"Dissolute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was reduced from fifty-nine to thirty. Macko invited the Esquimaux to worship God with him; this seemed more pleasant and convenient than to remain under restraint with the brethren, for there they saw "Christian" sailors who allowed themselves to follow every species of sinful dissolute conduct. On their return they said, the Europeans have meetings yonder as you have, and they have ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... an English boarding-house, it was kept by a broken-down American mariner, one Danby, a dissolute, idle fellow, who had married a buxom English wife, and now lived upon her industry; for the lady, and not the sailor, proved to be the head of ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... Maupeou, the banisher of Parlements; who plants you a refractory President 'at Croe in Combrailles on the top of steep rocks, inaccessible except by litters,' there to consider himself. Likewise there rose Abbe Terray, dissolute Financier, paying eightpence in the shilling,—so that wits exclaim in some press at the playhouse, "Where is Abbe Terray, that he might reduce us to two-thirds!" And so have these individuals (verily by black-art) built them a Domdaniel, or enchanted Dubarrydom; ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... If the dissolute or imbecile advocates of "free love" had their way, we should sink to the level of these wild tribes of India; but there is no danger of our losing again the large "tracts of mind, and thought, and feeling" we have acquired since ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... who occupied the throne for twenty-four [Page 145] years, weak and dissolute is a ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... lowest classes of English society. The poor were sunk in ignorance and barbarism, and the aristocracy was honeycombed by profligacy. Morality, discarded alike by high and low, took refuge in the great Middle Class, then, as now, deeply influenced by Evangelical Dissent. A dissolute Heir-Apparent presided over a social system in which not merely religion but decency was habitually disregarded. At his wedding he was so drunk that his attendant dukes "could scarcely support him from falling."[6] The Princes ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... said," he replied. "I'm anything but self-controlled by nature; already," and Augustine looked calmly at his mother, "I'd have let myself go and been very dissolute unless I'd had this ideal of my own honour to help me. I'm of anything ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... the Emperor Charles IV., King of Bohemia, was now emperor. It will be remembered that by marrying Mary, the eldest daughter of Louis, King of Hungary and Poland, he received Hungary as the dower of his bride. By intrigue he also succeeded in deposing his effeminate and dissolute brother, Wenceslaus, from the throne of Bohemia, and succeeded, by a new election, in placing the crown upon his own brow. Thus Sigismond wielded a three-fold scepter. He was Emperor of Germany, and King of Hungary ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... year. Had the discontented troops been well commanded, they might still have answered the purpose. But such was not the case. There were certainly enough officers—an average of one general for every 157 privates. But what officers they were! Dissolute and dandified generals drawing their pay and never visiting their troops, lieutenants reveling in vice, instead of drilling and caring for their commands. Noble blood, not ability, was the qualification of a commander. Counts, who had never seen a battlefield, were given military offices, and ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... they might last long were naturally in bad repute, so that the phrase tempestivum convivium often has almost the sense of 'a debauch'. Thus in Att. 9, 1, 3 Cicero describes himself as being evil spoken of in tempestivis conviviis, i.e. in dissolute society. Cf. pro Arch. 13. The customary dinner hour at Rome was about three o'clock in the afternoon. The word tempestivus, which in 5 means 'at the right time', here means 'before the right time'. So in English 'in good time' often means 'too ...
— Cato Maior de Senectute • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... has traced all knowledge to sensation. What prolific sources of disease are not those mineral and vegetable poisons, that have been introduced for its extirpation! How many thousands have become murderers and robbers, bigots and domestic tyrants, dissolute and abandoned adventurers, from the use of fermented liquors, who, had they slaked their thirst only with pure water, would have lived but to diffuse the happiness of their own unperverted feelings! How ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... impossible to trace back any circumstance which could, to speak advisedly, have led to such a course of deception as was practised by this boy; born of obscure parents, his father, a man of dissolute habits, was sub-chanter of the Cathedral, and also master of the free school in Pyle-street; this clever, but harsh, and dissolute man died in August, 1752, and the poet was born on the 20th of the following November.[3] ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... a slight occasion to chase Archilochus out of their city, perhaps for composing in a higher strain than their own soldierly ballads and roundels could reach to. Or if it were for his broad verses, they were not therein so cautious but they were as dissolute in their promiscuous conversing; whence Euripides affirms in Andromache, that their women were all unchaste. Thus much may give us light after what sort of books were ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... divorced, and Catharine Howard, granddaughter of the victor of Flodden Field, became queen of England. The king now fancied that his domestic felicity was complete; but, soon after his marriage, it was discovered that his wife had formerly led a dissolute life, and had been unfaithful also to her royal master. When the proofs of her incontinence were presented to him, he burst into a flood of tears; but soon his natural ferocity returned, and ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... saw Maggie, ignorant of the world, led away by a seducer from her married life, persuaded to embark upon what his own experience had taught him to be a dangerous, lonely, and often disastrous voyage. He had never heard of any good of Martin; he had been always in his view, idle, dissolute, and selfish. What could he think but that Martin had, most wickedly, persuaded her to abandon ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... to save him the bother o' luggin' 'em back to the plains, and all the ammunition he could get at, and, consilio et auxilio Rutton Singhi, tramped back to his fort with all his Sikhs and his precious prisoners, and a lot of dissolute hangers-on that he and the prisoner had seduced into service. He had sixty men of sorts—and his brazen cheek. Mac nearly wept with joy when he went. You see there weren't any explicit orders to Stalky to come in before the passes were blocked: Mac is a great man for orders, and Stalky's a ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... of alarm to let him pass, and Cargrim, not wishing to have trouble with the drunken bully, slipped into the shadow of a house until he passed. As usual, there was no policeman visible, and Jentham went bellowing and storming through the quiet summer night like the dissolute ruffian he was. He was making for the country in the direction of the palace, and wondering if he intended to force his way into the house to threaten Dr Pendle, the chaplain followed immediately behind. But he was careful to keep out of sight, as Jentham was in just the ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... matrimony. He is very eloquent upon the subject; and his manners are so solemn that I am strongly tempted—yet I dare not—to laugh. Really, Lucy, there is something extremely engaging, and soothing, too, in virtuous and refined conversation. It is a source of enjoyment which cannot be realized by the dissolute and unreflecting. But then this particular theme of his is not a favorite one to me; I mean as connected with its consequences—care and confinement. However, I have compounded the matter with him, and conditioned that he shall expatiate ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... bad qualities of both and the good ones of neither, was made one of this party, rather, I suppose, because he could not be left out, than because he was wanted. He has few friends in Palmyra, but among wild and dissolute spirits like himself. He is famed for no quality either great or good. Violent passions and intemperate lusts are what he is chiefly noted for. But, except that pride and arrogance are writ upon the lines of his countenance, you would hardly guess that his light-tinted and ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... nurse came to us who had known the girl's real mother in New York and who had taken charge of Edna as an infant before her foster mother had taken her. It seems that the mother was an American, that this child was illegitimate. A few months after her birth the mother abandoned her, became dissolute and is said ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... Ayliffe's riotous doings, and his wife had been terrified. There had been a general reformation in which Emlyn had only escaped dismissal through her mistress's favour, pleading her orphanhood, her repentance, and her troth plight to the good young man who had been attacked by those dissolute fellows, though Mrs. Henshaw little knew how accountable was her favourite maid ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... courtiers who have each the pay of 5000 horse; others of 4000, 3000, 2000, and so downwards. He who has the pay of 5000, is bound to have 2000 always on foot ready for service, and so in like proportion for all others. This absolute dependence renders them dissolute parasites. When the Mogul gives advancement to any one, he adds a new name or title, as Pharaoh did to Joseph. These names or titles are very significant; as Mahobet Khan, the beloved lord; Khan Jahaun, the lord of my heart; Khan Allum, the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... asked Vararuchi the reason why the fish laughed. He desired time to think over the matter and learned from the conversation of a rakshasi with her children that the fish said to himself, "All the king's wives are dissolute, for in every part of his harem there are men dressed up as women, and nevertheless while those escape, an innocent Brahman is to be put to death;" and this tickled the fish so that he laughed. Mr. Tawney says that Dr. Liebrecht, in "Orient und Occident," ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... Grange, should render his absence from home necessary whilst his father was swilling at the assizes, by which arrangement, added to others that will soon appear, the house must, to a certain degree, be left unprotected, or altogether under the care of dissolute servants, whose habits, caught from those of the establishment, were ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... this of a debauched and dissolute youth; but we are inquiring into the conduct of a constant and wise man. We may even allow a centurion, or standard-bearer, to be angry, or any others, whom, not to explain too far the mysteries of the ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... not gone forth to the battle against Syagrius, but Ragnachar of Cambray had given Clovis effectual help in that crisis of his early fortunes. However Ragnachar, by his dissolute life and his preposterous fondness for an evil counsellor named Farro, had given great offence to the proud Franks, his subjects. Just as James I. said of the forfeited estates of Raleigh: "I maun hae the land, I maun hae it for Carr", so Ragnachar said whenever anyone ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... see anything more, but came down to the foot of the stairs, that I might learn if Roland took his money to his dissolute comrades. He came out, and once more I followed him, and once more he led me to the Rheingold cellar. On this occasion, however, I took step by step with him until we entered the large wineroom at the foot of the stairs, ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... allayed the suspicion directed against the dissolute Englishman and the young men made an early return ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... free man; and in my wish to enjoy fully the liberty I thought I had just conquered, it was not long before I had made the very worst acquaintances amongst the most renowned students. As a matter of course, the most renowned were the most worthless, dissolute fellows, gamblers, frequenters of disorderly houses, hard drinkers, debauchees, tormentors and suborners of honest girls, liars, and wholly incapable of any good or virtuous feeling. In the company of such men did I begin my apprenticeship of the world, learning my lesson from ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... easy to believe, while painting on the very spot where St. Francis was in ecstasy, led a life much to his liking. He dwelt within the monastery, and his pure mind, open only to the good, was blind to the dissolute ways of monks who became a scandal to the district. When the fresco was half finished, the master received a visit from his bosom friends Steinle and Fuhrich, and the three strengthened one another as they communed ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... sweetness of an angel; but why do I say of an angel?—of a woman." Burke himself courageously walked to and fro amid the raging crowds with firm composure, though the experiment was full of peril. He describes the mob as being made up, as London mobs generally are, rather of the unruly and dissolute than of fanatical malignants, and he vehemently opposed any concessions by Parliament to the spirit of intolerance which had first kindled the blaze. All the letters of the time show that the outrages and alarms of those days and nights, in which the capital ...
— Burke • John Morley
... from it, my child:—Your unusual good sense makes a common-place lecture unnecessary, Harriet; but beware of flattery and dissimulation; for the manners of the present age are so dissolute, that the young fellows of these degenerate days think they cannot be fine gentlemen without being rakes, and—in short, rascals; for they make a merit even of debauching innocence:—indeed, that is scarcely to be wondered at, when so many of those who are called ladies ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... fellows who fairly devoured her with their eyes), who had charge of putting up the booths for the great fair for the benefit of destitute working women; a call on the president of the Cabinet, a somewhat dissolute old gentleman, in spite of his gravity, who received her with the airs of an old-fashioned gallant, kissing her hand, as they used to ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the army!' Ay, smiths, engineers, editors, and every thing else are there, amply capable of reoerganizing the whole South—of tilling its fields to greater advantage, of developing its neglected resources, of making the old, desolate, lazy, dissolute Southland hum with enterprise. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... and absorbed in the execution of a wall-painting, a dissolute young noble addressed her with insulting freedom. She could not escape, and in the struggle which ensued she drew a dagger and stabbed ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... clergy and a dissolute populace quickly felt the hand that now held the reins. He sedulously watched the inferior pastors, dealing out justice to them, and punishing all who offended with rigorous severity. He compelled the Italian bishops to acknowledge him ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... these, who go to foreign countries, England is judged. To my mind we should send abroad men who are bound to succeed, men who never forget that from their behaviour the Mother Country will be appraised. Argentina will embrace and reward them, but she will spurn and despise the dissolute and drunken. ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... shame, or stint of expense. He not only took part in all public entertainments and pleasures of that capital, but he held a most luxurious and gallant court of his own; and all night long his palace was the scene of theatrical representations by dissolute women, with music and banqueting, so that he had a worse name than Sardanapalus of old." He sneaked away to these gross delights in 1700, while the Emperor was at war with the Spaniards, and left his Duchess (a brave and noble woman, the daughter of Ferrante Gonzaga, Duke of Guastalla) ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... accordingly sent back word to Romulus that he must resort to the same plan to get women for his city that he had adopted to procure recruits of men. He must open an asylum for them. The low and the dissolute would come flocking to him then, they said, from all parts, and vagabond women would make just the kind of wives ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... oratory passion revealed itself chiefly in appeals to pity, not in the harsher forms of invective or of scorn. His mode of life was simple and restrained, but apparently with none of the pedantic austerity of the stoic. In an age that was becoming dissolute and frivolous he was moral and somewhat serious.[311] But his career is not that of the man who burdens society with the impression that he has a solemn mission to perform. Such men are rarely taken as seriously as they take themselves; they do not win aged ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... loose upon the country. These persons, and they who were emancipated from villenage, or who had in a more summary manner emancipated themselves, multiplied in poverty and wretchedness. Lastly, owing to the fashion for large households of retainers, great numbers of men were trained up in an idle and dissolute way of life, liable at any time to be cast off when age or accident invalided them, or when the master of the family died; and then if not ashamed to beg, too lewd to work, and ready for any kind of mischief. Owing to these ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... cause any sensation, even in the small community where it obliterated one of the principal members of the society. If the accounts given by these ladies of the character of the planters in this part of the south may be believed, they must be as idle, arrogant, ignorant, dissolute, and ferocious as that mediaeval chivalry to which they are fond of comparing themselves; and these are southern women, and should know the ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... degrees, into the father of his country, and of human kind. In that of Constantine, we may contemplate a hero, who had so long inspired his subjects with love, and his enemies with terror, degenerating into a cruel and dissolute monarch, corrupted by his fortune, or raised by conquest above the necessity of dissimulation. The general peace which he maintained during the last fourteen years of his reign, was a period of apparent ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... long before informing the police that she had seen him enter there! Mrs. Hagan was no friend of his! One could not live as he had lived, as Larry the Bat, and not see something in an intimate way of the pitiful little tragedies of the poor around him; for, bad, tough, and dissolute as the quarter was, all were not degraded there, some were simply—poor. Mrs. Hagan was poor. Her husband was a day labourer, often out of a job—and sometimes he drank. That was how he, Jimmie Dale, or rather, Larry the Bat, had come ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... lover, and impudent, ill-bred tomrig for a mistress, and these are the fine people of the play; and there is that latitude in this, that almost anything is proper for them to say; but their chief subject is bawdy, and profaneness, which they call brisk writing, when the most dissolute of men, that relish those things well enough in private, are choked at 'em in publick: and, methinks, if there were nothing but the ill manners of it, it should make poets avoid that indecent way of ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... the Lords was ordered to be burnt by the common hangman. For six years, till his death in Rouen, he lived in exile, but he was honoured by burial in Westminster Abbey. His private character in a dissolute age was unimpeachable. Anne Hyde, daughter of the earl, became Queen of England, as wife of James II., and was mother of two queens, Anne and Mary. The "History of the Rebellion" is a noble and monumental work, invaluable as written by ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... devour'd; E'en pipes were dropp'd despairing—all, save one, One man was faithful to his pipe, and kept Despair and deeper misery at bay, By seeking ever for a "topper," dropped From some spurned pipe, but that he could not find; So, with a piteous and perpetual glare, And a quick dissolute word, sucking the pipe, Which answer'd never with a whiff, he slept; The crowd dispersed by slow degrees, but two Of all the dreary company remain'd, And they kept 'bacca shops; they sat upon The scanted lid of a tobacco tub, ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... want of vital piety evinced by some of their number, still the present deplorable condition of the Sandwich Islands is by no means wholly chargeable against them. The demoralizing influence of a dissolute foreign population, and the frequent visits of all descriptions of vessels, have tended not a little to increase the evils alluded to. In a word, here, as in every case where civilization has in any way been introduced among those whom we call savages, she has scattered her vices, ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... to remedy the evil. The Emperor, Rudolph II., paved the way. He was just the man that Budowa required. He was weak in body and in mind. He had ruined his health, said popular scandal, by indulging in dissolute pleasures. His face was shrivelled, his hair bleached, his back bent, his step tottering. He was too much interested in astrology, gems, pictures, horses, antique relics and similar curiosities to take much interest in government; he suffered from religious mania, ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... every Man, whatever his Station is, do his Part towards averting the Judgments of God: Let every Man reform himself, and others as far as his Influence goes: This is our only proper Remedy; for the dissolute Wickedness of the Age, is a more dreadful Sign and Prognostication of Divine Anger, than even the Trembling of the ...
— A Letter from the Lord Bishop of London, to the Clergy and People of London and Westminster; On Occasion of the Late Earthquakes • Thomas Sherlock
... host shall be obliged to report to the government any insolent or dissolute acts ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... is certain, that married ladies living in chambers occasionally had for neighbors on the same staircase women whom they regarded with abhorrence. Sometimes it happened that a dissolute barrister introduced to his rooms a woman more beautiful than virtuous, whom he had not married, though he called her his wife. People can no more choose their neighbors in a house broken up into sets of chambers, ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... otherwise of the dissolute character of the poet and of all the women to whom he addressed his verses, make it only too obvious that there is here no question of purity, of respect, of adoration, of any of the qualities which ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... story of my courtship—it was brief and sweet as a song sung perfectly. There were no obstacles. The girl I sought was the only daughter of a ruined Florentine noble of dissolute character, who gained a bare subsistence by frequenting the gaming-tables. His child had been brought up in a convent renowned for strict discipline—she knew nothing of the world. She was, he assured me, with maudlin tears in his eyes, "as innocent as a flower ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... principles look upon mirth as too wanton and dissolute for a state of probation, and as filled with a certain triumph and insolence of heart that is inconsistent with a life which is every moment obnoxious to the greatest dangers. Writers of this complexion have observed, that the sacred Person who was the great pattern of perfection, ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... Plutarch" were too entertaining to young and old to be left for any length of time quietly upon the shelf. They were the familiar reading of boys who were to become the actors in the great drama of the Rebellion and the Commonwealth, or who a little later were to frequent the dissolute court of Charles, presenting in their own lives, whether in camp or court, as patriots or as traitors, parallels to those which they had read in the weighty pages of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... who will judge the secrets of all men, will judge between this man and this woman. Then, if never before, the full truth shall be told both of the depraved and dissolute man who made it his life's object to defame the innocent, and the silent, the self-denying woman who made it her life's object to give space for repentance to ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... is the idea of many that sailors have little or no religion: and their dissolute conduct, when thrown on shore, is certainly a strong argument in support of this opinion; but they must not be so partially judged. Those who are constantly mixed with the world, and exposed to its allurements, are subject to a continual struggle against their passions, which ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... eccentricities indicate a deviation which may lead to mental destruction. The last faculty to develop in the mind of man is the moral faculty; this faculty is the one first lost by diseased brains. If a man, who suddenly becomes dissolute and licentious (who, heretofore, has led a virtuous, moral life), be examined, in nine cases in ten his brain will be found to be diseased. The little cloud, which at first is no larger than a man's hand, grows ever ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... confidence on their faces and demanding to be led back forthwith to battle with the Huns. There were no guns belching forth: the grim Panoply of War, whatever it may mean, was conspicuous by its absence. Only a very fat quartermaster-sergeant lay asleep in the sun and snored, while an ancient and dissolute old warrior, near by, was engaged in clearing out a drain as part of his Field Punishment, and had just discovered a dead dog in it. He was not singing blithely: he had no cheery smile of confidence on his face: he was just ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... in the vulgarity of an English hall—I will not say the Pavilion, which is too cosmopolitan, dreary French comics are heard there—for preference let us say the Royal. I shall not easily forget my first evening there, when I saw for the time a living house—the dissolute paragraphists, the elegant mashers (mark the imaginativeness of the slang), the stolid, good-humoured costers, the cheerful lights o' love, the extraordinary comics. What delightful unison of enjoyment, what unanimity of soul, what communality ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... taking notice, that the quantity of strong liquors sold to these Indians, in the places of their residence, and during their hunting season, have increased to an inconceivable degree, so as to keep these poor creatures continually under the force of liquors, that they are thereby become dissolute, enfeebled and indolent when sober; and untractable and mischievous in their liquor, always quarreling, and often murdering one another." Some of the chiefs at this treaty said, "these wicked whisky-sellers, when they ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... personally there was a great contrast. In the favourite there was nothing of the precision, calmness, and moral behaviour of the King. Buckingham was dissolute, talkative, and vain. His appearance had made his fortune, and he endeavoured to add to it by a splendour of attire, which later times would have allowed only in women. Jewels were displayed in his ears, and precious stones served as buttons for his doublet. It was affirmed that on his journey ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... the means of an inglorious and frequently dissolute existence from the periodical receipt of money sent out to ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... classes, and, being himself a man of shrewd observation and natural humour, he gave the boy's studies a practical bearing by directing his attention to the follies and vices of the luxurious and dissolute society around him, showing him how incompatible they were with the dictates of reason and common-sense, and how disastrous in their consequences to the good name and happiness of those who yielded to their seductions. The ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... devotion to a wise care of his kingdom was about all this young man could stand, and he went back to his dissolute ways, and the bad blood of his ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... have not been provided in their gaol, that no time will be lost in providing those means by which imprisonment may be made a real punishment, by which offenders may be reformed during their imprisonment, and by which the idle and dissolute may be prevented from any ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... quietly, at his brother Martin's; from whence he was carried with a vast mob at his heels, before the worshipful Mr. Justice Overdo. Several of his neighbours made oath,* that of late, the prisoner had been observed to lead a very dissolute life, renouncing even his usual hypocrisy and pretences to sobriety; that he frequented taverns and eating-houses, and had been often guilty of drunkenness and gluttony at my Lord Mayor's table; that he had been seen in the company of lewd women; that he had transferred his usual care ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... are most completely abandoned to dissolute manners are not, on that account, insensible to virtue in women. The Comtesse de Perigord was as beautiful as virtuous. During some excursions she made to Choisy, whither she had been invited, she perceived that the King took great notice of her. Her demeanour of chilling ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... appear in subordinate parts, and played in Ben Jonson's "Sejanus" at its production in 1603, when he was forty years old. The first public notice he received was in 1592, in a letter of Robert Greene, a dissolute writer, who accuses Shakespeare and Marlowe of plagiarism, conceit, and ingratitude. Chettle, the publisher, soon afterward printed a retraction so far as Shakespeare was concerned, and eulogized his manners, his honesty, and his art. Our acquaintance with his ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... And as permission must be got by those in pursuit of him, from the authorities of the island to land and take him, he thus gains time to secrete himself. A tropical climate is suited to a roving life, and liquor as well as dissolute women being in great abundance, to gratify him during his hours of relaxation, makes this a congenial ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... always accompanied her and a maid, a manservant also, and on state occasions, two. It was impossible that her purpose could have been achieved with less; and yet, poor as she was, she had achieved her purpose. And then again the more dissolute Italian youths of Milan frequented the Stanhope villa and surrounded her couch, not greatly to her father's satisfaction. Sometimes his spirit would rise, a dark spot would show itself on his cheek, and he would ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... Ham, it appears, was but the worthy father of such a son.[61] The last will and testament of Canaan addressed to his children read as follows: "Speak not the truth; hold not yourselves aloof from theft; lead a dissolute life; hate your master with an exceeding great hate; and love ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... husband's apartments in Surrey Street. If that could be proved, then the woman had been guilty of perjury, and her evidence would collapse altogether. Now there were some portions of her evidence which were most unsatisfactory. She had led a dissolute life, and was cursed with an ungovernable temper. But, on the other hand, she had told a consistent tale as to the occurrences of that fatal afternoon, and he could not go so far as to advise the jury to ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Peacock, afterwards serving with credit on board the Chesapeake in her famous fight with the Shannon; but after his release from Dartmoor as a prisoner of war he opened a grocery shop in Ann Street, called the "Tin Pot," "a place full of abandoned women and dissolute fellows." Drinking up all the profits, he was compelled to go to sea again, and got a berth on a South American privateer. Gibbs led a mutiny, seized the ship and turned her into a pirate, and cruised about in ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... Jessica's adopted father, was German by birth, and the son of an innkeeper in one of the tiny villages on the banks of the Rhine. In his youth he had studied as an art-student at Munich; but, finally, by his idle and dissolute behaviour, so angered the authorities that he had been compelled to return home. Tiring of the rural life there, he finally obtained from his parents sufficient money to come to ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... maddening bedlam, called a city, the acknowledged inferno of industrialism, the agitation was tensest. With its brutalities, cruelties, corruptions and industrial carnage, its hideous contrasts of dissolute riches and woe-begone poverty, its arrogant wealth lashing the working population lower and lower into squalor, pauperism and misery, Chicago was overripe for any movement seeking to ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... interrupted the conversation. "It doesn't quite follow," he suggested. "You people don't, I regret to say, understand the destiny of this child. The fact is that even the old Hanlin scholar Mr. Cheng was erroneously looked upon as a loose rake and dissolute debauchee! But unless a person, through much study of books and knowledge of letters, so increases (in lore) as to attain the talent of discerning the nature of things, and the vigour of mind to fathom the Taoist reason as well ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... therefore considered to be an institution recognized by the state as a means of punishing immorality, upholding the Catholic religion, persuading the skeptical,—confirming the wavering, and exercising a salutary terror over the ladies of the upper class, at that period renowned for their dissolute morals. The aristocracy of Florence patronized and protected the institution—because its existence afforded a ready means to get rid of a dishonored daughter, or an unfaithful wife; and it was even said that the abbess was invested with extraordinary powers by the rescript ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... baseness of stratagem in order to stave off a small debt, or to swindle a poor creditor, than would have suffered to make a fortune for a braver rogue. He was abject and a shuffler in the very height of his prosperity. Had he been a crown prince, he could not have been more weak, useless, dissolute or ungrateful. He could not move through life except leaning on the arm of somebody: and yet he never had an agent but he mistrusted him; and marred any plans which might be arranged for his benefit, by secretly acting against the people whom he employed. Strong knew Clavering, and judged him quite ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a rocket. The base and feeble remains of legitimacy seemed to die away of its own weakness, and the despised younger son of the king-making vizier soon reigned supreme at Cabool. Let us note that this was in 1826. The new king, says Mr Kaye, 'had hitherto lived the life of a dissolute soldier. His education had been neglected, and in his very boyhood he had been thrown in the way of pollution of the foulest kind. From his youth, he had been greatly addicted to wine, and was often to be seen in public reeling along in a state of degrading intoxication, or scarcely ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... framers; by the construction of the committee, all limitation is lost, and it may be extended over the different actions of life as speculative politicians may think fit. What has a greater tendency to fit men for insurrection and resistance to government than dissolute, immoral habits, at once destroying love of order, and dissipating the fortune which gives an interest in society? The doctrine that Congress can punish any act which has a tendency to hinder the execution of the laws, as well as acts which ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... Government Propagandists and to take abode in a distant city. For some time he wandered about Persia in a destitute condition, plying the hereditary trade of tent-maker, but at length poverty compelled him to quit his native country for good and to try his fortunes in a land so remote that the dissolute record of his parent could no longer hound him. Borneo was the island to which the poet fled, and here the historian finds him some years later prospering in the world's goods and greatly reverenced by the inhabitants. Although Omar, Jr., ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... details, the narrator was not true to the facts. This was a comparatively unimportant charge; but a more serious question was the doubt whether his characters were essentially true to human nature; whether the wild soil of revenge and greed and dissolute living ever yields such flowers of devotion as blossom in Tennessee's Partner and the Outcasts of Poker Flat. However this may be, there is no question as to Harte's power as a narrator. His short stories are skillfully constructed and ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... injury, and would let his faithful lovers and servants go starve. He lived always, you would say, only for the flesh and the pride of the eyes; he was careless and selfish and ungrateful; in short, he was as dissolute as a man could be, or, rather, as dissolute as a king could be, and that is much more. Yet for all this, he was a man of an extraordinary power, if he had cared to use it. It was said of him that "he could, if he would, but that he would ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... damage under the lex Aquilia, on certain kinds of deposit, and for corruption of a slave, which lies against any one by whose instigation and advice another man's slave runs away, or becomes disobedient to his master, or takes to dissolute habits, or becomes worse in any way whatsoever, and in which the value of property which the runaway slave has carried off is taken into account. Finally, as we remarked above, the action for the recovery of legacies left to places of ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... public baths and amphitheatres devoted to pleasure and to cruelty; statues, monuments, and triumphal arches raised to the memory of blood-thirsty tyrants. He passes warriors and senators, beggars and cripples, effeminate and dissolute women, gladiators and slaves, merchants and statesmen, orators and philosophers;—all classes, all ranks, all conditions of men of every language and color under the sun. Everywhere he sees a maddening race for pleasure; everywhere the impress of luxury, ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... baby." Years passed by. Lincoln became a successful lawyer. Soon after he had entered upon the practice of his profession at Springfield, his old friend, Jack Armstrong died. The baby whom Lincoln had rocked grew into a stout but dissolute young man. He was arrested, charged with the crime of murder. "Aunt Hannah," as Lincoln used to call her, was heartbroken with sorrow for her poor, misguided boy. In her grief she appealed to the "noble, ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... correspondence of the Princess with Madame de Maintenon and the Marechale de Noailles from April, 1707, to November, 1708, the date of the duke's departure, shows that the relations of the latter with the camerara-mayor were for a long time maintained on the best footing, the dissolute habits of the Duke of Orleans proving less disgusting to Madame des Ursins than the accuracy of his insight into public affairs appears to have charmed her. The rupture of this good understanding, which, however, took place ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... the measures which Richard was taking for the execution of these plans, they, as well as all Edward's other earthly schemes and hopes, were suddenly destroyed by the hand of death. Edward's health had become much impaired by the dissolute life which he had led, and at last he fell seriously sick. While he was sick, an affair occurred which vexed and worried ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... profane its sanctity, by following their pleasures or their affairs; this way of acting being contrary to their own interest as Christians, and calculated to annoy those who do not follow their example; being also of great injury to society at large, by spreading a taste for dissipation and dissolute manners;— ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... apparently with no other purpose than to view our arrival. Among them we saw many specialized types that had been lacking to the old city of a few months ago—sharp, keen, businesslike clerks whom one could not imagine at the rough work of the mines; loafers whom one could not imagine at any work at all; dissolute, hard-faced characters without the bold freedom of the road agents; young green-looking chaps who evidently had much to learn and who were exceedingly likely to pay their little fortunes, if ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... usually devote a few of the morning hours to his profession, and then, growing weary, throw aside his pencil in disgust, and either wander about the neighbourhood in moody silence, or spend the rest of the day in the society of a few dissolute persons of education, with whom he had become acquainted since his residence in Manchester. The indolence of the parent had, however, the effect of awakening the latent energies of the daughter's ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... self-conceit mounted to Saint Anthony's head when he learned what immense veneration and adoration had been paid to him by all Christendom; and he who here below withstood the most terrible temptations was now quite an impertinent rascal and dissolute gallows-bird, who vied with his pig in rolling himself in the mud. The chaste Susanna, from having been excessively vain of her virtue, which she thought indomitable, came to a shameful fall, and she who once so gloriously resisted the two old men, was a victim to the ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... the law says that a licence-holder or supervisee shall produce a license when called upon, shall not habitually associate with persons of bad character, shall not lead an idle or dissolute life, shall report themselves monthly to the nearest police station (this regulation does not apply to women), and ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... few tears, and she is happy again. Take the case of your own daughter, the young lady downstairs, who is your breathing image'—Mrs Varden coughed and simpered—'there is a young man (I am sorry to say, a dissolute fellow, of very indifferent character) of whom I have heard Ned ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... can obtain permission in writing to leave, or the Justice in their complaint shall consider they have just cause to annull the contract and permit them to obtain another employee. All Indians must be required to obtain service and not be permitted to wander about the country in idleness in a dissolute manner. If found doing so they will be liable to arrest and punishment by labor on the public works at the direction of the Magistrate. All officers, Civil or Military under my command are required to execute the terms of this order and take notice of every violation thereof.—Given ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... an abominable theory familiar to, and held by the dissolute, who, not content with spreading the contagion of their souls, aim at poisoning the very wells of morality. They reason somewhat after this fashion: Human nature is everywhere the same. He knows ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... And besides, Klea, my sweetheart, we have now found some one, who makes your concerns his, and who is great and powerful—but oh! what are three clays? To think of seeing you turned out—and then that you may be driven with a dissolute herd in a filthy boat down to the burning south, and dragged to work which kills first the soul and then the body! No, it is not possible! You will never let this happen to me—and to yourself and Irene; no, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... lightning which shattered yonder oak hath softened its trunk. No; the seared wood is the fitter for the use of the workmen—the hardened and the dried-up heart is that which can best bear the task imposed by these dismal times. God and man will no longer endure the unbridled profligacy of the dissolute—the scoffing of the profane—the contempt of the divine laws—the infraction of human rights. The times demand righters and avengers, and there will be no ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... blusteringly disdainful of his intellectual superiors, and brazenly foul-mouthed. It was as though he was shouting: "I don't have to fear or respect anybody now! I have got a lot of money. I can do as I damn please." More than one pure man became dissolute in the riot of easily gotten wealth. A real-estate speculator once hinted to me, in a fit of drunken confidence, that his wife, hitherto a good woman and a simple home body, had gone astray through the new vistas of life that had suddenly been flung open to her. One fellow who ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... juvenile aspirations. He was apprenticed to a weaver in Paisley, and continued, with occasional intermissions, to prosecute the labours of the loom. His life was much chequered by misfortune. Fond of society, he was led to associate with some dissolute persons, who professed to be admirers of his genius, and was enticed by their example to neglect the concerns of business, and the duties of the family-hearth, for the delusive pleasures of the tavern. From his youth he composed verses. In 1835, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... transmission of office from father to son dealt a heavy blow at the popularity of the parliamentary body, which had already deeply suffered through shameful abuses, the enormity of the fees, the ignorance of some of the members, and the dissolute habits ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... come back," said Jacob, turning very white, but speaking clearly and distinctly, "I would drive him from my door, and tell him to be gone forever! A wine-bibber, dissolute, passionate, headstrong, having no reverence for God or man, no love for his mother, no sense of duty towards his father; I have disowned him, once and forever, and utterly cast him out! Let him beware and not come back to tempt me to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... It would hardly interest you to follow, as I did, each step by which the heroine of my history progressed ever downward on the path of vice. We find her at last traveling in Italy under the protection of the Count von Erlenstein, an Austrian noble of great wealth and dissolute character. She has cast aside the name she once bore, and, anticipating the jewel-borrowed cognomens of Cora Pearl and La Reine Topaze, she adopts a title from the profusion of pink coral jewelry which she habitually wears, ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... who mimicked beasts and their voices, ball-players and buffoons. Only a few persons looked at them, however, since wine had darkened the eyes of the audience. The feast passed by degrees into a drunken revel and a dissolute orgy. The Syrian damsels, who appeared at first in the bacchic dance, mingled now with the guests. The music changed into a disordered and wild outburst of citharas, lutes, Armenian cymbals, Egyptian sistra, trumpets, ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... said Charles. "But there is another question of greater importance still—Alfred's moral welfare. His early separation from his family would be a sad thing; but not half so fearful as the risk of sending him into the society of the dissolute, or, at best, the careless, where his duty will lie in scenes of bloodshed and devastation, where his employment will be to contrive and execute plans for spreading ruin and wasting life. Can we devote him to an employment like this? Some ...
