"Turpitude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... date—a difficulty all the more difficult in that he only claims to be in his eighty-seventh year. It would be worthy of little attention, if the eager assailants of Dryden's moral character had not sought to see evidence of the deepest turpitude in this tart-eating with Mrs. Reeve and the ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... of the Vedas, and taker of bribes, one whose investiture with the sacred thread has been delayed beyond the prescribed age, one that secretly slayeth cattle, and one that slayeth him who prayeth for protection,—these all are reckoned as equal in moral turpitude as the slayers of Brahmanas. Gold is tested by fire; a well-born person, by his deportment; an honest man, by his conduct. A brave man is tested during a season of panic; he that is self-controlled, in times ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... plans. But when even one of the great men in England, who made these laws against free-trading, could tell his fellow-lawmakers that the mind of man never could conceive of it as at all equalling in turpitude those acts which are breaches of clear moral virtue—how should it be expected that the parties chiefly interested should take a stricter view of ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... if he'd treated these lads as he ought, and brought them up to their own, and made them Kelmscotts indeed, instead of nameless adventurers, they might never have fallen into such abysses of turpitude. But he had let them grow up in ignorance of their own origin, with the vague stain of a possible illegitimacy hanging over their heads; and what wonder if they forgot in the end how noblesse oblige, and sank at last into foul depths ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... protestation that nothing had moved him to his enterprise "save the good zeal which he bore to the faith and true religion guarded by the Holy Mother Church Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman, and to the service of his Majesty." He begged pardon for having purloined the impressions of the seals—a turpitude which he would never have committed, but would sooner have suffered a thousand deaths, except for the great end in view. He particularly wished forgiveness for that crime before going to his task, "in order that he might confess, and receive the holy communion ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to was Slowburg; yes, covering up his tracks in his usual careful style, he made direct for the rival of Fastburg. What did he propose to do there? Oh, how can we reveal the whole duplicity and turpitude of Ananias Pullwool? The subject is too vast for a merely human pen; it requires the literary ability of a recording angel. Well, we must get our feeble lever under this boulder of wickedness as we can, ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... as well as the less. Reason too, pleads for the one as well as for the other. Consistency of moral doctrine again demands both. But if we admit the restricted interpretation, and exclude the larger, we offend reason. All consistency is at an end. Individual responsibility for moral turpitude will be taken from man. Crimes, clearly marked and defined in the page of Christianity, will cease to be crimes at the will of princes. One contradiction will rush in after another; and men will have two different standards of morality, as they adhere to the commands of the Gospel, or to the ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... way, when committed by one "cookee" on the property of another; and it is abundantly evident, from many things which are stated, that the natives themselves really do not consider the act as implying, in ordinary cases, that moral turpitude which we ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... and Steenie laying his duty before him, and if he can resist doing what they desire him, why I wish he would teach me the gate of it. O Geordie, Jingling Geordie, it was grand to hear Baby Charles laying down the guilt of dissimulation, and Steenie lecturing on the turpitude of incontinence.' 'I am afraid,' said George Heriot, more hastily than prudently, 'I might have thought of the old proverb of Satan reproving sin.' 'Deil hae our saul, neighbour,' said the king, reddening, 'but ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... God may be proved by reason. First, from his Benevolence. Second, from his Independence and Immutability. Third, from the excellence of truth and the turpitude of falsehood. Fourth, from the estimation in which truth is held by the intelligent creatures he ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... thorns of the tree tore his skin. His cries were heard by persons who were passing, and he was found after several hours of suffering, covered with blood, and dreadfully stung by the ants. This crime is perhaps without example in the history of human turpitude: it indicates a violence of passion less assignable to the climate than to the barbarism of manners prevailing among the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... as my knowledge goes, the sum total of the considerations and discussions tending to show and set forth the moral turpitude of the Negro, leave out, if they do not ignore wholly, a most vital element. Any conclusion, therefore, reached, must eliminate the same, and in the degree that this element is important, the conclusion will be inconclusive ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... is to an action as the lens through which it is viewed, and the turpitude of the deed seems to increase or diminish according to ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... requires its exercise. In such a case he has no alternative. He must either exert the negative power intrusted to him by the Constitution chiefly for its own preservation, protection, and defense or commit an act of gross moral turpitude. Mere regard to the will of a majority must not in a constitutional republic like ours control this sacred and solemn duty of a sworn officer. The Constitution itself I regard and cherish as the embodied and written ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... spoke regretfully. His voice was soft and courteous, breaking at times into the altisonance of the tragic muse. He does not think that any act of his can be wrong; the mere fact that HE ran counter to accepted standards divests, in his mind, the act itself of turpitude. That seems to be the way he looked upon his former Eastern encrouchments. That's the way he justified his subterranean deals with the KAISER; and he even goes so far as to assert that 'if the Vyborg-Bjoerkesund treaty had not been denounced the present war would not have happened.' He speaks ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... on the value of public faith may pass with some men for declamation—to such men I have nothing to say. To others I will urge, Can any circumstance mark upon a people more turpitude and debasement? Can anything tend more to make men think themselves mean, or degrade to a lower point their estimation of virtue and their standard ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... blushes to name, vices such that, to borrow the energetic language of Lord Keeper Coventry, "the depraved nature of man, which of itself carrieth man to all other sin, abhorreth them." But the offences of his youth were not characterized by any peculiar turpitude. They excited, however, transports of rage in the King, who hated all faults except those to which he was himself inclined, and who conceived that he made ample atonement to Heaven for his brutality by holding the softer passions in detestation. The Prince Royal, too, was not ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... kind of degradation which an inordinate love of luxury and the insatiable desires of jaded senses had suggested as a means to satisfaction, until the treachery of his own accomplices had thrown the glaring light of publicity on a career of turpitude such as even these decadent times ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... of the bar, thought to be the law established by the Supreme Court in the Knight sugar case. But the Supreme Court in its decree dissolving the Standard Oil and Tobacco Trusts, condemned them in the severest language for moral turpitude; and an even severer need of condemnation should be ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... back, and twenty times the anger that was rising from the bottom of my soul suddenly ended in a burst of laughter. I was confounded by so much shrewdness and so much vileness, by ideas now so just and then so false, by such general perversity of sentiments, such complete turpitude, and such marvellously uncommon frankness. He perceived the struggle going on within me:] What ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... means the British ship was to be enabled to sail for the attack on the American fleet, and by this only; for to drag spars of that weight up the rapids of the Richelieu, or over the rough intervening country, meant at least unendurable delay. "The turpitude of many of our citizens in this part of the country," wrote Macdonough, "furnishes the enemy with every ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... led directly to the state bedchamber which I have mentioned. Thence we passed into the grand Presentation Saloon, on the ceiling of which Lebrun had painted a likeness of Louis XIV. A tri-coloured cockade placed on the forehead of the great King still bore witness of the imbecile turpitude of the Convention. Lastly came the hall of the Guards, in front of the grand staircase of the Pavilion ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... most unsettling to Edward of all his affairs. It made him suspect that he was inconstant. The affair with the Dolciquita he had sized up as a short attack of madness like hydrophobia. His relations with Mrs Basil had not seemed to him to imply moral turpitude of a gross kind. The husband had been complaisant; they had really loved each other; his wife was very cruel to him and had long ceased to be a wife to him. He thought that Mrs Basil had been his soul-mate, separated from him ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... hear his well-earn'd fate. "Of human vice the fame had reach'd mine ear, "With hop'd exaggeration; gliding down, "From proud Olympus' brow, I veil'd the god, "And rov'd the world in human form around. "'Twere long to tell what turpitude I saw "On every side, for rumor far fell short, "Of what I witness'd. Through the dusky woods "Of Maenalus I pass'd, where savage lurk "Fierce monsters; o'er the cold Lycean hill, "With pine-trees waving; and Cyllene's height. "Thence to th' Arcadian monarch's roof ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... What a fool I had been not to insist that whatever expert accompanied Higgs should be a married man. And yet, now when I came to think of it, that might not have bettered matters, and perhaps would only have added to the transaction a degree of moral turpitude which at present was lacking, since even married ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... view his country with a cold impartiality, and to place its interests exactly on a par with the interests of other lands? Who, save the Chinaman himself, thinks it as important that a Chinaman should have enough to eat as that an American or an Englishman should? Was not the turpitude, that excluded the Chinaman from Australia, traced to the two deadly sins of undue diligence and sobriety? [Footnote: Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition, article, "Australia."] As for freedom, men of certain nations regard it as the highest virtue to be willing to die for ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... alone, has public opinion against him. He terrifies all who are about him. Yet, if he has companions, he plumes himself before them on his exploits, and here we may begin to notice the power of public opinion, for the approbation of his band serves to obliterate all consciousness of his turpitude, and even to make him proud of it. The warrior lives in a different atmosphere. The public opinion which would rebuke him is among the vanquished. He does not feel its influence. But the opinion of those by whom he is surrounded approves his acts and sustains him. He and his ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... Golden Spur made a rather indifferent "agent;" not surely, as a French writer suggests, because the dirty work was too dirty for his fingers, but probably because he was getting old and stupid and out-of-date, and failed to keep in touch with new forms of turpitude. He left Venice again and paid a visit to Vienna, saw beloved Paris once more, and there met Count Wallenstein, or Waldstein. The conversation turned on magic and the occult sciences, in, which Casanova was an adept, as the reader of the Memoirs will remember, and the count ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... abdomen!" said Mr. Boggs, slapping that portion of his frame as if he had a special grudge against it and would be glad if he could hit it hard enough to bring it to a realizing sense of its turpitude. "My figure had gone to the devil! It was not as large as it is now, but it was large enough to cook my gruel. My waist had increased so gradually that I had never noticed it. I got a tape and took its measure. Forty-two inches, sir! The ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... were the task, if possible, to describe the sensation created by this amazing disclosure; and we may only add in conclusion, that the prisoner was convicted on other testimony; and after an earnest admonition from the justice, on the turpitude of crime and its dreadful miseries, Jared Sculpin was sentenced to give Simon Bogle one good day's work, and one good fleece of wool for his time lost in hunting the chain, and in bringing the offender to justice; to carry the chain on his back through the main travelled ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... 71: If occasion served)—Ver. 479. The Aposiopesis in this line is very aptly introduced, on account of the presence of the female; but it admirably illustrates the abominable turpitude of the speaker, and perhaps in a somewhat more decent manner than that in which Plautus attributes a similar tendency to his Braggart ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... in the flesh, I ask whether it is consistent with the idea we have of divine justice to think that both will be condemned to the same everlasting punishment? If it be, then there is no more moral turpitude in parricide than in telling a trivial falsehood, which injures no one, but still is offensive and displeasing to God. But if it be not consistent with divine justice, then you must admit the distinction ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... theirs. This is the temptation to be resisted—this is the sin to be avoided. The official who uses his position to secure a pecuniary advantage over the public is an embezzler of power—and an embezzler of power is as guilty of moral turpitude as the embezzler of money. There is no better motto for the public official than that given by Solomon: "A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favour rather than silver and gold." There is no ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... Question," which for more than half a century has overshadowed all others in European diplomacy, and more than any other has strained the conscience and the moral sense of Christian nations. We wish we might say that one nation had been able to resist this invitation to a moral turpitude masked by diplomatic subterfuges. But there ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... the slave-whip's poignant crack, The sound of avarice and turpitude, As hands unwilling plied their arduous task, Creating monuments to iron will, Human injustice, greed ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... after effort was made to work upon her principles, but in vain. Once or twice, it is true, she entertained the matter for a time—but a momentary