"Viciousness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which you came in contact? Is there one of you who fears to examine why it is that even the most specious form of vice is vicious? You fear not infection here, for you know that you are on sure ground, and that there is no form of vice of which the viciousness is not clearly provable; but can you doubt that the foundation of your faith is sure also, and can you not see that your cowardice in not daring to examine the foul and soul-destroying den of infidelity is a stumbling-block to ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... passed, the squall persisting with unmitigated viciousness. If now and again it subsided momentarily, it was only into uglier growls and swiftly to rise once more ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... himself go, as he spoke, and a passionate hate appeared in his quiet eyes. The "Trouble" was of so impossible a viciousness that only the nobility and goodness of Madame had prevented his assassination numbers of times. He was hated, he said, hated and loathed; his life—spent in continual drunkenness, and worse, unspeakable wickedness—was not worth a day's purchase, ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... bare the falseness of Jefferson's professions. His longest and sharpest attack is upon the policy pursued by the President in rewarding his followers with office,—a policy in accord with the principles laid down in the inaugural. We are accustomed nowadays to strong statements of the viciousness of the spoils system, but no advocate of civil service reform has attacked the full-grown system of party rewards with any more vigor than Webster showed at the beginning of the system. "No, sir!" he ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... with a sudden viciousness. "By James!" he snapped, "you better take care of your-words, or there'll be a man in this smoke-room with a broken jaw. I allow no one to sling slights at either me or my ship. No, nor at the firm either that owns both of us. You needn't ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... but a few squatting dejectedly on the deck. In the dim twilight of that bare interior their faces scarcely appeared natural, and they conversed in undertones. Most of the fellows were sober and silent, not a bad lot to my judgment, with only here and there a countenance exhibiting viciousness, or a tongue given to ribaldry. I could remember seeing but few of them before, yet as I observed them more closely now, realized that these were not criminals being punished for crime, but men caught, ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... not of the angel, yet of the Maid, the emblem of perfection to that rude world, though often so barbarously handled. It might almost be said of the age, notwithstanding its immorality and rampant viciousness, that in its eyes a true virgin could do no harm. And hers was one if ever such a thing existed on earth. The talk in the streets began to take a very different tone. Massieu the clerical sheriff's officer saw nothing ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... self-esteem arises (3) Censoriousness, since he who thinks well of himself is apt to think ill of others. As a system Pharisaism was wanton hypocrisy—a character of seeming righteousness, but too often of real viciousness. ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... to struggle, and for a minute or two Dave and Phil had all they could do to hold him. Then, in sudden viciousness, Link kicked out, ...
— Dave Porter At Bear Camp - The Wild Man of Mirror Lake • Edward Stratemeyer
... prostitutes, its millions of hurrying clerks? The very leaves upon its trees were foul with greasy black defilements. Where is lime-white Paris, with its green and disciplined foliage, its hard unflinching tastefulness, its smartly organized viciousness, and the myriads of workers, noisily shod, streaming over the bridges in the gray cold light of dawn. Where is New York, the high city of clangor and infuriated energy, wind swept and competition swept, ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... beautiful creature, nocturnal in his habits, with large ears, and large, fine eyes full of a wild, harmless look. He is daintily marked, with white feet and a white belly. When disturbed by day he is very easily captured, having none of the cunning or viciousness of ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... and the circumstances of the case. In some men it results in paralysis of the energies, changing the character into shiftlessness. In other cases it results in destroying the moral sense, but does not amount to positive viciousness, while on the other hand it may result as it unquestionably did in this case, in absolutely perverting the affections so as to render the man incapable of the natural feelings of a husband and father, and ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... Elijah Martin was not long in discovering that when the Minyo hunter, with his obsolete bow, dropped dead by a bullet from a viewless and apparently noiseless space, it was NOT considered the lightnings of an avenging Deity, but was traced directly to the ambushed rifle of Kansas Joe, swayed by a viciousness quite as human as their own; the spectacle of Blizzard Dick, verging on delirium tremens, and riding "amuck" into an Indian village with a revolver in each hand, did NOT impress them as a supernatural act, nor excite their respectful awe as much as ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte
... there are no regular disciplined forces, is what its captain makes it. If I undertake this business, I shall be your escort. I may require a dozen men, just as I may require a dozen horses. Some of the horses will be vicious; so will all the men. If either horse or man tries any of his viciousness on me, so much the worse for him; but it will make no difference to you. I will order my men to behave themselves before the lady; and they shall obey their orders. But the lady will please understand that I take my own way with ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... ground. In the impenetrable darkness she realized that the house fuse of their Delco system must have been blown out, and she groped blindly for a match. She could hear the rain coming down again, now in rivers. There was unchained wrath in the downpour, viciousness. It was a madman rushing in to rend and tear. It frothed, and writhed, and spat hatred. Rose shook as though gripped by a strong hand. She was afraid—of the rain, the lightning, the thunder, the darkness; alone there, waiting ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... waste, and that mismanagement and waste spring from no other source than ignorance and from stupid divisions and jealousies, base patriotisms, fanaticisms, prejudices and suspicions that are all no more than ignorance a little mingled with viciousness. We have looked closely into this servitude of modern labor, we have seen its injustice fester towards syndicalism and revolutionary socialism, and we know these things for the mere aimless, ignorant resentments they are; punishments, not remedies. We have looked into the portentous ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... the small virago in her tantrums, and to set her going again when he thinks she has been a long enough time in subsidence. His ideal of woman is an amusing little plaything, with a great facility for being put up, and a dash of viciousness to give it piquancy. ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... arose out of our author's selection of the subject as an example of the viciousness of our method. He would not permit us 'simply to place side by side' savage and Greek myths and customs, because it did harm (i. 195); and the harm done was proved by the Nemesis of De Brosses. Now, first, a method may be a good method, ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... the drop of the handkerchief; steel rang upon steel, and no buttons tipped their foils. It was careful fencing at first, thrust and parry, parry and thrust, until Simon lost patience at length and put all his viciousness into one deadly lunge. ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... York has less evil in it than most places. Here, after the mills shut down, there's no recreation for the men, and so they amuse themselves with viciousness. But in a great place like New York, there are a thousand amusements specially planned for the evening hours. Exhibitions, theatres, concerts, libraries, lectures—everything to tempt one away from wrong-doing to fine things. And there wickedness is kept out of sight ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... and encourage, but yet to give warning strong and clear that these frightful catastrophes were in great measure the effect of our sins, our fostering of heathenism, our recognition of caste, and were especially a judgment on the viciousness and irreligion that had been the curse of English life in India. It was in open Christianity ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... wives, better mothers, more willing to sacrifice their own pleasure to their children than a hundred other women. Tradeswomen (I mean the wives of tradesmen) in the city, who are worth from ten to fifteen thousand pounds, are the worst creatures upon the earth, grossly ignorant, and thinking viciousness fashionable. Farmers, I think, are often worthless fellows[1050]. Few lords will cheat; and, if they do, they'll be ashamed of it: farmers cheat and are not ashamed of it: they have all the sensual vices too of the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Harding, that you will never regret having spoken them," and to the bottom of his heart the man meant what he said, at the moment; for inherent chivalry is as difficult to suppress or uproot as is inherent viciousness. ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... conscientious best to conceal from him the demoralizing fact of her belief that he could do almost no wrong, and she clung to the modifying almost with a passionate fervour born of her clerical ancestry and her consequent belief in the inherent viciousness of unconverted man. Moreover, her inherited notions of conversion included spiritual writhings and physical night-sweats and penitential tears by way of its accomplishment. According to the creed of all the Parson Wheelers since the Puritan migration, one became a Christian rather violently, ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... was the consummate dignity of a pure life. Dignity as well as purity were alike banished from the Court of Charles II., with the examples before it of his own more open debauchery and of his brother's more morose viciousness, which was rendered all the uglier by his sullen bigotry. With a discerning eye Clarendon read the prevailing defects of the Stuart race—their proneness to succumb to flattery and vicious influence, and then obstinately to sacrifice every good inclination ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... fields from Endleigh, the trio came upon a group of the idle boys of the village who were assembled in front of an inclosed paddock containing Farmer Giles's brindled bull, a savage animal, whose implacable viciousness was the talk of the place; not even the ploughman, with whom he was more familiar than anyone else, daring to approach him without the protection of ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... to represent the members of it as noble, chivalrous, high-minded, unfortunate princes; though, perhaps, of all the royal families that ever existed upon earth, this family was the worst. It was unfortunate enough, it is true; but it owed its misfortunes entirely to its crimes, viciousness, bad faith, and cowardice. Nothing will be said of it here until it made its appearance in England to ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... of viciousness. "I did give them a little time," he agreed. "How was I to know?" He looked calmly at them over the tops of his glasses. "You can go now," he said, like ...
— Vigorish • Gordon Randall Garrett
... forth out of a young and tender body a downy beard or the sprouting tokens of mature youth, but by having in a feeble, soft, unmanful, and undetermined mind, a perfect intellect, a consummate prudence, a godlike disposition, an unprejudiced science, and an unalterable habit. All this time his viciousness gives not the least ground in order to it, but he becomes in an instant, I had almost said, of the vilest brute, a sort of hero, genius, or god. For he that receives his virtue from the ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... rather more viciousness than I gave him credit for, has Master Joseph. He flew at me with his knife, and I had to grasp him twice, and got a cut over the knuckles, before I had the upper hand of him. He looked murder out of the only eye he could see with when we had finished, ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... crooked, and deformed. So that these two, a disease and sickness, proceed from a violent concussion and perturbation of the health of the whole body; but a defect discovers itself even when the body is in perfect health. But a disease of the mind is distinguishable only in thought from a sickness. But a viciousness is a habit or affection discordant and inconsistent with itself through life. Thus it happens that, in the one case, a disease and sickness may arise from a corruption of opinions; in the other case, the consequence may be inconstancy ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... easy to see how a man expecting a polite, formal duel can be completely shattered by the viciousness of such an attack. And the machine ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova
... know that at the thought his muscles made involuntary response. He swung the pick down, imagining the blow, with a ferocity and viciousness that would ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... with a viciousness. It knew now that it was finally in control. That the full change had been completed. And it ...
— The Monster • S. M. Tenneshaw
... degeneration. For this degradation of character we are bound to hold this new social force in a measure responsible, even though it has so operated because of its inherent qualities and in no material respect through conscious cynicism or viciousness; indeed it is safe to say that in so far as it was acting consciously it was with good motives, which adds an element of even greater tragedy to a ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... We Catholics know what foreigners are, how they work for evil in places high and low. One cannot take up a daily paper without seeing some exposure of their many-sided viciousness. They contaminate the land with their godless depravity. Nobody can count on immunity. The highest officials in the land, the very Ministers of the Crown, are subjected to their vile disguised attempts at bribery and corruption, no ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... present observed, the acquisition of money would seem to be the height of human aim—the great object of living, to which all other purposes are made subordinate. Money, which exalts the lowly, and sheds honour upon the exalted—money, which makes sin appear goodness, and gives to viciousness the seeming of chastity—money, which silences evil report, and opens wide the mouth of praise—money, which constitutes its possessor an oracle, to whom men listen with deference—money, which makes deformity beautiful, and sanctifies crime—money, which lets the guilty go unpunished, and ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... a man as any half-dozen young mates that may be caught by casting a net upon the waters; and though he had been somewhat taken aback by the startling viciousness of the first squall, he had pulled himself together on the instant, had called out the hands and had rushed them along to secure such openings about the deck as had not been already battened down earlier in the evening. Shouting ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... assists effect as delightfully as it veils intention. At times she is sensitive and tender, but her graver mood has no more of violence or mawkishness than has her gallant roguery (or enchanting archness) of viciousness or spite. Best of all, she is her poet's very own. You may woo her and pursue her as you will; but the end is invariable. 'I follow, follow still, but I shall never see her face.' Even as in her ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... past! what fineness of race there must be to get it, what exquisite balance and symmetry of the vital powers! And then, finally, determine for yourselves whether a manhood like that is consistent with any viciousness of soul, with any mean anxiety, any gnawing lust, any wretchedness of spite or remorse, any consciousness of rebellion against law of God or man, or any actual, though unconscious violation of even the least law to which obedience is ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin |
