"Voluptuary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... despite his devotedness, a great social prestige. He perpetuated the traditions of the elegance of the old regime. Having lived much in the society of women, his politeness toward them was exquisite. This former voluptuary preserved only the ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... insight into Vincent's nature which drew us closer together. I recognized in the man, who as yet was only playing a part, a resemblance to myself, while he, perhaps, saw at times that I was somewhat better than the voluptuary, and somewhat wiser than the coxcomb, which were all that at present it suited ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... recompense of his services. This new dignity, by giving him frequent and easy access to the emperor, created an intimacy between them, which was increased to friendship and esteem on the side of Nero, by the elegant entertainments often given him by Petronius. In a short time, this gay voluptuary became so much a favourite at court, that nothing was agreeable but what was approved by Petronius and the authority which he acquired, by being umpire in whatever related to the economy of gay dissipation, procured ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... as before stated, consider biche de mer a very great luxury, believing that it wonderfully strengthens and nourishes the system, and renews the exhausted system of the immoderate voluptuary. The first quality commands a high price in Canton, being worth ninety dollars a picul; the second quality, seventy-five dollars; the third, fifty dollars; the fourth, thirty dollars; the fifth, twenty dollars; the sixth, twelve ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... appetites, have limited objects: the objects of psychical desires may be unlimited. A thirsty man thirsts not for an ocean, but for drink quantum sufficit: give him that and the appetite is gone. But the miser covets all the money that he can get: the voluptuary ranges land and sea in search of a new pleasure: the philosopher ever longs for a higher knowledge: the saint is indefatigable in doing good. Whatever a man takes to be an end in itself, not simply a means, ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... who was in heart a poetical voluptuary, smiled as Miss Ophelia made her remark on his premises, and, turning to Tom, who was standing looking round, his beaming black face perfectly radiant with ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... been a wife-killer, a persecutor, the slayer of the nobility of his kingdom, the exterminator of the last remnants of an old royal race, the patron of fagots and ropes and axes, and a hard-hearted and selfish voluptuary, who seems never to have been open to one kind or generous feeling. Most of those tyrants that have been hung up on high, by way of warning to despots, have had their "uncorrupted hours," in which they vindicated their claim to humanity by the performance of some good ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... with Mrs. Weir; and the next day's meal would never be a penny the better—and the next cook (when she came) would be worse, if anything, but just as pious. It was often wondered that Lord Hermiston bore it as he did; indeed, he was a stoical old voluptuary, contented with sound wine and plenty of it. But there were moments when he overflowed. Perhaps half a dozen times in the history of his married life—"Here! tak' it awa', and bring me a piece of bread and kebbuck!" he had exclaimed, with an appalling explosion of his voice and rare ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is practically current throughout the civilized world, to multiply these sects of sentimental philosophy, with the fads and poses which correspond, and to provide them with appropriate cant. The cant of the voluptuary, the cynical egoist, the friend of humanity, and all the rest is just as distinct as that of the religious sectarian. Each of the little groups operates its own selection, but each is small. They interfere with and neutralize each other, ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... approached the frontiers of Arabia, a famous robber, named Arbogad, seized me and sold me to some merchants, who brought me to this castle, where Lord Ogul resides. He bought me without knowing who I was. He is a voluptuary, ambitious of nothing but good living, and thinks that God sent him into the world for no other purpose than to sit at table. He is so extremely corpulent that he is always in danger of suffocation. His physician, who has but little ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... from literature (and this, like one or two other chapters here, is partly an effort in literary hedonism) Wilson stands very high, indeed so high that he can be ranked only below the highest. He who will enjoy him must be an intelligent voluptuary, and especially well versed in the art of skipping. When Wilson begins to talk fine, when he begins to wax pathetic, and when he gets into many others of his numerous altitudes, it will behove the reader, according to his own ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... next to some new state-plot, that occurred oftener than a new epic, might engage the monarch and his privy council. These were not the men to be touched by the compressed reflections and the ideal virtues personified in this poem. In the court of the laughing voluptuary the manners as well as the morals of these satellites of pleasure were so little heroic, that those of the highest rank, both in birth and wit, never mentioned each other but with the vulgar familiarity of nicknames, or the coarse appellatives of Dick, Will, and Jack! ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... before me, which threw their broad shades over the grassy banks and quivering waters of the Avon, that the poet's fancy may have sallied forth into that little song which breathes the very soul of a rural voluptuary ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... the ragpickers are called bibines; the most celebrated are the Saucepan and The Slaughter-House. Hence, tea-gardens, goguettes, caboulots, bouibuis, mastroquets, bastringues, manezingues, bibines of the rag-pickers, caravanseries of the caliphs, I certify to you, I am a voluptuary, I eat at Richard's at forty sous a head, I must have Persian carpets to roll naked Cleopatra in! Where is Cleopatra? Ah! So it ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... malady from which you suffer is due to no witchcraft. Lead a quiet life for ten weeks, and drink the water of Pougues." The best king France ever had, namely, the gay Gascon, and after him Louis XIII., by no means one of the worst, had recourse to Pougues waters; also that arch-voluptuary and arch-despot, the Sun-King, who imagined that even syntax and prosody must bow to his will. [Footnote: One day the young king ordered his carriage, saying, "mon carrosse," instead of "ma carrosse," the French word being ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... The death of Ibrahim in November 1848 made Abbas regent of Egypt, and in August following, on the death of Mehemet Alh—who had been deposed in July 1848 on account of mental weakness,—Abbas succeeded to the pashalik. He has been generally described as a mere voluptuary, but Nubar Pasha spoke of him as a true Turkish gentleman of the old school. He was without question a reactionary, morose and taciturn, and spent nearly all his time shut up in his palace. He undid, as far as lay in his power, the works of his grandfather, good and bad. Among other things ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... economy of the King was a subject for his satire, the opposite qualities in the Prince of Wales met with as little mercy. "The Voluptuary under the Horrors of Digestion" (1792) gives a very clever treatment of this latter theme; and in a "Morning after Marriage, or a Scene upon the Continent," we seem to find the same distinguished person, with a lady who may ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton
... capricious. No lucrative or noble purpose impels me. I aim at nothing but selfish gratification. I have no relish, indeed, for sensual indulgences. It is the intellectual taste that calls for such banquets as imagination and science can furnish; but, though less sordid than the epicure, the voluptuary, or the sportsman, the principle that governs them and me is the same; equally limited to self; equally void of any basis ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... made him a voluptuary, and reclining there in an ease which the languor born of his long illness rendered the more delicious, inhaling the tepid summer air that came to him laden with a most sweet attar from the flowering rose-garden, he realized that with all its cares life may be sweet to live in ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... even when they were within our reach? Were not these the two great sources of depravity? What security had he, that in this change of place and condition, he should not degenerate into a tyrant and voluptuary? Power and riches were chiefly to be dreaded on account of their tendency to deprave the possessor. He held them in abhorrence, not only as instruments of misery to others, but to him on whom they ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... honor, and without nobility. The surprise grows on us, perceiving such a man courted, feted, honored, and arbiter of the destinies of Europe for thirty-seven years. I do not find one virtue in him. In Julius Caesar, a voluptuary and red with carnage, there were yet multitudinous virtues. We do not wonder men loved him and were glad to die for him. He had a soul, and honor, and remembrance of friendship. He was a genius, superlative and bewildering. We can forget and forgive some things in such a man; but ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... were drawn, compelling as were her stature and her basilisk stare. They quickly turned from her, with a motion of contempt, to feast on the vision by her side—that of a girl on the threshold of young womanhood and of a beauty that dazzled the eyes of the old voluptuary. How had she come there and in such company, this ravishing girl on whom Nature had lavished the last touch of virginal loveliness, this maiden with her figure of such supple grace, the proud little oval face with its complexion of cream and roses, the dainty head from which twin plaits ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... voluptuary may ridicule the idea of the Almighty Creator of the universe, being pleased, or displeased, with a man for having a full or an empty stomach; but whatever tends directly or remotely, to subdue rebellious ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... not yet over: at some very silly remark of mine the joyous widow pressed some half-dozen rapid kisses on the cheek that was glowing so near her own. Either this act emboldened Riprapton, or he egregiously mistook her character, and judged that a mere voluptuary stood before him, for he immediately went on the vacant side and endeavoured to possess himself ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... great Asshur-bani-pal, the vanquisher of Tirhakah, the subduer of the tribes beyond the Taurus, the powerful and warlike monarch whose friendship was courted by the rich and prosperous Gyges, king of Lydia, as a mere voluptuary, who never put his foot outside the palace gates, but dwelt in the seraglio, doing woman's work, and often dressed as a