deliberation soon raised her naturally noble and generous spirit above the turpitude ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... man who holds notions opposed to the current prejudices, than to hit the right mark where intellectual integrity and prudence, firmness and wise reserve, are in exact accord. When we come to declaring opinions that are, however foolishly and unreasonably, associated with pain and even a kind of turpitude in the minds of those who strongly object to them, then some of our most powerful sympathies are naturally engaged. We wonder whether duty to truth can possibly require us to inflict keen distress on those to whom we are bound by the tenderest and most consecrated ties. This is so wholly honourable ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... chiefs obtain the condemnation and disposal of their subjects, are nearly all imaginary; for few exist which, under their laws, are considered as acts of turpitude. The abuse of authority, the action of violent passions, barbarous customs, ferocious habits, and insatiate avarice among the chiefs, augment the number of captives and victims, and the operation of these is much greater in the ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... royal turpitude was the revolution headed by Rafael Diego, seconded by General O'Daly, a Puerto Rican by birth, who had greatly distinguished himself in the war against the French. Other generals and their troops followed, and when General ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... yet, in respect of carnal knowledge, they are both taken in under INCEST: and that still for the same convenience of expressing under one name, and reckoning of one species, such unclean mixtures as have a peculiar turpitude beyond others; and this to avoid ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... exclaimed Mrs. Bixbee, wondering not more at the deacon's turpitude than at the lapse in David's acuteness, of which she had an immense opinion, but commenting only on the former. "I'm ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... moving of laughter always the end of comedy; that is rather a fowling for the people's delight, or their fooling. For, as Aristotle says rightly, the moving of laughter is a fault in comedy, a kind of turpitude that depraves some part of a man's nature without a disease. As a wry face without pain moves laughter, or a deformed vizard, or a rude clown dressed in a lady's habit and using her actions; we dislike and scorn such representations which made the ancient ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... right to punish such an offense on the ground that it deserves punishment. No man has, or ever had, the right to wield the awful attribute of retributive justice; that is, to inflict so much pain for so much guilt or moral turpitude. This is the prerogative of God alone. To his eye, all secrets are known, and all degrees of guilt perfectly apparent; and to him alone belongs the vengeance which is due for moral ill-desert. His law extends over the state of nature as well ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... referred to; but others more minute we shall subjoin here. Aristotle's account of the matter seems both imperfect and false. [Greek: To ghar geloion], says he, [Greek: estin hamartaema ti kai aischos]: 'The ridiculous is some certain fault or turpitude without pain, and not destructive to its subject' (Poet. c. 5). For allowing it to be true, as it is not, that the ridiculous is never accompanied with pain, yet we might produce many instances of such a fault or turpitude which cannot with any tolerable propriety be called ridiculous. ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... bigotry of patriotism rejected her for her birth,—the scrupulousness of modesty, for her history. The night, that consecrated so many homes and gathered together so many families in innocence and repose, was to her blacker than its own blackness in misery and turpitude; the morning, that radiated gladness over the face of the world, revealed the extent and exaggerated the sense of her own degradation. But the vision of Jesus had alighted upon her; she had seen him speeding on his errands of mercy; she hung ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... circumstance to give them an opportunity of recovering their liberty, which they did in effect; but the means they employed was marked by a cruel act of ingratitude to their compassionate benefactress, of so much deeper turpitude that it was unnecessary for their purpose. As the young prince was one day riding between them, escorted by a party of archers and preceded by an officer carrying a lance, Monroy suddenly dispatched him with two or three mortal wounds of a poniard. At the same time Miranda wrested the lance from ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... Outward circumstances, the eyes and the thoughts of men, are below the notice of an immortal being about to stand the trial for eternity, before the Supreme Judge of heaven and earth. Be comforted: your crime, morally or religiously considered, has no very deep dye of turpitude. It corrupted no man's principles; it attacked no man's life. It involved only a temporary and reparable injury. Of this, and of all other sins, you are earnestly to repent; and may GOD, who knoweth our frailty, and desireth not our death, accept your ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... two complaints which the Puritans of Old England and of New England often made against the English Ecclesiastical Courts: first, that they punished with merciless severity violations of certain ecclesiastical regulations which involved no moral turpitude; second, that they were too lax in the punishment of social sins, Sabbath desecrations, etc., etc. But nowhere among the literary remains of the Puritans do we find any suggestion that the system of morals ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 5, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 5, May, 1886 • Various
... for a new trial and desired no appeal. He had feared, throughout, the possible capture and conclusive testimony of Drann and Holvey, and, lest a worse thing befall him, he accepted a sentence of a long term in the penitentiary. In view of the turpitude of "lying in wait," though a matter of inference and not proof, he doubted the saving grace of that anomaly of the Tennessee law that in order to constitute murder in the first degree the victim of a premeditated slaughter must be the person intended ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... deserters are hung upon trees: [76] cowards, dastards, [77] and those guilty of unnatural practices, [78] are suffocated in mud under a hurdle. [79] This difference of punishment has in view the principle, that villainy should he exposed while it is punished, but turpitude concealed. The penalties annexed to slighter offences [80] are also proportioned to the delinquency. The convicts are fined in horses and cattle: [81] part of the mulct [82] goes to the king or state; part to the injured person, ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... a challenge to Mr. Lyttleton, Lewis was put on his trial. The conventional turpitude of the offence wholly depended on the provocation. A magistrate could not be covered by his privilege when standing in the street, and announcing his opinions to the loungers there; but Lyttleton, himself the sole witness, denied the ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... inclinations. This opinion comes from a false estimate of the nature and uses of the Understanding. If considered as a mere receptacle for Latin and Greek, Mathematics and Metaphysics, Science and Literature, we may, without moral turpitude or virtue, abstractly considered, follow our own inclinations; but the Understanding will all the time be growing either stronger or weaker, wiser or more foolish, whether we study them or whether we let them alone. This action of the Understanding cannot go on without ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... selection, gave rise to a relation which continued for life. It was called necessitudo sortis; and it was looked upon with a sacred reverence. Breaches of any of these kinds of civil relation were considered as acts of the most distinguished turpitude. The whole people was distributed into political societies, in which they acted in support of such interests in the state as they severally affected. For it was then thought no crime to endeavor by every honest ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... generally acknowledged. This distinction, which lies at the basis of the ancient penitential discipline, was already beginning to vitiate the whole catholic theology. Some sins, it is true, are more heinous than others, but the comparative turpitude of transgressions depends much on the circumstances in which they are committed. The wages of every sin is death, [441:2] and it is absurd to attempt to give a stereotyped character to any one violation of God's law by classing ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... every faculty that I possessed, and I directed it in every way in which I could possibly employ it. I labored night and day. I labored in Parliament; I labored out of Parliament. If, therefore, the resolution of the House of Commons, refusing to commit this act of unmatched turpitude, be a crime, I am guilty among the foremost. But, indeed, whatever the faults of that House may have been, no one member was found hardy enough to propose so infamous a thing; and on full debate we passed the resolution against the petitions with as much ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... evidently wishes, as much as possible, to spare the character of Laertes,—to break the extreme turpitude of his consent to become an agent and accomplice of the King's treachery;—and to this end he re-introduces Ophelia at the close of this scene to afford a probable stimulus of passion in ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... capacities in the production of war munitions for our enemies. All those who thus reinforce the military strength of our foes, thereby make the prosecution of the war more difficult for Germany, and not only burden themselves with a heavy load of moral turpitude, but also expose themselves—and many of them are seemingly unaware of this—to the operation of the German laws ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... feeling was none the less, but all the more, poignant because it was he himself who was guilty towards it. He pitied it in a sort as if it had been the victim of a wrong more shocking perhaps for the want of taste in it than for any real turpitude. This was a quality of the event not without a strange consolation. In arraying him on the side of the apparition, it antagonized him with what he had done, and enabled him to renounce ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... respects. It is a part of his nature; it permeates his entire being. Hence no city in the world, perhaps—Jerusalem not excepted—presents so strange a spectacle of religious enthusiasm, genuine and universal, mingled with moral turpitude; monkish asceticism and utter abandonment to vice; self-sacrifice and loose indulgence. It may be said that this is not true religion—not even what these people profess. Perhaps not; but it is what they are accustomed to ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... Turpitude of character must betray itself. Moral corruption can no more be hidden than physical corruption. Wickedness "will out," like murder or smallpox. A man's wife discovers it; his children shun him instead of clinging about his knees; his neighbors and acquaintances eye him with suspicion ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... whole Evolve the laws which shall Disorder deep Within the grave entomb and on that throne The God of Order seat, and in his hand Imperial scepter place, to rule the world Politic, as it on its axis rolls, Unharmed by venomed darts of turpitude? I dreamed of formulating certain laws Which economic matters would control. The midnight lamp, companion of my toil, Has burned in vain. Alas, I see it now. When the great "Commoner," of wisdom full, A plank within our platform did insert That our good ships which coastwise ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... of Bk. XII. Chap. I. in which Gil disclaims paternity and resigns it to Marialva. This may have been prompted by a desire to lessen the turpitude of the go-between business; but it is a clumsy device, and makes Gil look a fool as ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... laughing. Angels much prostitutes like and holy apostles big damn ruffians. Demimondaines nicely handsome sparkling of diamonds very amiable costumed. Or do you are fond better what belongs they moderns pleasure turpitude of old mans? (He points about him with grotesque gestures which Lynch and the whores reply to) Caoutchouc statue woman reversible or lifesize tompeeptom of virgins nudities very lesbic the kiss five ten times. Enter, gentleman, to see in mirror every positions trapezes all that ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... yet I shall die incredulous. As for the moral turpitude that man unveiled to me, even with tears of penitence, I cannot, even in memory, dwell on it without a start of horror. I will say but one thing, Utterson, and that (if you can bring your mind to credit it) will be ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... hath appointed boys to serve his prophets and saints in Paradise, because Paradise is the abode of joy and delight, which could not be complete without the service of youths; but, as to the use of them for aught but service, it is Hell's putridity[FN248] and corruption and turpitude. How well ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... Riker or Ambrose Spencer. DeWitt Clinton was portrayed as "formed for mischief," "inflated with vanity," "cruel by nature," "an object of derision and disgust," "a dissolute and desperate intriguer," "an adept in moral turpitude, skilled in all the combination of treachery and fraud, with a mind matured by the practice of iniquity, and unalloyed with any virtuous principle." "Was it not disgraceful to political controversy," continues "Aristides," with ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... gently over the Bridge, "Do you observe," continued he, "that extensive building? That is called the Penitentiary. It is a building designed for the punishment, employment, and reformation of offenders of secondary turpitude, usually punished by transportation for a term of years. It has been conceived since the commencement of the disputes which terminated in the separation of the American States. The plan of it is known to be partly that of Mr. Jeremy Bentham. The culprits are confined in circular buildings, the ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... instructed to touch here, which I do not think he intended if not obliged by distress." Such was the case; and it was this very distress, and the generous alleviation of it by the British colonists, that make the singular turpitude of Peron and Freycinet in pursuing nefarious designs of their own and plotting to rend the breast that fed them. The great war gave rise to many noble acts of chivalry on both sides, deeds which are luminous with a spirit transcending the hatreds of ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... they tend to promote or impede it. The attainment of the end is considered as the supreme good, and the detestable doctrine is adopted that the end will justify the means. The mind, habituated to the extenuation of acts of moral turpitude, becomes gradually contaminated, and loses that delicate sensibility which instinctively inspires horror for ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... discovered that the Rajah's ruby had mysteriously disappeared from the collection of jewels to be divided. The other pirates immediately suspected their captain of having secretly purloined it, and, indeed, so certain were they of his turpitude that they immediately set about taking means to force a confession ...
— The Ruby of Kishmoor • Howard Pyle
... side entrance to the Cafe Royal, which less than a minute earlier had been inconceivably distant and unattainable. Lucas dashed first into the restaurant. To keep ladies waiting in a public place was for him the very worst crime, surpassing in turpitude arson, embezzlement, and the murder of innocents. The ladies must have been waiting for a quarter of an hour, half an ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... stinking, suffocating, deleterious vapors shall be destroyed by the ever-living light of truth, then the grateful people will bless your names, which, pure and luminous, will shine high above the stupidity, conceit, heartlessness, turpitude, selfish ambition, indirect and direct treason ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... which canker them. Why fear to mention that which everyone knows? Why dread to sound the abyss which can be measured by everyone? Why fear to bring into the light of day unmasked wickedness, even though it confronts the public gaze unblushingly? Extreme turpitude and extreme excellence are both in the schemes of Providence; and the poet has summed up eternal morality for all ages and nations ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... that the pretorians were willing that the dream should come true. Emissaries were despatched, and Caracalla was stabbed. In his luggage poison was found to the value of five million five hundred thousand drachmae. What fresh turpitude he was devising no one knew, and the discovery might serve as an epitaph, were it not that by his legions he was adored. No one had abandoned to the army ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... the means of depraving thousands by his example and his rhetoric, on condition that he refuses to marry the woman whom he has made an adulteress; who has imbibed, from the contagion of his discourse, all the practical and speculative turpitude which he ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... well as my health, that I would be an easy prey to his blandishments? Did he dream that the prospect of liberty which newspaper rumour and semi-official information held out to me was too dear to be forfeited for a trilling forfeiture of honour? Did he believe that by an act of secret turpitude I would open my prison doors only to close them the faster on others who may or may not have been my friends—or did he imagine he had found in me a Massey to be moulded and manipulated into the service of the crown, or a Corridon to have cowardice and cupidity made the incentives to his ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... love is. I don't think he had much of what may be called the second condition of human goodness—reverence. If he had, we should never have seen him push revenge to the verge of crime. Richard Perley, it is true, accuses him of a turpitude that makes a man shudder and abhor; but allowances must be made for the exaggeration of a careless spendthrift—a "good fellow," than whom I can conceive of nothing so useless and mischievous in the human economy. For my part, I think I could endure the frank heartlessness ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... consorted with the new position he had so basely purchased. The odium of his injured countrymen spoke loudly throughout the land he had betrayed. He was burned in effigy countless times, and a growing generation was told with wrath and scorn the abhorrent tale of his turpitude. Meanwhile, as if by defiant self-assurance to wipe away the perfidy of former acts, he issued a proclamation to "the inhabitants of America," in which he strove to cleanse himself from blame. This address, teeming with ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... exclaimed my aunt in her terrible voice, and freed herself from his hold like an offended goddess. "O heaven, I might have known that you, George, would have abetted my poor, wilful boy in his dirt and bodily viciousness, and that you, Jervas, would have condoned his turpitude and moral degradation. None the less, though you both desert me in this dreadful hour, shirking your duty thus shamelessly, this woman's hand shall pluck my dear, loved nephew from the abyss, this hand—" Here, turning ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... colonies, only two hundred horses and twenty wagons were forthcoming, so that for a time it seemed that the expedition must be abandoned. Small wonder the general raved and swore at provincial perfidy and turpitude, the more so when it was discovered that a great part of the provision furnished for the army was utterly worthless, and the two hundred horses scarce able to stand ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... tale, as well as to the development of character in Mammon's pattern-slave, and to the fullness of his due retribution in this world. I may add, that if any thing could make the plan more heinous—if any shade than blackest can be blacker—this extra turpitude is seen in the true consideration, that the promise to Grace of her father's safety would be entirely futile—as Jennings knew full well; the crown was prosecutor, not he: and circumstantial evidence alone would be sufficient to condemn. Again, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... and fretfulness which is so unpopular in school. The sins of childhood are by nine tenths of mankind enormously overrated, and perhaps none overrate them, more extravagantly, than teachers. We confound the trouble they give us, with their real moral turpitude, and measure the one by the other. Now if a fault prevails in school, one teacher will scold and fret himself about it, day after day, until his scholars are tired both of school and of him: and yet he will do nothing effectual to remove ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... I could, here or to-day, embody a record of my later years of unspeakable misery, and unpardonable crime. This epoch—these later years—took unto themselves a sudden elevation in turpitude, whose origin alone it is my present purpose to assign. Men usually grow base by degrees. From me, in an instant, all virtue dropped bodily as a mantle. From comparatively trivial wickedness I passed, with the stride of a giant, into more than the enormities of an Elah-Gabalus. What chance—what ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... with small-pox is as an ulcer upon a finger to an ulcer in the vitals. Small-pox does not vitiate the blood of a people; this disease does. Its existence in a primary form implies moral turpitude. ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... first time in my life found myself under the necessity of connecting it with disdain, and of withdrawing my confidence from a man for whom I had an affection, and by whom I imagined myself beloved! The wretch concealed from me his turpitude; and that I might not expose Theresa, I was obliged to conceal from him my contempt, and secretly to harbor in my heart such sentiments as were foreign to its nature. Sweet and sacred illusion of friendship! Gauffecourt first took the ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... cherished against the man. Of course legally this former relationship between master and slave meant nothing; it would be considered no bar to legitimate marriage; perhaps to one brought up in the environment of slavery it would possess no moral turpitude even, yet to me it seemed a foul, disgraceful thing. Whether it would so appear to Miss Willifred I could not even conjecture; she was of the South, with, all the prejudice and peculiarity of thought characteristic of her section. Pure-hearted, ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... of what she had done to him; of how she had lied to him about Gwenda; of the abominable thing that Alice had cried out to him in her agony. The thought of Mary's turpitude had consoled him mysteriously. Instead of putting it from him he had dwelt on it, he had wallowed in it; he had let it soak into him till he was poisoned ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... with the mistress and scholars, forthwith denounced me to the higher powers. The proofs of my peculation were too glaring, and the amount too serious to be passed over; I was tried, convicted, condemned, sentenced, flogged, and dismissed in the course of half-an-hour; and such was the degree of turpitude attached to me on this occasion, that I was rendered for ever incapable of serving in that or any other employment connected with the garden or farm; I was placed at the bottom of the list, and declared to be the worst boy ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... features of their behavior may become habitual. Suitable surroundings and treatment would here consist of the presence of good models and high ideals, sympathetic help in resisting temptation, and not in a harsh denunciation of each unapproved act as evidence of turpitude and perversion. You need not assume that there is perversion until that is demonstrated beyond any doubt. For, if the child is morally redeemable, he should be treated like one who is weak and who needs help until the difficulties are mastered; otherwise you are likely to encourage ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... demoralized not only France, but the world. Unquestionably part of this evil example was his falsehood to the Republic. Promise, pledge, honor, oath, were all violated in this monstrous treason. Never in history was greater turpitude. Unquestionably he could have saved the Republic, but he preferred his own exaltation. As I am a Republican, and believe republican institutions for the good of mankind, I cannot pardon the traitor. The people of France are ignorant; he did not care to have them educated, for their ignorance ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... to your hands, your lordship will find that I have left out all that was said of our friend Lord Lyttelton in one of them. He desired that it might be so; and I had at once the double mortification of concealing the good I had said of one friend, and of revealing the turpitude of another. I hope you will never have the same treatment that I have met with; neither will you. I am single in my circumstances—a species apart in the political society; and they, who dare to attack no one else, may ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... it so familiar, that it escapes our notice; nor do we often reflect upon its turpitude or malignity, till we happen to feel its influence. When he that has given no provocation to malice, but by attempting to excel, finds himself pursued by multitudes whom he never saw, with all the implacability of personal resentment; when he perceives clamour and malice let loose ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... and forcible. His anger at Lagune and Chaffery blinded him to her turpitude. He talked her defences down. "It is cheating," he said. "Well—even if what you do is not cheating, it is delusion—unconscious cheating. Even if there is something in it, it is wrong. True or not, it is wrong. Why don't they ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... matter of general reproach against him, clearly appears from the long and labored apology which Bacon thought it necessary, several years afterwards, to address to lord Montjoy, then earl of Devon;—an apology which extenuates in no degree the turpitude of the fact; but which may be consulted for a number of highly curious, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... when separated from the sordid desires engendered by its too great immersion in body, and liberated from the dominion of every perturbation, can thus and thus only, blot out the base stains imbibed from its union with body; and thus becoming alone, will doubtless expel all the turpitude contracted from a nature so opposite to ...
— An Essay on the Beautiful - From the Greek of Plotinus • Plotinus
... called evil good, and good evil, put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter. He openly threw aside the admission of any one moral obligation. Never did some of the Roslyn boys, to their dying day, forget the deep, intolerable, unfathomable flood of moral turpitude and iniquity which he bore with him; a flood, which seemed so irresistible, that the influence of such boys as Montagu and Owen to stay its onrush seemed as futile as the weight of a feather to bar the fury of a mountain stream. Eric might have done much, Duncan might have done much, to aid ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... York Central Railroad, after Vanderbilt had proved himself not less an able executive than an indefatigable and effective briber and corrupter. So long as Vanderbilt produced the profits, Astor and his fellow-directors did not care what means he used, however criminal in law and whatever their turpitude in morals. John Jacob Astor of the fourth generation repeats this performance in aligning himself, as does Goelet, with that master-hand Harriman, against whom the most specific charges of colossal looting ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... had a wife and three children—the turpitude of fornication, and the many other political ill consequences of this jingling, never once entered his brain,—he had however his objection, which came home to himself, and weighed with him, as it has oft-times done with the greatest patriots.—'The ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... turning aside for the moment from the study of more recent turpitude, is preparing an analytical memoir on the first murder, that of ABEL by CAIN. With all his well-known thoroughness he reconstructs the crime and shows in what particulars CAIN, although an innovator, proved himself ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 19, 1919 • Various
... brother of a mistress of Louis XI.; all with many errors and absurdities. As for the scholars, they swore. This was their day, their feast of fools, their saturnalia, the annual orgy of the corporation of Law clerks and of the school. There was no turpitude which was not sacred on that day. And then there were gay gossips in the crowd—Simone Quatrelivres, Agnes la Gadine, and Rabine Piedebou. Was it not the least that one could do to swear at one's ease and revile the name of ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... indignantly—"our greatest mistake is to assume that crimes of violence are the most dangerous to the state, for they are not. They cause greater disturbance and perhaps more momentary inconvenience, but they do not usually evince much moral turpitude. After all, it does no great harm if one man punches another in the head, or even in a fit of anger sticks a dagger in him. The police can easily handle all that. The real danger to the community lies in the crimes of duplicity—the cheats, frauds, false pretenses, ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... of the senate that was surprising, on the part of all Italy surpassing belief, and of all the loyalists unparalleled, in standing forth in my defence, I will not say what happened—for the blame attaches to many, and is of various shades of turpitude—I will only say briefly that it was not the rank and file, but the leaders, that played me false. And in this matter, though some blame does attach to those who failed to defend me, no less attaches ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... likeness of the Christian heaven, hell, and purgatory. Very faint traces of any such belief except where derived from the missionaries are visible in the New World. Nowhere was any well-defined doctrine that moral turpitude was judged and punished in the next-world. No contrast is discoverable between a place of torments and a realm of joy; at the worst but a negative castigation awaited the liar, the coward, or the niggard. The typical belief of the tribes of the United States ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... Jesse's tree whose blossoms Scent the heavenly hazel wood, Pray for me for full purgation Of my bosom's turpitude. ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... Catiline, that can delight thee any longer in this city, in which there is not one man, without thy band of desperadoes, who does not fear, not one who does not hate thee?—What brand of domestic turpitude is not burnt in upon thy life? What shame of private bearing clings not to thee, for endless infamy? What scenes of impure lust, what deeds of daring crime, what horrible pollution attaches not to thy whole career?—To what young man, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... leading characteristic of "Vernon Grove" is the extremely good taste with which it is conceived and written; and so we no more meet with offensive descriptions of vulgar show and luxury than we do with those of squalor or moral turpitude. It is a book marked by a high tone of moral and religious as well as artistic and esthetic culture. Without being made the vehicle of any set theories in philosophy or Art, without (so far as we know) "inculcating" any special ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... and not morals that he satirizes. He is interested, not so much in effecting a fundamental reform in the lives of his characters, as in giving them a little social sense. He preaches, not against distinct moral turpitude like hypocrisy and avarice, but against inordinate affection for lap-dogs (Melampe), pietistic objections to masked balls {Masquerades}, and superstitious belief in legerdemain (Witchcraft). Holberg voices the urbane humanistic spirit that ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... blushes of indignation: he turned from OMAR, in scorn, anger, and confusion, without reply; and OMAR departed with the calm dignity of a benevolent and superior being, to whom the smiles and frowns of terrestrial tyranny were alike indifferent, and in whom abhorrence of the turpitude of vice was mingled ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... Wintersen's plan of bringing the unhappy people together, and effecting a reconciliation between them by means of the unexpected sight of their children. Moreover, when Waldburg rejects his friend's advice and entreaties that he will forgive his wife, it is hardly upon the ground of any deep moral turpitude involved in such a forgiveness, but upon the score of the insupportable humiliation of reappearing in the great world of German society to which they both belong with "his runaway wife on his arm," and the "whispering, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... scheme that he had in contemplation, employed by men of affluence and consequence, and that he thought no man more competent to that than myself.—On my asking him if there was any thing of moral turpitude in it, he said that there was none but that it was practised daily by men of the first consequence, it was nothing more nor less than biting the biters, or in other words, a Hoax upon the Stock Exchange. I asked ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... the rate of a few shillings on the pound, taking advantage of needy holders, who dwelt, many of them, in districts too remote from the centre of action to know what the Government was about. And even before this "signal instance of moral turpitude," the fact that so many old soldiers who had gone home with no other pay than government securities, to be exchanged for specie at the pleasure of a government which nobody had trusted, had sold out for a small sum, was one of the agitating themes of the country; and opinion ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... Bobtail's indefinite opinions in regard to the moral turpitude of smuggling, he had very decided views on the subject of lying. He believed in telling the truth, though, like most other boys, I am afraid he did not invariably do so; but he always felt mean and guilty when he told anything in the shape of a lie. In the present instance he had made up ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... doctor, though no unskilful writer, here wrote in vain; for what ingenuity can veil the turpitude of long and practised treachery? To keep up appearances, Sir Judas resorted more than usually to court; where, however, he was perpetually enduring rebuffs, or avoided, as one infected with the plague of treachery. He offered the king, in his ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... the people, exhibiting the free command of a pure and copious vocabulary, an inexhaustible fund of metaphors and similitudes, giving variety and grace to the most familiar topics, with an almost dramatic exposure of the folly and turpitude of vice, and a deep moral earnestness. His zeal as a bishop and eloquence as a preacher, however, gained him enemies both in the church and at the court. The ecclesiastics who were parted at his command from the lay-sisters (whom they kept ostensibly as servants), the thirteen bishops ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... he said. "But I'm not qualified to interpret the law. I'll arrest you and bring you to trial and then it's up to some judge to rule upon your purity and innocence of criminal intent, and freedom from moral taint or turpitude. Maybe take ...
— The Big Fix • George Oliver Smith
... she found it an easy task to face Hugh Johnstone, after that one reassuring glance. Her stern employer failed to pierce the muslin fortifications of her guilty bosom and discern the moral turpitude lurking there. She stole a last anxious glance at her still plump wrist where the diamond bracelet had softly clasped her flesh, and then softly sighed in relief ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... regard for Johnny, though many an hour have I spent at our masthead at his instigation; while Dicky, promoted by the like authority, was taking sights at me from another. We were sent there not without cause, I own, and still the amount of moral turpitude which gained us that elevated distinction was not such as to make me blush as I think of it, or to make me anxious to conceal it from the public. Neither as a first-lieutenant nor as a man was Lieutenant Du ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... see the royal authority thus openly degraded. They indulged, too, some compassion for a prince, whose political vices, at least, were imputable to mental incapacity, and to evil counsellors, rather than to any natural turpitude of heart. Among the nobles who adhered to him, the most conspicuous were "the good count of Haro," and the powerful family of Mendoza, the worthy scions of an illustrious stock. The estates of the marquis of Santillana, the head of this house, lay chiefly ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... primitive Slavic communal organization thus survived only on the royal domain, and there it exists till the present day. The census of Peter having thus fairly inaugurated chattelhood, it immediately began to develop itself in all its turpitude. The masters grew more reckless and cruel; they sold chattels separately from the lands; they brought them singly into market, disregarding all family-ties and social bonds. Estates were no more ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... useful purposes ended as it began, leaving us both just where it had found us—our tempers rather than our views suffering in the conflict. Two or three times I was tempted to rattle out a volley of indignation at his amazing and unparalleled effrontery, and of calling him to account for his turpitude; but my better judgment withheld me, bidding me reserve my blows until they should fall unerringly and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... to be taken away and executed. He had a profound conviction that argument was futile, and that nothing would serve but a pitched battle, in which each fighting man should go to the poll and put a cross against a name in grim silence. Argue with these gross self-satisfied fellows about the turpitude of the artisans! Why, there was scarcely one of them whose grandfather had not been an artisan! Curse their patriotism! Then he would begin bits of argument to himself, and stop them, too impatient to ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... the Grand-Vicar scoffingly; in truth, my poor friend, you make me doubt your reason. Can there be anything reasonable in the turpitude ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... his step-sons, he clears himself in good earnest, nay does more than clear himself. For he unveils in the most merciless fashion the villany of his accusers—the base ingratitude of Pudens, and the unspeakable turpitude of Rufinus. ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... make our morality a profession and our innocence an art. They all hang their romances to motives that no woman recognises as feminine; they ascribe to us instincts which we do not possess, passions of which we are ignorant—a ridiculous moral turpitude in the overmastering presence of love. Pooh! If they only knew what a small part love plays ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... but rather as a form of the imagination which he selected for expressing his views on humanity;—to paint crime; to castigate tyranny; to vindicate honesty; to portray the abomination of corruption, the turpitude of debauchery and the baseness of servility;—to represent fortitude in its strength and grandeur, innocence in its grace and beauty, while standing forth the sturdy admirer of heroism and freedom; the ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... called to order at least once in five minutes. The images which the orator brings in to give vividness to his argument are sometimes coarse; but, coarse as they are, they admirably reflect the moral turpitude of the men against whom he inveighs. Among these is the image with which he covers Dundas, the special friend of Pitt, with a ridicule which promises to be immortal. Dundas, on the occasion when Fox and Burke called for papers by the aid of which ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... what has disease, deformity, and filth, upon which the thoughts can be allured to dwell? Delany is willing to think that Swift's mind was not much tainted with this gross corruption before his long visit to Pope. He does not consider how he degrades his hero, by making him at fifty-nine the pupil of turpitude, and liable to the malignant influence of an ascendant mind. But the truth is that Gulliver had described his yahoos before the visit; and he that had formed those images ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... for him in all matters of open enmity; but in ways of secrecy and deep dealing, he is master, and all the more to be dreaded that he makes it impossible for one to understand him or measure the depths of turpitude to which he would descend. When, therefore I heard him say he should have that will back before it could pass into the hands of Mr. Nicholls, I trembled; and as the night passed and morning came without showing any diminution in the set determination of his expression, ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... who cleared off what was left by those stronger creatures of prey, the proconsuls. Thus the misery caused by a meddlesome and nerveless national policy was enhanced by a domestic administration based on turpitude and extortion. ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... and proper sense, is the expression to an inferior of the will of a superior, which the inferior has it in his power to obey or to resist, but resistance to which entails a penalty more or less severe, in proportion to the moral turpitude, or the injurious consequences of the act of disobedience. In this its strict sense the law can only exist in connection with beings possessed of reason to understand it, of power to obey it, and of free ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... in this country. To bring accusations of fraud, cupidity and cunning against human nature, is not libellous. I am persuaded that robbery,—well contrived, deliberately executed robbery,—is perpetrated in every community among ourselves, without any due estimate of its moral turpitude, by reputable merchants and traders upon their customers, to a larger extent than all the avowed and heinous thefts collectively, which are committed against society. It is lamentable to see how studiously conscience ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... Aunt Victoria with much to reflect upon. The glimpse she had accidentally given the old lady of Harriet's turpitude had startled her considerably. Mrs. Caldwell had always congratulated herself on having such a quiet respectable person in the house as Harriet to look after Beth, and now it appeared that the woman was disreputable ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... alive; never a Decimus was allowed to stand in the way of the nine seniors. The birth of twins is an evil portent to the Mpongwes, as it is in many parts of Central Africa, and even in the New World; it also involves the idea of moral turpitude, as if the woman were one of the lower animals, capable of superfetation. There is no greater insult to a man, than to point at him with two fingers, meaning that he is a twin; of course he is not one, or he would have been killed at birth. Albinos are allowed to live, ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... He break all my bones. [Again, v. 14: Mine eyes fail with looking upward; 0 Lord, I am oppressed.] In these terrors, conscience feels the wrath of God against sin, which is unknown to secure men walking according to the flesh [as the sophists and their like]. It sees the turpitude of sin, and seriously grieves that it has sinned; meanwhile it also flees from the dreadful wrath of God, because human nature, unless sustained by the Word of God, cannot endure it. Thus Paul says, Gal. 2, 19: I through ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... John Ryder's outward appearance to justify Lombroso's sensational description of him: "A social and physiological freak, a degenerate and a prodigy of turpitude who, in the pursuit of money, crushes with the insensibility of a steel machine everyone who stands in his way." On the contrary, Ryder, outwardly at least, was a prepossessing-looking man. His head was well-shaped, and he had an intellectual brow, while power was expressed in every gesture ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... ashamed to tell you that your letters to me, mine to you, and, indeed, everything that has come and gone between us by mail, has been read by other eyes than ours. This was true of your last letter to me, and, without doubt, it will be true of this letter. Can you imagine it? Think of the moral turpitude of a creature employed to break open private letters and to read them! Can you imagine work more degrading? What a dirty dog he must be! how despicable, indeed, he must seem to himself!" And so Mr. Buchanan went on until ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White |
