"Profanity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with bees! How you told of tulips and narcissuses, and a thousand lovely things for beds and borders and rock work—at so much a dozen, so very much a dozen, and a dozen so very few! I did not resort to cotton in my ears, but to tears and profanity. ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... company came across other Missourians on the plains; but no hostilities ensued, the Missourians having no object now to interfere with the Saints, and the latter contenting themselves by noting in their diaries the profanity and quarrelsomeness of their ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... Tim's hard blue eyes and a glance at his fist curled around the butt of his belt gun, the bogas backed up. A moment later they were thrown boldly into their own part of the boat by Jose, who blistered them with the profanity of three languages at once. Then McKay ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... he lay, coughing and weeping with smoke, that there was something splendid and large in the other's rage. Vanrevel was ordinarily so steady and cool that this was worth seeing, this berserker gesture; worth hearing, this wonderful profanity, like Washington's one fit of cursing; and Crailey, knowing Tom, knew, too, that it had not come upon him because Carewe had a daughter into whose eyes Tom had looked; nor did he rage because he believed that Crailey's life and his were in the greater hazard for the lack of every drop ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... he would look into his crystal for me. With a burst of profanity, as unexpected as it was vivid, he cursed "dem boys" that had stolen from him a priceless crystal which once had belonged to his old royal mother, who, before him, had had the same gift of the spirit. ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... for us to understand how such a farrago of absurdity, profanity, and indecency could ever have been gravely produced in a so-called court of justice in England as a state paper—a bill of indictment against a body of noblemen and gentlemen; against an order that for two hundred years had been the right arm of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... was usually reserved for interviews with widows whose homestead mortgages were to be foreclosed, guileless individuals who had indorsed notes for friends, or others whose business was unpleasant and likely to be accompanied with weeping or profanity. Mr. Bangs didn't object to foreclosing a mortgage, but he disliked to have a prospective customer hear the dialogue that ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... good which is written by so great a genius as Voltaire, though I cannot excuse all his profanity. But you are right to give so much time to those little poems addressed to persons; they are unquestionably among the most charming of his works. There is not a line which is not full of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... the best and most decided proofs of the beauty arising from the philosophical consideration of the subject intended to be represented. To all their deities a fixed and appropriate character was given, from which it would have perhaps been profanity to depart. This character was the result of a careful consideration of the ideal beauty suitable to the respective attributes of the different deities. Thus in their Jupiter, Neptune, Hercules, Vulcan, Mars, and Pluto; the Apollo, Mercury, Hymen, and ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... fightings, their loves and their lusts, their blunt, grim humour, their stoicism under stress, their adventures, their treasures found in a day and gambled in a night, their direct, crude speech, their generosity and cruelty, their heroism and bestiality, their religion and profanity, their self-sacrifice and obscenity—a true and fearless setting forth of a passing phase of history, un-compromising, sincere; each group in its proper environment; the valley, the plain, and the mountain; the ranch, the range, and the mine—all this, all ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... view of the janitor as he swept past. He was a regular volcano in pants. Never have I heard the English language more richly embossed with profanity. Firing a fat locomotive up the grades around Siwash with bad coal gives a man great talent in expression. We listened to him with awe. Pubby was entranced. He asked me if it would be safe to take anything down in his notebook, ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... on record what Terwilliger said in answer to this statement. It was forcible rather than polite, and the earl from that moment adopted a new simile for degrees of profanity, substituting "to swear like an American" for the old forms having to do with pirates and troopers. The string of expletives was about five minutes in length, at the end of which time ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... affidavit, cursing, profanity, anathema, denunciation, reprobation, ban, execration, swearing, blaspheming, imprecation, sworn ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... paintings are defaced by Tomkins and Hobson, but worst of all Prince Puckler Muskau has engraved his and his Ordenskreuz in huge letters on the naked breast of that august and pathetic giant who sits at Abou Simbel. I wish someone would kick him for his profanity. ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... dressed, he says, like his body, in black; for though he is so brisk a spark in company, he suffers sadly from the spleen when he is alone. We can follow him pretty closely through his day. He is a queer mixture of profanity and piety, of coarseness and loyalty, of cleverness and density; we do not breed this kind of beau nowadays, and yet we might do worse, for this specimen is, with all his faults, a man. He dresses carefully in ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... general tone and character of national religion. The Evangelical leaders, relying on less exclusively ecclesiastical methods, diffused their influence over a much wider area, and, under the impulse of their teaching, drunkenness, indecency, and profanity were sensibly abated. The reaction from the rampant wickedness of the eighteenth century drove men into strict ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... mingled with this white-haired old peasant's profanity. It was true that I had twice escaped mowing off his son's legs, and his father was ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... to permit me to make an extract from his journal in this place. It is less harrowing to copy than to recall. I omit the pious observations and reflections which grace the original. Comforting as they are to me, it seems a profanity to make them public; besides, it is his wish that I should withhold ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... youth's company was shot in the hand. He began to swear so wondrously that a nervous laugh went along the regimental line. The officer's profanity sounded conventional. It relieved the tightened senses of the new men. It was as if he had hit his fingers with a tack hammer ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... pleasures of the world, would say with Solomon, 'all is vanity.' I see nothing in which I can work. All are vanities, shadows; beneath all there is nothing. Great God! what is all this for? Why torment and pain me so? Why is all this action a profanity to me? And even ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... number of equally beautiful young butlers, coachmen, grooms and pages, in equally perfect liveries, appear to be discussing the aesthetics of an ideal and highly salaried service, at the other end of the same room. In the comparison there is all the brutal profanity of truth that shocks the reverence of romance; but in the respective relations of the great artist's masterpiece and of the poor modern lithograph to the realities of each period, there is the clue to the daily ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... and, while his diction embraced a choice stock of profanity, which he used when aroused, it also expressed itself in the choicest of English, his sentences full of commas, semicolons, and periods. He reeled off his stories as ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... doubtless absurd in the intensity of the worship paid to the fox by hunting communities. The animal becomes sacred, and his preservation is a religion. His irregular destruction is a profanity, and words spoken to his injury are blasphemous. Not long since a gentleman shot a fox running across a woodland ride in a hunting country. He had mistaken it for a hare, and had done the deed in the presence of keepers, owner, and friends. His feelings were so acute and his remorse so great that, ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... at the evening star, the Prioress heard again, with startling distinctness, the final profanity of poor Sister Seraphine: "I want ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... this is the look of Luther, even of the hard-headed Calvin, as seen from the Roman-Catholic side. Hence, also, every epoch of revolution in Art seems to the preceding like an irruption of frivolity and profanity. Christian Art would have seemed so to the ancients; the Realism of the fourteenth century must have seemed so to the Giotteschi and the Renaissance, to both. The term Pre-Raphaelitism, though it seems an odd collocation ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... a loafer hanging about in the store, and having paid only attention to the dram counter, the necessary concomitant of the village center, became garrulous, but unfortunately more than seasoned the flow with a profanity tolerably rich in variety if not distinguished for refinement; he was of the Clary's Grove genus. As there was a crowd at the "ladies' department," that is, the dry-goods and finery, where it happened ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... was interrupted by an outburst of such vile and savage profanity that it literally rendered me speechless. It lasted, I suppose, fully ten minutes, and left its utterer gasping and in a state of collapse. I administered stimulant, and at length the colour came slowly ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... repeat his language, mother, but the muscles stood out on his profanity in regular knots—he intimated, in a way that left no doubt as to his meaning, that I was not quite up to the nine per week standard. I'll be honest with you and admit that I didn't lean against the pay-shed and weep. I still wanted to work, but I decided that I didn't want to start life ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... back. When the hurry of shipping was over he went to Shorty and asked for his time, much to the foreman's astonishment and disgust. The Happy Family was incensed and wasted profanity and argument trying to make him give up the crazy ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... honour to any edge-gilt vacuity in man's shape: cant shall be known to thee by the sound of it;—thou wilt fly from cant with a shudder never felt before; as from the opened litany of Sorcerers' Sabbaths, the true Devil-worship of this age, more horrible than any other blasphemy, profanity or genuine blackguardism elsewhere audible among men. It is alarming to witness,—in its present completed state! And Quack and Dupe, as we must ever keep in mind, are upper-side and under of the selfsame substance; ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... the Author, with a wild burst of spiritual enthusiasm, sings the charms of the rearward part of certain men; and what a royal ecstatic felicity there sometimes is in indisputable survey of the same. He rises to the heights of Anti-Biblical profanity, quoting Moses on the Hill of Vision; sinks to the bottomless of human or ultra-human depravity, quoting King Nicomedes's experiences on Caesar (happily known only to the learned); and, in brief, recognizes that there is, on occasion, considerable beauty in that quarter of ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... promises belied him, battling with her consecrated mood. She felt that his innermost spirit remained in its profanity, ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... longer act." For abuse of the critical faculty brings with it its natural consequences—timidity of soul, paralysis of the will, complete self-distrust. "To know is enough for me; expression seems to me often a profanity. What I lack is character, will, individuality." "By what mystery," he writes to M. Scherer, "do others expect much from me? whereas I feel myself to be incapable of anything serious or important." Defiance ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... thing to do, you will say, and much beneath the dignity of a grown man who cared not a bodle for his life, and not greatly for the manner of its losing. I grant you this; and yet it was that same bull-bellow of soldier profanity that saved my life. Whilst I was in the storm of it, cursing the lawyer by every shouted epithet I could lay tongue to, a miracle was wrought and Richard Jennifer and Ephraim Yeates pushed their ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... words, and even sentences, imperfectly formed; there was a certain amiable flatness in his tone, and he abounded in exclamations—"Goodness gracious!" and "Mercy on us!"—not much in use among the sex whose profanity is apt to be coarse. He had small, fair features, remarkably neat, and pretty eyes, and a moustache that he caressed, and an air of juvenility much at variance with his grizzled locks, and the ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... of Thomas Cooper, by which he was ever afterward known. He had early in life manifested a religious turn of mind; and this was probably increased by his continual perils and narrow escapes. He mourned over every indication of dishonesty, profanity, or dissipation, among people of his own color; and this feeling grew upon him, until he felt as if it were a duty to devote his life to missionary labors. He became a popular preacher among the Methodists, and visited some of the West India Islands ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... with their vittles. They can go to the other place next time," which was as near as Ledlie ever came to profanity. ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... dainty green except where the sandstone cliffs stood up in all the shades of yellow and red. Montana, as viewed on "horse round-up," looks better than in the first bleak days of March, and I could gaze upon it without profanity. I even got to like tearing over the newborn grass on a good horse, with a cowboy or two galloping, keen-faced and calm, beside me. It was almost better than slithering along a hard road with a motor-car stripped to ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... "expert" opinion, but wish to look into these things for themselves and intelligently purchase an instrument which is thoroughly up-to-date in every particular, which will not drive the organist to the verge of profanity every time he plays upon it, and will not prove a snug source of ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... maharajah was in no mood to be put off with smiles just then. As Yasmini got the story afterward from the bald old mendicant, whose piety had recently won him permission to bask on the comfortable carved stones just outside the window, Gungadhura burst forth into such explosive profanity that the high priest ran out of the room. The mendicant vowed that he heard the door slam—and so he did; but it was really Gungadhura, done with argument, on his way to ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... of the work that Lott Cary had set himself to accomplish. By his unselfish labors and untiring efforts he had won the hearts of the natives. He had been indefatigable in his efforts to uplift the colony. The morale of the settlement was greatly lifted. Drunkenness, profanity and quarreling were unknown; the Sabbath was observed with strictness.