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Licentious   Listen
adjective
Licentious  adj.  
1.
Characterized by license; passing due bounds; excessive; abusive of freedom; wantonly offensive; as, a licentious press. "A wit that no licentious pertness knows."
2.
Unrestrained by law or morality; lawless; immoral; dissolute; lewd; lascivious; as, a licentious man; a licentious life. "Licentious wickedness."
Synonyms: Unrestrained; uncurbed; uncontrolled; unruly; riotous; ungovernable; wanton; profligate; dissolute; lax; loose; sensual; impure; unchaste; lascivious; immoral.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Licentious" Quotes from Famous Books



... he declared, was right. The false Demetrius was none other than his own nephew, Grishka Otrepiev, who had once been a monk, but, unfrocked, had embraced the Roman heresy, and had abandoned himself to licentious ways. You realize now why Smirnoy had been chosen by Basmanov ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini

... simpler. But the scholar of the Renaissance was forced to combine great learning with the power of resisting the influence of ever-changing pursuits and situations. Add to this the deadening effect of licentious excess, and—since do what he might, the worst was believed of him—a total indifference to the moral laws recognized by others. Such men can hardly be conceived to exist without an inordinate pride. They needed it, if only to keep their heads above ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... least whose appearance foretold no disorder, gave rise to no debauchery, and from whose capacious hull would stream forth an Army of men, who, instead of thronging the grog-shops and other haunts of licentious indulgence, would occupy themselves with explaining and proclaiming the religion of the Love of God and ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... wherein several provisions are contained, sufficient to prevent the designs of persons disaffected to the State and Government of this Commonwealth, who have assumed to themselves and do continually take upon them a licentious boldness to write, print, publish, and disperse many dangerous, seditious, blasphemous, Popish, and scandalous pamphlets, books, and papers, to the high dishonour of God, the scorn and contempt of the Laws and of ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... upon by the committee, who I am informed have made their report, as to which I am wholly uninformed. Soon after this report was delivered to Congress, having been persecuted in the public papers for several months, in the most scandalous, virulent, and licentious manner, and accused before the public of crimes of the blackest complexion, I again addressed myself to Congress, and as their servant claimed their protection, and that I might be heard in the most public manner, or in any other way they thought proper. This letter, of the 30th of March, remains ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various

... a diversion in the formation of a library from severer employments; of the prince who loved to gather round him such evidences of his taste, or to lay them at the feet of a chere amie; of the licentious but superb Lady Marquise, who vied with her king in the magnificence of her books, as she did with his consort in that of her toilette—it is this which exercises upon our imagination its ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt

... night, as my dear babe lay dead, Before mine eyes the vision spread Of things that might have been: Licentious riot, cruel strife, Forgotten prayers, a wasted life ...
— Love-Songs of Childhood • Eugene Field

... marriage vow and becomes his wife's enemy. A husband is not an enemy. This will place many women in the roll of living with men who are not their husbands, and this is so. I do not favor divorce, but it is better to separate, than bring up children of drunkards or licentious fathers. There is nothing which is making so much enmity between the sexes as intoxicating drink. This is the cause of so many divorces. Men who go into saloons generally visit houses of prostitution. The women they meet there have been deceived ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation

... night. Her manner was so gentle and kind, that it inspired affection in all who approached her; but there was also a profound and awful purity in her aspect and in her demeanour, which effectually checked the utterance of a free or licentious word in her presence. Faithful to her early habits of piety, she continued every Wednesday her visits to Santa Maria Nuova; and after confessing to Don Antonio, she went to communion with such fervent devotion, that ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton

... mortal disorders which racked that unfortunate country. The chief of all was the vicious system of the Universities, which instead of duly developing the vessel of the Christian State from the cradle of Moses, [289] brought up young men to be despisers of law and instruments of a licentious Press. The ingenious Moldavian, whose expressions in some places bear a singular resemblance to those of Alexander, while in others they are actually identical with reflections of Metternich's not then published, ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... the characteristic excellences of their style, to the same class of writers with Suckling, Rochester, and Sedley: the former imbibed most of the licentious levity of the age of Charles II. and carried it on beyond the Revolution under King William. Prior has left no single work equal to Gay's Fables, or the Beggar's Opera. But in his lyrical and fugitive pieces he has shown even more genius, more playfulness, more mischievous ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt

... glories of the nation and the age. She consulted the king, but found Louis, on this subject, in entire agreement with her mother and her brother. He had no literary curiosity, and he disapproved equally the lessons which Voltaire had throughout his life sought to inculcate upon others, and the licentious habits with which he had exemplified his own principles in action. She yielded to his objections, and Voltaire, deeply mortified at the refusal,[14] was left to console himself as best he could with ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge

... imbittered, however, the noblest of human enjoyments. They must often have recollected the instability of a happiness which depended on the character of single man. The fatal moment was perhaps approaching, when some licentious youth, or some jealous tyrant, would abuse, to the destruction, that absolute power, which they had exerted for the benefit of their people. The ideal restraints of the senate and the laws might serve to display the virtues, but could never correct the vices, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... the people who surround me here, the weak, the vicious, the licentious of all the earth. A band of unprincipled adventurers, vile Canadians and half-breeds, all too lazy to work, or even to feed themselves out of the bountiful earth which would give everything we need almost for the asking. ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson

... them some respect or even enthusiasm for the Respublica Romana. "When I was young," said King Athaulf the Visigoth, "I desired to obliterate the Roman name and to bring under the sway of the Goths all that once belonged to the Romans. But I learned better by experience. The Goths were licentious barbarians who would obey no laws; and to deprive the commonwealth of laws would have been a crime. So for my part I chose the glory of restoring the Roman name to its old estate." To such men the ideal of the future was ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis

... same licentious use of Allegory and Metaphor sprung the Fables of the wars of the Giants, of the birth and education of Jupiter, of the dethroning of Saturn, and of the provinces assigned by the Supreme to the Inferior ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie

... tangles for Earth's first broad rectilinear way: Admonishing loftier reaches, the rich adventurous shoots, Pushes of tentative curves, embryonic upwreathings in air; Not always the sprouts of Earth's root-Laws preserving her brutes; Oft but our primitive hungers licentious in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... two alone has the management of affairs; for the latter, given up to evil deeds, makes use of his power only for the indulgence of his licentious passions. ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob

... straightforward realism than in the preceding tract. And yet there are good things to be gathered out of this effusive and vehement lay sermon; this sentence, for example, is worth recollection: "He is not slothful that is only lazy, that only wastes his good hours and his silver in luxury and licentious ease:—no, he is the true slothful man, that does no good." And there is genuine insight as well as honesty and courage in his remonstrance with the self-love and appeal against the self-deceit of his countrymen, so prone to cry out on the cruelty of others, on the blood-thirstiness ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... I may have been to man, that to her I have been most faithful." With frantic efforts he strove to unclasp his pocket-book: but could not succeed. Bertram was deeply touched by the pallid and ghastly countenance of the man (in whose features however there was a wild and licentious expression which could not be mistaken); ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey

... trouvere of the reign of St. Louis (Louis IX., thirteenth century), is perhaps as conspicuous a personal name as any that thus far emerges out of the sea of practically anonymous early French authorship. A frankly sordid and mercenary singer, Rutebeuf, always tending to mockery, was not seldom licentious,—in both these respects anticipating, as probably also to some extent by example conforming, the subsequent literary spirit of his nation. The fabliaux generally mingled with their narrative interest ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson

... in the Grecian seas has been effectually maintained, with scarcely any exception. During the war between the Governments of Buenos Ayres and of Brazil frequent collisions between the belligerent acts of power and the rights of neutral commerce occurred. Licentious blockades, irregularly enlisted or impressed sea men, and the property of honest commerce seized with violence, and even plundered under legal pretenses, are disorders never separable from the conflicts of ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John Quincy Adams • John Quincy Adams

... moods the poet appreciated the conditions of the family. Unfortunately the better moods were not fixed, and we had Don Juan, where the wit and colour and power served to make an anti-social and licentious sentiment attractive to puny creatures, who were thankful to have their lasciviousness so gaily adorned. As for Great Britain, she deserved Don Juan. A nation, whose disrespect for all ideas and aspirations that cannot be supported ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley

... multitude of offerings glorify God, but the godlike mind well governed enters into union with God. For like is of necessity joined to like. But the victims of the senseless crowd are food for the flames, and their offerings are the supplies for a licentious life to the plunderers of temples. But, as I have said to thee, let the mind within thee be the temple of God. This must be tended and adorned to become a ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... and passive as she could wish, whilst her freedom raised no other emotion but those of a strange, and, till then, unfelt pleasure. Every part of me was open and exposed to the licentious courses of her hands, which, like a lambent fire, ran over my whole body, and thawed all coldness as ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland

... and exposed the imprinted marks of their chains. They found thus a lucrative profession in begging, which had been interdicted by the laws. The profession did not finish with them: men of an untoward, turbulent, and licentious disposition, gladly embraced it. It spread so wide that the succeeding emperors were obliged to institute new laws; and individuals were allowed to seize on these mendicants for their slaves and perpetual vassals: a powerful ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... according to de Bure, in 1470. This collection, which forms a principal part of the Poggiana, is chiefly valuable as recording interesting anecdotes of eminent men of the 14th and 15th centuries. It also contains a number of quibbles or jeux de mots, and a still greater number of facetiae, idle and licentious stories. These Facetiae form, upon the whole, the most amusing and interesting part of the Poggiana printed at Amsterdam in 1720; but this collection also comprehends additional anecdotes of Poggio's life, and a few extracts from his ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... wanting to complete all the happiness I wished for in this life; which was, the remote hope I had entertained, that one day, my dear Mr. B. who from a licentious gentleman became a moralist, would be so touched by the divine grace, as to become in time, more than moral, a religious man, and, at last, join in the duties which he had the goodness ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... case to which there were two such parties as a brutal, sensual, degraded ruffian, on one side in character of accuser, and on the other as defendant, a meek angel of a woman, timid and fainting from the horrors of her situation, and under the licentious gaze of the crowd—yet, at the same time, bold in conscious innocence, and in the very teeth of the suspicions which beset her, winning the good opinion, as well as the good wishes of all who saw her. There had been at this ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... of Angelico and Perugino, and all that was learned from them in the north, while the introduction of the rose, as a primal element of decoration, only takes place when the luxury of English decorated Gothic, the result of that licentious spirit in the lords which brought on the Wars of the Roses, indicates the approach of destruction to the feudal, artistic, and moral ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... the superstition affected even the licentious good-for- nothing Abbe. Down he dropped upon his knees, hiding his eyes, and sobbing out: 'Sancta Margarita, spare me, spare me! I vow thee a silver image. I vow to lead a changed life. I was drawn into it, holy Lady Saint. They ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... century came the decline of the drama for which the novel had been waiting. By 1660 the romantic drama of Elizabeth's time was dead; the comedy of the Restoration which followed, witty and brilliant though it was, reflected a society too licentious and artificial to secure it permanence; by the time of Addison play-writing had fallen to journey-work, and the theatre to openly expressed contempt. When Richardson and Fielding published their novels there was ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair

... instrument with the people, and must be accepted as an important social fact. There were even some of his bitter enemies: members of the old aristocratic anti-Medicean party—determined to try and get the reins once more tight in the hands of certain chief families; or else licentious young men, who detested him as the killjoy of Florence. For the sermons in the Duomo had already become political incidents, attracting the ears of curiosity and malice, as well as of faith. The men of ideas, like young Niccolo Macchiavelli, went to observe and write reports to ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... the daily sacrifice. With him perished his daughter, her blood mingling with her father's. The priests and the Levites threw themselves into the flames with their harps and trumpets, and, to escape the violence feared from the licentious Chaldeans, (29) the virgins who wove the curtains for the sanctuary followed their example. Still more horrible was the carnage caused among the people by Nebuzaradan, spurred on as he was by the sight of the ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... we behold as we sit near the pastor's table, in full view of the audience! The inhabitants of this place were noted for the worship of Bacchus, and Cybele, mother of the gods; hence her name, Phrygia Mater. Every kind of licentious language and actions was practised in the worship of these deities, accompanied with a frantic rage called orgies, from the Greek word for rage. This was a part of their religious worship. From among such people, converts had been made ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams

... end of twenty days journey through the before mentioned depopulated country, we met with cities and many villages, inhabited by an idolatrous people, whose manners are so licentious that no man marries a wife who is a virgin. Hence when travellers and strangers from other countries come among them, the women of the country who have marriageable daughters bring them to the tents of the strangers, and entreat them to enjoy the company of their daughters ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr

... charge of having drawn the picture of one pure man or woman. Zola is the natural goal of Dumas; and we enjoy neither the route nor the terminus. Louis XIV, Charles II, and George IV are modeled after the old licentious pretense at manhood, but we may all rejoice that they deceive nobody now. Our civilization has outgrown them, and will not, even in second childhood, take to ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... of the schoolmen; it is the splendid and palmary instance of the wise policy and large liberality of the Church, as regards philosophical inquiry. If there ever was a time when the intellect went wild, and had a licentious revel, it was at the date I speak of. When was there ever a more curious, more meddling, bolder, keener, more penetrating, more rationalistic exercise of the reason than at that time? What class of questions did that subtle, metaphysical spirit not scrutinize? ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... Dean Patrick, until he had paid three thousand marks. After his liberation, he returned to the monastery, and made himself more odious to the monks than before. He was depraved and dissolute, and, to satisfy his licentious desires, he is said to have made free with the treasury. He introduced two monks likewise into the monastery, who were foreigners, and quite as unscrupulous as himself, in purloining the wealth of the abbey. He was afterwards made a bishop in France, but owing to his utter recklessness ...
— The New Guide to Peterborough Cathedral • George S. Phillips

... at least as active as her imagination. It is a small volume, entitled "The Hermit of Snowden." Albert, opulent and fashionable, feels a passion for Lavinia, and meets the kindest return; but, having imbibed an ill opinion of women from his licentious connexions, he conceived they were slaves of passion, or of avarice. He wrongs the generous nature of Lavinia, by suspecting her of mercenary views; hence arise the perplexities of the hearts of both. Albert affects to be ruined, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... would expand their minds, and prove of vast advantage, among other means, in aiding their comprehension of Christianity. It must, not be expected, however, that the Indians will easily forsake a mode of life that is so congenial to man, in his natural love of ease and indolence and licentious freedom. Necessity, in a measure, must compel them to do this; but the children may be educated, and trained to industry upon the soil, in the hope that they may be recovered from their savage habits and customs, to see and enjoy the blessings of civilization and Christianity. This object ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West

... side with equal animosity; on the one by the aristocratic, slavish, parliamentary, clerical—in a word, by all the enemies to my free and levelling doctrine—and on the other by the Orleans factions, anti-royal, licentious, and pillaging parties of every kind: so that my personal escape from amidst so many hostile bands is rather dubious, although our great and good revolution is, thank Heaven, not only insured in ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... these festivals,) and the third to theatrical exhibitions in the temple of the patron of the feast. In this state of excitement it will be easily imagined that some coarser ingredients were required by the clever but licentious rabble of Athens, to whom these representations were more particularly addressed, besides the better commodities of rich poetry and wit; and hence the deformities which have been so much complained of in the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 482, March 26, 1831 • Various

... under the preceding period), Milton, Dryden, Pope, Butler, and Beaumont and Fletcher, with a class of writers known as the "Comic Dramatists of the Restoration," whose works, though not lacking in genius, exhibit many of the worst features of the licentious age in which they were produced. Three other great writers were born in the latter part of this period,— Fielding, the novelist, Hume, the historian, and Butler,[1] the ablest thinker of his time in the English Church,—but their productions belong to ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery

... harsh and severe in his measures. He exacted all he could and then turned them over to the Earl of Cornwall. "The one flayed and the other emboweled." It is written in the chronicles of England, 1251 A.D., "By such usurers and licentious liurs as belong to him, the realme had ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott

... high condition, and her female dependants, friends, and servants, were plundered of the effects they carried with them, and which were reserved to them in the capitulation of their fortress, and in their persons were otherwise rudely and inhumanly dealt with by the licentious followers of the camp: for which outrages, represented to the said Hastings with great concern by the commanding officer, Major Popham, he, the said Hastings, did afterwards recommend a ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... that in obliterating and abolishing this, suddenly to create and bring into credit a like institution, is not a proper attempt for so licentious and so sick a time as this wherein we now are; and it will fall out that the last will from its birth incur the same inconveniences that have ruined the other.—[Montaigne refers to the Order of the Saint-Esprit, instituted by Henry III. in 1578.]—The rules for dispensing ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... or rebellion, which invades the majesty of the republic; the obsequious civilians unanimously pronounced that the republic is contained in the person of its chief; and the edge of the Julian law was sharpened by the incessant diligence of the emperors. The licentious commerce of the sexes may be tolerated as an impulse of nature, or forbidden as a source of disorder and corruption; but the fame, the fortunes, the family of the husband, are seriously injured by the adultery of the wife. The wisdom of Augustus, after curbing the freedom ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... Peorias, the Cahokias, the Tamaroas, the Moingona, and others. Their general character and habits were those of other Indian tribes, but they were reputed somewhat cowardly and slothful. In their manners, they were more licentious than many of their neighbors, and addicted to practices which are sometimes supposed to be the result of a perverted civilization. Young men enacting the part of women were frequently to be seen among them. These were ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman

... observes the reviewer, 'is an inflated jargon, composed of terms picked up in all countries, and wholly irreducible to any ordinary rules of grammar and sense. The sentiments are mischievous in tendency, profligate in principle, licentious and irreverent in the highest degree.' The first part of this accusation was only too well founded, but the licentiousness of which Lady Morgan's works were invariably accused in the Quarterly Review, can only have existed in the mind of the reviewer. One cannot but smile to think how many ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston

... elapsed before the door was opened by one of the most hideous old hags I ever saw in my life. We were then introduced to a long room where thirty persons of both sexes were indiscriminately smoking and drinking, mingling in strange and licentious positions. Under their blue loose frocks, ornamented with red embroidery, the men wore blue velvet waistcoats with silver buttons, like the Andalusian muleteers; the clothing of the women was all of one bright colour; there were some ferocious ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... wicked men and nations, with imperfections and apostacies of individuals in high places. This is what we must look for in a book of its pretensions. It professes to contain a revelation of God and his will to man. The ugly, wicked, licentious, and bloody things constitute the background of the picture, representing man in all his ways. It is also shaded with all there was, and is, of moral and noble character in the human. God with his attributes, as the true, grand and glorious Bible picture, shines out through this human ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume 1, January, 1880 • Various

... famous lithograph (of a lady and gentleman kissing each other at full speed on horseback), which owes its subject to the book, in no more romantic a place that a very small public-house in "Scarlet town," to which I had gone, not to quench my thirst or for any other licentious purpose, but to make an ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... had made up your mind to kill yourself, but all at once a mystery fills your mind, and you think no more about death. You child! Does not any one day of your life afford mysteries more absorbing? Listen to me. I saw the licentious days of Regency. I was like you, then, in poverty; I have begged my bread; but for all that, I am now a centenarian with a couple of years to spare, and a millionaire to boot. Misery was the making of me, ignorance has made me learned. I will tell you in ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac

... said the other constable. "What is this?" taking up the book from the table. "A book of plays! profane and wicked stage plays, in Salem village! You had better hold your peace, goodwife; or you may go to prison yourself for harboring such licentious devices of Satan ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson

... consequence, nowhere than in the dances of that country is manifested a more simple unconsciousness or frank disregard of decency. As by nature, and according to the light that is in him, the Hindu is indolent and licentious, so, in accurately matching degree, are the dancing girls innocent of morality, and uninfected with shame. It would be difficult, more keenly to insult a respectable Hindu woman than to accuse her of having danced, while the man who should affect the society ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce

... the resources of a free, I may add a licentious press to destroy me, with a view of extinguishing the principles of civil and religious liberty which I advocate, you and your party now seek to have recourse to the "glorious uncertainty of the law" to accomplish what you cannot effect by free discussion before ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... upon good terms with them. Nor did he change this policy toward Guacanagari. How far that chief had tried to prevent the massacre will never be known. The detail of the story was never fully drawn from the natives. The Spaniards had been cruel and licentious in their dealing with the Indians. They had quarrelled among themselves, and the indignant natives, in revenge, had destroyed ...
— The Life of Christopher Columbus from his own Letters and Journals • Edward Everett Hale

... the sacredness of blood, especially of the blood of man, ix. 1-17. Though grace abounds, however, sin also abounds. Noah fell, and his fall revealed the character of his children: the ancestor of the Semites, from whom the Hebrews sprang, is blessed, as is also Japheth, while the ancestor of the licentious Canaanites is cursed, ix. 18-27. From these three are descended the great families of mankind (x.) whose unity was confounded and whose ambitions were destroyed by the creation of diverse languages, xi. 1-9. [Footnote 1: Death is the ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen

... actually on Shrove Tuesday a considerable number of boys were collected in front of the cathedral, and there divided into bands, which traversed the whole town, making a house-to-house visitation, claiming all profane books, licentious paintings, lutes, harps, cards and dice, cosmetics and perfumes—in a word, all the hundreds of products of a corrupt society and civilisation, by the aid of which Satan at times makes victorious ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... she spent the greater portion of her time sailing about from one island to another, attended by a licentious court; and wherever she went all manner of games and festivities celebrated ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville

... Behn, who, as Pope says, "fairly puts all characters to bed." But whatever coarseness there may be in some of Swift's poems, such as "The Lady's Dressing Room," and a few other pieces, there is nothing licentious, nothing which excites to lewdness; on the contrary, such pieces create simply a feeling of repulsion. No one, after reading the "Beautiful young Nymph going to bed," or "Strephon and Chloe," would desire any personal acquaintance with the ladies, but there is ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... profession, he had to encounter many prejudices, and men of gravity and wisdom shook their heads at what they thought his idle trifling. But if he wished to be counted respectable, and to separate himself from the crowd of foolish or licentious rimers, he must intend distinctly, not merely to interest, but to instruct, by his new and deep conceits. It was under the influence of this persuasion that Spenser laid down the plan of the Faery Queen. It was, so he ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church

... have made infidelity prevail over that part of the continent where the Reformation was arrested. God preferred Romanism, and other despotisms, modified as they were by the struggle, to rule for a time, than have those countries destroyed under the sway of a licentious freedom. ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.

... I knew, too, that without the Catholic Church the Christian world would fall to the level of Rome at its worst, and that every enemy of Christ turned his face against her priests. I knew that every real atheist, every licentious man, most revolutionists, every anarchist, hated a priest. It annoyed me to think that they didn't hate me, the representative, as I thought, of a purer religion. But they did not hate me at all. They ignored the sacredness of my calling, and classed me with themselves because of what they ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach

... gratifying their licentious appetites in the manner already related, they also sought new excitements by utilizing certain animals on the farm. Ethel would frig a bull or a goat, and when milking a favorite cow, would suddenly persuade Frank to lift her in his arms, where she would lay extended ...
— The Power of Mesmerism - A Highly Erotic Narrative of Voluptuous Facts and Fancies • Anonymous

... licentious and horrible, doesn't it; but there are two queer things about it—the first is that man quite naturally wishes to be decent, and the second is that, when he does come to rely wholly upon the authority within himself, he finds it a stricter disciplinarian than ever the decalogue was. One ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson

... killed him with their daggers in the Senate House, B. C. 44. After this, there was great confusion; and while Augustus Caesar, the nephew of Julius, gained power in the west, Mark Antony, another Roman general, came to Egypt to attend to the affairs of the East. He was a selfish licentious man, who cared more for Cleopatra, the beautiful sister of the last Ptolemy, and Queen of Egypt, than for Rome or for his duty; and he took bribes from Herod to support his power over the old prince, Hyrcanus, to whose daughter, ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... begot, When extreame cold hath stroke it to her heart, The more it is comprest, the more it rageth, Exceeds his prisons strength that should containe it, And then it tosseth temples in the aire, 40 All barres made engines to his insolent fury: So, of a sudden, my licentious fancy Riots within me: not my name and house, Nor my religion to this houre observ'd, Can stand above it; I must utter that 45 That will in parting breake more strings in me, Than death when life parts; and that holy man That, from my ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman

... poems, great as was their genius, are deficient in the severe taste which marked the Greeks, and are immoral in their tendency. He had great advantages, but was banished by Augustus for his description of licentious love. Nor did he support exile with dignity; he languished like Cicero when doomed to a similar fate, and died of a broken heart. But few intellectual men have ever been able to live at a distance from the scene of their glories, and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord

... Indians, whom he describes as "lazy, gluttonous, irreligious, treacherous, cruel, and licentious." He makes an exception in favor of Memberton, whom he calls "the greatest, most renowned, and most redoubted savage that ever lived in the memory of man," and especially commends him for contenting himself with but one wife, ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... soon proved the unsoundness of Flecknoe's tribute. Amongst the most licentious beauties of the court was Anna Maria, Countess of Shrewsbury, the daughter of Robert Brudenel, Earl of Cardigan, and the wife of Francis, Earl of Shrewsbury: amongst many shameless women she was the most ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... seeming marble heart, Now masked by silence or withheld by pride, Was not unskilful in the spoiler's art, And spread its snares licentious far and wide; Nor from the base pursuit had turned aside, As long as aught was worthy to pursue: But Harold on such arts no more relied; And had he doted on those eyes so blue, Yet never would he join the lover's ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron

... rebuked the idle poor people, all would be right. But each class has a tendency to look for the faults of the other. A hard-working man of property is particularly offended by an idle beggar; and an orderly, but poor, workman is naturally intolerant of the licentious luxury of the rich. And what is severe judgment in the minds of the just men of either class, becomes fierce enmity in the unjust—but among the unjust only. None but the dissolute among the poor look upon the rich as their natural enemies, or ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... confiding woman; but he had been trained among the dissolute spirits of the Regency too thoroughly to feel more than a passing regret for a woman whom, probably, he loved better than any other of the victims of his licentious life. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... seems to forget the rules of decorum; and though an innocent, young creature, exposed in this manner, were to remain pure and spotless, can she, without horror, reflect that she becomes, the sport of the imagination of the licentious youths to whom she so abandons herself? It were to be wished," adds he, "that our damsels (I mean those who preserve any vestige of bashfulness), might, concealed in a private corner, hear sometimes the conversation of those very men ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... step advancing, came A martial chieftain—Otho was his name: In Denmark born, of an illustrious line, Whose glories, now effaced, had ceased to shine; And he was but unanxious to redeem Those honours, in his eyes a worthless dream. Trained in licentious customs, he despised All virtue's rules, and pleasure only prized; And, faithful as the magnet, turn'd his head To follow fortune wheresoe'er it led: Tho' hostile justice rear'd her loftiest mound, To bar his passage o'er forbidden ground. Swift o'er all impediments he flew, ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker

... them that sent thee," said the insurgent leader, "and tell them that we are this day in arms for a broken Covenant and a persecuted Kirk; tell them that we renounce the licentious and perjured Charles Stewart, whom you call king, even as he renounced the Covenant, after having once and again sworn to prosecute to the utmost of his power all the ends thereof, really, constantly, and sincerely, all the days of his life, having no enemies but the ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... had been brought up on a regime of such extreme indulgence as can only be met with amongst an Oriental people. His mother had never once restrained him in a childish selfishness nor a manly vice. From a spoilt, inconsiderate, wilful childhood he passed to a cruel, passionate, licentious manhood; finally, he took to opium smoking and ruin threatened the home. His mother reaped a bitter harvest of sorrow from the planting of those wasted years, and now her urgent plea was: "My son is good at heart, and a virtuous ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable

... she makes no other reply than to cast down her eyes and keep her lips closed; such is her virtue and modesty; so that her modesty excites my love, no less than her beauty. But it is almost too much for my patience, to think that the corregidor's son, who is an impetuous and somewhat licentious youth, is dying for her; a night seldom passes but he serenades her, and that so openly, that she is actually named in the songs sung in her praise. She never hears them to be sure, nor ever quits ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... exile,—a fact which shows that contemporaries are not always the best judges of real merit. His poems, great as was their genius, are deficient in the severe taste which marked the Greeks, and are immoral in their tendency. He had great advantages, but was banished by Augustus for his description of licentious love, "Carmina per libidinosa." Nor did he support exile with dignity. He died of a broken heart, and languished, like Cicero, when doomed to a similar fate. But few intellectual men have ever been able to live at a distance from the ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... deities and Asuras, since they were created by myself in my indescribable form as Brahma. As I have created the deities and the Asuras and the great Rishis so I have placed the Brahmanas in their respective situations and have to punish them occasionally. In consequence of his licentious assault on Ahalya, Indra was cursed by Gautama, her husband, through which Indra got a green beard on his face. Through that curse of Kausika Indra lost, also, his own testicles, which loss was afterwards (through the kindness of the other deities) ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... find that he frequently said things worth hearing, though they were often new and somewhat daring things to be said by one of his age at this period, when 'twas not the custom for a man to think for himself, but either to follow the licentious follies of his fellows or accept without question such statements as his Chaplain made concerning a somewhat unreasoning Deity, His inflexible laws, and man's duty towards Him. That a handsome youth, for example, should, in a serious voice and with a thoughtful face, announce that beauty ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... finally, but very lightly, on the commonplaces of stock plots and characters. The whole array of puppets is familiar to us all: the cunning slave, the fond or licentious papa, the spendthrift son and their inevitable confrA"res appear in play after play with relentless regularity. The close correspondence of many plots is also too familiar to need discussion.[187] The glimmering of originality in the plot of the Cap. called for ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke

... it an object of scandal to the heathen and worldly people, whereby they are misled and become enemies to the faith and to the Word of God without cause, being the harder to convert since they regard Christians as licentious knaves. And the responsibility for this must be placed at the door of those who have given offense ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther

... content with using the pretext of necessity to prove that virtue and vice do neither good nor ill, they have the hardihood to make the Divinity accessary to their licentious way of life, and they imitate the pagans of old, who ascribed to the gods the cause of their crimes, as if a divinity drove them to do evil. The philosophy of Christians, which recognizes better than that of the ancients the dependence of things upon the first Author and his co-operation ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz

... Nazarene brethren from the doctrine of the synagogue; and they would gladly have extinguished the dangerous heresy in the blood of its adherents. But the decrees of Heaven had already disarmed their malice; and though they might sometimes exert the licentious privilege of sedition, they no longer possessed the administration of criminal justice; nor did they find it easy to infuse into the calm breast of a Roman magistrate the rancor of their own zeal and prejudice. The ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... unripe yeares, thou hast with too licentious appetite embraced my most mortall Foe, to whome I shall bee made a mother, and ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius

... patent, actually applied for and obtained the English rights in his own name. In 1858, the United States Commissioner of Patents said, "No inventor, probably, has ever been so harassed, so trampled upon, so plundered by that sordid and licentious class of infringers known in the parlance of the world as 'pirates.'" Worn out with work and disappointment, Goodyear died two years later, a bankrupt. But his story should be remembered, and his memory honored, by ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson

... canine wedding the news of which is brought to him by the effluvia borne upon the air. His pilgrimage fulfilled, he returns, with a discomfited look and a slit ear, but always ready, once he has had his feed, to repeat the escapade. To put an end to this licentious behaviour, which has cost him so many gaping wounds, we decided to remove the heap of soil which serves him as a ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre

... spring of fertility, whose beneficent agency was seen in the abundant harvest. She was clothed with sensual attributes, and propitiated with unchaste rites. It was in the worship of this divinity that the coarse and licentious side of the Semitic nature expressed itself. At the same time, there was an opposite ascetic side in the service of this deity. Her priests were eunuchs: they ministered at her altar in woman's attire. On the relation of the human ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... is much impatient: Ne'er let that hand assist me in my need, If I more said than that she thought amiss To think that you were so licentious given; And thus much more, when she inferr'd it more, I swore an oath you lov'd her but too well: In that as guilty I do hold myself. Now that I come to more considerate trial, I know my fault: I should have borne with her: Blame ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various

... crown never so much extended over the great; but the great without influence over the lower sort. Parliament losing its reverence with the people. The voice of the multitude set up against the sense of the legislature; a people luxurious and licentious, impatient of rule, and despising all authority. Government relaxed in every sinew, and a corrupt selfish spirit pervading the whole. An opinion of many, that the form of government is not worth contending for. No attachment in the bulk of the people towards ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... raved and fought became as historic as the actual decks of battle ships, and his small and brawny figure comes down to us in those paroxysms of delirious art, like that of Harold, or Richard, or Prince Rupert. He drank to excess, was profligate but not generous, required but not reliable, and licentious to the bounds of cruelty. He threw off the wife of his bosom to fly from England with a flower-girl, and, settling in Baltimore, dwelt with his younger companion, and brought up many children, while his ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend

... have effected, if he had not been bought off by a sum greater than he hoped to gain by his iniquity, besides the luxury of confiscation. The Irish, during the reign of James I., suffered under the DOUBLE evils of a licentious ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith

... perceptions that his resemblance to Michael Angelo lies. There is a rigour, an austerity which emanates from their work, such as is not found in the work of Titian or Rembrandt or Leonardo or Rubens or any other mighty artist of ripe epochs. Yet we find both of them illustrating the licentious legends of antiquity, turning from the Virgin to Amymone and Leda, from Christ to Apollo and Hercules. By their action and example neither joins either the Reformation or the Renascence in so far as these movements may be considered antagonistic; nor did ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore

... service for better pay and treatment under the French flag, even on the burning plains of Africa. Perhaps some of them were drafted into that “foreign legion” which rivalled the Zouaves in the Crimea,—âmes perdus, the most reckless before the enemy, the most licentious in the camp. These were merry fellows, launching witty shafts against Austrians, Pope, and Cardinals,—maladetti tutti, and good-humoured gibes at their comrade, who, standing in an embrasure, bent his back with laudable patience to the right angle for an ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... were most conversant about the stability of human institutions, such as the lawyers, men of science, doctors, statesmen, painters, and the like, were just those who were most likely to be misled by their own fancied accomplishments, and to be made unduly suspicious by their licentious desire for greater present return, which was at the root of nine-tenths of the opposition; by their vanity, which would prompt them to affect superiority to the prejudices of the vulgar; and by the stings of their own conscience, which was constantly ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler

... too much to the spirit of antiquity, the other panders to the spirit of the age, goes to the very edge of extreme and licentious speculation, and breaks his neck over it. Grossness and levity are the playthings of his pen. It is a ludicrous circumstance that he should have dedicated his Cain to the worthy Baronet! Did the latter ever acknowledge the obligation? We are not nice, not very ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt

... of saintly life, and the enemy of every vice, insomuch that he would never on any account paint licentious works, although he was very often entreated to do so by the Marquis; and equal to him in goodness were his brothers, as will be related in the proper place. Finally, being old, and suffering in the bladder, ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari

... the objections to the reality and immutability of moral distinctions and to the universal diffusion of the moral faculty. The reference is, in the first instance, to Locke, and then to what he terms, after Adam Smith, the licentious moralists—La Rochefoucauld and Mandeville. The replies to these writers contain nothing special ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain

... were all remarkable for simplicity and truth, except one. He was greatly licentious; and his licentiousness, at the age of eighty-five, had nearly carried him off. Yet such was the mildness of his temper, and so correct was he in regard to exercise, rest, rising, eating, drinking, etc., that he lived on, to the great age of one hundred and fifteen years, and then died, not ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott

... rough, virtue-loving despot? She remembered how he had tarried four whole weeks at Dresden when he had paid a visit to Augustus the Strong some years before. And this in spite of his disapproval of the reigning favourite, the Countess Orzelska, and the many lesser stars of that licentious court. Good Heavens! would he stay four weeks at Ludwigsburg? She smiled; even in her despair there was something humorous in her being which no sadness could dull, and she found her own dismay at the honoured guest's possible procrastination a ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay

... Soveraign, shared amongst them the Soveraignty of Rome; and afterwards by their Successors. And by reading of these Greek, and Latine Authors, men from their childhood have gotten a habit (under a false shew of Liberty,) of favouring tumults, and of licentious controlling the actions of their Soveraigns; and again of controlling those controllers, with the effusion of so much blood; as I think I may truly say, there was never any thing so deerly bought, as these Western ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes

... tremendous sound of the Gothic trumpet. Eleven hundred and sixty-three years after the foundation of Rome, the imperial city which had subdued and civilized so considerable a part of mankind was delivered to the licentious fury of the tribes of ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various

... fornication." When Balak desired Balaam to pronounce a curse against Israel, God by various means miraculously prevented Balaam's doing so; but Balaam craftily instructed Balak to make use of the women of Moab to seduce the men of Israel to sacrifice to their idols and to indulge in the licentious accompaniments to such idolatry. In many places in heathen countries to-day vile women are attached to the temples of the gods, and at certain stated feasts licentiousness becomes a sanctioned part of the religious celebration. Balaam's plan was successful. God was displeased with Israel, ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith

... Sujah ul Dowlah was a man unquestionably in his manners very licentious with regard to women, that he had a great number of these women in his family, and that his women and the women attendant upon the persons of his favorites had increased to a very great number. We know that his sons amounted ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke

... as she was descended from, to fight for hir kingdome and riches; but as one of the meaner sort, rather to defend hir lost libertie, and to reuenge hir selfe of the enimie, for their crueltie shewed in scourging hir like a vagabond, and shamefull deflouring of hir daughters: for the licentious lust of the Romans was so farre spred and increased, that they spared neither the bodies of old nor yoong, but were readie most shamefullie to abuse them, hauing whipped hir naked being an aged woman, and forced hir daughters to satisfie their filthie concupiscence: but (saith she) the gods are ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (4 of 8) - The Fovrth Booke Of The Historie Of England • Raphael Holinshed

... highest interest. It was reserved for a countryman of Joan of Arc's (Du Bellay) to invent a legend to disprove the fact; and to the everlasting shame of French literature, Voltaire adopted the lying calumny in his licentious ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower

... course repulsed, and many of his followers were made prisoners. He held out in the border counties for a little while, but all his supporters were gained from him by his father, and he at length came back to court, and appeared reconciled. There, however, he had nothing to do, and all the licentious and disaffected congregated round him; he idled away half his time, and revelled the rest, and his pretensions magnified themselves all the time in his fancy, till at last he was stimulated to demand of his father the cession of Normandy, as a right confirmed ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... is about to become a nun. They separate at Tarbes, and the scene of the story is laid in the region of the Pyrenees, in Tarbes Auch, Nerac, the Landes, and finishes with the return to Paris. Rose, after an entertainment which is a veritable orgy, is handed over by her mother to a licentious young man. He is ashamed of himself, and, instead of leading Rose astray, he takes her to the Convent of the Augustines, where she finds Sister Blanche once more. Sister Blanche has not yet pronounced her vows, and the proof of this is that she marries ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic



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