woman. The character of Asshur-bani-pal stands really in the strongest contrast to the description—be ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... which it does not. A day's work is a day's work, neither more nor less, and the man who does it needs a day's sustenance, a night's repose, and due leisure, whether he be painter or ploughman. But the rascal of a painter, poet, novelist, or other voluptuary in labor, is not content with his advantage in popular esteem over the ploughman; he also wants an advantage in money, as if there were more hours in a day spent in the studio or library than in the field; ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... which has in it nothing positive of evil, and a very miasma of poisonous influence may rise from the apparently innocuous creations of a tainted soul. Now Correggio is moralised in neither way—neither as a good nor as a bad man, neither as an acute thinker nor as a deliberate voluptuary. He is simply sensuous. On his own ground he is even very fresh and healthy: his delineation of youthful maternity, for example, is as true as it is beautiful; and his sympathy with the gleefulness of children is devoid of affectation. We have then only to ask ourselves whether the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... Colline in a tone of stupefaction. "Ah! The voluptuary, that is why he will not open ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... that Byron's tragedies are failures. Fools! Is Cain, the dark, dim, disturbed, insane, hell-haunted Cain, a failure? Is Sardanapalus, the passionate, princely, philosophical, joy-cheated, throne-wearied voluptuary, a failure? Is Heaven and Earth, that magnificent confusion of two worlds, in which mortal beings mingle in love and hate, joy and despair, with immortal—the children of the dust claiming alliance with the radiant progeny of the skies, till man and angel seem to ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... a pity as you may think, Madam. 'Carpe diem' is my motto. 'Tis likewise the motto of that finished voluptuary, Horace, but I only take it because it suits me. The pleasure which follows desires is the best, for it ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... pensive seems the foregoing strain of sentiment. Who could suppose it a prelude to detailed reminiscence on the author's part of sensual pleasures—the basest—enjoyed in the past? The venerable voluptuary keeps himself in countenance for his lascivious vein, ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... remaining were a camp at Jerbourg, the nearly obliterated tessellated pavement and fragments of wall belonging to the sybarite's villa, which occupied the site in the King's Mills Valley where the Moulin de Haut now stands, the pond in the Grand Mare in which the voluptuary had reared the carp over which, dressed with sauces the secret of which died with him, he dwelt lovingly when stretched on his triclinium, and the basins at Port Grat in which he stored his treasured mullet and succulent oysters. The islanders were ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... transport was swarming with the dusky figures of the native bearers, who swiftly transferred the cargo from the groaning hold into the nimble bum-boats, and carried the large-limbed Anglo-Saxon heroes into luxurious barges, stuffed with cushions soft enough to satisfy the most jaded voluptuary. At shore, a sight awaited them calculated to stir every instinct of patriotism in their noble bosoms. On a richly chased ebon throne sat the viceroy in person, clad in all the panoply of power. A delicate edge of starched white linen, a ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... back into the old ruts when they find that the bank is too steep to climb. The springs of pride which lie in a great man's secret soul had been slackened in Victurnien. With such guardians as he had, such company as he kept, such a life as he led, he had suddenly became an enervated voluptuary at that turning-point in his life when a man most stands in need of the harsh discipline of misfortune and adversity which formed a Prince Eugene, a Frederick II., a Napoleon. Chesnel saw that Victurnien possessed that uncontrollable appetite for enjoyments which should be the ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... creatures who hastened to the prison, which youth thinks freedom and old age protection, at their shrieking summons. He preferred to be master of his soul, and had no desire to set it drilling at the command of painted women, or to drown it in wine, or to suffocate it in the smoke at which the voluptuary tries to warm his hands, mistaking it for fire. Intellectuality is to some men what religion is to many women, a trellis of roses that bars out the larger world. Valentine loved to watch the roses bud and bloom as he sat in his flower-walled ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... ascended the throne was in every respect the opposite of Cromwell. Charles II had no love of country, no sense of duty, no belief in man, no respect for woman. Evil circumstances and evil companions had made him "a good-humored lad but hard-hearted voluptuary." For twelve years he had been a wanderer, and at times almost a beggar. Now the sole aim of his life was enjoyment. He desired to be King because he would then be able ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... Lord Liverpool in 1827, and though he consented with reluctance to Canning's tenure of the foreign office, he did not attempt to interfere with the change in foreign policy consequent upon it. He was, in fact, sinking more and more into an apathetic voluptuary; but he could rouse himself, and exhibit some proofs of ability, under the impulse of his brothers, the honest Duke of York and the arch-intriguer, the ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... is now called the "vegetable system" of living; although it is evident he did not see every thing clearly. "In the early part of his life," says Prof. Hitchcock, in his work on Dyspepsia, "he was a voluptuary; and before he attained to middle age, was so corpulent that it was necessary to open the whole side of his carriage that he might enter; and he saw death inevitable, without a change of his course. He immediately abandoned all ardent spirits, wine, and fermented liquors, and confined ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... of course not. None of us have. I trust I am not a voluptuary or self-indulgent in any way, but I too would dislike to be excessively hungry. Still, I think it must be a great consolation to a man to think that he had made a great work out of ... his ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... of Ahasuerus for his fair bride seems to have soon declined. The fickle voluptuary sought new pleasures, and the bride so lately exalted to a throne was no longer an object of envy. Many bitter tears have been shed by the victims of family pride or state policy, when thus allied to greatness and splendour. ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... these verses before him, in either Suetonius or some other work, but seems to have been too slow-witted to appreciate the double entendre in subegit, which may signify voluptuary as well as military prowess. Hence, though he might have turned the expression exactly by [Greek: hupaegageto] he contented himself with the ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... a regular advocate in the courts of civil and canon law, he did not love his profession, nor, indeed, any kind of business which interrupted his voluptuary dreams or forced him to rouse from that indulgence in which only he could find delight. His reputation as a civilian was yet maintained by his judgments in the Courts of Delegates, and raised very high by the address and knowledge which he discovered in 1700, when he defended the ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... not half read thy villain lesson! Thou shouldst have known that the very cat, thou thoughtest me, will turn and rend the huntsman if he dare rob her of her portion! I tell you, Lucius Catiline, you thought me a mere wanton! a mere sensual thing! a soulless animal voluptuary! Fool! I say, double fool! Look into thine own heart; remember what blood runs in these female veins! Man! Father! Vitiator! My spirit is not female! my blood, my passions, my contempt of peril, my will indomitable and immutable, are, like my mortal ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... purposes. Indeed, it is certain, although he vouchsafed none of it to me, that this cold and stolid politician possesses to a great degree the art of ingratiation, and can be all things to all men. Hence there has probably sprung up the idle legend that in private life he is a gross romping voluptuary. Nothing, at least, can well be more surprising than the terms of his connection with the Princess. Older than her husband, certainly uglier, and, according to the feeble ideas common among women, in every particular ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... for this scene which would have gladdened a voluptuary's heart—and which, for that reason was dear to Waldron—but walked toward the huge, four-posted bed where Wally himself, now rather paler than usual, with bloodshot eyes, was lying. This bed, despite ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... and even decency; and frankly accepting squalor and disrepute as the price of anarchic self-indulgence. The conflict between Malvolio and Sir Toby, between the marquis and the bourgeois, the cavalier and the puritan, the ascetic and the voluptuary, goes on continually, and goes on not only between class and class and individual and individual, but in the selfsame breast in a series of reactions and revulsions in which the irresistible becomes the unbearable, and the unbearable the ...
— Overruled • George Bernard Shaw
... military, gathered up as much of Reilly's clothes and linen as she could conveniently carry to her cottage, which was in the immediate vicinity of Whitecraft's residence—it being the interest of this hypocritical voluptuary to have the corrupt wretch near him. The Rapparee, having left Whitecraft to his reflections, immediately directed his steps to her house, and, with her connivance, changed the dress he had on for one which she ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... finest gentlemen and ladies of Europe did the like. Belinda ate with her knife; and Saccharissa had only that weapon, or a two-pronged fork, or a spoon, for her pease. Have you ever looked at Gilray's print of the Prince of Wales, a languid voluptuary, retiring after his meal, and noted the toothpick which he uses? . . . You are right, madam; I own that the subject is revolting and terrible. I will not pursue it. Only—allow that a gentleman, in a shaky steamboat, on a dangerous river, in a far-off country, which caught fire three times ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... resource against it, either in beautiful slaves, or Ionian dances, or magnificent repasts, or the combats of gladiators, or Milesian tales, or the voluptuous pictures which garnish the walls of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Athumia poisoned all, and the demon possessed the voluptuary in the midst even of the debauch. But if, fatigued with these alternate pleasures and disgusts, he adopted regular and simple manners, married and had had children, then, as if by enchantment the demon quitted him. No more despondency, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various |