[151] Nearly the whole adult population had come under the influence of Christianity. On the site of a once desolate forest consecrated to demon worship was erected the commodious chapel which stood as a monument ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... replenishing with oil the lamp in the compartment where we were. The compartment into which we were moved was pretty full already. A good many were smoking strong tobacco, some were far gone in the tipsy direction, one of whom was indulging very liberally in profanity. I was the only woman in the compartment; but my countrymen, as always, were polite, inconveniencing themselves for my accommodation. Even the profane person made a violent effort to curb his profanity when he ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... Nulty; but Toddles hung on like grim death. Hawkeye was bawling fluent profanity and seeing red. Toddles heard one and sensed the other—and he clung grimly on. He was all doubled up around Hawkeye's knees, and in that position Hawkeye couldn't get at him very well; and, besides, Toddles had his own plan of battle. ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... seventeenth century. Claverhouse, with his powerful character and indomitable will, with his Titanic daring and relentless cruelty, has the face of a singularly beautiful young girl. Judge Jeffreys, whose delight in blood was only equalled by the foulness and extravagance of his profanity, looks in his picture the very type of spiritual wistfulness. Samuel Pepys, whose large oval eyes and clear-cut profile suggest a somewhat voluptuous and very fastidious aristocrat, was really a man of the people, sharp to a miracle in all the detail of the humblest kind of life, and apparently ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... lay and sacerdotal, will flourish once more in Britain; trade and commerce will be put down, as savouring of independence and intelligence; indolence and beggary will be sanctified; and troops of friars, with wallets on their backs, impudence on their brows, and profanity and filthiness on their tongues, will scour the country, demanding that every threshold and every purse shall be open to them. This result will come as surely as to-morrow will come, provided we permit the Papacy to raise its head once ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... know how susceptible even dogs and horses are to the different modulations of the human voice. They know the tone of affection; they are reassured and respond to it. But they are stricken with fear and trembling at the profanity of the master's rage. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... known; the natural bent of his mind apprehended, and once that is grasped, these satires will appeal to the heart and understanding of the reader with a sense of naturalness and expectedness. They are as inevitable as his love lyrics, and are read with the conviction that his merciless exposure of profanity masquerading in the habiliments of religion, was part of the life-work and mission of this great poet. He had been born, it is recognised, not only to sing the loves and joys and sorrows of his fellow men and women, but to purge their lives of grossness, and their religion of the filth of hypocrisy ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... the Governor's son never so little, his left hand lifted to point his utterance, and opened upon Boyle the most withering stream of blasphemous profanity that Slavens had ever heard. If there ever was a man who cursed by note, as they used to say, Hun Shanklin was that one. He laid it to ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... a not unusual compound of piety and profanity. We read in one place of his reckless exploits in burning churches and desecrating shrines, and in others of his liberal endowments of ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... Hinkle and become fourth in the tourney. Magnificently, he boarded at the yellow pine hotel instead of at the Parisian Restaurant; but he came to be a formidable visitor in the Hinkle parlor. His competition reduced Bud to an inspired increase of profanity, drove Jacks to an outburst of slang so weird that it sounded more horrible than the most trenchant of Bud's imprecations, and made ...
— Options • O. Henry
... that he was made for, it was to pile up epithets against this infernal rebellion!" Chacun a son gout. Our young author has struck a harder blow at the Confederacy by his damaging facts, than if he had intensified them with the vocabulary of profanity and vituperation. There has been more than enough of bitter words, North and South; it is now a question of strength, and skill, and endurance. This book will teach us to respect the energy, while we detest the principles, of this ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... disperse in. I could now hear Alphonse's howls much more distinctly; they were made up of the oddest mixture of invocations to the Supreme Power and the name of his beloved Annette that it is possible to conceive; and, in short, though their evident earnestness saved them from profanity, were, to say the least, very remarkable. Taking up a paddle I managed to drive it into his ribs, whereon he, thinking that the end had come, howled louder than ever. Then I slowly and cautiously raised myself ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... much grossness and profanity, the discursive talk, in this hiding place of criminals, may be partially reproduced as follows. The chief is ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... he walked about the veranda, observing every person he encountered, as well as those who were seated in groups, engaged in rather noisy conversation, intermixed with a great deal of profanity. He breathed easier when he had made the circuit of the piazzas on the first floor, though there were two others on the stories above it, for he found no one he could identify as a person ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... quickly. The paper still goes to press and the public sees no change; but we, who worked beside him, see it nightly. By twelve o'clock on a busy night, nervous, drawn faces surround the central desk, and profanity is snapped crossly back and forth. There is no alleviation of cheerful inanity. Presently somebody looks up, remarking, "I wish Bobbie Barton was back." And somebody else replies with profane asperity and lax grammar, "I wish he was!" Bobbie, meanwhile has become a lawyer, ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... had some heart, some frankness and honesty, but he was a bluff, rough sailor, and when excited, oaths of the hottest sort flew from his lips, like sparks from an anvil. Because of his roughness and profanity, and because, perhaps, of the fact of his surrounding himself with a lot of natural children, the Duchess was determined to persevere in her retirement from the Court circle, and in keeping her innocent little daughter out of its unwholesome ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... about her,—a divinity which made it almost a profanity to have talked about her at all to such a one as Dolly Longstaff. She was his Holy of Holies, at which vulgar eyes should not even be allowed to gaze. It had been a most unfortunate interview. But this was clear; that, as he had announced his engagement to such a one as Dolly Longstaff, the matter ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... and used it as a razor. Tennys compelled him to seek a secluded spot for his, weekly shave, decreeing that the morals of the natives should not be ruined in their infancy by an opportunity to acquire first-class, fully developed American profanity. ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... doing with that? None of your funny robot tricks. I know your kind, plotting all kinds of things in them tin domes." His voice trailed off into a stream of incomprehensible profanity. With sudden spite he lashed his foot out and sent 17's ...
— The Velvet Glove • Harry Harrison
... worth noticing, from his connection with the important and somewhat curiously conducted controversy respecting the Resurrection, to which Sherlock's 'Tryal of the Witnesses' gave both the impulse and the form. Annet, like Woolston, was prosecuted for blasphemy and profanity; and if the secular arm should ever be appealed to in such matters, which is doubtful, he deserved it by the coarse ribaldry of ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... characters. And an ugly picture it is, which should hang in the gallery of every young man and woman. 'Wine is a mocker.' Intemperance delights in scoffing at all pure, lofty, sacred things. It is the ally of wild profanity, which sends up its tipsy and clumsy ridicule against Heaven itself. If a man wants to lose his sense of reverence, his susceptibility for what is noble, let him take to drink, and the thing is done. If he would fain keep these fresh and quick, let him eschew ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... impression produced on him was that they were swearing. If they had only sworn right out, he would not have minded it so much, because he would have known the worst. But the feeling that the air was full of suppressed profanity was very wearing and after standing it for a week, he gave up in disgust and went to ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... all of Jim's crude but honest ethics of the big wilderness to take the Lord's name in vain, and the words he uttered were filled more with the softness of a prayer than the harshness of profanity. He was big, and his hands were hard and knotted, and his face was covered with a coarse red scrub of beard. But his hair was blond, and his eyes were blue, and just now they were filled with unbounded amazement. Slowly the fork loaded with ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... to maintain your Christian profession among your comrades. I need not caution you against strong drink as useless and hurtful, nor against profanity, so common among soldiers. Both these practices you abhor. Aim to take at once a decided stand for God. If practicable have prayers regularly in your tent, or unite with your fellow-disciples in prayer-meetings in the camp. ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... tragedies or the histories. The most heavily annotated plays are, however, the tragedies, and it is curious to observe that the sombre "problem comedy," Measure for Measure, commands more notes than any other comedy. Further, Johnson's moral and religious sensibilities were offended by profanity and obscenity in the drama, and Shakespeare's comedies, far more than his tragedies and histories, transgress in this direction. One recollects, finally, that the dramatic genre favored most by Johnson ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... magistrate. The Squire, not unwilling to get a handle against so bad a rebel, observed that it was high time for the authorities to make a head against the tide of blasphemy which had swept over the state since the war, and to advertise to the rabble that the statute against profanity was not a dead letter and thereupon sentenced Abe to ten lashes at the whipping-post, to be at once laid on, it chancing to be a Saturday afternoon. While Abe, frantic with rage, was struggling with ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... merry, rollicking nature. At times you are seized with a wild, tumultuous hilarity to which you give ample vent in shouting and song. You are much addicted to profanity, and you rightly feel that this is part of your nature and you must not check it. The world is a very bright place to you, Aunt Dorothea. Write to me again soon. Our minds seem cast ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... They made straight for the Judaean hills, and in the first little village were welcomed by the inhabitants at their harvest, as they saw them coming across the plain. But again death attended the Presence, and curiosity, which was profanity, was punished. So the villagers were as eager to get rid of the ark as they had been to welcome it, and they passed it on to the little city of Kirjath-jearim,'the city of the woods,' as the name means, or, as we might say, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... you get him! Get him, or I'll get you! If he ain't back in jail to-day, off comes your buttons to-morrow—do you get that?" Old John banged the receiver onto the hook, and launched what would undoubtedly have been a classic of denunciatory profanity, had it not been interrupted in its inception by Jean, who had slipped into the office unnoticed at the beginning of ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... points to you by applying his hands to the parts designated, and uttering cries of feigned anguish to give effect to his description. He informs you, as a piece of refreshing intelligence, that it is devilish hard to bear, and enough to make a saint indulge in profanity. When he has proceeded thus far, he may be taken with one of his capricious pains, ducks his head between his knees, squeezes it with his hands, and bawls out: 'O-h! Je-ru-sa-lem!' with a duration of sound ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... a sound of a heavy fall, followed by a volley of profanity, and the next instant something flew against the wall, and was shivered to fragments that fell ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... interfered but little in the management of political affairs, save in cases of imminent danger. Their duties, grave, tranquil, and solemn, held them aloof from the stir of temporary agitation. They were the last great refuge of the state, to which, on common occasions, it was almost profanity to appeal. Their very demeanour was modelled to harmonize with the reputation of their virtues and the dignity of their office. It was forbidden to laugh in their assembly—no archon who had been seen in a public tavern could be admitted to their ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... midsummer madness all who breathed their fumes. They stung, smarted, stimulated, intoxicated. It was said that the most jaded and foot-sore horses became furious and ungovernable under their influence; wearied teamsters and muleteers, who had exhausted their profanity in the ascent, drank fresh draughts of inspiration in this fiery air, extended their vocabulary, and created new and startling forms of objurgation. It is recorded that one bibulous stage-driver exhausted description and condensed its virtues ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... want me to do? Do you want me to stay at home and read the Bible?' her companion demanded with an effect of profanity, confronted ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... Phineas Everton and his daughter had disappeared over the shoulder of the spur on their way back to the Lawrenceburg. I gave my two partners the gist of the conversation with the assayer, briefly and without comment. Gifford oozed profanity; but Barrett laughed ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... Horace or Aristophanes, or the theology of Lucretius, so peculiarly admirable, as to render them, per se, fitter subjects for the exclusive exercise of a young man's faculties than "the Pickwick Papers," or "The Rod and the Gun." I have heard—(I never saw, nor will I believe it)—of the profanity of certain sporting under-graduates, who took into chapel the racing calendar, bound in red morocco, instead of a prayer-book; I hold it to have been the malicious fiction of some would-be university ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... was in a frequent state of intoxication, and kept gin, brandy, and beer in her berth. Whether sober or not, she was equally voluble; and as her language was not only inelegant, but replete with coarseness and profanity, the annoyance was almost insupportable. She was a professed atheist, and as such justly an object of commiseration, the weakness of her unbelief being clearly manifested by the frequency with which she denied the existence of ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... was his anchor down than Captain Cable began to lower a boat, and Petersen, seeing the action, broke into mild Scandinavian profanity. "He is going to try and get to us!" he said, pessimistically, and went forward to give the necessary orders. He knew his business, too, this Northern sailor, and when, after a long struggle, the boat ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... Archbishop of Mayence, stating that they contained such things as "a fair piece of Moses' left horn, a whole pound of the wind that blew for Elijah in the cave on Mount Horeb and two feathers and an egg of the Holy Ghost" as a dove. All this, of course, not in ribald profanity, but in works intended for ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... pride taught him to insist upon; and he resented the boldness of the lampoons upon his Court which were now circulated broadcast, not because they reflected on his morals, but because they were a breach of good manners. One whose chosen associates were men of habitual profanity and unabashed licentiousness; one who believed religion to be nothing but disguised hypocrisy, and the chastity of women nothing but a delusion artfully contrived—could not long condone plain speaking for its manliness and sincerity, and could not conceive that the profligacy of the royal courtesan ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... his presence. On he came, stamping and shaking his head steerlike. One expected every moment to hear him bellow. When he came up to Mr. B., it really did seem that the man must fall in a fit. When he could speak, he burst into vituperation and profanity. He d——d the city, its founders, and its present occupants. He d——d Mr. B., his ancestors, his relatives near and distant, by blood and by law; but he was exceptionally florid when he came to tell Mr. B. how many kinds of a fool ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... Miss Isobel had such thrilling occupation as that of returning Ezra Quinby's grandson to the spiritual fold. In spite of the fact that Quin was a fairly decent chap already, whose worst vices were poker and profanity, she persisted in regarding him as a brand which she had been privileged to snatch ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... mother's dreams for him, her prejudices, his own choice and his renouncing of it all for the sake of what his mother had already given up for him. To his colleagues, the old professor expressed himself with plain profanity. To Scott, he took a gentler tone, spoke with appreciation of a mother such as Mrs. Brenton must be, spoke of the ministerial profession with an admiration he was far from feeling, and then craftily suggested to his favourite student that the preaching of the gospel ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... among them when they learn that Mrs. William Henry Warburton, the richest woman in Fairfield County, and the daughter of a bishop, has been doin' her own work! What consternation! What dismay! What female profanity! What a revision of habits an' resolutions! Why, there's been nothin' like it since the descent ...
— Keeping up with Lizzie • Irving Bacheller
... my subconscious fears. "Hit them? Why, we will soak them in the gizzard; wreck them!" "Charge? Let them come on and may the best man win!" "Die? There never was a fairer, brighter, better day to die on." In fact, "Lead on!" I felt absolutely gay. A little profanity or a little intellectual detachment at these times is of material help in the process ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... uttered violent language; but, since there was nobody present to hear him, it is likely he found small satisfaction in his profanity, rich though it may have been in metaphor and variety. So presently he betook himself off, going straight to the office in Legal Row ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... ever hear the beat o' that!" shouted a pious fellow who was inventing cuss words that would pass the charge of profanity. ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... they plodded on with mutual revilings and profanity, till Gus became afraid of Van ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... himself as having led an abandoned life in his youth; but there appears to be no evidence that he was, outwardly at any rate, worse than the average of his neighbours: the only serious fault which he specifies is profanity, others being dancing and bell-ringing. The overwhelming power of his imagination led him to contemplate acts of impiety and profanity, and to a vivid realisation of the dangers these involved. In particular he was harassed by a curiosity in regard to the "unpardonable sin," and ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... the big chair, his head inclining to one side, the book half-fallen from his hand, and the lamp sputtering its last beside him. But instead of viewing the weary face with pity, Sinclair burst into sudden and amazed profanity. ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... general distraction. Drays and baggage-vans were clattering hither and thither in a wild hurry, every now and then getting blocked and jammed together, and then, during ten seconds, one could not see them for the profanity, except vaguely and dimly. Every windlass connected with every forehatch from one end of that long array of steamboats to the other, was keeping up a deafening whiz and whir, lowering freight into the hold, and the half-naked crews of perspiring negroes that worked them were roaring ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... short. "Now see here, Frank, let's understand this. We've been fooling with this thing too damned long. We've made a hell of a mess of it, you know that." He spoke determinedly, with a profanity unusual with him. The Doctor ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... Thorlakson muttered profanity as he stared out the window. The big Swede looked up with mild enquiry, at the same time reaching for another slice of bread, while the other two men stopped eating altogether and gazed ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... of profanity there is a less ardent pursuit of evidences, chiefly, I daresay, because their unearthing is less stimulating. (Beside, there is no law prohibiting profanity in books: the whole inquiry here is but so much lagniappe.) On page ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... guttural rumbling, ninety per cent profanity, and Hopalong, nodding wisely, picked up two wedges. "Johnny, here's yore gun. If this man will stop talking to hisself and drop that lead-sprayer long enough to take our good money, ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... few seconds it seemed as though Benjamin J. Flugel's heirs-at-law would collect a substantial death benefit from the I. O. M. A., but the impending apoplexy was warded off by a tremendous burst of profanity. ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... a little breath. For a moment he was speechless. To him it seemed something like profanity that this young man should ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... seductions; so that the gray dawn had already faintly appeared in the east while our delirious extravagance was at its height. Madly flushed with cards and intoxication, I was in the act of insisting upon a toast of more than wonted profanity, when my attention was suddenly diverted by the violent, although partial, unclosing of the door of the apartment, and by the eager voice of a servant from without. He said that some person, apparently in great haste, demanded to speak with ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... was thrust savagely back against his seat. His tongue tried to slide back into his throat. There was an enormous oppression on his chest. He found himself thinking panicky profanity. ...
— Sand Doom • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... should start with plants that he knows to be genuine, and propagate from them. Then, by constant and personal vigilance, he can maintain a stock that will not be productive chiefly of profanity when coming into fruit. This scrutiny of propagating beds is a department that I shall never ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... hands, and on the wall, I read the imaginary placard, in infamous grammar, "POSITIVELY NO FREE LIST, EXCEPT MEMBERS OF THE PRESS!" Hanging about the doorway (I fancied,) were slouchy Pompeiian street-boys uttering slang and profanity, and keeping a wary eye out for checks. I entered the theatre, and sat down in one of the long rows of stone benches in the dress circle, and looked at the place for the orchestra, and the ruined stage, and around at the wide ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... constituted that it moves them the other way. When Tom replied gently to Zeigler, and asked him privately why he annoyed him without cause, the fellow sneered the more at him. He took pains to indulge in profanity and obscenity before Tom, and received the full reward he sought when he saw how ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... on Sin, and holding those scales, the decision of which would destine to eternal bliss or eternal woe, and that Justice personified in Him "whose glory is a burning like the burning of a fire,"—no, but the revolting fears produced by the profanity of that poor worm of very common mud, which has been since the beginning of time acting the God. Ay, the aurelia-born image of grace sees a difference when it looks from the sun to the epigenetic thing which He raises out of corruption. There was, in that small place ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... deep sin of blasphemy lies not, as many suppose, in profanity alone, but as Dr. Kelso, Stand. Bible Dict., summarizes: "Every improper use of the divine name (Lev. 24:11), speech derogatory to the Majesty of God (Matt. 26:65), and sins with a high hand—i.e. ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... he would overreach a Spaniard when he could, but when he had given his word he kept it; he burned incense before joss, he read the analects of Kung Foo Too and Mang Tse, and worshipped his ancestors; he never stole or used any kind of profanity that moral Spaniards could understand. For all this he was nagged and worried constantly, and could hardly take a walk without being pursued by friars who requested alms for their charities in so pointed a manner ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... in ever so small a degree. Indeed, "it was a law of the Ostrogoths that anybody might hew down what trees he pleased in the common wood, except oaks and hazels; those trees had peace, i.e., they were not to be felled[9]." That profanity of this kind was not treated with immunity was formerly fully believed, an illustration of which is given us by Aubrey,[10] who says that, "to cut oakwood is unfortunate. There was at Norwood one oak that had mistletoe, a timber tree, which was felled about 1657. Some persons ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... Capital. Lax Precautions. The New York "Tribune" Dispatch. Montgomery Murmurs. Troops en route, and their Feelings. The Government on Wheels. Kingsville Misnomer. Profanity and Diplomacy. Grimes' Brother-in-law. ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... pardonable confusion between the symptoms and its cause Ranny's mother had hit upon a phrase that made it possible for them to discuss his father's affliction without the smallest, most shadowy reference to its essential nature. For Ranny's mother, such reference would have been the last profanity, a sacrilege committed against the divinities of the hearth and of the marriage bed. But for that phrase Mr. Ransome's weakness must have been passed in silence as the unspeakable, ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... can you!" murmured Mrs. Hudson, to whom this savored of profanity, and to whose shrinking sense, indeed, the accumulated loveliness of the night seemed to ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... live wire at repartee, Mamie McCorkle was stumped. With a captain of industry swearing in each ear and the get-rich-quick millionaire trying to break in with his more artistic specialties in profanity, she was for a moment frozen into silence. When she did come to the surface, she set the captains of industry down where they belonged, retorted upon the get-rich-quick millionaire that he was no gentleman and she hoped he would ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... lamb, a new S. John. On her right stood the man of Torcello with his keys, a new S. Peter. Both were laughing after their all-absorbent, divine, noiseless fashion; and under both was written, Sic Genius. Are not all things, even profanity, permissible in dreams? ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... crowd of men in front of the saloon across the way. Soon I saw him go into the gin-mill, the crowd following him, and the noise of voices grew louder. I had had enough experience with such things to know pretty well what was going on; the stink of spilled drinks, and profanity and indecency—there was nothing in them to toll me in from the ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... even a superficial study of the hand he would have been spared much profanity and the pupil much heartache and disappointment. Tuition is twofold. There is direct teaching and there is development. The seed is sown and then the soil is watered and tended in the manner calculated to nourish and develop the particular plant ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... broke in Buxton, with an outburst of profanity. "Not sunset! why, it's well-nigh dark now, sir, and every man in the troop had side-lined his horse half an hour ago. D—n your insolence, sir! your excuse is worse than your conduct. Mr. Billings, see to it, sir, that this man walks and leads his horse in rear of the ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... an election in Wilkes County, and a delegation, in spite of the lateness of the hour, went to Mr. Toombs' residence, awoke him, and asked for an authoritative denial of what they considered a damaging charge. Mr. Toombs listened to the delegation, and then declared with emphasis, not free from profanity, that it was so. "I have responded to their calls just as I have those of other denominations. You can tell the people that the distribution of my money is none ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... already spoken. They were filled, as a general thing, all night, with an eager throng, especially on Sunday. Indeed everything then had its full course on Sunday. There were various sports; drinking and gambling ran riot. Blasphemous words filled the air. Men swore without the least thought. But profanity is not alone restricted to a frontier or border community, where laws and a sense of propriety are wanting. One may hear it in old and civilised towns, as he walks the streets, and sometimes from the lips of boys. In these saloons people of ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... his real intention, the new Grand Duke ordered the body of the Grand Duchess to be placed beside that of her husband in the Cappella Medici of the church. For six brief hours it was suffered to remain, and then, at midnight, agents of Ferdinando, well paid for their profanity, deported all that was mortal of the brilliant "woman whom he hated" to an unknown grave in the paupers' burial plot beyond the city boundary! "For," said he, "we will have none of ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... he went a step toward her, he exclaimed, with reckless profanity, "Ask the God who made me what I am, why I want you! Ask the God who made you so ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... instances could be cited in proof of this statement. It is related that "One day while showing goods to two or three women in Offutt's store, a bully came in and began to talk in an offensive manner, using much profanity and evidently wishing to provoke a quarrel. Lincoln leaned over the counter and begged him, as ladies were present, not to indulge in such talk. The bully retorted that the opportunity had come for which he had long sought, and he would like to see the man who could hinder him from saying anything ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... pillow. Least of all, must one throw extra strain on the Minister, who had all he could carry without being fretted in his family. One must read one's Times every morning over one's muffin without reading aloud — "Another disastrous Federal Defeat"; and one might not even indulge in harmless profanity. Self-restraint among friends required much more effort than keeping a quiet face before enemies. Great men were the worst blunderers. One day the private secretary smiled, when standing with the crowd in the throne-room while the endless procession made bows to the ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... the old man with the ejaculation that with him supplied the place of trooper profanity—"I believe you're right about your Indian. You probably wounded him and he's lying behind that rock now, and those fellows are coming up to help him. Don't fire! They're too far away for a down-hill shot. Wait till I tell you. Now, Ned, my boy, run back and comfort Nellie a minute. ...
— Sunset Pass - or Running the Gauntlet Through Apache Land • Charles King
... stood thus in vain endeavor to fathom this inexplicable mystery the sound of voices broke upon her ears. Instantly she was all alert. They were coming closer! A second later she recognized the lurid profanity of the Swede. Malbihn, her persecutor, was returning! Meriem ran quickly to the opening of the tent and looked out. It was too late! She was fairly cornered! The white man and three of his black henchmen were coming straight across the ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Shakespeare's death and 1623. There are frequent oaths in the Quarto which have been very much modified in the Folio, and this strengthens our belief that the manuscript from which the Quarto was printed was written about 1604, for shortly after that date an act was passed against the use of profanity ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... I used to think the language of a merchant ship's fo'c'sle pretty bad, but the language of Tommies in point of profanity quite equals, and in point of obscenity beats it hollow. This department is a speciality of his. Of course, after a little it becomes simply meaningless, and you scarcely notice it, but the haphazard and indiscriminate way, quite regardless of any meaning, ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... contemptuous flings at the great pliable public. When threatened by competitors, or occasionally by public officials, with the invocation of the law, he habitually sneered at them and vaunted his defiance. In terse sentences, interspersed with profanity, he proclaimed the fact that money was law; that it could buy either laws or immunity from ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... out of one of the little wooden offices on the quay. He was apparently the owner of the sheep, or in some way concerned with them, for he harangued the drovers in a flow of language which though rich in profanity, was poured forth in a pleasant and jovial voice. He had been drinking unwisely and too well, and as he wobbled richly about the small quay he happened to lurch against Stafford, who was attempting to avoid him. He begged ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... time by turning suddenly on the question of the Sacrament; he cited the appearance of Hooper as a witness in proof that it was really on this point that he was brought to trial, and he at last succeeded in arousing Cranmer's love of controversy. A reply of almost incredible profanity from the Archbishop, if we may trust Foxe's report, rewarded Bonner's perseverance in demanding a statement of his belief. The Bishop was not slow to accept the advantage he had gained. "I am right sorry to hear your Grace ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... upon what you call my soul and conscience," and the Count indicated with his hand where both those faculties were contained. "I will select the boy who had audacity, I will say profanity, to break the windows of my good friend and ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... the old musher going up the White Horse Trail in a blizzard and meeting the Bishop, only he didn't know it was the Bishop. And the Bishop says, "How's the trail back of you, my friend?" and the old musher just swore with the utmost profanity for three straight minutes. Then he says to the Bishop, "And what's it like back of you?" and the Bishop says, "Just like that!" Jake here got embarrassed from talking so much and ordered another round ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... Hopper admonished sharply. Since his retirement to private life he had sought diligently to free his speech of profanity and thieves' slang, as not only unbecoming in a respectable chicken farmer, but likely to arouse suspicions as to his origin and previous condition of servitude. "Can't ye see Shaver ain't use to ut? Shaver's a little gent; he's a reg'ler little ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson
... fiendish wish, and bade him say, "Pray God, send the soul to heaven!" which he was bawling when he met a he and a she-dog going to be hanged. The good people who heard him were greatly shocked at his seeming profanity, and striking him, strictly charged him to cry, "A he and a she-dog going to be hanged!" On he went, accordingly, repeating this new cry, till he met a man and a woman going to be married. When the bridegroom heard what ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... was slung up to a hook in the ceiling, and gradually drawn back by a pulley until it was far above the heads of the men, the chains meanwhile clanking continually against the receptacle, from which came forth a stream of smothered profanity. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... us would turn out. An officer of the guard would go up with a squad into the third floor, only to find everybody up there snoring away as if they were the Seven Sleepers. After relieving his mind of a quantity of vigorous profanity, and threats to "buck and gag" and cut off the rations of the whole room, the officer would return to his quarters in the guard house, but before he was fairly ensconced there the cap and blouse would go out again, and the maddened guard be regaled with a spirited and vividly profane lecture ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... making the old woman's cheque a little bigger. Right.... We've been two years together now, Joe, and this is the only thing I've ever asked you to do or done myself that wasn't square and aboveboard. But look here"—here, for some half-minute, Captain Dave Liardet launched into profanity—"I tell you that the owners of this ship wouldn't care a single curse if you and I and every living soul aboard had had our livers cut out at La Vandola as long as they didn't lose money over it, and haven't to pay our wages to our ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... to the house, gratified that she had enforced discipline, not hearing the contractor's profanity about meddlesome women. Later on the same day after the workmen had left,—they knocked off from their eight hours while the sun was still high in the heavens,—Adelle was wandering over the place, idly looking for a suitable location for a tennis-court. The doctor had told her to take some ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... big ears. Set it to the credit of the black folk, they always had regard for the innocence of childhood. Scandal was merely breathed—not even so hinted as to arouse curiosity. Foul speech I never heard from them nor a trace of profanity. What I did hear was a liberal education in the humanities—as time passes I rate more and more highly the sense of values it fixed in a plastic mind. I think it must have been because our Mammys saw all things from the ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... the extreme right wing of the reactionary group. Between these and the Socialists of the extreme left the assembly was kept at fever pitch. The Black Hundreds, for the most part, indulged in violent tirades of abuse, often in the most disgusting profanity. The Socialists replied with proletarian passion and vigor, and riotous scenes were common. The Second Duma was ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... recovered from his amazement, after his humiliating defeat at Tom's hands, he stood irresolute for a moment outside her garden gate, indulged at some length in a form of profanity peculiar to his class, and then walked ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... grave of the departed person. Needless to say that such a process belongs distinctly to "Black" Magic, and is wholly evil. Ethereal corpses, like dense ones, if not swiftly destroyed by burning, should be left in the silence and the darkness, a silence and a darkness that it is the worst profanity to break. ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant
... instantaneous. His pony did an animated two-step not on the programme. It took one glance at the diabolical machine, and went up on its hind legs, preliminary to giving an elaborate exhibition of pitching. The rider indulged in vivid profanity and plied his quirt vigorously. But the bronco, with the fear of this unknown evil on its soul, varied its bucking so effectively that the puncher astride its hurricane deck was forced, in the language of his kind, to ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... sixteen days ago, you came to our camp to deny a charge made against you by a man of our company. You overawed, browbeat and insulted the man and those who were assisting and protecting him in his distress. You denied the accusation made against you, with vehemence and much profanity. Giving you the benefit of a doubt, we permitted you to go. Now we are here to take the full statement of the prosecuting witness, and examine such other evidence as there may be. We will clear you if we can, or find you ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... confidence in you which finally grows into an unquestioning faith. Beware how you start, in the minds of men whose good-will you must have, a question as to whether their good opinion of you is justified or not. Profanity will create ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... at the Tombs the officer is obliged to throw persons who command his sympathy into the company of the most abandoned wretches for an entire night. Drunkenness, disorderly conduct, and fighting, are the principal charges brought against the occupants of the Bummers' Cell. The noise, profanity, and obscenity are fearful. All classes ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... His sandals out in tramping over the countryside, he professed the most bitter contempt; nor was he more lenient to those poorer members of the clergy who winked at the vices of their patrons that they might secure a seat at their table, and who would sit through a long evening of profanity rather than bid good-bye to the cheesecakes and the wine flask. That such men represented religious truth was abhorrent to his mind, nor would he even give his adhesion to that form of church government dear to the Presbyterians, where a general council of ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... carols had to be reformed and regulated lest they should be a mere occasion of profanity and rudeness, that curious one of Dives and Lazarus was occasionally heard, of which two lines could never ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... to anybody except those who sell it. In short Mr. Bilge's usefulness consists in being useful to Mr. Bilge, and all the rest is illusion and sentimentalism. But because I know that Bilge is only Bilge, shall I stoop to the profanity of saying that fire is only fire? Shall I blaspheme crimson stars any more than crimson sunsets, or deny that those moons are golden any more than that this grass is green? If a child saw these coloured lights, he would dance ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... became so regularly paved. My townsmen have all heard the tradition—the oldest people tell me that they heard it in their youth—that anciently the Indians were holding a pow-wow upon a hill here, which rose as high into the heavens as the pond now sinks deep into the earth, and they used much profanity, as the story goes, though this vice is one of which the Indians were never guilty, and while they were thus engaged the hill shook and suddenly sank, and only one old squaw, named Walden, escaped, ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... Nicholas. "S'blood, man!—but I must be careful, for Doctor Ormerod and Parson Dewhurst are within hearing, and may lecture me on the wantonness and profanity of swearing. By Saint Gregory de Northbury!—no, that's an oath too, and, what is worse, a Popish oath. By—I have several tremendous imprecations at my tongue's end, but they shall not out. It is a sinful propensity, and must be controlled. In a word, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth |
