired applauder of the mouthing actor. But whether the citadel of panoplied Minerva allure him ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... appearance noticeable as the special mark of waiters in night-restaurants, actors, and light women, and produced by conventional grimacing and the wan reflection of gaslight. He was reputed to be the paid lover of an exiled and profligate queen. The rumour was whispered around him, and, in his own world, secured him ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... minister nullipotentiary, for all that his credentials showed—was an event of national importance. It was much more than this; it was the beginning of a new order of things in the relations of nations to each other. It is but a little while since any graceless woman who helped a crowned profligate to break the commandments could light a national quarrel with the taper that sealed her billets-doux to his equerries and grooms, and kindle it to a war with the fan that was supposed to hide her blushes. More and more, by virtue of advancing civilization and easy intercourse ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... Persian prodigal son, who was not so fortunate in the end as his biblical prototype: The son of a religious man, who succeeded to an immense fortune by the will of his uncle, became a dissipated and debauched profligate, in so much that he left no heinous crime unpractised, nor was there any intoxicating drug which he had not tasted. Once I admonished him, saying: "O my son, wealth is a running stream, and pleasure revolves like a millstone; or, in other words, profuse expense suits ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... amused by this piece of gossip believe it implicitly; it does not appear to me either amusing, or credible, or creditable to the man who retailed it. The Florentine society of the early years of this century was, if we may trust the keen observation of Stendhal, almost as naively and openly profligate as that of a South Sea Island village; and such a society, which could talk of the things and in the way which it did, which could permit certain poetical compositions (found highly characteristic by Stendhal) to be publicly ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... retaining it, and is not driven by the distresses of the present moment to destroy the future productiveness of the soil. Any rent which the landlord accepts more than this, or any system by which more rent than this is obtained, is to borrow money upon the most usurious and profligate interest—to increase the revenue of the present day by the absolute ruin of the property. Such is the effect produced by a middleman; he gives high prices that he may obtain higher from the occupier; more is paid by the actual occupier than ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... Dialogue happen'd between two men of quality, and both men of wit too; and the effect was, that the Lord brought the reality of the Devil into the question, and the debate brought the profligate to be a penitent; so in short, the Devil was made ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... which stimulated discussions; it was she, oftenest, who kept in view the fact that a good many women in the past had been entrusted with power and had not always used it amiably, who brought up the wicked queens, the profligate mistresses of kings. These ladies were easily disposed of between the two, and the public crimes of Bloody Mary, the private misdemeanours of Faustina, wife of the pure Marcus Aurelius, were very satisfactorily classified. If the influence of women in the past accounted for every ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... scholarship at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and passed a very creditable examination, though he failed in obtaining the election. Eight years later, we find him congratulating himself in his journal on thus having escaped the "scenes of debauchery" to which his "profligate acquaintances" might have introduced him. Was Corpus very much changed, when, only eleven years after, John Keble entered it at the same age? Was it that Martyn's Cornish schoolfellows were a bad set, or does this thanksgiving proceed from the ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... conduct. This unhappy lady, whom we have already mentioned as the daughter of Sir Thomas Lake, Secretary of State, had the misfortune to be sincerely attached to her handsome but profligate husband, whose neglect and frequent irregularities she had pardoned, until the utter estrangement, occasioned by his passion for the Countess of Exeter, filled her with such trouble, that, overpowered at length by anguish, she complained ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... and dissolute life, had expired within its walls. For years previously, many a mysterious story, fraught with dark hints of seduction and infanticide, had been whispered over the surrounding country; and when at last death arrested the Baron's profligate career, some reported that he had been strangled in requital of outrage committed,—others, that the Devil had taken home his own, as they ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... Emporia Wasp—you know they did call it the Bee, but the guy that bought it from the Bee people renamed it the Wasp, because he got stung worse than any bee could sting—the Emporia Wasp came out with a long editorial about the profligate rich and the Attic Debating Society had a big pow-wow in the basement of the church on the subject, 'Be it Resolved, That more people are killed by strong drink than by hanging.' All this had such a moral effect on the young that the soda fountain didn't sell a claret phosphate for ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... speculative free-thinker in matters of religion and in the theory of morals. But as by a process which is seldom missed free-thinking does and will end in free-acting, he who has cast off one yoke also casting off the other, so a 'libertine' came in two or three generations to signify a profligate, especially in relation to women, a licentious and debauched person. [Footnote: See the author's Select ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... Venetian, wife of Paolo Gambara. With him she led a life of almost continual poverty, and for a long time maintained them at Paris by her needle. Her clients on rue Froidmanteau were mostly profligate women, who however were kind and generous towards her. From 1831 to 1836 she left her husband, going with a lover, Andrea Marcosini, who abandoned her at the end of five years to marry a dancer; and in January, 1837, she returned to her husband's home emaciated, withered and ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... "Hold on, you abandoned profligate!" said the Judge. "You don't know any one in the Big Burgh, do you? Thought not. Without there! Ho, varlet!" He thumped on the table, demanding writing materials. "I'll fix you out. Give you a letter to a firm of mining experts I'm in ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... mad—our wealth exhausted, our people miserable, our credit blasted, and our state on the brink of perdition? This prospect, indeed, will make the fainter impression, if we recollect that we ourselves are a pack of such profligate, corrupted, pusillanimous rascals, as deserve ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... and a social tie between others and yourself when you are in the world. The same may be said of literature, though in a less degree; and though, as fewer persons care about literature than politics, your companions must be more select. If you are very young, you are fond of dancing; if you are very profligate, perhaps you are fond of flirtations with your friend's wife. These last are objects in their way: but they don't last long, and, even with the most frivolous, are not occupations that satisfy the ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... reading has shown this entire evening. We do not gain the high art of holding the good which we gain, so profligate are we. Then we like to blame our friends or the fates for our poor judgment and our obtuseness. Until we begin to work as though we belong to and believe in an immortal life, as an inheritance, the great human family cannot enjoy that ...
— Cupology - How to Be Entertaining • Clara
... altogether such a knight as I had never beheld, or even fancied, at Knowl—a hero of another species, and from the region of the demigods. I did not then perceive that coldness of the eye, and cruel curl of the voluptuous lip—only a suspicion, yet enough to indicate the profligate man, and savouring of death ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... despotic government of Spain. England, alarmed lest she should be once more involved in a war with France for the protection of the Iberian peninsula, looked with concern upon the tyrannical and profligate conduct of the Spanish court and government; and Lord Palmerston, therefore, addressed a note to Sir H. Bulwer, the British representative at Madrid, requesting him to make such representations to the government, and offer such advice as would tend to consolidate ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... to the injudicious schemes of the protector who planned it, as to the bad execution of the officers by whom it was conducted. The soldiers were the refuse of the whole army: the forces enlisted in the West Indies were the most profligate of mankind: Pen and Venables were of incompatible tempers: the troops were not furnished with arms fit for such an expedition: their provisions were defective both in quantity and quality: all hopes of pillage, the best incentive to valor among such men, were ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... Cassius, defeated by Augustus, almost in the same place, at the Battle of Philippi. He concludes also that by Hylaeus is meant Mark Antony, who assumed the name of Bacchus, and ruined himself by his profligate passion for Cleopatra. Another Commentator observes, that as the Giants, and Lapithae, are said to have made the Palace of Saturn shake, so also did Brutus, and Cassius, and afterwards Mark Antony, make all Italy tremble, and that it is Rome itself that Horace ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... hear a plenty of nonsense talked, and by very sensible people, too, about most drunken fools! He was a spender and a profligate, was old Marshall Langham; a tavern loafer, but a man of parts. Yes, he had a bit of a brain, when he was sober and of a ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... religious than heretofore. Her account of her brother was far less favourable, though she did not say anything directly to his disadvantage. From all that I could gather from her, I was led to suppose that he was a specimen of the idle, coarse-mannered, profligate "squirearchy"—a result which might naturally have followed from the circumstance of his being, as it were, outlawed from society, and driven for companionship to grades below his own—enjoying, too, the dangerous prerogative of spending a good deal of money. However, ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... of fact, therefore, we are bound to trace back the responsibility for the present crisis even to the Reformation itself, as well as to the tyranny and absolutism of government, and the sordid and profligate ordering of society, which followed on the ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... clergy. Many of them are, I doubt not, liberal and well-meaning men, who have preferred peace and submission to theological warfare, and who might not think themselves justified in opposing their opinion to a national decision: yet are there also many of profligate lives, who were never educated for the profession, and whom the circumstances of the times have tempted to embrace it as a trade, which offered subsistence without labour, and influence without wealth, and which at once supplied a veil for licentiousness, and the means ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... Remember that China is reduced to the expedient of throwing its children into the water, according to the accounts of travelers. Now this production of two children is really the whole of marriage. The superfluous pleasures of marriage are not only profligate, but involve an immense loss to the man, as I will now demonstrate. Compare then with this poverty of result, and shortness of duration, the daily and perpetual urgency of other needs of our existence. Nature reminds us every hour of our real needs; and, on ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... of a clownish but faithful valet or the garrulous narrative of the heroine's fille-de-chambre, when rehearsing the stories of blood and horror which she had heard in the servant's hall? Again, had my title borne 'Waverley, a Romance from the German,' what head so obtuse as not to image forth a profligate abbot, an oppressive duke, a secret and mysterious association of Rosycrucians and Illuminati, with all their properties of black cowls, caverns, daggers, electrical machines, trap-doors and dark lanterns? Or, if I had rather chosen to call my work, 'A Sentimental Tale,' would ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... security, of individuals, which would be perpetually violated by a system, to preserve which, it would be requisite continually to take from the acquisitions of the industrious, to give to the idle and the profligate. It is possible that the experience of the last twenty years may not have produced as full a conviction as might have been expected on the minds of the French; but it cannot be supposed to have ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... of avoiding the dangers of prostitution in the streets, brothels were organized. These are generally managed by an elderly female profligate, often in partnership with a "husband," who is only a superior kind of protector. Officially, the prostitutes are free lodgers in the brothel, but in reality they are often prisoners or slaves. They are well fed and dressed in a way to attract the clients as much as possible. Clothes, food, etc., ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... he was committed to prison, where, with "much firmness of mind and nobility of soul," he endured a tedious captivity for many years, until Charles II. was recalled, when he ordered his old and faithful friend Seaforth to be released, after which he became a great favourite at his licentious and profligate Court. ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... the mental association which links together Clubs and domestic happiness—or unhappiness. I bring against these institutions no wholesale denunciation. I neither say nor believe that all who belong to them are men of profligate character. I cannot doubt that they comprise individuals not only of high social standing, but of great personal worth. But in dealing with the institutions themselves, I must be permitted to express the conviction that they are unfavourable to ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... a virtuous queen; but what if another profligate like George IV. should, by the accident of birth, become the heir of her sovereignty? France is as strong as one man's life can make her; but what if that man should run against some fanatic's idea which had taken shape in a bullet-mould, or receive a sudden call ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... procession to the tombs of those who died at Marathon, and the boat-races in the Bay of Salamis. That he gave his father some trouble is only too certain. His private tutor in rhetoric, as we should call him, was a certain Gorgias, a man of ability, and a writer of some note, but a worthless and profligate fellow. Cicero peremptorily ordered his son to dismiss him; and the young man seems to have obeyed and reformed. We may hope at least that the repentance which he expresses for his misdoings in a ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... thus be affected,—nor would it rob him, the younger son, of his right to call himself also by the title. The offer made to her was not ungenerous. The family owed her nothing, but were willing to sacrifice nearly half of all they had with the object of restoring to her the money of which the profligate had robbed her,—which he had been enabled to take from her by her own folly and credulity. In this terrible emergency of her life, Mrs. Vincent sent over to her a solicitor from London, between whom and the Italian man of business a bargain was struck. The ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... church, which the admirers of Brunelleschi must study, are two small, but most exquisite masterpieces of Lippo Lippi. All the works of this most profligate of friars are tender and holy beyond description. They have also that distinguishing charm of the Florentine school of the fifteenth century, navet,—a fresh, gentle, and loving appreciation of the beautiful and the natural. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... sacrilege, perfidy, and sedition; that the democracy of Athens was a most absurd constitution, productive of anarchy and mischief, which must always happen when the government of a nation depends upon the caprice of the ignorant, hair-brained vulgar; that it was in the power of the most profligate member of the commonwealth, provided he was endowed with eloquence, to ruin the most deserving, by a desperate exertion of his talents upon the populace, who had been often persuaded to act in the most ungrateful and ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... as orphan heiress, and she should have been wealthy as widow. But her husband was profligate, and he wasted her substance. She turned out to be a thoroughly capable woman of affairs who managed her property well. During her long and stainless widowhood—her husband fell in a shameful duel when ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... opportunity. Divide wisely and equitably between the few who are most nearly of your own blood, and the many who in kinship are only a little farther removed. If you regard only those reared under your own roof, your cherished estate will soon be scattered, perhaps wasted by profligate heirs in riotous living, to their own ruin, and you and your fortune will quickly be forgotten. Give a share—pay a tithe to your more distant and more numerous kindred—to the general public, and you ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... law to her own child, the father having legal sanction to dispose of the offspring even before it was born. At the time this committee was urging Congress to pass the bill, the public was horrified by a notorious case in the courts of the District in which a profligate father, who had never done anything to benefit his children, had disposed of them by will, debarring the mother from their custody and control. This cruelty and injustice was an object-lesson which especially evoked the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... beard; for in him behold the Autocrat of all the Russias! Not yet had the genius and perseverance of Peter the Great introduced the arts and sciences into that vast region of snow and mental darkness. Ivan, the Squinter, ruled over his serfs with Oriental despotism: he was ignorant, coarse, and profligate. At his feasts, the dishes were of gold from the Ural Mountains, and the attendants who waited upon the monarch were arrayed in all the grandeur of Eastern princes; but the slightest blunder on their part subjected them to death, to the more dreaded knout, or to banishment ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... of raising funds. They hunted the Indians, and sold them as slaves to the West Indies, and their sea-ports became the resort of pirates. These atrocious and ruinous pursuits soon reduced them to a state of miserable poverty, and the baneful influence of a series of profligate governors completed the mischief. One of these, named Sette Sothel,[363] was especially conspicuous for rapacity and injustice. (1683.) His misrule at length goaded the people into insurrection; they seized him, ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... of indulging his vain fancy by attempting to trace analogies in detail, where none are intended by the Holy Spirit. The true church of Christ is compared to a virtuous and fruitful woman, (ch. xii. 5;) and the apostate church is symbolized by a fruitful but profligate woman, (ch. xvii. 5.) Then both are also represented by two cities, which are equally contrasted. As the women differ in their outward adornment, (chs. xix. 8, xvii. 4,) so do the cities in the quality of population, commerce and employment, ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... of our scientific method of transportation, which very soon I will show you. We are a scientific people. Hah!" He laughed ironically. "The workers say that we princes are profligate—that we think only of women and music. But that is not so. Once, many generations ago, we were a tremendous nation, and skilled in science far beyond your own world—and with a population a hundred times what we have now. The land everywhere must have been rich and fertile. There were big ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... Castlefort, as well as she recollected, was easy enough to live with. "And after all," said she, "it is better than what we see every day, the fairest of the fair knowingly, willingly giving themselves to the most profligate of the profligate, In short, the market is so overstocked with accomplished young ladies on the one hand, and on the other, men find wives and establishments so expensive, clubs so cheap and so much more luxurious than any home, liberty not only so sweet but so fashionable, that their policy, ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... tales of ill things done daringly, which delighted his fathers, can scarcely quicken his slackened pulses. His wooings have lost their spice of danger, and, with it, more than half their romance. He is as frankly profligate as his thin blood permits, but the dissipation in which he indulges only makes him a disreputable member of society, and calls for none of the manly virtues which make the Malay attractive to those who know and love him in his truculent untamed state. On the East ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... seizure of Le Mans brought his border to the Norman frontier. Here however his advance was checked by the genius of William the Conqueror, and with his death the greatness of Anjou came for a while to an end. Stripped of Maine by the Normans and broken by dissensions within, the weak and profligate rule of Fulk Rechin left Anjou powerless. But in 1109 it woke to fresh energy with the accession of his son, Fulk of Jerusalem. Now urging the turbulent Norman nobles to revolt, now supporting Robert's son, William, in ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... three felt sure of catching him. And first, among the small folk under their protection, they stirred up two good souls to declare that they could no longer keep as vicar a profligate, a wizard, a devil, a freethinker, who bent one knee in church instead of two, who scoffed at rules and granted dispensations contrary to the rights of the Bishop. A shrewd accusation, which turned against him his natural defender, the Bishop of ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... and torment him like furies. The flash of repentance over her strangled body is also the first flash of insanity. He survives to present the spectacle of a crazed lunatic, and to be run through the body by his paid assassin. In the Cardinal of Aragon, Webster paints a profligate Churchman, no less voluptuous, blood-guilty, and the rest of it, than his brother the Duke of Calabria. It seems to have been the poet's purpose in each of his Italian tragedies to unmask Rome as the Papal city really was. In the lawless desperado, the intemperate ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... virtue. But despotism courts shade and obscurity, and dreads the scrutinizing eye of liberty, the freedom of the press, which pries into its secret recesses, discovering it in its lurking holes, and drags it forth to public detestation. If a tyrannically disposed prince, supported by an unprincipled, profligate minister, backed by a notoriously corrupt Parliament, were to cast about for means to secure such a triple tyranny, I know of no means he could devise so effectual for that purpose as the bill now ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various |
