"Turpitude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... abdomen!" said Mr. Boggs, slapping that portion of his frame as if he had a special grudge against it and would be glad if he could hit it hard enough to bring it to a realizing sense of its turpitude. "My figure had gone to the devil! It was not as large as it is now, but it was large enough to cook my gruel. My waist had increased so gradually that I had never noticed it. I got a tape and took its measure. Forty-two inches, sir! The jig was up. With a heart as young as ever, with ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... bedchamber which I have mentioned. Thence we passed into the grand Presentation Saloon, on the ceiling of which Lebrun had painted a likeness of Louis XIV. A tri-coloured cockade placed on the forehead of the great King still bore witness of the imbecile turpitude of the Convention. Lastly came the hall of the Guards, in front of the grand staircase ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Ducal Court might be on the subject of conjugal infidelity, when quietly carried on under the domestic roof and dignified by the name of serventismo, no court, no society, could do otherwise than virtuously resent so great a turpitude as a wife publicly running away by herself from her husband's house. It became necessary to win over the sympathies of those in power, to secure their connivance, or at all events their neutrality; and this task of talking, flattering, wheedling, imploring, ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... addressed himself to Heudicourt, whom he treated in the most cruel fashion. "The good little fellow" was strangely taken aback, and wished to defend himself; but Villars produced proofs that could not be contradicted. Thereupon the ill-favoured dog avowed his turpitude, and had the audacity to approach Villars in order to speak low to him; but the Marechal, drawing back, and repelling him with an air of indignation, said to him, aloud, that with scoundrels like him he wished for no privacy. Gathering up, his pluck at this, Heudicourt gave rein ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... justifies his dealings with his step-sons, he clears himself in good earnest, nay does more than clear himself. For he unveils in the most merciless fashion the villany of his accusers—the base ingratitude of Pudens, and the unspeakable turpitude of Rufinus. ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... kholopy, that is, as chattels. The primitive Slavic communal organization thus survived only on the royal domain, and there it exists till the present day. The census of Peter having thus fairly inaugurated chattelhood, it immediately began to develop itself in all its turpitude. The masters grew more reckless and cruel; they sold chattels separately from the lands; they brought them singly into market, disregarding all family-ties and social bonds. Estates were no more valued according to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... crimes, undoubtedly, of great magnitude, naturally fitted to create horror, and that loudly call for punishment, that have yet no idea of turpitude annexed to them; but unclean hands, bribery, venality, and peculation are offences of turpitude, such as, in a governor, at once debase the person and degrade the government itself, making it not only horrible, but vile and contemptible in the eyes of all mankind. In this humiliation and abjectness of guilt, he comes here not as a criminal ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... in question as well as the less. Reason too, pleads for the one as well as for the other. Consistency of moral doctrine again demands both. But if we admit the restricted interpretation, and exclude the larger, we offend reason. All consistency is at an end. Individual responsibility for moral turpitude will be taken from man. Crimes, clearly marked and defined in the page of Christianity, will cease to be crimes at the will of princes. One contradiction will rush in after another; and men will have two different standards of morality, ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... to post, eventually left Munich for Switzerland, it was in the company of Auguste Papon, who, on the grounds of "moral turpitude," had already been given his marching-orders. He described himself as a "courier." His passport, however, bore the less exalted description of "cook." It was probably the more correct one. The faithful Fritz Peissner, anxious to be of service to the woman ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... evil, put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter. He openly threw aside the admission of any one moral obligation. Never did some of the Roslyn boys, to their dying day, forget the deep, intolerable, unfathomable flood of moral turpitude and iniquity which he bore with him; a flood, which seemed so irresistible, that the influence of such boys as Montagu and Owen to stay its onrush seemed as futile as the weight of a feather to bar the fury of a mountain stream. Eric might have done much, Duncan might have ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... do other than believe her? How could I gauge the turpitude of that beauty's mind—I, all unversed in the wiles that Satan teaches women? How could I have guessed that when she saw Fifanti speak to that lad at the gate that afternoon she had feared that he had set a spy upon the house, and that fearing this she had bidden the Cardinal begone? ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... deserters are hung upon trees: [76] cowards, dastards, [77] and those guilty of unnatural practices, [78] are suffocated in mud under a hurdle. [79] This difference of punishment has in view the principle, that villainy should he exposed while it is punished, but turpitude concealed. The penalties annexed to slighter offences [80] are also proportioned to the delinquency. The convicts are fined in horses and cattle: [81] part of the mulct [82] goes to the king or state; part to the injured person, or his relations. In the same assemblies chiefs ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... not chidden him for the use of that familiar salutation, nor did she chide him now, though she was promised to another. She wondered at herself—flushing at her own turpitude; for upon Barsoom it is a shameful thing for a woman to listen to those two words from another than ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... a particular friend, there had been about this time two or three scandalous intrigues, followed by 'the public brand of shameful life.' One of these 'sad affairs,' as they are styled, was marked with premeditated treachery and turpitude. The lady had been, or had seemed to be, for years a pattern wife, the mother of several children; yet she had long betrayed, and at last abandoned, a most amiable and confiding husband, and went off with a man who did not love her, who cared for nought but himself, a disgusting monster of ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... that nothing would serve but a pitched battle, in which each fighting man should go to the poll and put a cross against a name in grim silence. Argue with these gross self-satisfied fellows about the turpitude of the artisans! Why, there was scarcely one of them whose grandfather had not been an artisan! Curse their patriotism! Then he would begin bits of argument to himself, and stop them, too impatient to ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... was during the ensuing time that the real problem came up—the problem of how far it was excusable to discuss the turpitude of parents with a child of twelve, of thirteen, of fourteen. Absolutely inexcusable and quite impossible it of course at first appeared; and indeed the question didn't press for some time after Pemberton had received his ...
— The Pupil • Henry James
... for the partiality of the people, exhibiting the free command of a pure and copious vocabulary, an inexhaustible fund of metaphors and similitudes, giving variety and grace to the most familiar topics, with an almost dramatic exposure of the folly and turpitude of vice, and a deep moral earnestness. His zeal as a bishop and eloquence as a preacher, however, gained him enemies both in the church and at the court. The ecclesiastics who were parted at his command from the lay-sisters (whom they kept ostensibly as servants), the thirteen bishops ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... mistress and scholars, forthwith denounced me to the higher powers. The proofs of my peculation were too glaring, and the amount too serious to be passed over; I was tried, convicted, condemned, sentenced, flogged, and dismissed in the course of half-an-hour; and such was the degree of turpitude attached to me on this occasion, that I was rendered for ever incapable of serving in that or any other employment connected with the garden or farm; I was placed at the bottom of the list, and declared to be the worst ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... gloomiest forbodings. What a fool I had been not to insist that whatever expert accompanied Higgs should be a married man. And yet, now when I came to think of it, that might not have bettered matters, and perhaps would only have added to the transaction a degree of moral turpitude which at present was lacking, since even married men ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... the deeds done in the flesh, I ask whether it is consistent with the idea we have of divine justice to think that both will be condemned to the same everlasting punishment? If it be, then there is no more moral turpitude in parricide than in telling a trivial falsehood, which injures no one, but still is offensive and displeasing to God. But if it be not consistent with divine justice, then you must admit the distinction ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... more the sharp woody thorns of the tree tore his skin. His cries were heard by persons who were passing, and he was found after several hours of suffering, covered with blood, and dreadfully stung by the ants. This crime is perhaps without example in the history of human turpitude: it indicates a violence of passion less assignable to the climate than to the barbarism of manners prevailing among the lower class of ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... violent, more malignant, more odious than Louis XIV., but there was not one who ever used his power to inflict greater suffering or greater wrong; and the admiration with which he inspired the most illustrious men of his time denotes the lowest depth to which the turpitude of absolutism has ever degraded ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... a curious passage of Bk. XII. Chap. I. in which Gil disclaims paternity and resigns it to Marialva. This may have been prompted by a desire to lessen the turpitude of the go-between business; but it is a clumsy device, and makes Gil look a fool as well ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... so too; the limit is imposed, and the malefactor is led out to the living death which will end with death in reality. And now will some righteous and competent person arise and proclaim that this man's yielding to his first temptation to crime did NOT involve greater moral turpitude than did his yielding to the second temptation or to the third—greater or at least as great—and that therefore the severer sentence is justified? His first misdeed was prompted by hunger, ignorance, drunkenness, or cupidity; the others were the fruit of desperation ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... Common Law of England is the type that speaks for Coke. The glory of human wisdom shines forever around the drooping head of Bacon. Both teach posterity how much intellectual grandeur may co-exist with the most glaring moral turpitude; both pay homage to virtue by seeking refuge in disgrace in the tranquil pursuits that have since immortalized them. Bacon, with a genius only less than angelic, condescends to paltry crime, and dies branded. Coke, with a profound contempt ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... sadly. "At one time I had written proof of his turpitude, but I could not make up my mind to use it then, and I destroyed it eventually; so that now my word would be the only evidence against him, and that would not do, I suppose, although you all know, better than I do, I fancy, ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... ship, and can not see its motion. We can not realize the world's yesterdays. We know them, but do not comprehend them, since between apprehending and comprehending an epoch lie such wide spaces. "Quo Vadis" has done good in that it has popularized a realization of that turpitude of condition into which Christianity stepped at the morning of its career; for no lazar-house is so vile as the Roman civilization when Christianity began—God's angel—to trouble that cursed pool. Christ has come into this world's affairs unheralded, ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... up the cause of Burr, struck at higher game than Richard Riker or Ambrose Spencer. DeWitt Clinton was portrayed as "formed for mischief," "inflated with vanity," "cruel by nature," "an object of derision and disgust," "a dissolute and desperate intriguer," "an adept in moral turpitude, skilled in all the combination of treachery and fraud, with a mind matured by the practice of iniquity, and unalloyed with any virtuous principle." "Was it not disgraceful to political controversy," continues "Aristides," with an audacity of denunciation and sternness ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... times the anger that was rising from the bottom of my soul suddenly ended in a burst of laughter. I was confounded by so much shrewdness and so much vileness, by ideas now so just and then so false, by such general perversity of sentiments, such complete turpitude, and such marvellously uncommon frankness. He perceived the struggle going on within me:] What ails ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... can be allured to dwell? Delany is willing to think that Swift's mind was not much tainted with this gross corruption before his long visit to Pope. He does not consider how he degrades his hero, by making him at fifty-nine the pupil of turpitude, and liable to the malignant influence of an ascendant mind. But the truth is that Gulliver had described his yahoos before the visit; and he that had formed those images ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... suppose you are very anxious for people to know how near you came to absolute turpitude. You may rest easy on that point. I shall speak to my father, of course, and we will agree to say that ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... 15 min., lon. 92. 30.; and is as remarkable for its health as for the superior scale and shell fish with which its waters abound. The chief of this horde, like Charles de Moor, had, mixed with his many vices, some transcendant virtues. In the year 1813, this party had, from its turpitude and boldness, claimed the attention of the Governor of Louisiana; and to break up the establishment he thought proper to strike at the head. He therefore, offered a reward of 500 dollars for the head of Monsieur La Fitte, who was well known ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... or liberty? Not on account of the moral guilt of the criminal—not by impiously and arrogantly assuming the prerogative of the Almighty, to dispense justice or suffering, according to moral desert. It is for its own protection—it is the right of self-defense. If there existed the blackest moral turpitude, which by its example or consequences, could be of no evil to society, government would have nothing to do with that. If an action, the most harmless in its moral character, could be dangerous to the security ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... repeated the Grand-Vicar scoffingly; in truth, my poor friend, you make me doubt your reason. Can there be anything reasonable in the turpitude of heresy? ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... as my knowledge goes, the sum total of the considerations and discussions tending to show and set forth the moral turpitude of the Negro, leave out, if they do not ignore wholly, a most vital element. Any conclusion, therefore, reached, must eliminate the same, and in the degree that this element is important, the conclusion ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... "cookee" on the property of another; and it is abundantly evident, from many things which are stated, that the natives themselves really do not consider the act as implying, in ordinary cases, that moral turpitude which ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... pastime; nor for the curiosity of those who shudder while they gratify it. Indeed, there are few circumstances in which it is not expedient that a veil should be drawn over the crimes and sufferings of our fellow-creatures; and it is greatly to be wished, that in all cases of turpitude and atrocity, no further publicity were given to the offence than is necessary for the ends of justice. For no one who is conversant with criminal courts, or has obtained any insight into the human mind, can entertain a doubt that such ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 477, Saturday, February 19, 1831 • Various
... and decency he did not shrink from the blasphemy of claiming a special revelation which made God the abettor of his vices, and even represented Him as reproving and threatening his wives for their just complaints—if all this does not stamp a man as a reckless impostor, what further turpitude ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... submit to the wisdom of God, and zealously to vindicate it. There is no subject which more fully displays our fallen nature, than that of reprobation. All mankind agree in opinion, that there ever has been an elect, or good class of society; and a reprobate, or worthless and bad class; varying in turpitude or in goodness to a great extent and in almost imperceptible degrees. All must unite in ascribing to God that divine foreknowledge that renders ten thousand years but as one day, or hour, or moment in his sight. All ascribe to his omnipotence the power to ordain ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... only made my case worse by citing as an instance of German official turpitude the ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... maner of conceites that stirre vp any vehement passion in a man, doo it by some turpitude or euill and vndecency that is in them, as to make a man angry there must be some iniury or contempt offered, to make him enuy there must proceede some vndeserued prosperitie of his egall or inferiour, to make him pitie some miserable fortune ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... well as my health, that I would be an easy prey to his blandishments? Did he dream that the prospect of liberty which newspaper rumour and semi-official information held out to me was too dear to be forfeited for a trilling forfeiture of honour? Did he believe that by an act of secret turpitude I would open my prison doors only to close them the faster on others who may or may not have been my friends—or did he imagine he had found in me a Massey to be moulded and manipulated into the service of the ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... Turpitude of character must betray itself. Moral corruption can no more be hidden than physical corruption. Wickedness "will out," like murder or smallpox. A man's wife discovers it; his children shun him instead of clinging ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... intellectual integrity and prudence, firmness and wise reserve, are in exact accord. When we come to declaring opinions that are, however foolishly and unreasonably, associated with pain and even a kind of turpitude in the minds of those who strongly object to them, then some of our most powerful sympathies are naturally engaged. We wonder whether duty to truth can possibly require us to inflict keen distress on those to whom we are bound by the tenderest and most consecrated ties. This ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... were none to assist her; the bigotry of patriotism rejected her for her birth,—the scrupulousness of modesty, for her history. The night, that consecrated so many homes and gathered together so many families in innocence and repose, was to her blacker than its own blackness in misery and turpitude; the morning, that radiated gladness over the face of the world, revealed the extent and exaggerated the sense of her own degradation. But the vision of Jesus had alighted upon her; she had seen him speeding on his errands ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... acknowledge that Shakspeare evidently wishes, as much as possible, to spare the character of Laertes,—to break the extreme turpitude of his consent to become an agent and accomplice of the King's treachery;—and to this end he re-introduces Ophelia at the close of this scene to afford a probable stimulus of passion ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... representation, I will here explicitly declare the only grounds," &c. &c. &c.—Mr. Bowles's sensibility in denying his "sensitiveness to criticism" proves, perhaps, too much. But if he has been so charged, and truly—what then? There is no moral turpitude in such acuteness of feeling: it has been, and may be, combined with many good and great qualities. Is Mr. Bowles a poet, or is he not? If he be, he must, from his very essence, be sensitive to criticism; ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... ungrateful requital for His unmerited forbearance, He is still declaring, "As I live, saith the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth." Thy sins may be legion-like,—the sand of the sea may be their befitting type,—the thought of their turpitude and aggravation may be ready to overwhelm thee; but be still! thy patient God waits to be gracious! Oh! be deeply humbled and softened because of thy guilt, resolve to dedicate thyself anew to His service, and so coming, "He will ...
— The Faithful Promiser • John Ross Macduff
... blushes to name, vices such that, to borrow the energetic language of Lord Keeper Coventry, "the depraved nature of man, which of itself carrieth man to all other sin, abhorreth them." But the offences of his youth were not characterized by any peculiar turpitude. They excited, however, transports of rage in the King, who hated all faults except those to which he was himself inclined, and who conceived that he made ample atonement to Heaven for his brutality by holding the softer passions in detestation. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... intolerance that well consorted with the new position he had so basely purchased. The odium of his injured countrymen spoke loudly throughout the land he had betrayed. He was burned in effigy countless times, and a growing generation was told with wrath and scorn the abhorrent tale of his turpitude. Meanwhile, as if by defiant self-assurance to wipe away the perfidy of former acts, he issued a proclamation to "the inhabitants of America," in which he strove to cleanse himself from blame. This address, teeming with ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... the envious man is a wretch without talent, jealous of merit as beggars are of the rich; if, pressed by the indigence as by the turpitude of his character he writes you some "News from Parnassus," some "Letters of Madame la Comtesse," some "Annees Litteraires," this animal displays an envy that is good for nothing, and for which Mandeville could never make ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... of anger against this unwieldy hypocrite and well-fed malefactor swept over the jester. The man's assumed heartiness, his manner of joviality and good-fellowship, were only the mask of moral turpitude and blackest purpose. But for the lawless scholar, the fool would probably have retired to his bed with full confidence in the probity and honesty of the ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... spoken. Nor is there any doubt that Cain, after hearing the words from an angry father, was overwhelmed with terror and confusion, not knowing whither to turn. The expression, "which hath opened its mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand," is, indeed, terrifying, but it portrays the turpitude of the fratricidal deed better than ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... the like) receive any stronger sanction from being also declared to be duties by the law of the land. The case is the same as to crimes and misdemesnors, that are forbidden by the superior laws, and therefore stiled mala in se, such as murder, theft, and perjury; which contract no additional turpitude from being declared unlawful by the inferior legislature. For that legislature in all these cases acts only, as was before observed, in subordination to the great lawgiver, transcribing and publishing his precepts. ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... request, hoping to avail themselves of this circumstance to give them an opportunity of recovering their liberty, which they did in effect; but the means they employed was marked by a cruel act of ingratitude to their compassionate benefactress, of so much deeper turpitude that it was unnecessary for their purpose. As the young prince was one day riding between them, escorted by a party of archers and preceded by an officer carrying a lance, Monroy suddenly dispatched him with two or ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... chance, not selection, gave rise to a relation which continued for life. It was called necessitudo sortis; and it was looked upon with a sacred reverence. Breaches of any of these kinds of civil relation were considered as acts of the most distinguished turpitude. The whole people was distributed into political societies, in which they acted in support of such interests in the State as they severally affected. For it was then thought no crime, to endeavour by every honest means to advance to superiority ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... were the task, if possible, to describe the sensation created by this amazing disclosure; and we may only add in conclusion, that the prisoner was convicted on other testimony; and after an earnest admonition from the justice, on the turpitude of crime and its dreadful miseries, Jared Sculpin was sentenced to give Simon Bogle one good day's work, and one good fleece of wool for his time lost in hunting the chain, and in bringing the offender to justice; to carry the chain on his back through the main travelled ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... possessed, and I directed it in every way in which I could possibly employ it. I labored night and day. I labored in Parliament; I labored out of Parliament. If, therefore, the resolution of the House of Commons, refusing to commit this act of unmatched turpitude, be a crime, I am guilty among the foremost. But, indeed, whatever the faults of that House may have been, no one member was found hardy enough to propose so infamous a thing; and on full debate we passed the resolution against ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... men, are below the notice of an immortal being about to stand the trial for eternity, before the Supreme Judge of heaven and earth. Be comforted: your crime, morally or religiously considered, has no very deep dye of turpitude. It corrupted no man's principles; it attacked no man's life. It involved only a temporary and reparable injury. Of this, and of all other sins, you are earnestly to repent; and may GOD, who knoweth our frailty, and desireth not our death, ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... a name, and so a distinct species, and the other not; yet, in respect of carnal knowledge, they are both taken in under INCEST: and that still for the same convenience of expressing under one name, and reckoning of one species, such unclean mixtures as have a peculiar turpitude beyond others; and this to ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... faithful may with more good will avoid the sin of lying, the Parish Priest shall set before them the extreme misery and turpitude of this wickedness. For, in holy writ, the devil is called the father of a lie; for, in that he did not remain in Truth, he is a liar, and the father of a lie. He will add, with the view of ridding men of so great a crime, the evils which follow upon lying; and, whereas they are innumerable, ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... respects. It is a part of his nature; it permeates his entire being. Hence no city in the world, perhaps—Jerusalem not excepted—presents so strange a spectacle of religious enthusiasm, genuine and universal, mingled with moral turpitude; monkish asceticism and utter abandonment to vice; self-sacrifice and loose indulgence. It may be said that this is not true religion—not even what these people profess. Perhaps not; but it is what they are accustomed to from infancy, and it certainly develops some of their best traits of ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... and not morals that he satirizes. He is interested, not so much in effecting a fundamental reform in the lives of his characters, as in giving them a little social sense. He preaches, not against distinct moral turpitude like hypocrisy and avarice, but against inordinate affection for lap-dogs (Melampe), pietistic objections to masked balls {Masquerades}, and superstitious belief in legerdemain (Witchcraft). Holberg voices the urbane ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... inordinate love of luxury and the insatiable desires of jaded senses had suggested as a means to satisfaction, until the treachery of his own accomplices had thrown the glaring light of publicity on a career of turpitude such as even these decadent times had ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... harsh expression, the tone of irritation and fretfulness which is so unpopular in school. The sins of childhood are by nine tenths of mankind enormously overrated, and perhaps none overrate them, more extravagantly, than teachers. We confound the trouble they give us, with their real moral turpitude, and measure the one by the other. Now if a fault prevails in school, one teacher will scold and fret himself about it, day after day, until his scholars are tired both of school and of him: and yet he will do nothing effectual to remove it. Another ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... knowledge of ancient times, must have met with numerous instances of the miseries which "flesh is heir to," may be disposed perhaps to confess that, of all species of afflictions, the present one under consideration has the least moral turpitude attached to it. True, it may be so: for, in the examples which have been adduced, there will be found neither Suicides, nor Gamesters, nor Profligates. No woman's heart has been broken from midnight debaucheries: no marriage ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... which he alleged had been promised for his collusion. In repeated trials Farley was unable to produce evidence satisfactory to the courts, which held that in any case his claim must be rejected because 'based on inherent turpitude.' ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton
... a collision between these two principles which frequently occurred, produced odd situations by the thousand. And then, woman was physically little understood, and what was actually sickness in her, was considered a prodigy, witchcraft or monstrous turpitude. In those days these creatures, treated by the law as reckless children, and put under guardianship, were by the manners of the time deified and adored. Like the freedmen of emperors, they disposed of crowns, they decided battles, they awarded ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... and yet I shall die incredulous. As for the moral turpitude that man unveiled to me, even with tears of penitence, I cannot, even in memory, dwell on it without a start of horror. I will say but one thing, Utterson, and that (if you can bring your mind to credit it) will be more than enough. The creature who crept into my house that night ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... the ludicrous to be "a certain error and turpitude unattended with pain, and not destructive," a statement which may refer to moral or physical defects. Cicero and Quintilian, looking probably at satire, consider it to be mostly directed against the shortcomings and offences of men. Bacon in his "Silva Silvarum" ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... "But I'm not qualified to interpret the law. I'll arrest you and bring you to trial and then it's up to some judge to rule upon your purity and innocence of criminal intent, and freedom from moral taint or turpitude. ...
— The Big Fix • George Oliver Smith
... if he can resist doing what they desire him—why, I wish he would teach me the gate of it. O Geordie, Jingling Geordie, it was grand to hear Baby Charles laying down the guilt of dissimulation, and Steenie lecturing on the turpitude ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... as if he were ransacking his ingenuity to see what else he could do to save his father's reputation. Then, with a little cold sigh, he seemed to signify that he regretfully surrendered the late marquis to the penalty of his turpitude. He gave a hardly perceptible shrug, took his neat umbrella from the servant in the vestibule, and, with his gentlemanly walk, passed out. Newman stood listening till he heard the door close; then he slowly exclaimed, "Well, I ought to begin to ...
— The American • Henry James
... high office as chief magistrate, be held to a stricter responsibility than if his example was less dangerous to the public safety. Still, to justify the conviction of the President there must be specific allegations of some crime or misdemeanor involving moral turpitude, gross misconduct, or a willful violation of law, and the proof must be such as to satisfy the conscience of the truth of ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... exclaimed Mrs. Bixbee, wondering not more at the deacon's turpitude than at the lapse in David's acuteness, of which she had an immense opinion, but commenting only on the former. "I'm 'mazed ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... representatives in its favor? Not a bit of it; the place that he went to and the only place that he went to was Slowburg; yes, covering up his tracks in his usual careful style, he made direct for the rival of Fastburg. What did he propose to do there? Oh, how can we reveal the whole duplicity and turpitude of Ananias Pullwool? The subject is too vast for a merely human pen; it requires the literary ability of a recording angel. Well, we must get our feeble lever under this boulder of wickedness ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... have tried to shake Ailsa Craig as to make an impression upon this witness; however, heroically devoted to my trust, I hazarded the attempt, and ended by bringing out several additional tales of turpitude in the life ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... To bring accusations of fraud, cupidity and cunning against human nature, is not libellous. I am persuaded that robbery,—well contrived, deliberately executed robbery,—is perpetrated in every community among ourselves, without any due estimate of its moral turpitude, by reputable merchants and traders upon their customers, to a larger extent than all the avowed and heinous thefts collectively, which are committed against society. It is lamentable to see how studiously conscience and fair dealing are excluded from the secular business ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... stopped the fountains!' Mrs. Fox-Moore spoke as though detecting an additional proof of turpitude. 'Those two policemen,' she went on, in a whisper, 'why are they looking at us ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... loyalty and fidelity to the King of England; but how changed the meaning of that word in New England after the Declaration of Independence! Words and deeds before deemed patriotic were now traitorous, and so deeply was their moral turpitude impressed on the public mind as to have tainted popular opinions concerning the heroic deeds of our ancestors, performed in the King's service in the French Wars.... The War of the Revolution absorbed and neutralised all the heroic fame ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... been thinking of what she had done to him; of how she had lied to him about Gwenda; of the abominable thing that Alice had cried out to him in her agony. The thought of Mary's turpitude had consoled him mysteriously. Instead of putting it from him he had dwelt on it, he had wallowed in it; he had let it soak into him till ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... written to her, giving and asking for news, and urging a visit, on the very day after the scene in which George Cannon admitted his turpitude. Had the letter been sent a day or two sooner, reaching Hilda on her honeymoon, she would certainly have replied to it with the tremendous news of her marriage, and, her marriage, having been made public in the ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... to an action as the lens through which it is viewed, and the turpitude of the deed seems to increase or diminish according to the effect ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pretorians were willing that the dream should come true. Emissaries were despatched, and Caracalla was stabbed. In his luggage poison was found to the value of five million five hundred thousand drachmae. What fresh turpitude he was devising no one knew, and the discovery might serve as an epitaph, were it not that by his legions he was adored. No one had abandoned to the ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... Rajah's ruby had mysteriously disappeared from the collection of jewels to be divided. The other pirates immediately suspected their captain of having secretly purloined it, and, indeed, so certain were they of his turpitude that they immediately set about taking means to force a ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... mention that which everyone knows? Why dread to sound the abyss which can be measured by everyone? Why fear to bring into the light of day unmasked wickedness, even though it confronts the public gaze unblushingly? Extreme turpitude and extreme excellence are both in the schemes of Providence; and the poet has summed up eternal morality for all ages and ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... it would be impossible to elect him. An impartial but kindly judge had, some months before, while expressing great admiration for Mr. Blaine, informed me of some transactions which, while they showed no turpitude, revealed a carelessness in doing business which would certainly be brought to bear upon him with great effect in a heated political campaign. It was clear to me that, if nominated, he would be dragged through the mire, the Republican party defeated, and the country at large besmirched ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... ultimate Author of all our volitions is the Creator of the world, who first bestowed motion on this immense machine, and placed all beings in that particular position, whence every subsequent event, by an inevitable necessity, must result. Human actions, therefore, either can have no moral turpitude at all, as proceeding from so good a cause; or if they have any turpitude, they must involve our Creator in the same guilt, while he is acknowledged to be their ultimate cause and author. For as a man, who fired a mine, is answerable for all the consequences whether the train he employed be long ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... does take that direction all competent observation proves. To Vashti and Judah the time speedily comes when their love is acknowledged, upon both sides—the preacher speaking plainly; the girl, conscious of turpitude, shrinking from a spoken avowal which yet her whole personality proclaims. Yielding to her father's malign will she has consented to make one more manifestation of curative power, to go through once more,—and for the last ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... opportunities of licence of this kind, that nothing could prevent purity of manners, were marriage allowed, among the nearest relations, or any intercourse of love between them ratified by law and custom. Incest, therefore, being PERNICIOUS in a superior degree, has also a superior turpitude and moral deformity annexed ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... soft and courteous, breaking at times into the altisonance of the tragic muse. He does not think that any act of his can be wrong; the mere fact that HE ran counter to accepted standards divests, in his mind, the act itself of turpitude. That seems to be the way he looked upon his former Eastern encrouchments. That's the way he justified his subterranean deals with the KAISER; and he even goes so far as to assert that 'if the Vyborg-Bjoerkesund treaty ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... Assizes, 1830, Mr. Justice Gazalee, addressing the grand jury, said that none of the crimes appeared to be marked with circumstances of great moral turpitude. The prisoners numbered one hundred and thirty; he passed sentences of death on twenty-nine, life transportations on five, fourteen years on five, seven years on eleven, and various terms of hard labour ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... his reign was such as by no means prognosticated its subsequent transition. The sudden change of his conduct, the astonishing mixture of imbecility and presumption, of moral turpitude and frantic extravagance, which he afterwards evinced; such as rolling himself over heaps of gold, his treatment of his horse Incitatus, and his design of making him consul, seem to justify a suspicion that his brain ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... thwarting of their plans. But when even one of the great men in England, who made these laws against free-trading, could tell his fellow-lawmakers that the mind of man never could conceive of it as at all equalling in turpitude those acts which are breaches of clear moral virtue—how should it be expected that the parties chiefly interested should take a stricter ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... bringing the unhappy people together, and effecting a reconciliation between them by means of the unexpected sight of their children. Moreover, when Waldburg rejects his friend's advice and entreaties that he will forgive his wife, it is hardly upon the ground of any deep moral turpitude involved in such a forgiveness, but upon the score of the insupportable humiliation of reappearing in the great world of German society to which they both belong with "his runaway wife on his arm," and the "whispering, pointing, jeering" of which their reconciliation ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble |
