"Pernicious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... all the decisions deny the defendant the right to introduce any testimony, whether expert or otherwise, that a book is of artistic value and not pornographic, and that its effect upon normal persons is not pernicious. Upon this point the jury is the sole judge, and it cannot be helped to its decision by taking other opinions, or by hearing evidence as to what is ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... Sam Caldwell had made his headquarters at the home of the United States Consul, who owed his appointment to the influence of Mr. Forrester, and who, in behalf of that gentleman, was very justly suspected by Alvarez of "pernicious activity." On taking his leave of Senora Rojas, which he did as soon as Roddy had been shown the door, Caldwell hastened to the Consulate, and, as there might be domiciliary visits to the houses of all the Vegaistas, Colonel ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... that wisdom which planned the most beautiful parts of the world. Many poisons are valuable medicines, Storms are beneficial; and diseases often promote life. These Termites are indeed frequently pernicious to mankind, but they are also very useful and even necessary. One valuable purpose which they serve is, to destroy decayed trees and other substances which, if left on the surface of the ground in hot climates, would in a short time pollute the air. In this respect they resemble very much ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... himself; he had thrown it up to work, to sit quietly down and bend over his task. If he should go abroad his parent might think he had some weak-minded view of joining Julia and trying, with however little hope, to win her back—an illusion it would be singularly pernicious to encourage. His desire for Julia's society had succumbed for the present at any rate to a dire interruption—he had become more and more aware of their speaking a different language. Nick felt like a young man who has gone to the Rhineland to "get up" his German for an examination—committed ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... the silly colors," he said, "and useless dawns on hill-slopes facing South, and butterflies flapping along them as soon as the sun rose high, and foolish maidens coming out to dance, and the warm mad West wind, and worst of all that pernicious influence Love." ...
— Fifty-One Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... asses. This inscription is of great interest to the antiquary, and to the archoeologist. That bakers were not slow in organizing the grist mills is shown by a passage from Paulus Diaconus, xiii, 2: "as time went on, the owners of these turned the public corn mills into pernicious frauds. For, as the mill stones were fixed in places under ground, they set up booths on either side of these chambers and caused harlots to stand for hire in them, so that by these means they deceived ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... to me," said Mr. Gilmore, "that to be successful in love, a man should not be in love at all; or, at any rate, he should hide it." Then he went off home alone, feeling on his heart that pernicious load of a burden which comes from the unrestrained longing for some good thing which cannot be attained. It seemed to him now that nothing in life would be worth a thought if Mary Lowther should continue to say him nay; and it seemed to him, too, ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... shood not be permitted to be out after 7 o'clock, P.M., in the evenin; they shoodent leave the plantashen onto wich they wuz employed; they shood work every day till 7; and to do away with the pernicious work uv the Freedmen's Bureau, no man and wife wich hed bin married by a chaplin uv the Bureau, or by any one else, shood be employed on the same plantashen, and also no father or mother and child. Sich ez violated these ordinances shood be arrested by anybody, ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... their divinations from birds, chiefly regard the vulture, though Herodorus Ponticus relates that Hercules was always very joyful when a vulture appeared to him upon any occasion. For it is a creature the least hurtful of any, pernicious neither to corn, fruit-tree, nor cattle; it preys only on carrion, and never kills or hurts any living thing; and as for birds, it touches not them, though they are dead, as being of its own species, whereas eagles, owls, and hawks mangle and kill their ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... ideas been associated with Anarchism under the name of Anabaptism. Persecution, which fifteen years later More advocated and practised as the unavoidable remedy for the spread of doctrines which he had come to regard as actively pernicious, was alien to his instincts; in his ideal Commonwealth, men might expound whatever they honestly held, provided they did not deny God and the Future Life. More's nature was tolerant and charitable. But his own convictions ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... rallying and consolidating their scattered and demoralized forces, and they kept the Rumanians from balking the Bolshevist work of preparing another attack. As one of their French critics[148] remarked, they dealt exclusively in negatives—some of them pernicious enough, whereas a positive policy was imperatively called for. To reconstruct a nation, not to say a ruined world, a series of contradictory vetoes is hardly sufficient. But another explanation of their attitude was offered ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... ages, have never better pleased themselves or satisfied their readers than when they have descanted upon, deplored, and denounced the pernicious influence of money upon the heart and the understanding. "Filthy lucre"—"so much trash as may be grasped thus"—"yellow mischief," I know not, or choose not, to recount how many justly injurious names have been applied ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 7, 1841 • Various
... seventeen hundred and twenty-two (writes Mademoiselle Gautier), while I was still leading a life of pleasure—according to the pernicious ideas of pleasure which pass current in the world—I happen to awake, contrary to my usual custom, between eight and nine o'clock in the morning. I remember that it is my birthday; I ring for my people; and ...
— A Fair Penitent • Wilkie Collins
... Valentine and Orson, Cinderella, Bluebeard, and such stories, are a web of false and exaggerated statements that will, and do produce injurious effects upon the child's mind. The story of Aladdin's Lamp has made many a child desire to enjoy wealth without labor, and has exerted a most pernicious, though unsuspected, influence upon his future. Children, not less than men, seek an easy road to the objects of their desires; and while works of imagination are to be by no means discarded in mental training, such should not be selected as give false notions of the busy ...
— The Philosophy of Teaching - The Teacher, The Pupil, The School • Nathaniel Sands
... considerable emotion; then I can readily admit that in strict truth this title belongs to many of the Fathers. . . . They admitted, with good intentions no doubt, yet most inconsiderately, a great error in regard to morals, and pernicious to Christianity; an error which, through all succeeding ages to our times, has produced an infinity of mistakes and evils of various kinds. Jesus, our Savior, prescribed one and the same rule of life or duty to all His disciples. But the Christian doctors, either ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... difficult problem in discussing the principles of Misson and Carracioli is to attempt an explanation of why Defoe, a Presbyterian, should have made his protagonists into deists. Defoe attacks Carracioli's deistic arguments through his narrator, Captain Johnson, who remarks that such ideas are pernicious only to "weak Men who cannot discover their Fallacy." But since similar ideas appear in Robert Drury's Journal published a year later, it may be assumed that the arguments of the deists held a certain fascination for Defoe at this time. Carracioli's deism also has a ...
— Of Captain Mission • Daniel Defoe
... own; giving him water to drink, teaching him sobriety, and stripping him of his garlands. He, who should have been sitting over his wine, now became acquainted with the perverse, the harassing, the pernicious quibbles of philosophy. Alas! the ruddy glow has departed from his cheek; he is pale and wasted; his songs are all forgotten; there are times when he will sit far on into the night, tasting neither meat nor drink, while he reels out the meaningless platitudes with which I have so abundantly supplied ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... Deeply impressed with these sentiments, we most humbly beseech your Majesty to remove all restraints on your Majesty's Governors of this colony, which inhibit to their assisting to such laws as might check so very pernicious a commerce." No notice was taken of the petition by the crown. This was the principal grievance complained of by Virginia at the ...
— Anti-Slavery Opinions before the Year 1800 - Read before the Cincinnati Literary Club, November 16, 1872 • William Frederick Poole
... built up upon the germ theory of disease and treatment. Since the microscope has revealed the presence and seemingly entirely pernicious activity of certain microorganisms in connection with certain diseases, it has been assumed that bacteria are the direct, primary causes of most diseases. Therefore, the slogan now is: "Kill the bacteria (by poisonous antiseptics, serums and antitoxins) and ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... declared in his preface. In this play, as in Greek tragedy, the Chorus comments upon the action as it unfolds itself, and the great interests at stake lift the poet to lofty heights of lyrical inspiration. The lyrics of the chorus, far from being a relapse into the pernicious practice, prevalent before the time of Corneille, of providing such passages for the mere display of the actor's ability, are pure chants and hymns, like the Cantiques Spirituels which Racine composed subsequently in detached form, and are a highly appropriate ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... performances—in a word, all the fumum and strepitus of a German inn in fair time. The waiter brought the Major a mug of beer, as a matter of course, and he took out a cigar and amused himself with that pernicious vegetable and a newspaper until his charge should come ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... entertain for the blacks makes us fancy many things that are founded neither in reason nor experience; and an unwillingness to part with property of so valuable a kind will furnish a thousand arguments to show the impracticability or pernicious tendency of a scheme which requires such a sacrifice. But it should be considered, that, if we do not make use of them in this way, the enemy probably will; and that the best way to counteract the temptations they ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... and cried, "What is it?" She made answer, "Father is having Dick Halliwell beaten for some evill communication with Jack. 'Tis seldom or never he proceedeth to such extremities, soe the offence must needs have beene something pernicious; and, e'en as 'tis, father is standing by to see he is not smitten over-much; ne'erthelesse, Giles lays the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... 18, 1861, surrendered, at San Antonio, Texas, all the military posts and other property in his possession; and this after receiving an order relieving him from command. He was an old and tried soldier of the United States Army, and his example was pernicious in a high degree. ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... Showdown were garnished with tin cans and trash, dirt and desolation. Unlike the ordinary cow-town this place was not sprightly, but morose, with an aspect of hating itself for existing. Even the railroad swung many miles to the south as though anxious to leave the town to its own pernicious isolation. ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... existence of such persons! Hence, the study of books makes them worse than they ever were before. But it isn't the books that ruin them; the misfortune is that they make improper use of books! That is why study doesn't come up to ploughing and sowing and trading; as these pursuits exercise no serious pernicious influences. As far, however, as you and I go, we should devote our minds simply to matters connected with needlework and spinning; for we will then be fulfilling our legitimate duties. Yet, it so happens that we too know a few characters. But, as we can read, it behoves ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... scorn, is another prominent and unsightly feature of such societies; they do harm by the cliquerie which they generate, collecting little knots of little men, no individual of whom can stand his own ground, but a group of whom, by leaning hard together, can, and do, exercise a most pernicious influence; seeking petty gain and class celebrity, they exert their joint-stock brains to convert science into pounds, shillings, and pence; and, when they have managed to poke one foot upon the ladder of notoriety, use the other to kick furiously at the poor aspirants ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... received some pernicious teaching down yonder," he said, with a shake of his abundant locks. "Mr. Gessner, I may tell you, has an abhorrence of socialism. If you wish to please him, ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... Ghost falling on Cornelius and his family while hearing the preaching of Peter. Paul teaches that no man is justified before God by the works of the law; for sin only cometh by the law. He that trusts in works condemns faith as the most pernicious arrogancy and error of all others. Here thou seest plainly that such a man is not righteous, being destitute of that faith and belief which is necessary to make him acceptable before God and His Son; yea, he is an enemy to this faith, and therefore to righteousness also. Thus ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... the cankerworm restrain, The dew that blights and tarnishes the grain, The drought, the nipping winds, the lightning's glare, Which to the growing corn pernicious are. ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... created, called oino-mania, (see Glossary,) and the only remedy is total abstinence, and that for a long period, from the alcoholic poison. And what makes the danger more fearful is, that the brain-cells never are so renewed but that this pernicious stimulus will bring back the disease in full force, so that a man once subject to it is never safe except by maintaining perpetual and total abstinence from every kind of alcoholic drink. Dr. Day, who for many years has had charge of an inebriate asylum, states ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... of cases to which I applied it was that of compound fractures, in which the effects of decomposition in the injured part were especially striking and pernicious. The results have been such as to establish conclusively the great principle that all local inflammatory mischief and general febrile disturbances which follow severe injuries are due to the irritating and poisonous influence of decomposing blood or ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... other outcome of George Liddell's reappearance. Her quick imagination depicted what the boys' lives would be under the jurisdiction of their mother and her husband—the worries, the suppression, the sense of being always naughty and in the wrong, the different yet equally pernicious effect such treatment ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... law" was an old story to the owner of the Cheroot Works. He kept apprised of the signs of the times; and he happened to know in some detail the provisions of the pernicious legislation the Labor Commissioner was cooking up in secret,—"that'd confiscate two years' profits from every near mill in town," said MacQueen. But the rest was news, and highly unwelcome news. To fight blackmail legislation against progressive business was comparatively simple; ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... 'tupto' and "amo" to which the Bishop had referred. But in the serious steps which he now intended to take, he was determined to have positive proof from the hands of the Bishop himself. The Bishop had not directed the pernicious newspaper with his own hands, but if called upon, could not deny that it had been sent from the palace by his orders. Having received it, the Doctor wrote back at ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... pernicious charm of Italy worked on her, and, instead of acquiring information, she began to be happy. She puzzled out the Italian notices—the notices that forbade people to introduce dogs into the church—the notice that prayed people, in the interest of health and out of respect to the sacred edifice ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... person as yet, but I can remember as far back as maybe some twenty year, when hand-labour were encouraged and respected, and no mischief-maker had ventured to introduce these here machines which is so pernicious. Now, I'm not a cloth-dresser myself, but by trade a tailor. Howsiver, my heart is of a softish nature. I'm a very feeling man, and when I see my brethren oppressed, like my great namesake of old, I stand up for 'em; ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... meddlesome spirit, which, in the garb of learned research, goes prying about the traces of history, casting down its monuments, and marring and mutilating its fairest trophies. Care should be taken to vindicate great names from such pernicious ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... to the tolerance and freedom of higher civilization and purer ethics in normal, healthy man; worse, because crime (and I mean by crime all anti-social acts) has greatly increased on account of the pernicious influence of degeneration. ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... passion of Rousseau, so was vanity beyond dispute the grand characteristic of Voltaire, (the proximity of Fernay may excuse my here comparing him with Rousseau,) and this passion induced him to pervert transcendent talents to the most pernicious and fatal purposes. ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... the veriest child! Do not be deceived, Hernandez is still the same man, even though he has left his earthly body behind. Do not think he has been lifted at once into eternal bliss. The Church has taught such rubbish for ages, and has based its pernicious teachings upon the grossly misunderstood words of Jesus. The Church is a failure—a dead, dead failure, in every sense of the word! And that man lying there in his grave is a ghastly ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... pathetic as the condition of the English farm labourer—so hopeless, so cheerless. Our Scottish peasants have more education, more energy, and are more disposed to emigrate. Their wages are fixed more by custom than by competition, and their independence has not been sapped by centuries of a most pernicious poor law system; yet, though I think their condition very much better than those of the same class south of the Tweed, it is nothing like ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... person of the age of discretion, which is accounted fourteene yeares, who shall wittingly and willingly make, or publish, any lye which may be pernicious to the publique weal, or tending to the dammage or injury of any perticular person, to deceive and abuse the people with false news or reportes, and the same duly prooved in any courte, or before any one magistrate, who hath hereby power granted to heare and determine all ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... superior to feats of conjuring and legerdemain, tricks with cards, and impositions of various kinds, which are put in some books for the amusement of young people, and which are highly pernicious both to ...
— The Book of Sports: - Containing Out-door Sports, Amusements and Recreations, - Including Gymnastics, Gardening & Carpentering • William Martin
... charity, either from the Government or from his neighbors. This bill, which proposes to give him land at an almost nominal price out of the property of the Government, will go far to demoralize the people and repress this noble spirit of independence. It may introduce among us those pernicious social theories which have proved ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... has not experienced the evil of gold thieving from reduction mills can have any idea of the pernicious element it is, and the difficulty, once that it has got 'well hold,' of rooting it out. It permeates every class of society in the district connected with the industry, and managers, amalgamators, assayers, accountants, ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... refusing. They owed it as a return for the generosity of the king, they owed it to their own relatives, they owed it to the memory of their ancestors, not to show greater animosity to the ancient religion than to the new and pernicious sect of Anabaptists, born into the world for the express purpose of destroying empires; they owed it to their many fellow-citizens, who would otherwise be driven into exile, because deprived of that which ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... unconscious response. With the solemn conviction of the maiden who, until past the meridian, had never loved, she looked on Angela as far too young and immature to think of marrying, yet too shallow, vain and frivolous, too corrupted, in fact, by that pernicious society school—not to shrink from flirtations that might mean nothing to the man but would be damnation to the girl. Even the name of this big, blue-eyed, fair-skinned young votary of science had much about it that made her fairly bristle, for ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... Piece of this Kind is much wanted in the World, which is but too much, as well as too early, debauched by pernicious Novels. I know nothing Entertaining of that Kind that one might venture to recommend to the Perusal (much less the Imitation) of the Youth of either Sex: All that I have hitherto read, tends only to corrupt their Principles, mislead their Judgments, and initiate them ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson
... or even to the over-taxed subject, peace is no peace, but a constant and systematised struggle, often more pernicious in its effects than even the anarchy of open war. A war of this kind numbers its slain by millions, for the victims of famine are victims of political crime on the part of a nation's rulers. I have no time now to talk ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... that the first place he came to was the dwelling of the Devil, and that all who had died drunkards were there, with flames issuing out of their mouths. He acknowledged that he had himself been a drunkard, but that this awful scene had reformed him. Such was the effect of his preaching against this pernicious vice, that many of his followers became alarmed, and ceased to drink the "fire-water," a name by which whiskey is significantly called among the Indians. He likewise, declaimed against the custom of Indian women intermarrying with white men, and denounced ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... can spoil only his own part; while an incapable or malevolent conductor ruins all. Happy indeed may the composer esteem himself when the conductor into whose hands he has fallen is not at once incapable and inimical; for nothing can resist the pernicious influence of this person. The most admirable orchestra is then paralyzed, the most excellent singers are perplexed and rendered dull; there is no longer any vigor or unity; under such direction the noblest daring of the author appears extravagant, enthusiasm beholds its soaring flight checked, ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... slim!' with grief he said. 'My glorious heads o'ertops The branches of the copse; My legs are my disgrace.' As thus he talk'd, a bloodhound gave him chase. To save his life he flew Where forests thickest grew. His horns,—pernicious ornament!— Arresting him where'er he went, Did unavailing render What else, in such a strife, Had saved his precious life— His legs, as fleet as slender. Obliged to yield, he cursed the gear Which nature ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... the General looked astonished. He had not yet fully measured little Jim's ambition that stopped at nothing. Hitherto it had been that pernicious ambition that desires, and at the same time, lazily refuses to put forth the exertion necessary to attain, or it had been that other scarcely less reprehensible ambition that exerts itself simply to outshine others, and Mrs. O'Callaghan had had good cause to be anxious about ...
— The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys • Gulielma Zollinger
... patron and Coryphaeus of this tribe, Nicolo Machiavel, laid down this for a master rule in his political scheme: 'That the show of religion was helpful to the politician, but the reality of it hurtful and pernicious.'" ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... again, with his usual commentaries of 'How CAN you be so ridiculous, Eugene!' and 'What an absurd fellow you are!' but when his laugh was out, there was something serious, if not anxious, in his face. Despite that pernicious assumption of lassitude and indifference, which had become his second nature, he was strongly attached to his friend. He had founded himself upon Eugene when they were yet boys at school; and at this hour ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... motion the ominous sign of haphazard floundering. She was no longer struggling intelligently. It was the beginning of the end; and the note of busy concern in Captain MacWhirr's voice sickened him like an exhibition of blind and pernicious folly. ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... possessors first acquired the privilege, and especially how they acquired the rightful power to withhold that privilege from others, according to caprice or notions of expediency. We hold this doctrine to be pernicious in tendency, and hostile to the spirit of a republican government; and we believe that it can only be justified by the same arguments that are used to justify slavery or monarchy—for it is an obvious deduction of logic that if one thousand ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... advantages attend the cultivation of one master passion or occupation. In superior minds it is a sovereign that exiles others, and in inferior minds it enfeebles pernicious propensities. It may render us useful to our fellow-citizens, and it imparts the most perfect independence to ourselves. It is observed by a great mathematician, that a geometrician would not ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... not to believe you, Maggie," said Aneta, "and I am relieved that you have spoken as you did to Merry. But now I want to say something else. I have thought of it a good deal during the holidays, and I am firmly convinced that this taking sides, or rather making parties, in a school is pernicious, especially in such a small school as ours. I am willing to give up my queendom, if you, on your part, will give yours up. I want us all to be in unity—every one of us—all striving for the good of the school and for the ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... at King James' death King Charles ascended the throne, he inherited a legacy of trouble. Unhappily, his disposition was even more obstinate than that of his father. His training had been wholly bad, and he had inherited the pernicious ideas of his father in reference to the rights of kings. Even more unfortunately, he had inherited his father's counselors. The Duke of Buckingham, a haughty, avaricious, and ambitious noble, raised by King ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... last, by an unsurpassed and most pernicious baseness, Gallus ventured on adopting a course of fearful wickedness, which indeed Gallienus, to his own exceeding infamy, is said formerly to have tried at Rome; and, taking with him a few followers secretly armed, he used to rove in the evening through ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... which could in any way promote a brother's spiritual welfare. But we are too apt to forget, if not to disbelieve, the solemn declarations of the bible; and forgetfulness to all practical results is as pernicious as downright infidelity. The man who forgets God is as little influenced by his law as the fool, who in his heart says there is no God at all. Now, this forgetfulness paralyzes our energies, damps our zeal, checks our benevolence. We do not consider that sinners are heaping up wrath against ...
— The Church of England Magazine - Volume 10, No. 263, January 9, 1841 • Various
... arms, and eagerly learned from them to read Homer and Aristotle in the original tongue, and the New Testament also. Those who followed these studies came to be known as Humanists. But most of the universities and the monasteries in Germany looked upon this revival of Greek culture as pernicious and antichristian. Poetry they despised. The Latin Vulgate met their religious needs, and Greek was only another name for Paganism. The party name of Obscurantists ("Dunkelmaenner") was given to these, and this name has remained with them on the ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... avoided that dangerous and empirical morality, which cures one vice by means of another. But envy is so base and detestable, so vile in its original, and so pernicious in its effects, that the predominance of almost any other quality is to be preferred. It is one of those lawless enemies of society, against which poisoned arrows may honestly be used. Let it therefore be constantly remembered, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... upward of a year, Ware had enjoyed great peace of mind as a direct result of his absence from west Tennessee, and when he thought of him at all he had invariably put a period to his meditations with, "I hope to hell he catches it wherever he is!" It had really seemed a pernicious thing to him that no one had shown sufficient public spirit to knock the captain on the head, and that this had not been done, utterly destroyed his faith in the good ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... on the likeness of the most Pious and Innocent Saint on Earth. There are, who acknowledge that a Daemon may appear in the shape of a Godly Person, But not as doing Evil. Whereas the Devil in Samuel's likeness told a pernicious Lye, when he said, Thou hath disquieted me. It was not in the Power of Saul, nor of all the Devils in Hell, to disquiet a Soul in Heaven, where Samuel had been for Two years before this Apparition. Nor did the Spectre speak true, when he said, Thou and thy Sons shall be with ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... have raised its head, had the middle comedy continued to be supported by a succession of such wits as Aristophanes, with new supplies of envenomed personal satire. Fortunately, however, the stage was pretty well cleared of that pernicious kind of writing when Menander, the amiable and the refined, came forth ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... upsets the vessel so that the heated fluid exercises its scathing influence upon an uncovered portion of the body-hand, arm, or face. Here, at all events, there is no room for doubt. Boiling water unquestionably exercises a most pernicious and rapidly destructive effect upon the living matter of which we are composed.' [Footnote: Bastian, 'Evolution,' p. 133.] And lest it should be supposed that it is the high organisation which, in this case, renders the body susceptible to heat, he refers to the action of boiling water on the hen's ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... but very severe upon the unfrugal manner it was carried on, in which he addressed himself principally to the C[hancellor] of the E[xchequer], and laid on him terribly.... Legge answered Beckford very rationally and coolly. Lord K. spoke long. Sir F. D[ashwood] maintained the German war was most pernicious.... Lord B[arrington] at last got up and spoke half an hour with great plainness and temper, explained many hidden things relating to these accounts in favour of the late K., and told two or three conversations which had passed between the K. and himself relative to these expenses, which ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... fulfills the duties of his office—but with a modesty, Lord Athol, which, I must affirm, I never saw equaled. I dissent from you in all that you have said—and I confess I did fear the blandishing arguments of the faithless Cospatrick had persuaded you to embrace his pernicious treason. You deny it—that is well. Prove your innocence at this juncture in the field against Scotland's enemies; and John of Badenoch will then see no impending cloud to darken the honor ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... fingers at him. "Then I shall certainly continue the pernicious habit. Do you know Major Hunt-Goring? It was he who gave them to me. He thinks he is going to marry ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... right to his too willing master, the prince, as an abuse which had no legal justification, and which, the sooner it were abolished in the interest of good government the better it would be. All feudal rights as against the power of an overlord were explained away by the civil jurist, either as pernicious abuses, or, at best, as favours granted in the past by the predecessors of the reigning monarch, which it was within his right to truncate or to abrogate at ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... obedyent to theyr prynce, but also (to theyr greate laude and prayse) shall shewe them selfe to be redy and confirmable to do theyr dueties in aydyng hys excellent hyghnes to the reformacyon of all pernicious abuses & chiefly of detestable ydolatrye, whiche is so muche prohibited in holy scripture and most displeasant to god, || for whiche intent and purpose the sayd most noble and famous clarke Desiderius Erasmus, compiled & made this dialoge in Laten, as it foloweth herafter nowe ...
— The Pilgrimage of Pure Devotion • Desiderius Erasmus
... for them," she explained; "they get so hungry, and sometimes they starve to death right out here. Papa says they are pernicious birds; but I don't care—do ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... of students and accountants going immediately from severe mental labor to their meals, is a pernicious one, and a fruitful cause of indigestion and mental debility. The custom of farmers and mechanics hurrying from their toil to the dinner-table, does much to cause dyspepsia and debility among ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... judgment befal a country than such a dreadful spirit of division as rends a government into two distinct people, and makes them greater strangers and more averse to one another, than if they were actually two different nations. The effects of such a division are pernicious to the last degree, not only with regard to those advantages which they give the common enemy, but to those private evils which they produce in the heart of almost every particular person. This influence is very fatal both to men's morals and their understandings; it sinks the virtue of a nation, ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... obtained by means of a troop of one hundred picked marksmen, called "the flying company," because their services were available in all places according to the varying emergencies of their situation. A treaty of peace so nearly approximating to justice as to be denounced by the pope as "a pernicious example," and by a "liberal" Roman Catholic historian[D] as "a blameable weakness," was concluded at Cavour on the 5th of June, 1561, and honourably fulfilled by Philibert Emmanuel to the end of his ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... but small inroads have been made upon these forests, and as I stood one afternoon upon the summit of a mountain gazing over the miles of timbered hills below me, it seemed as though here at least was an inexhaustible supply of splendid lumber. But no more pernicious term was ever coined than "inexhaustible supply!" I wondered, as I watched the sun drop into the somber masses of the forest, how long these splendid hills would remain inviolate. Certainly not many years after the Gobi Desert has been crossed by lines of steel, ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... the evil effects proceeding from this pernicious advice on the very same evening. I remarked an unwillingness on her part to speak to me before my brother; and, as soon as she entered into discourse with him, she commanded me to go to bed. This command she repeated two or three times. ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... the Church of Christ, so it is a matter of your teaching to instruct them in the Catholic dogmas, by which they may be instructed in the full knowledge of the truth, that they may know how to reject totally the errors of pernicious heresy, to remain in charity in the ways of the true faith, and to embrace with fervent desire the communion of the Catholic Church.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} As it is of benefit to us to profess with the mouth what we believe in the heart {HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} therefore I anathematize ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... and pleasant-mannered enough when sober and not opposed. I have known several such, who have for years deceived their owners and others on shore, led by outward appearance, till some fearful catastrophe has been the result of their pernicious habits. ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... said she, "and I think you had better train in some other company. I thought your going into compound fractures in school would be dilatorious to you. I don't know who Mr. Morrissey is, and I don't want to, but I hear that he has been whipping the Pernicious Boy, a poor lad with a sore leg, and I think he should be ashamed of himself." Ike had read the "Herald," with all about "the great prize fight" in it, and had become ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... menacing their disobedient charges with hobgoblins, phantoms and witches. Such images as these make a profound impression on tender minds, leaving a panic terror which the reasoning of after years is often unable entirely to efface. There can be no doubt but that this pernicious habit, is the fruit of the noxious plant fostered in the Vatican. Rising generations must be brought up in superstitious terror, in order to render them susceptible to every kind of absurdity; for this ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... person, and judge him accordingly. We try him in our courts, from which there is no appeal to the dramatis personae, his peers. We have been spoiled with—not sentimental comedy—but a tyrant far more pernicious to our pleasures which has succeeded to it, the exclusive and all devouring drama of common life; where the moral point is every thing; where, instead of the fictitious half-believed personages of the stage (the phantoms of old comedy) we recognise ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... an intolerant and arbitrary system, could subvert that system without acts of cruelty and folly, half the objections to despotic power would be removed. We should, in that case, be compelled to acknowledge that it at least produces no pernicious effects on the intellectual and moral character of a people. We deplore the outrages which accompany revolutions. But the more violent the outrages, the more assured we feel that a revolution was necessary. The ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... of Tetzel to Wittenberg roused Luther to more decided action. He now wrote out ninety-five propositions in which he set forth in the strongest language his reasons for opposing and his view of the pernicious effects of Tetzel's doctrine of indulgences. These he nailed to the door of the Castle church of Wittenberg. The effect produced by them was extraordinary. The news of the protest spread with the greatest ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... is, in many respects, very imperfect. It is, therefore, not much approved." But when these interruptions are slight and unimportant, it is better to omit the comma; as, "Flattery is certainly pernicious;" "There is surely a pleasure ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... words! How well worthy of a constant place in our memories! Yet, what pains have been taken to apologize for a life contrary to these precepts! And, what punishment can be too great, what mark of infamy sufficiently signal, for those pernicious villains of talent, who have employed that talent in the composition of Bacchanalian songs; that is to say, pieces of fine and captivating writing in praise of one of the most odious and destructive vices in the black catalogue ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... "he had a hundred times talked with the chancellor and the judges on the subject of the stocks; that for his part he did not pretend to be well acquainted with the principles on which they were established, but had always heard them reckoned pernicious to trade, uncertain in their produce, and unsolid in their foundation; and that he had been advised by three judges, his most intimate friends, never to venture his money in the funds, but to put it out upon land security, till ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... demands that they should wear garments manufactured in India only and eat food only grown in India, decline to wear any other clothing or eat any other food. Lord Curzon set the fashion for tea-drinking. And that pernicious drug now bids fair to overwhelm the nation. It has already undermined the digestive apparatus of hundreds of thousands of men and women and constitutes an additional tax upon their slender purses. Lord ...
— Third class in Indian railways • Mahatma Gandhi
... having a waiting-woman at her heels. "I am no Queen, to need such honours," she once said to him; and he had answered that a man who has a treasure does not leave the key in the lock when he goes out. "Then take me with you," she urged; but to this he said that towns were pernicious places, and young wives better off at their ...
— Kerfol - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... did Pitt "blend Ireland with the industry and capital of Great Britain." Cupped by his finance she gave the venal blood of her industry to strengthen the predominant partner, and to help him to exclude for a time from these islands that pernicious French Democracy in which all states and peoples have since found redemption. Such was the first chapter in the Economics ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... through usury and rapine alone: all this is made to revive again through the instrumentality of the national-economic disease called a paper crisis, in a less violent form, indeed, but in one which is much more insidious and scarcely less pernicious. ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... which he punisheth mortal men's peevishness and folly) such brutish stories were suppressed, because ad morum institutionem nihil habent, they conduce not at all to manners, or good life. But they will have it thus nevertheless, and so they put note of [324]"divinity upon the most cruel and pernicious plague of human kind," adore such men with grand titles, degrees, statues, images, [325]honour, applaud, and highly reward them for their good service, no greater glory than to die in the field. So Africanus is extolled by Ennius: Mars, and [326]Hercules, and I know not ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... Church. In order to conquer Romanism, we must go on and leave it behind, seeking something better, and finding some more excellent way. Now, the sin of Romanism is its aristocracy; Protestantism ought, then, to give us, in its Church, a Christian democracy. But it keeps up the pernicious distinction between clergy and laity, making the clergy a separate class, and so justifying Milton's complaint that the "Presbyter is only the old priest written large." It makes a distinction between ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... which war and time and bigotry had spared. Amrou, therefore, sent to the khalif to ascertain his pleasure. "If," replied the khalif, "the books agree with the Koran, the Word of God, they are useless, and need not be preserved; if they disagree with it, they are pernicious. Let them be destroyed." Accordingly, they were distributed among the baths of Alexandria, and it is said that six months were ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... conjectures of a few obstinate visionists? If it is very difficult to cure the theologians of their mania and the people of their prejudices, it is at least very easy to prevent the extravagances of the one and the folly of the other from producing pernicious effects. Let each one be allowed to think as he chooses, but let him not be allowed to annoy others for their mode of thinking. If the chiefs of nations were more just and more sensible, theological opinions would not disturb the public tranquillity any more than the ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... fantastic vision of careless, pleasure-loving monarch and butterfly Court ever be realised again? Angela thought not. It seemed to her serious mind that the glory of those wild years since his Majesty's restoration was a delusive and pernicious brightness which could never shine again. That extravagant splendour, that reckless gaiety had borne beneath their glittering surface the seeds of ruin and death. An angry God had stretched out His hand against the wicked city ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... that the King of Naples, for all that in public he dissembled the pain it caused him, signified to the queen, his wife, with tears—which were Unusual in him even on the death of his children—that a Pope had been created who would be most pernicious to Italy." ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... and independent authorities to be going on within our territory at the same time, without collision. They will foresee that if Mr. Genet perseveres in his proceedings, the consequences would be so hazardous to us, the example so humiliating and pernicious, that we may be forced even to suspend his functions before a successor can arrive to continue them. If our citizens have not already been shedding each other's blood, it is not owing to the moderation of Mr. Genet, but to the forbearance of the government. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... against all those bad influences that are often so fatal at the inception of life, even to the healthiest babes, preserved from an excess or insufficiency of food, sheltered from cold and dampness, protected against clumsy handling and against pernicious microbes, sickly or prematurely born babies soon acquire enough strength in the apparatus to be able, finally, like others, to face the various perils that await us ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... shoulders. It was felt by Cicero that if he could induce Octavian to act with him the Republic might be again established. He would surely have influence enough to keep the lad from hankering after his great uncle's pernicious power. He was aware that the dominion did in fact belong to the owner of the soldiers, but he thought that he could control this boy-officer, and thus have his legions at the command of ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... individuals charged with such a grand mission should be competent effectually to fulfil it, it was necessary that they should themselves have been always free from the pernicious influence of the errors and corruption, which had already spread almost throughout the world; it was necessary that their minds should have remained unpolluted by the notions of the extravagant and ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... is generally pernicious in cases depending upon the feelings of the heart, I should almost fear that, without very uncommon exertions, you will scarcely be prepared early in the next sessions, for bringing the business into parliament with the greatest advantage. But, be that as it may, let the best use be made of the ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... well and usefully employed. "It is a great pity, sir, that Your Highness," he said, "can't change bodies as you change horses, when they are tired. I beg of you to notice that you have a soul of steel in a crystal body, and that the abuse of your will can only be pernicious to you." ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... settlement and wantonly set fire to the forests in order to destroy underbrush, the better to secure their quarries. A comparatively dense and vigorous new growth followed the discontinuance of this pernicious practice. ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... service of the constable Alvaro de Luna, by whom he had been introduced into the household of Prince Henry, during the lifetime of John the Second. His polished and plausible address soon acquired him a complete ascendency over the feeble mind of his master, who was guided by his pernicious counsels, in his frequent dissensions with his father. His invention was ever busy in devising intrigues, which he recommended by his subtile, insinuating eloquence; and he seemed to prefer the attainment of his purposes by a crooked rather than by a direct ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... also undeniable, that dramatic singing—the style which he preferred—is dangerous to the vocal organism; particularly when one practices the shriek or scream, which produces a fine effect when skilfully employed, but is most pernicious in excess. ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... Philippe did not meet with much respect. Not only did the Belgians reproduce French works at a cheap rate by calmly dispensing with the duty of paying their authors; but publishers in the provinces often followed this pernicious practice, and it was difficult to prosecute them. A striking instance of this injustice was to be found in the case of "Paroles d'un Croyant," by M. de Lamennais, of which ten thousand pirated copies were sold in Toulouse, where only five hundred of the authorised edition had been sent by the publisher. ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... the fuchsia indoors is the pernicious red spider. For details of the proper reception to be given ...
— Gardening Indoors and Under Glass • F. F. Rockwell
... candid, generous, too high-spirited to take mean advantages even in the most exciting disputes, and pure from all taint of personal malevolence. It must also be admitted that his opinions on ecclesiastical and political affairs, though in themselves absurd and pernicious, eminently qualified him to be the reformer of our lighter literature. The libertinism of the press and of the stage was, as we have said, the effect of a reaction against the Puritan strictness. Profligacy was, like the oak leaf on the twenty-ninth of May, the badge of a cavalier ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... need all he has, and more. The way you go among the villagers! You think you merely slouch about and keep it quiet, but you don't. You've set an example no other landowner can expect to live up to, or intends to. It's too lavish. It's pernicious, dear chap. I have heard all about the cottage you are doing over for Pearson and his bride. You had better invest ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... single instance proves that arbitrary rules of grammar have little to do in the regulation of language. Its barriers are of sand, soon removed. It will not be said that this is an unimportant mistake, for, if an error, it is pernicious, and if a grammarian knows enough to say that a becomes an, he ought to know that he tells a falsehood, and that an becomes a under certain circumstances. Mr. Murray gives the following example to illustrate the use of a. "Give me a book; that is, any ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... military operations to the known rules of war, as far as was possible under the singular conditions in which they fought, and exacted a promise from the lofty-minded Tecumseh that his warriors "should not taste pernicious liquor until they had humbled the Big-knives." "If this resolution," remarked Brock, "is persevered ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... was well able to answer those calumnies (for they were calumnies), and to restrain insinuations so pernicious and prejudicial to the interests with which he was charged; for he had discretion and a spirit for everything. The most effective thing in that was the pressing need of his commissions, and the contents of his credentials. But death, which ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... supported by the German biologists, by the musicians, sculptors, philosophers, poets, soldiers, socialists and priests, by the wisest and by the madmen beyond the Rhine. Unfortunately France, Russia and even Great Britain have not been quite exempt from this pernicious theory of individualistic education. ...
— The New Ideal In Education • Nicholai Velimirovic
... occurs in districts where lead mining is the principal industry. The waste products of the mine thrown into streams contaminate the water supply, so that the mineral is taken into the system gradually, and a very small per cent of any of the salts taken into the system in this way is pernicious. Water which contains any salt of lead to the extent of more than one-tenth of a grain to the gallon is unfit to drink. Such water when used continually is likely to produce colic from the resulting intestinal irritation, ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... Apostolic Order. I visited a Mormon bookstore, among other places, and I was amazed at the number of volumes which I found here on the religion of the Latter-Day Saints. In a history of Mormonism, which I opened, was this pregnant sentence—"The pernicious tendency of Luther's doctrine." Surely here is ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey |
