"Turpitude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as well as my health, that I would be an easy prey to his blandishments? Did he dream that the prospect of liberty which newspaper rumour and semi-official information held out to me was too dear to be forfeited for a trilling forfeiture of honour? Did he believe that by an act of secret turpitude I would open my prison doors only to close them the faster on others who may or may not have been my friends—or did he imagine he had found in me a Massey to be moulded and manipulated into the service of the crown, or a Corridon to have cowardice ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... hear his crimes, and hear his well-earn'd fate. "Of human vice the fame had reach'd mine ear, "With hop'd exaggeration; gliding down, "From proud Olympus' brow, I veil'd the god, "And rov'd the world in human form around. "'Twere long to tell what turpitude I saw "On every side, for rumor far fell short, "Of what I witness'd. Through the dusky woods "Of Maenalus I pass'd, where savage lurk "Fierce monsters; o'er the cold Lycean hill, "With pine-trees waving; and Cyllene's height. "Thence to th' Arcadian monarch's ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... at the demise of Sultan, the royal generosity of Madame Brandt, and the turpitude of his friend Saupiquet, brought tears to the little man's eyes. Monsieur Saupiquet shrugged his ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... candour, concerning the pamphlet on which I was then engaged. Consideration however did but seem to confirm me in my purpose. Let my defence be right or wrong, and I had by no means yet decided in the negative, still the turpitude of the bishop and my persecutors was no less flagitious. These incidents once more turned my thoughts toward Turl, whom I knew not whether to admire, love, or hate. I was not so entirely overwhelmed but that I had arguments, at least I had words, at my command. ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... these two principles which frequently occurred, produced odd situations by the thousand. And then, woman was physically little understood, and what was actually sickness in her, was considered a prodigy, witchcraft or monstrous turpitude. In those days these creatures, treated by the law as reckless children, and put under guardianship, were by the manners of the time deified and adored. Like the freedmen of emperors, they disposed of crowns, they decided battles, they awarded fortunes, they ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... weakness a little: Mr. Larkins's letter will be the epilogue to it. I have already incurred the censure of the prisoner; I mean to increase it, by bringing home to him the proof of his crimes, and to display them in all their force and turpitude. It is my duty to do it; I feel it an ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... to post, eventually left Munich for Switzerland, it was in the company of Auguste Papon, who, on the grounds of "moral turpitude," had already been given his marching-orders. He described himself as a "courier." His passport, however, bore the less exalted description of "cook." It was probably the more correct one. The faithful Fritz Peissner, ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... discovered that the Rajah's ruby had mysteriously disappeared from the collection of jewels to be divided. The other pirates immediately suspected their captain of having secretly purloined it, and, indeed, so certain were they of his turpitude that they immediately set about taking means to ...
— The Ruby of Kishmoor • Howard Pyle
... herself from his hold like an offended goddess. "O heaven, I might have known that you, George, would have abetted my poor, wilful boy in his dirt and bodily viciousness, and that you, Jervas, would have condoned his turpitude and moral degradation. None the less, though you both desert me in this dreadful hour, shirking your duty thus shamelessly, this woman's hand shall pluck my dear, loved nephew from the abyss, this hand—" Here, turning to behold me, my poor aunt shivered, gasped and setting dainty handkerchief ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... notwithstanding all thine ungrateful requital for His unmerited forbearance, He is still declaring, "As I live, saith the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth." Thy sins may be legion-like,—the sand of the sea may be their befitting type,—the thought of their turpitude and aggravation may be ready to overwhelm thee; but be still! thy patient God waits to be gracious! Oh! be deeply humbled and softened because of thy guilt, resolve to dedicate thyself anew to His service, and so coming, "He will ...
— The Faithful Promiser • John Ross Macduff
... against an alleged erroneous dogma and only incidentally affected personal morality. The reaction, therefore, was void of bitter resentment. Sumner's charges were directed against alleged moral turpitude, and the classic form and scrupulous regard for parliamentary rules which he observed only added to the feeling of personal resentment on the part of his opponents. Some of the defenders of slavery were themselves devoted students ...
— The Anti-Slavery Crusade - Volume 28 In The Chronicles Of America Series • Jesse Macy
... canker them. Why fear to mention that which everyone knows? Why dread to sound the abyss which can be measured by everyone? Why fear to bring into the light of day unmasked wickedness, even though it confronts the public gaze unblushingly? Extreme turpitude and extreme excellence are both in the schemes of Providence; and the poet has summed up eternal morality for all ages and nations in this ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... lordship will find that I have left out all that was said of our friend Lord Lyttelton in one of them. He desired that it might be so; and I had at once the double mortification of concealing the good I had said of one friend, and of revealing the turpitude of another. I hope you will never have the same treatment that I have met with; neither will you. I am single in my circumstances—a species apart in the political society; and they, who dare to attack no one else, may attack ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... with the glare of objects, equally new to them, as they were captivating. Stealing, amongst the civilized and enlightened nations of the world, may well be considered as denoting a character deeply stained with moral turpitude, with avarice unrestrained by the known rules of right, and with profligacy producing extreme indigence, and neglecting the means of relieving it. But at the Friendly and other islands which we visited, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... into it. You wanted to be shielded at any cost." The scorn that intolerant youth has for moral turpitude rang ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... I had known what an atrocious humbug you are? Do you imagine for a moment that my relatives, if I had any, would have subjected my innocence to such insidious guardianship? Have you brought me here to destroy my faith, and pollute my morals, and poison my young life with the spectacle of your turpitude?" ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... thwarting of their plans. But when even one of the great men in England, who made these laws against free-trading, could tell his fellow-lawmakers that the mind of man never could conceive of it as at all equalling in turpitude those acts which are breaches of clear moral virtue—how should it be expected that the parties chiefly interested should take a stricter view ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... kind of degradation which an inordinate love of luxury and the insatiable desires of jaded senses had suggested as a means to satisfaction, until the treachery of his own accomplices had thrown the glaring light of publicity on a career of turpitude such as even these decadent times ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... thousand copies at their own expense. The odiousness of the corruption supposed in those papers excited a general and high indignation among the people. Unexperienced in such manoeuvres, they did not permit themselves even to suspect that the turpitude of private swindlers might mingle itself unobserved, and give its own hue to the communications of the French government, of whose participation there was neither proof nor probability. It served, however, for a time, the purpose intended. The people, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... evil good, and good evil, put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter. He openly threw aside the admission of any one moral obligation. Never did some of the Roslyn boys, to their dying day, forget the deep, intolerable, unfathomable flood of moral turpitude and iniquity which he bore with him; a flood, which seemed so irresistible, that the influence of such boys as Montagu and Owen to stay its onrush seemed as futile as the weight of a feather to bar the fury of a mountain stream. Eric might have done much, Duncan might have done much, to ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... sadly. "At one time I had written proof of his turpitude, but I could not make up my mind to use it then, and I destroyed it eventually; so that now my word would be the only evidence against him, and that would not do, I suppose, although you all know, better than I do, I fancy, what ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... and proper sense, is the expression to an inferior of the will of a superior, which the inferior has it in his power to obey or to resist, but resistance to which entails a penalty more or less severe, in proportion to the moral turpitude, or the injurious consequences of the act of disobedience. In this its strict sense the law can only exist in connection with beings possessed of reason to understand it, of power to obey it, and of free ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... over the Bridge, "Do you observe," continued he, "that extensive building? That is called the Penitentiary. It is a building designed for the punishment, employment, and reformation of offenders of secondary turpitude, usually punished by transportation for a term of years. It has been conceived since the commencement of the disputes which terminated in the separation of the American States. The plan of it is known to be partly that of Mr. Jeremy Bentham. The culprits ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... times present no worse spectacles of carnality than these; and will it be claimed that anything so vile is seen among civilized nations at the present day? But though there may be less grossness in the sensuality of to-day, the moral turpitude of men may be even greater than that of ancient times. Enlightened Christianity has raised the standard of morality. Christ's commentary upon the seventh commandment requires a more rigorous chastity than ancient standards ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... his reign was such as by no means prognosticated its subsequent transition. The sudden change of his conduct, the astonishing mixture of imbecility and presumption, of moral turpitude and frantic extravagance, which he afterwards evinced; such as rolling himself over heaps of gold, his treatment of his horse Incitatus, and his design of making him consul, seem to justify a suspicion that his brain had actually been affected, either by the potion, said to have ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... of money-lenders and tax-farmers ('negotiatores,' and 'publicani'), who cleared off what was left by those stronger creatures of prey, the proconsuls. Thus the misery caused by a meddlesome and nerveless national policy was enhanced by a domestic administration based on turpitude and extortion. ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... in the most cruel fashion. "The good little fellow" was strangely taken aback, and wished to defend himself; but Villars produced proofs that could not be contradicted. Thereupon the ill-favoured dog avowed his turpitude, and had the audacity to approach Villars in order to speak low to him; but the Marechal, drawing back, and repelling him with an air of indignation, said to him, aloud, that with scoundrels like him he wished ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... civic courage in the public press—when all these stinking, suffocating, deleterious vapors shall be destroyed by the ever-living light of truth, then the grateful people will bless your names, which, pure and luminous, will shine high above the stupidity, conceit, heartlessness, turpitude, selfish ambition, indirect and direct treason darkening ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... have mentioned. Thence we passed into the grand Presentation Saloon, on the ceiling of which Lebrun had painted a likeness of Louis XIV. A tri-coloured cockade placed on the forehead of the great King still bore witness of the imbecile turpitude of the Convention. Lastly came the hall of the Guards, in front of the grand staircase ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... of economy. They were too optimistic and too superficial to anticipate any serious trouble in the Promised Land of America; and they were so habituated to inconsistent and irresponsible political thinking, that they attached no importance to the moral and intellectual turpitude implied by the existence of slavery in a democratic nation. The responsibility of the Whigs for evading the issue is more serious than that of the Democrats. Their leaders were the trained political ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... annoyance of the country, but the same traffic, intercourse, and intelligence is carried on with great subtility and treachery by profligate citizens, who, in vessels ostensibly navigating our own waters from port to port, under cover of night or other circumstances favoring their turpitude, find means to convey succors or intelligence to the enemy and elude the penalty of the law. This lawless traffic and intercourse is also carried on to a great extent in craft whose capacity exempts them from the regulations of the revenue ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 10. • James D. Richardson
... very anxious for people to know how near you came to absolute turpitude. You may rest easy on that point. I shall speak to my father, of course, and we will agree to say ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... Aunt Victoria with much to reflect upon. The glimpse she had accidentally given the old lady of Harriet's turpitude had startled her considerably. Mrs. Caldwell had always congratulated herself on having such a quiet respectable person in the house as Harriet to look after Beth, and now it appeared that the woman ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... curious passage of Bk. XII. Chap. I. in which Gil disclaims paternity and resigns it to Marialva. This may have been prompted by a desire to lessen the turpitude of the go-between business; but it is a clumsy device, and makes Gil look a fool as ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... wife and three children—the turpitude of fornication, and the many other political ill consequences of this jingling, never once entered his brain,—he had however his objection, which came home to himself, and weighed with him, as it has oft-times done with ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... laughter kept my anger back, and twenty times the anger that was rising from the bottom of my soul suddenly ended in a burst of laughter. I was confounded by so much shrewdness and so much vileness, by ideas now so just and then so false, by such general perversity of sentiments, such complete turpitude, and such marvellously uncommon frankness. He perceived the struggle going on within me:] ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... second I will sing to thee, as thou hast to wander joyless on thy ways. May Urd's protection hold thee on every side, where thou seest turpitude. ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... being adequate security against repetition of the wrong. So far as may be necessary for this purpose, punishment may equitably go, but no further. Genuine justice does not permit penal laws of human enactment to take into account the abstract turpitude of crime. That she reserves for divine cognisance, recollecting that 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay,' saith the Lord. Nor does she permit the smallest aggravation of punishment for the sake either of the offender's own mental improvement, or to discourage others from evil doing; neither, ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... and to place its interests exactly on a par with the interests of other lands? Who, save the Chinaman himself, thinks it as important that a Chinaman should have enough to eat as that an American or an Englishman should? Was not the turpitude, that excluded the Chinaman from Australia, traced to the two deadly sins of undue diligence and sobriety? [Footnote: Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition, article, "Australia."] As for freedom, men of certain nations regard ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... Disorder deep Within the grave entomb and on that throne The God of Order seat, and in his hand Imperial scepter place, to rule the world Politic, as it on its axis rolls, Unharmed by venomed darts of turpitude? I dreamed of formulating certain laws Which economic matters would control. The midnight lamp, companion of my toil, Has burned in vain. Alas, I see it now. When the great "Commoner," of wisdom full, A plank within our platform did insert That our ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... answer for the deeds done in the flesh, I ask whether it is consistent with the idea we have of divine justice to think that both will be condemned to the same everlasting punishment? If it be, then there is no more moral turpitude in parricide than in telling a trivial falsehood, which injures no one, but still is offensive and displeasing to God. But if it be not consistent with divine justice, then you must admit the distinction of ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... they are to be found. Parbleu! They bear no external stamp and nobody distrusts them; but, so far as uncertainty, want of substantial foundation in their lives is concerned, they have nothing to wish for from those whom they call so disdainfully 'irregulars.' Ah! if we knew how much turpitude, what fantastic or abominable stories, a black evening-coat, the most correct of your hideous modern garments, can mask. Why, see, Jenkins, the other evening at your house I was amusing myself by counting them—all these ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... were the task, if possible, to describe the sensation created by this amazing disclosure; and we may only add in conclusion, that the prisoner was convicted on other testimony; and after an earnest admonition from the justice, on the turpitude of crime and its dreadful miseries, Jared Sculpin was sentenced to give Simon Bogle one good day's work, and one good fleece of wool for his time lost in hunting the chain, and in bringing the offender to justice; to carry the chain on his back through the main travelled ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... consider itself to be an earnest and active body, but I can never look upon its efforts as anything but lukewarm, standing, as I do, with the light of other days around me. As a child, whatever I might question, I never doubted the turpitude of Rome. I do not think I had formed any idea whatever of the character or pretensions or practices of the Catholic Church, or indeed of what it consisted, or its nature; but I regarded it with a vague terror as a wild beast, the only good point about it being that ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... fidelity to the King of England; but how changed the meaning of that word in New England after the Declaration of Independence! Words and deeds before deemed patriotic were now traitorous, and so deeply was their moral turpitude impressed on the public mind as to have tainted popular opinions concerning the heroic deeds of our ancestors, performed in the King's service in the French Wars.... The War of the Revolution absorbed and neutralised all the heroic fame of the illustrious ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... an idealistic youth at first views the truculence of nature and the turpitude of worldly life is capable of being softened by experience. Time subdues our initial preferences by showing us the complexity of moral relations in this world, and by extending our imaginative sympathy to forms of existence and passion at first repulsive, which from new and ultra-personal points ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... of the senate that was surprising, on the part of all Italy surpassing belief, and of all the loyalists unparalleled, in standing forth in my defence, I will not say what happened—for the blame attaches to many, and is of various shades of turpitude—I will only say briefly that it was not the rank and file, but the leaders, that played me false. And in this matter, though some blame does attach to those who failed to defend me, no less attaches ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... obliged to make our morality a profession and our innocence an art. They all hang their romances to motives that no woman recognises as feminine; they ascribe to us instincts which we do not possess, passions of which we are ignorant—a ridiculous moral turpitude in the overmastering presence of love. Pooh! If they only knew what a small part love plays with us, ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... persons; (3) epileptics; (4) prostitutes; (5) paupers; (6) persons likely to become public charge; (7) professional beggars; (8) persons afflicted with a loathsome or contagious disease; (9) persons who have been convicted of a felony or other crime or misdemeanor involving moral turpitude, not including those convicted of purely political offences; (10) polygamists; (11) anarchists (or persons who believe in or advocate the overthrow by force or violence of the government of the United ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... difficulty is properly met, according to Fitzjames, by leaving a wide discretion in the hands of the judge. The jury says the law has been broken; the judge must consider the more delicate question of the degree of turpitude implied. Yet in some cases, such as that of a patriotic rebel, it is impossible to take this view. It is desirable that a man who attacks the Government should attack it at the risk of his life. Law and morality, therefore, cannot be brought into perfect coincidence, although ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... disapprobation &c 932; ingloriousness, derogation; abasement, debasement; abjectness &c adj.; degradation, dedecoration^; a long farewell to all my greatness [Henry VIII]; odium, obloquy, opprobrium, ignominy. dishonor, disgrace; shame, humiliation; scandal, baseness, vileness^; turpitude &c (improbity) 940 [Obs.]; infamy. tarnish, taint, defilement, pollution. stain, blot, spot, blur, stigma, brand, reproach, imputation, slur. crying shame, burning shame; scandalum magnatum [Lat.], badge of infamy, blot in ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the character with moral turpitude; and I believe the facts related above show that said Senator is a coward; at all events he lacks moral courage, and is afraid of the Justices of the United States Supreme Court, whose judge the Senator-attorney of the court becomes in case of trial of any of said Justices by impeachment; ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... not chidden him for the use of that familiar salutation, nor did she chide him now, though she was promised to another. She wondered at herself—flushing at her own turpitude; for upon Barsoom it is a shameful thing for a woman to listen to those two words from another than her husband ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... enemy on the eve of battle made no secret of their recompense, and strutted immodestly in the light of day, in the cynicism of riches and dignities; deserters from Ligny and Quatre-Bras, in the brazenness of their well-paid turpitude, exhibited their devotion to the monarchy ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... I can control them. Through this detestable mystery, I have been insulted, reviled—a wretch has had the hardihood, the turpitude, to brand both you and me—me as the base-born child, and you as the ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... by which the chiefs obtain the condemnation and disposal of their subjects, are nearly all imaginary; for few exist which, under their laws, are considered as acts of turpitude. The abuse of authority, the action of violent passions, barbarous customs, ferocious habits, and insatiate avarice among the chiefs, augment the number of captives and victims, and the operation of these is much greater in the interior than in the maritime districts; but this leads me to the ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... fancy humane emotions often kindly mix to soften their atrocity. Thus humanity, generosity, and even self-denial, sometimes render a character grand, and even useful, when hurried away by lawless passions; but what can equal the turpitude of a cold calculator who lives for himself alone, and considering his fellow-creatures merely as machines of pleasure, never forgets that honesty is the best policy? Keeping ever within the pale of the law, he crushes his ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... the sons arrived a week after the catastrophe. He found his old home in ruins, and that his aged parents and their children had become victims of the turpitude of an Act of Parliament. The son went in search of his relatives across the Vaal, but it was not known if they succeeded in finding the refuge which the law ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... however, at most only calculated to excite a smile; there is no turpitude in them, and they merit notice but as indications of the humour of character. It was his Lordship's foible to overrate his rank, to grudge his deformity beyond reason, and to exaggerate the condition of his family and circumstances. But the alloy of such small vanities, his caprice and feline ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... even in this country. To bring accusations of fraud, cupidity and cunning against human nature, is not libellous. I am persuaded that robbery,—well contrived, deliberately executed robbery,—is perpetrated in every community among ourselves, without any due estimate of its moral turpitude, by reputable merchants and traders upon their customers, to a larger extent than all the avowed and heinous thefts collectively, which are committed against society. It is lamentable to see how studiously conscience and fair dealing are excluded from the secular business of ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... Spencer. DeWitt Clinton was portrayed as "formed for mischief," "inflated with vanity," "cruel by nature," "an object of derision and disgust," "a dissolute and desperate intriguer," "an adept in moral turpitude, skilled in all the combination of treachery and fraud, with a mind matured by the practice of iniquity, and unalloyed with any virtuous principle." "Was it not disgraceful to political controversy," continues "Aristides," ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... he said. "But I'm not qualified to interpret the law. I'll arrest you and bring you to trial and then it's up to some judge to rule upon your purity and innocence of criminal intent, and freedom from moral taint or turpitude. Maybe take weeks, ...
— The Big Fix • George Oliver Smith
... the foibles of these poor natives of the Pacific Ocean, whose minds were overpowered with the glare of objects, equally new to them as they were captivating. Stealing, among the civilized nations of the world, may well be considered as denoting a character deeply stained with moral turpitude: with avarice, unrestrained by the known rules of right; and with profligacy, producing extreme indigence, and neglecting the means of relieving it. But at the Friendly and other islands which we visited, the thefts, so frequently committed by the natives, of what we had brought ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... money of his own, and, never extravagant upon himself, was more liberal to the poor girl than ever she desired. But there was nothing mercenary in her. She was far more incapable of turpitude than he, for she was of a higher nature, and loved much where he loved only a little. She was nobler, sweetly prouder than he. She had sacrificed all to him for love—could accept nothing from him without the love which ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... of indignation: he turned from OMAR, in scorn, anger, and confusion, without reply; and OMAR departed with the calm dignity of a benevolent and superior being, to whom the smiles and frowns of terrestrial tyranny were alike indifferent, and in whom abhorrence of the turpitude of vice was mingled ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... abjectly stupid as to be deceived for a single moment. At that time, and for the first two months of the war, I happened to be in Poland, and I remember perfectly well that, when those precious documents came out, the confidence in the moral turpitude of mankind they implied did not even raise a scornful smile on the lips of men whose most sacred feelings and dignity they outraged. They did not deign to waste their contempt on them. In fact, the situation was too ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... the royal turpitude was the revolution headed by Rafael Diego, seconded by General O'Daly, a Puerto Rican by birth, who had greatly distinguished himself in the war against the French. Other generals and their troops followed, and when General Labisbal, sent by Ferdinand to quell ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... portion, where he defends his marriage with Pudentilla and justifies his dealings with his step-sons, he clears himself in good earnest, nay does more than clear himself. For he unveils in the most merciless fashion the villany of his accusers—the base ingratitude of Pudens, and the unspeakable turpitude of Rufinus. ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... approaching with a powerful army, hastily raised the siege, and, removing to a distance, took up a position where they could intercept the Egyptians, and still cover the city. No sooner did the Jews behold the retreat of the enemy, than they believed all danger was past, and, with their usual turpitude, they repudiated their oath, and refused to liberate their oppressed countrymen. For this violation of their covenant with the Lord, they were given over to all the horrors of the sword, pestilence, and famine—Jeremiah, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... maner of conceites that stirre vp any vehement passion in a man, doo it by some turpitude or euill and vndecency that is in them, as to make a man angry there must be some iniury or contempt offered, to make him enuy there must proceede some vndeserued prosperitie of his egall or inferiour, to make him pitie some miserable fortune ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... punishment—give free scope to the emulation of intellect and to the cultivation of proper self- interest—and vindicate to popular opinion, the claims of this most useful class, to the character of moral and rational beings, so that no flattering but injurious unction may be applied to film over the real turpitude of their offences—then, and then only, may it be safely asserted, that such descriptions as we have been considering, are the offspring of prudery or inflamed imagination, and have no ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... Reason too, pleads for the one as well as for the other. Consistency of moral doctrine again demands both. But if we admit the restricted interpretation, and exclude the larger, we offend reason. All consistency is at an end. Individual responsibility for moral turpitude will be taken from man. Crimes, clearly marked and defined in the page of Christianity, will cease to be crimes at the will of princes. One contradiction will rush in after another; and men will have two different standards of morality, as they ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... subject which more fully displays our fallen nature, than that of reprobation. All mankind agree in opinion, that there ever has been an elect, or good class of society; and a reprobate, or worthless and bad class; varying in turpitude or in goodness to a great extent and in almost imperceptible degrees. All must unite in ascribing to God that divine foreknowledge that renders ten thousand years but as one day, or hour, or moment in his sight. All ascribe ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... ample apology for the partiality of the people, exhibiting the free command of a pure and copious vocabulary, an inexhaustible fund of metaphors and similitudes, giving variety and grace to the most familiar topics, with an almost dramatic exposure of the folly and turpitude of vice, and a deep moral earnestness. His zeal as a bishop and eloquence as a preacher, however, gained him enemies both in the church and at the court. The ecclesiastics who were parted at his command ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... manner expel any other who so transgressed, and they appeared fully to concur in the justice of my conduct. There is no doubt indeed but that they punish each other for similar offences, although perhaps the moral turpitude of the action ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... Turpitude of character must betray itself. Moral corruption can no more be hidden than physical corruption. Wickedness "will out," like murder or smallpox. A man's wife discovers it; his children shun him instead of clinging about his knees; his neighbors and acquaintances eye him with suspicion ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... the X.Y.Z. dispatches sent rolling through the country a wave of patriotic feeling before which the Republican leaders quailed and which swept away many of their followers. Jefferson held that the French Government ought not to be held responsible for "the turpitude of swindlers," and he steadfastly opposed any action looking to the use of force to maintain American rights. Some of the Republican members of Congress, however, went over to the Federalist side, and Jefferson's party was presently reduced to a feeble and dispirited minority. Loyal addresses ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... that I would not be a match for him in all matters of open enmity; but in ways of secrecy and deep dealing, he is master, and all the more to be dreaded that he makes it impossible for one to understand him or measure the depths of turpitude to which he would descend. When, therefore I heard him say he should have that will back before it could pass into the hands of Mr. Nicholls, I trembled; and as the night passed and morning came without showing any diminution ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... circumstances, the eyes and thoughts of men, are below the notice of an immortal being about to stand the trial for eternity, before the Supreme Judge of heaven and earth. Be comforted: your crime, morally or religiously considered, has no very deep dye of turpitude. It corrupted no man's principles. It attacked no man's life. It involved only a temporary and reparable injury. Of this, and of all other sins, you are earnestly to repent; and may God, who knoweth our frailty, and desireth not our ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... plausible and mitigated language. Effort after effort was made to work upon her principles, but in vain. Once or twice, it is true, she entertained the matter for a time—but a momentary deliberation soon raised her naturally noble and generous spirit above the turpitude of ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... may be his short-comings in other respects. It is a part of his nature; it permeates his entire being. Hence no city in the world, perhaps—Jerusalem not excepted—presents so strange a spectacle of religious enthusiasm, genuine and universal, mingled with moral turpitude; monkish asceticism and utter abandonment to vice; self-sacrifice and loose indulgence. It may be said that this is not true religion—not even what these people profess. Perhaps not; but it is ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... or some one obstinate desire, got the better of their reason; or it might happen, that the motive for committing a great crime was not of so dark a dye as that which often induces to one of less turpitude. And yet neither our author, nor any one else, would hesitate to accord to the crime of murder the very severest penalty that stands ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... distinct abstract idea with a name, and so a distinct species, and the other not; yet, in respect of carnal knowledge, they are both taken in under INCEST: and that still for the same convenience of expressing under one name, and reckoning of one species, such unclean mixtures as have a peculiar turpitude beyond others; and this to avoid circumlocutions ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... mistake is to assume that crimes of violence are the most dangerous to the state, for they are not. They cause greater disturbance and perhaps more momentary inconvenience, but they do not usually evince much moral turpitude. After all, it does no great harm if one man punches another in the head, or even in a fit of anger sticks a dagger in him. The police can easily handle all that. The real danger to the community lies ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... thick the darkness; and wondered more at the old face of dawn, which appeared to know nothing of her agitation. But morning was better than night, and she ceased counting over her sins forward and backward; adding comments on them, excusing some and admitting the turpitude of others, with 'Oh! I was naughty, padre mio! I was naughty—she huddled them all into one of memory's spare sacks, and tied the neck of it, that they should keep safe for her father-confessor. At such times, after a tumult of the blood, women have tender ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... crime in question was punished, either with death or in any other way, when committed by one "cookee" on the property of another; and it is abundantly evident, from many things which are stated, that the natives themselves really do not consider the act as implying, in ordinary cases, that moral turpitude which ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... rather than narrow; highest of all in the form of universal good-will to all. (4) The disposition to desire and love moral excellence, whether observed in ourselves or others—in short, true piety towards God. He goes on to give a similar scale of moral turpitude. Again, putting aside the indifferent qualities, and also those that merely make people despicable and prove them insensible, he cites—(1) the gratification of a narrow kind of affection when the public good might have been ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... and thereby made some little advance in education, he is transformed into a conceited coxcomb, who, instead of plundering travellers on the highway, finds in city life a sphere for the indulgence of his evil propensities. What is the cause of this incorrigible turpitude of the negroes? To answer this important question is not easy, if we admit the principle that the negro is as capable of cultivation as the Caucasian; and in support of it the names of some highly-educated Ethiopians may be ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... yesterdays. We know them, but do not comprehend them, since between apprehending and comprehending an epoch lie such wide spaces. "Quo Vadis" has done good in that it has popularized a realization of that turpitude of condition into which Christianity stepped at the morning of its career; for no lazar-house is so vile as the Roman civilization when Christianity began—God's angel—to trouble that cursed pool. Christ has come into this world's ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... is a law for women—and no man would deny that—it is a law for every woman without exception; and if it is a law for every woman, it follows necessarily that it must be for every man, unless we are going to indulge in the moral turpitude of accepting a pariah class of women made up of other women's daughters and other women's sisters—not our own, God forbid that they should be our own!—set apart for ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... venerable faces, his confidence in this court of final appeal was restored. Then he began to scan the features of the consulars, and his heart sank. There was Lucius Calpurnius Piso, with the visage of a philosopher, but within mere moral turpitude. There was Favonius; there were the two sanguinary Marcelli, consuls respectively for the two preceding years; there was Domitius; there was Cato, his hard face illumined doubtless by the near realization of unholy hopes; there was Faustus Sulla, another ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... of the present British Negro philanthropy, and the occasion of her assumed moral turpitude in elevating the heathen barbarian of Africa to the primary plane of civilization, to the protection of its laws, and the meliorations of its moral, political, social, and religious institutions. It is because monarchy was beginning to be odious in the eyes of the European ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... Salisbury Spring Assizes, 1830, Mr. Justice Gazalee, addressing the grand jury, said that none of the crimes appeared to be marked with circumstances of great moral turpitude. The prisoners numbered one hundred and thirty; he passed sentences of death on twenty-nine, life transportations on five, fourteen years on five, seven years on eleven, and various terms of hard labour ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... my ignorance of her identity, in my estrangement from the house of her protector since she first entered it, I have unconsciously committed such an offense against Mr. Blyth as no contrition can ever adequately atone for. Now indeed I feel how presumptuously merciless my bitter conviction of the turpitude of my own sin, has made me towards what I deemed like sins in others. Now also I know, that, unless you have spoken falsely, I have been guilty of casting the shame of my own deserted child in the teeth of the very man who had nobly and tenderly ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... words, and abandoned them shamefully in the hour of defeat. But never, so he said, would he abandon the betrayed electors of Ballywhacket. Others might shuffle, and cheat and cozen, but he might be counted upon to remain firm, faithful, and incorruptible amidst the seething waves of political turpitude. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 16, 1892 • Various
... summed up in those words: resounding titles, real millionaires, then, down below, the most extravagant medley of international imposture and turpitude. And Pierre thought of that internationalism, that cosmopolitanism, that flight of foreigners which, ever denser and denser, swooped down upon Paris. Most certainly it came thither to enjoy it, as to a city of adventure and delight, and it helped to rot it a little more. Was it then ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... of the whites to unite against this tremendous menace, we are challenged with the smallness of our vote. This has long been flippantly charged to be evidence and has now been solemnly and officially declared to be proof of political turpitude and baseness on our part. Let us see. Virginia—a state now under fierce assault for this alleged crime—cast in 1888 seventy-five per cent of her vote; Massachusetts, the State in which I speak, sixty per cent ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... for all pleasures one can do him,"—marrying against one's will, and the like. "As to his health, it is one day better, another worse; but the legs, they are always swelled, Judge what my joy must be to get out of that turpitude,—for the King will only stay a fortnight, at most, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... criminal law, where the people are a "law unto themselves," where courts, lawyers, sheriffs, and constables existed not, and yet has seen as much quiet and order, and more honesty in paying just debts, than where legal restraints operated in all their force. The turpitude of vice and the majesty of virtue, were as apparent as in older settlements. Industry, in laboring or hunting, bravery in war, candor, honesty, and hospitality were rewarded with the confidence and honor of the people. Regulating parties would exist, and thieves, rogues ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... prejudices, than to hit the right mark where intellectual integrity and prudence, firmness and wise reserve, are in exact accord. When we come to declaring opinions that are, however foolishly and unreasonably, associated with pain and even a kind of turpitude in the minds of those who strongly object to them, then some of our most powerful sympathies are naturally engaged. We wonder whether duty to truth can possibly require us to inflict keen distress on those to whom we are bound ...
— On Compromise • John Morley |