— Principle and Practice - The Orphan Family • Harriet Martineau
... crude storehouse. He had not come out of any curiosity. He had not come to contemplate the havoc wrought on the bodies of this flotsam of dissolute life. He had come for the simple purpose of offering some cheer in the ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... wife; "and I soon found one. And the next step was to throw away all false judgment in regard to such things. And so I can see more clearly than you into the right of the matter.—Would you hesitate a moment between Tom Weir and the dissolute son of an ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... ask your advice, father, rather than to confess the sins I have committed in the last week. Since I have come to live in London I have been drawn into the society of the dissolute and the impure." ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... he makes out a pretty good case. He approves the remark of Scipione Ammirato, that she contracted four successive marriages through a desire to have direct heirs. Another notices that had she been dissolute, she would have preferred the liberty of remaining a widow. The poet cites Pope Innocent VI, who gave her the golden rose, and sets great store upon the expression of Saint Catherine of Siena, who calls her "Venerabile madre in Gesu Cristo," and he concludes by ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... driven them from their quiet homes, plundered them of their property, ravished their daughters, drenched their fields with the blood of the innocent, and whitened the highways with the bones of his own dissolute but deluded followers, and spread desolation over the land, had to leave it a vanquished miscreant. And upon the principle, that if you give power to the idle and reckless they will make heroes to suit their kind and circumstances, he ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... he nevertheless preserved his rank and officer's cross. He rejoined General Lallemand in Texas, returning from America in October, 1819, thoroughly degenerated. He ran an opposition newspaper in Paris in 1820-1821. He led a most dissolute life; was the lover of Mariette Godeschal; and attended all the parties of Tullia, Florentine, Florine, Coralie, Matifat and Camusot. Not content with using the income of his brother Joseph, he stole a coffer entrusted to him, and despoiled ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... most part automatic. 'Whatsoever a man soweth, that'—and not some other crop—'will he also reap.' The wages of sin are paid in ready money; and it is as just to lay them at God's door as it would be to charge Him with inflicting the disease which the dissolute man brings upon himself. It is no arbitrary appointment of God's that 'he that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption'; nor is it His will acting as that of a jealous despot which makes it inevitably ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... a pupil of Xenocrates, and succeeded him as the head of his school. There is a story that he had been a very dissolute young man, and that one day, at the head of a band of revellers, he burst into the school of Xenocrates, when his attention was so arrested by the discourse of the philosopher, which happened to be on the subject ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... not left to the vengeance of the law. The colonists, of higher grades, preserved the distinction between the guilty and the innocent, which it is the object of public trials to establish; but the lower orders, and especially the dissolute and the worthless, justified hatred to the race, and finally, systematic massacre by the individual acts ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... have the face to come here with their religion, when the dissolute white man is in every port manifesting a lust and greed and brutality which Chinese are accustomed to associate with the citizenship and religion attributed to Christianity. No wonder it is hard for them to make converts ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... He was to obtain full emancipation from the thraldom of Rome in Rome itself. He was sent there to represent seven convents of his own order, who were at variance with the Vicar-general. He had always imagined Rome to be the abode of sanctity. Ignorance, levity, dissolute manners, a profane spirit, a contempt for all that is sacred, a scandalous traffic in divine things. Such was the spectacle afforded by this unhappy city. Even when performing their most sacred ceremonies, the priests derided them. Some of them boasted that when pretending to consecrate ...
— Count Ulrich of Lindburg - A Tale of the Reformation in Germany • W.H.G. Kingston
... Christian. Millions of the heathen, with thousands of years of savage and bestial heredity behind them, have become pure and loyal disciples of the spotless Redeemer. The fierce heathen Africaner, as well as the dissolute Jerry McCauley, have illustrated this ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... boys stood by perplexed and distressed, Brother Segrim came back, and said, "So, young sirs, have you seen enough of your doting kinsman? The sub-prior bids me say that we harbour no strange, idling, lubber lads nor strange dogs here. 'Tis enough for us to be saddled with dissolute old men-at-arms without all their idle kin making an excuse to come and pay their devoirs. These corrodies are a heavy charge and a weighty abuse, and if there be the visitation the king's majesty speaks of they will be one of the first ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... teachers of French to instruct her daughter in the literature of that country over which she was destined to reign. From that pleasure-loving metropolis two play actors were sent to take charge of her education, one of whom was a man of notoriously dissolute character. As the connection between Maria Antoinette and Louis, the heir apparent to the throne of France, was already contemplated, some solicitude was felt by members of the court of Versailles in reference to the impropriety of this selection, and the French embassador at Vienna was requested ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... exactly respectful, nor yet exactly disrespectful. Ben looked up from his seat. The speaker was Barclay Fetters, and his companion one Tom McRae, another dissolute young man of the town. Ben got up unsteadily and walked over to where ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... youth, and remembered that at dawn he was to die in his company, he realized that he had used him ill, that his behaviour towards him had been that of the dissolute ruffler he was become, rather than of the gentleman ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... viz. "That about two years since, her too indulgent Parents," naming a Family of good account in the Country, "had unfortunately married her to Mr. —— a Mercer on Ludgate-Hill; but that his Life, since their Marriage, had been so scandalous and dissolute, that, in short, he had not only ruin'd her Fortune, but she fear'd her Constitution, by his Conversation with Scrumpets; and that her Condition was such, she knew not what to do with herself, nor how to make her Case known to any living Creature." He was going directly ...
— The Tricks of the Town: or, Ways and Means of getting Money • John Thomson
... In dissolute array... The glitter and the jumbled finery And strangely juxtaposed Cans, paper, rags And colors decomposing, Faded like old hair, With flashes of barbaric hues And eyes of mystery... Flung Like ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... from the brilliancy of his talents, and a favorite, too, from the graceful pliancy of his manners, and apparent sweetness of his disposition. But with all his grace and sweetness, he was unprincipled and dissolute, and exerted the commanding influence he had acquired over the minds of his companions, to lead them into temptation, and lure them to sin. Yet he had the art to appear himself the tempted, as well as they. ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... police department of this city is decidedly hostile to color, and the daily acts of persecution in this city are manifest in the number of arrests and false imprisonment made where no shadow of criminality exists, while gangs of idle rebel soldiers and other dissolute rowdies insult, rob, and assault ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz
... emancipated from all that temper of reserve which would have been impressed upon her by habitual anxiety for the good opinion of virtuous and high-principled women, the poor lady was tempted into an elopement with two dissolute brothers; for what ultimate purpose on either side, was never made clear to the public. Why a lady should elope from her own house, and the protection of her own servants, under whatever impulse, seemed generally unintelligible. ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... Charles V. some centuries later, by going and seeking in a monastery isolation from the world and repose. But, in the same domains and at the end of the same century, his grandson William VII. was the most vagabondish, dissolute, and violent of princes; and his morals were so scandalous that the bishop of Poitiers, after having warned him to no purpose, considered himself forced to excommunicate him. The duke suddenly burst into the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the vice of busy idleness they display other vices. The same inability to forgo immediate enjoyment, at whatever cost, shows itself in other acts. They are nearly always spendthrifts, usually drunkards, often sexually dissolute. Next to their lack of industry, their most conspicuous quality is their incurable mendacity. Their readiness, their resources, their promptitude, the elaborate circumstantiality of their lies are astonishing. ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... set at the "fortification-gate," to prevent these outrages. It is amusing to see Boston assuming the aspect of a walled city, guarded, probably, by a detachment of church-members, with a deacon at their head. Governor Belcher makes proclamation against certain "loose and dissolute people" who have been wont to stop passengers in the streets, on the Fifth of November, "otherwise called Pope's Day," and levy contributions for the building of bonfires. In this instance, the populace are more puritanic ...
— Old News - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... The Fable of the Bees there are Encomiums upon Stews, which I can assure you, Sir, is not true. What might have given a Handle to this Charge, must be a Political Dissertation concerning the best Method to guard and preserve Women of Honour and Virtue from the Insults of dissolute Men, whose Passions are often ungovernable. As in this there is a Dilemma between two Evils, which it is impracticable to shun both, so I have treated it with the utmost Caution, and begin thus: I am far from encouraging Vice, and should think ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville
... very rich man, Hubert, one of the richest in all London; yet set not your heart on wealth, and above all do not ape nobility or strive to climb from the honest class of which you come into the ranks of those idle and dissolute cut-throats and pick-brains who are called the great. Lighten their pockets if you will, but do not seek to wear their silken, scented garments. That is my ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... windows of Aladdin's palace, the little gems and the large all equally pure, needing no cement but the fitting of facets; while the associative work of immodest men is all jointless, and astir with wormy ambition; putridly dissolute, and forever on the crawl: so that if it come together for a time, it can only be by metamorphosis through a flash of volcanic fire out of the vale of Siddim, vitrifying the clay of it, and fastening the slime, only to end in wilder scattering; ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... industrious apprentices, and the lesson taught by Hogarth's famous pictures is as applicable to them that go down to the sea in ships as to the workers at the loom. It is doubtful, too, whether the sailor is either more gullible or more dissolute when in port than the cowboy when in town for a day's frolic, or the miner just in camp with a pocket full of dust, after months of solitude on his claim. Men are much of a sort, whatever their calling. After weeks of monotonous ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... was in general disrepute. The dissolute and declining Romans were cracking lewd jokes in the very faces of their gods, the myriad followers of Confucius, Buddha and Zoroaster were either too remote or too helpless to matter in one way or another. Talmudic Judaism and Oriental ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... gracefully written, however, and that on the death of Mr. Fox particularly so. In his "Maxims" he speaks of women disrespectfully—a consequence, no doubt, of his disregard for the domestic virtues, and of the dissolute manners which prevailed in the higher ranks of French society in his time—and of the priesthood contemptuously. No hatred is so intense, or so durable, as that which is begotten of apostasy; and a renegade clerk, or a renegade politician, may be always expected to rail fiercely against his original ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... letters that Harvey was not without uneasiness lest his friend, from his gay and pleasure-loving nature, and the temptations round him, should be carried away into the vices of an age, which, though very brilliant and high-tempered, was also a very dissolute one. He couches his counsels mainly in Latin; but they point to real danger; and he adds in English,—"Credit me, I will never lin [ cease] baiting at you, till I have rid you quite of this yonkerly and womanly humour." But in the second pair of letters of April, 1580, a lady appears. Whether ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... young men of dissolute lives and irreligious spirits, on hearing of the miracles at Santa Maria Nuova, begin to jeer and laugh on the subject, and, moved only by curiosity, go to the church, approach the bier with mock demonstrations of respect. But no sooner have they knelt before ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... substantial legacy is divided into two shares, one of which falls to a man, young, dissolute and clever, and the other to a girl, pretty and inexperienced, there is laughter in the hells. But, to the girl's legacy add another item—a strong, stern guardian, and the issue becomes one less easy ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... Boileau, among French writers, and Cowley among the English, were his favourite authors. He also read many books of physic; for long before thirty his constitution was so broken by his life, that he turned his attention to remedies, and to medical treatment; and it is remarkable how many men of dissolute lives take up the same sort of reading, in the vain hope of repairing a course of dissolute living. As a writer, his style was at once forcible and lively; as a companion, he was wildly vivacious: madly, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... He was a tall, stout man, with long, grayish side-whiskers. He was married, but, like his wife, led a very dissolute life. They did not interfere with each other. On the morning in question he received a note from a Swiss governess, who had lived in his house during the summer, and was now passing on her way from the South to St. Petersburg. She wrote that she would be in town ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... joined, and contributed nearly L30,000. Unfortunately they were, Ralegh has recorded, mostly dissolute, disorderly, and ungovernable. Their friends were cheaply rid of them at the hazard of thirty, forty, or fifty pounds apiece. Some soon showed themselves unmanageable, and were dismissed before the fleet sailed. Of the discharged a correspondent ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... Shaker village, and was said never to have clasped a woman's hand in his own, and to have no conception of a closer tie than the cold fraternal one of the sect. Old Father Ephraim was the most awful character of all. In his youth he had been a dissolute libertine, but was converted by Mother Ann herself, and had partaken of the wild fanaticism of the early Shakers. Tradition whispered at the firesides of the village that Mother Ann had been compelled to sear his heart of flesh with a red-hot iron before it could ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of consequences. For instance, fidelity to a trust is a law of immutable morality subject to no casuistry whatever. You have been left executor to a friend—you are to pay over his last legacy to X, though a dissolute scoundrel; and you are to give no shilling of it to the poor brother of X, though a good man, and a wise man, struggling with adversity. You are absolutely excluded from all contemplation of results. It was your deceased friend's right ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... From the moment of his accession, Caracallus had exhibited an inordinate ambition; and this ambition had early taken the shape of a special desire for the glory of Oriental conquests. The weak and dissolute son of Severus fancied himself, and called himself, a second Alexander; and thus he was in honor bound to imitate that hero's marvellous exploits. The extension of the Roman territory towards the East became very soon his great object, and he shrank from no steps, however base and ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... preaching of soporific truths (or untruths) to keep the mob quietly at work, while we amuse ourselves; and the necessity for this amusement is fastening on us as a feverous disease of parched throat and wandering eyes—senseless, dissolute, merciless. How literally that word Dis-Ease; the Negation and impossibility of Ease, expresses the entire moral state of our ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... supersede, obsession Sentio, sensum feel presentiment, consensus Sequor, secutus follow sequence, persecute, ensue Signum sign insignia, designate *Solus alone solitude, desolate Solvo, solutum loosen solvent, dissolute *Somnus sleep somnambulist, insomnia *Sono sound consonant, resonance *Sors, sortis lot sort, assortment Specio, spectum look despicable, suspect Spiro, spiratum breathe perspire, conspiracy *Spondeo, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... been answered? Whom did you look upon as your savior, your rescuer? That big American, who loves you better than life. Philip Quentin had saved you from the brigands, and you loved him for it. Now, Dorothy Garrison, you hate him because he saved you from a worse fate—marriage with the most dissolute hypocrite in Europe, the most cunning of all adventurers. You are not trying to check the tears that blind your eyes; but you will not confess to me that your tears come from a heart full of belief in the man who loves you deeply enough to risk his honor and his life to save ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... year A.D. 618 the House of T'ang entered upon its glorious course of three centuries in duration. Under a strong but dissolute ruler immediately preceding, China had once more become a united empire, undivided against itself; and although wars and rebellions were not wanting to disturb the even tenor of its way, the general picture presented to us under the new dynasty of the T'angs is one of national peace, ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... promenading the Champs Elysees, although but thirty-two years old, was now virtually dictator of France, and the greatest orator in the Republic. What a striking example of the great reserve of personal power, which, even in dissolute lives, is sometimes called out by a great emergency or sudden sorrow, and ever after leads the life to victory! When Gambetta found that his first speech had electrified all France, his great reserve ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... passed before him; the retrospect became the present; and his heart swelled painfully within him; for he thought on what he had been, and on what he was, until, drawing his coarse hand across his brows, he gave forth a dissolute song, seeking, like many who ought to be wiser, to stifle conscience ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... brother's keeper? He is not an Abel, Is strange to my roof, and no guest at my table: I know not his mates, we are not near each other, He swills in the pothouse, that dissolute brother!— But there's your example?—The drunkards can't see it, And if they are told of it, scorn it and flee it; Example?—Your children!—No doubt it is right To be to them always a law and a light; But moderate temperance is the vise way To ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... "The dissolute, spendthrift habits of his son," was suggested. "These are sufficient to weigh down the father's spirits,—to bow ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur
... not made for each other. He was thriftless, idle, dissolute—the small roue of the neighbourhood: she was careful, industrious, virtuous. He was good-looking—of a dark, saturnine beauty, insidiously impressive, like the dangerous charms of a tempter; she was radiant and lustrous with the sweet graces of modesty, innocence, and intelligence. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various
... The new tendency which manifested itself so vividly in our country was reflected by their impetuous and susceptible natures with all its noble yearnings, its virtues and excesses exaggerated. The frivolous pastimes, the senseless or dissolute amusements that were so fashionable in those days were abandoned for serious reading, gathering of information and investigation of current events. They had already opinions of their own, which not rarely they could utter with striking audacity."—I ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... is for Oliver, casting aspersion On Omar, that awfully dissolute Persian, Though secretly longing to ...
— An Alphabet of Celebrities • Oliver Herford
... Themistocles, his conduct had been wild and dissolute [143]; and with his father from a child, he had acquired, with the experience, something of the license, of camps. Like Themistocles also, he was little skilled in the graceful accomplishments of his countrymen; he cultivated neither the art of music, nor the brilliancies ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to reach the city in the dusk. There was danger of running upon a snag, or happening to attract the attention of dissolute characters, who, taking advantage of the darkness of the night and the fact of the cruisers being strangers to the place, might attempt ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... Rouen and the abbess of Montivilliers, is but little to the credit of either party. It represents the lady-abbess as by no means free from irregularities in the performance of her office; it charges one of her nuns with dissolute life; and it arraigns the primate himself of being the cause, if not the immediate instrument, of scandal:—"Siquidem, ex parte abbatissae fuit propositum et probatum, quod quidam, qui cum eodem archiepiscopo et suis praedecessoribus ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... two sisters were in duty bound to pull out their handkerchiefs. Their brother had lived a most dissolute life, but then ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... protruded? The human heart is more subtly constructed. Those romantic Christian hagiologists saw to that. And—to come nearer to the point—could her fine tension of soul have been built up on a body as dissolute and weak as a candle in ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... Maintenon were squandered on the useless decoration of her own person, or hoarded for the purpose of elevating into rank and notice an insignificant family, who had no other claim to such distinction than that derived from the easy honesty of a female relation, and the dissolute extravagance of a vain and ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... turners, shoemakers, tailors, blacksmiths; there are cab-drivers, young women living alone, and female pedlers, laundresses, old-clothes dealers, money-lenders, day-laborers, and people without any definite employment; and also beggars and dissolute women. ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... subdued harmony with my general impression of Aureataland; but the peculiar position in which I stood gave to my mind an unusual activity of perception. Among this band of careless, drunken revelers I sat vigilant, restless, and impatient; feigning to take a leading part in their dissolute hilarity, I was sober, collected, and alert to my very finger-tips. I anxiously watched their bearing and expression. I led them on to speak of the President, rejoicing when I elicited open murmurs and covert threats at his base ingratitude to the men on whose support ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope |
