"Vicious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that can flow from the intercourse of women were debarred me than run such a course. The moral effect upon my mind was stronger than any which ever resulted from the most didactic work, and if anyone wants to excite remorse in the most vicious mind I would recommend him to make use of 'Les ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... themselves into this new World—Men who by the Wisdom of their Councils and their exemplary Manners, will establish the public Liberty on the Foundation of a Rock.—These Men will secure to themselves more of the Esteem of their virtuous, and even of their vicious Fellow-Citizens, than they could by a thousand courtly Addresses which are commonly the Breath of Vanity and Adulation.—There is a charm in Virtue to force Esteem.—If Men of a different Character have by any Means been advanced to those hallow'd Seats, who have even sollicited public Employments ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... mischief. Had she been a vicious woman nothing would have troubled her, but she was not vicious. She was not even less than good in her moral instincts. Only she was weak, hopelessly weak, and so all these things drove her to a shrewish ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... them as if he had been a rich nobleman. He would not tolerate careless grooming for an instant; bits and stirrups were always kept in a state of exemplary brightness, and when he rode through Shaw he was quite fit to be seen in Hyde Park. At that time he had a jet-black mare of a vicious temper, which only gratified his pride as a horseman, and it so happened (I am not inventing this for a contrast) that my pony was of the purest white with full mane and tail of the same, and shaped exactly like the sturdy war-horses ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... and in a vicious temper when he reached the camp. He knew it was his destination because, on a wide porch facing the west, he came upon his friend and former schoolmate, John Matthews, snugly rolled in his blankets, ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... during the continuance of the time of depression, when an unwarlike monarch was living in inglorious ease amid the luxuries and refinements of Nineveh, and the people, sunk in repose, gave the themselves up to vicious indulgences more hateful in the eye of God than even the pride and cruelty which they were want to exhibit in war, that the great capital was suddenly startled by a voice of warning in the streets—a voice which ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... said pro and con concerning the usefulness of birds in general there remains no doubt, in the minds of thinking people at least, as to the value of these creatures. It is only the vicious, biased, and thoughtless persons who continue ruthlessly to destroy birds indiscriminately without first pausing to consider whether or not it is a proper thing to do, whether it ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... last description is that other maxim of Edwards, that men are adjudged virtuous or vicious on account of actions proceeding from the will, without considering how they come by their volition. True, we may judge of external actions according as their origin is in the will or otherwise, without considering how its volitions come ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... last word to all our consultations was the pathetic one, 'Give me a fund and I see my way to doing anything.' And so we had travelled drearily for years in the vicious circle that there could be no creative energy in the Party without funds, and that there could be no possibility for funds for a party thus ingloriously inactive. Although myself removed from Parliament my aid ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... girl on the screen had flung herself, bareback, on a vicious, bucking pony, and holding on by his mane, went through the most hairbreadth escapes, yet was not thrown. Indeed, she finally tamed the wild creature, and dashed madly off on her errand. This was the rescue of a baby who had been left behind, when those who should have looked after the ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... any spirit of reform. The convicts were crowded together in small, filthy cells, and often in damp cellars without light or air; boys, who had thoughtlessly committed some trifling misdemeanor, with gray-headed, corrupt sinners; young girls with the most vicious old women. There was no attempt at classification of prisoners. Some of them might be innocent people waiting for trial. Neither was there oversight, save to keep the prisoners from escaping. No ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... a common vagrant, exactly, and yet he came very near being one. It was not supposed that he was a vicious boy; still it could not be denied that the life he led was tolerably well calculated to make him vicious, and most of the neighbors were afraid to have him about their houses, without keeping a sharp ...
— Mike Marble - His Crotchets and Oddities. • Uncle Frank
... he took an observation. "Your cat has only changed his position a little. I suppose the crowd thought it was going to fall, but it's all right. I'll soon have it back to you. Is it a vicious cat?" ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... the middle of the seventeenth century the renaissance schools of poetry had become effete in all European countries. They had run into extravagances of style, into a vicious manner known in Spain as Gongorism, in Italy as Marinism, and in England best exhibited in the verse of Donne and Cowley and the rest of the group whom Dr. Johnson called the metaphysical poets, and whose Gothicism of taste Addison ridiculed in his Spectator papers ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... whole energies of his nature became strangely directed to just such reforms of language as would be apt to strike the imagination of a pedagogue of his calibre. In the first place, he had brought from home with him a great number of sounds that were decidedly vulgar and vicious, and with these in full existence in himself, he had commenced his system of reform on other people. As is common with all tyros, he fancied a very little knowledge sufficient authority for very great theories. His first step was to improve the language, ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... that STEELE, though he led a careless and vicious life, had nevertheless a love and reverence for virtue. The life of Steele was not that of a retired scholar; hence his moral character becomes more instructive. He was one of those whose hearts ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... that the most indolent and most slovenly men were the most vicious; and a dirty external was a pretty sure indication of a depraved mind. Such as would not conform to the rules of cleanliness were committed to the black hole, which was under the prison, and divided into solitary cells. The ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... Zealand word for devil, often applied by settlers to a vicious horse or as a name for a dog. There is a dangerous river, the Taipo, on the west coast. There is considerable dispute as to whether the word is true Maori or not. The Rev. T. G. Hammond ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... cross the muskeg with a slight ascent; but the bank sank as they worked at it, and the track now led downhill toward its end. The foreman failed to remember this in his vicious mood. ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... "Videant isti asini." In his book of 1534 against the Apology, Cochlaeus complains that the youthful Melanchthon called old priests asses, sycophants, windbags, godless sophists, worthless hypocrites, etc. In the margin he had written: "Fierce and vicious he is, a barking dog toward those who are absent, but to those who were present at Augsburg, Philip was more gentle than a pup. Ferox et mordax est, latrator in absentes, praesentes erat Augustae omni catello blandior Philippus." ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... we please," snarled Zeke, who was a vicious youth of about Dick's age, as was Lem Hicks also. "An' we'll stay heer ef we want to, too, Dick Dare, an' ye ...
— The Dare Boys of 1776 • Stephen Angus Cox
... perhaps in part sustained upon postponed pork, her professional associate being a Learned Pig, displayed her life-size picture in a low dress as she appeared when presented at Court, several yards round. All this was a vicious spectacle as any poor idea of amusement on the part of the rougher hewers of wood and drawers of water in this land of England ever is and shall be. They MUST NOT vary the rheumatism with amusement. They may vary it with fever and ague, or with as many rheumatic variations ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... and finally, with much panting and tugging, wriggled his plump, round body into the hen-house. He walked over where a lonesome looking hen was sitting patiently on a nest. He put out a cautious hand and the hen promptly gave it a vicious peck. ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun
... upon to criticize Lady Hamilton, but he also offers as apology for the errors of her early life, the fact of her vagabond childhood, and says her immorality was more unmoral than vicious, and that her loyalty to Sir William was beautiful and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... Uncle Solomon was a grave, elderly man, mild and forgiving in his temper, and greatly esteemed among the more serious portion of our hands. He used to snatch every occasion to talk to the lewd and vicious about the concerns of their souls, and to advise them to fix their minds upon the Savior, as their only helper. Some I have heard curse and swear in answer, and others would say that they could not keep their minds upon God and the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Cynocephalus is exceedingly dangerous. When travelling on the Gold Coast with my late friend Colonel De Ruvignes, we suddenly came in the grey of the morning upon a herd of these beasts. We dismounted, hobbled our nags and sat down, sword and revolver in hand. Luckily it was feeding time for the vicious brutes, which scowled at us but did not attack us. During my four years' service on the West African Coast I heard enough to satisfy me that these powerful beasts often kill me and rape women; but I could not convince myself that they ever ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... a Majority in Both Senate and Assembly, Good Bills Were Defeated, and Vicious Measures Passed - Three Reasons for This: (1) Reform Element Was Without Plan of Action, (2) Was Without Organization; (3) The Machine Was Permitted to Organize ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... first planning session when we realists were underdogs, yet swung the basic direction. By then, the Hollywood Mind had appeared. The Hollywood Mind is definitely a real thing, a vicious thing, a blank thing, that paternalistically insists It knows what the ...
— Question of Comfort • Les Collins
... the tiller a vicious shove, as if that would wake the yacht up, and glared forward along the row of parasols protecting fair faces from the sun and of hats cocked over noses that were screwed up with feelings too deep for words, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... and honorable administration of just laws. His native land untrammeled by French control would realize this ideal, he had fondly hoped: but the Revolution emancipated it completely, entirely; and what occurred? A reversion to every vicious practice of medievalism, he himself being sucked into the vortex and degraded into a common adventurer. Disenchanted and bitter, he then turned to France. Abandoning his double role, his interest in Corsica was thenceforth sentimental; ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... factories,—all the aspects of the city monstrous by right, were miles away. But Halsted Street, with its picturesque mutations of poverty and its foreign air, was infinitely worthier than this. Sommers shuddered to think how many miles of Cottage Grove Avenue and its like Chicago contained,—not vicious, not squalid, merely desolate and unforgivably vulgar. If it were properly paved and cleaned, it would be bearable. But the selfish rich and the ignorant poor make ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... as you get to the next full stop, and read the whole chapter over again. I have imposed this penance upon the lady, neither out of wantonness nor cruelty; but from the best of motives; and therefore shall make her no apology for it when she returns back:—'Tis to rebuke a vicious taste, which has crept into thousands besides herself,—of reading straight forwards, more in quest of the adventures, than of the deep erudition and knowledge which a book of this cast, if read over as it should be, would infallibly ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... close upon seventy, and to-day looked even older than his years. It was not a vicious face, but it was not a strong one. People who wanted to say nice things of the Governor called him pleasant or genial or kindly. Even the men in the appointive offices did not venture to ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... the throne, and the boast of Italy. You are not placed in an obscure station, where little would be expected from you, and little would be the disappointment, though you should act in an imprudent or a vicious manner. The antiquity of your house fixes the eyes of your countrymen upon you. Your accession at so early a period to its honours and its emoluments, ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... those that were black with white hairs intermixed or with a white breast, the uniform bay, the brown, and the light reddish-brown, were classed under the name yack-ah, and were said to resemble each other in being smaller and having shorter nails, in climbing trees, and being so little vicious that they could be ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... both inhabitants of South Africa, resemble the zebra, but are not so regularly striped nor so brilliant in coloring. They are not so vicious in character, and are capable of being tamed. The quagga is made useful by the settlers near the Cape of Good Hope, and is taught to draw and to carry burdens. A settler once captured a zebra when it was a colt. The animal accustomed ...
— Harper's Young People, August 31, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... not check all inclination to mirth, and turn laughter into grief, the frantic conduct of the government of England would only excite ridicule. But it is impossible to banish from one's mind the images of suffering which the contemplation of such vicious policy presents. To reason with governments, as they have existed for ages, is to argue with brutes. It is only from the nations themselves that reforms can be expected. There ought not now to exist any doubt that the peoples of France, England, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... vicious beast lost all control of himself, as with a vile oath he leaped at the slender woman, gripping her tender throat in his brute clutch. Thuvia screamed and sprang to aid her fellow-prisoner, and at the same instant I, too, went mad, and tearing at the bars that spanned ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... for success. Directly anything bored him he dropped it. Self-indulgence seemed to him the only true wisdom. He never resisted the whim of the moment except through fear of the consequences, and unfortunately many of his propensities were vicious. ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... Saturday when posters were hung up announcing the manager's order in regard to the toll. He had not gone to work and he knew nothing about it. The next day, after mass, a dapper old man, the smelter Sizov, and the tall, vicious-looking locksmith Makhotin, came to him and told ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... blight upon the most buoyant heart that ever swelled with maternal devotion. I sometimes think I would rather have never existed, that I could forfeit all the grand privileges of a created being destined for a noble end, rather than have become the mother of impious and vicious children." ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... a percentage discount was charged for absence, and in some instances it reduced a passing mark to a failing mark. This comes close to the assignment of marks of failure for penalizing purposes, which is unjustified and vicious. ...
— The High School Failures - A Study of the School Records of Pupils Failing in Academic or - Commercial High School Subjects • Francis P. Obrien
... community, religious at the core, had a fringe of people who had failed to live up to the requirements of the Law. They came under the condemnation of the respectable people and of their own conscience, and drifted into the despised and vicious occupations. These were the "publicans and sinners," the "publicans and harlots," to whom the Gospels refer. A socially efficient religion would have prompted the good people to establish loving and saving contact with ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... cul-de-sac of chastity, worse than any devised by a Javert. In the store, such things were matters of course. There is little innocence for the girl in the modern city. There can be none for the worker thrown into the storm-center of a great commercial activity, humming with vicious gossip, all alive with quips from the worldly wise. At the very outset of her employment, the sixteen-year-old girl learned that she might eke out the six dollars weekly by trading on her personal attractiveness to those of the opposite sex. ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... friends, by reason of his fare intelligence, warm heart, and generous impulses; to his family, because he was always so considerate of them, so affectionate, and so brimful of courtesy; but to his enemies (and he never made any except among the vicious), he was ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... At the first sight of the animal and its rider, he hastened forward, and, seizing the bridle, assisted his master to dismount. Once on the ground, the young man satisfied his spleen by hitting the horse several vicious cuts with his whip. Then he informed the servant that it was his intention to walk home, and, with an ominous scowl, watched the "rushing beast" led from his sight. No one, except himself, was permitted to ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... man, with high hopes and ideals, fresh from the surroundings of Oxford and Rugby, from the training of the Schoolhouse and Fox How, and plunged suddenly into a society of boys—the subalterns of the Bengal Native Infantry—living for the most part in idleness, often a vicious idleness, without any restraining public opinion, and practically unshepherded, amid the temptations of the Indian climate and life. They show that the novel is, indeed, as was always supposed, largely ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... were the same. The local officials were too powerful within their respective spheres; neither inspectors nor royal courts proved adequate as safeguards against corruption and abuses of authority, which were the more frequent because the vicious expedients of farming and selling offices had become an established practice. Otherwise the English system was superior to that of France, particularly in making use for certain purposes of local representatives as an additional ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... tempted more and more, in the old hard drinking days, by the special poison of the West Indies—new rum, to the destruction both of soul and body. Be that as it may, their extirpation helped to make inevitable the vicious system of large estates cultivated by slaves; a system which is judged by its own results; for it was ruinate before emancipation; and emancipation only gave the coup de grace. The 'Latifundia perdidere' the Antilles, as they did Italy of old. The vicious system ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... he who does not remember that he has once been young, is the most completely disqualified for giving youthful counsel. He obtrudes his advice occasionally, when the youth is already under temptation, and borne along with the force of a vicious current; but because he disregards it, he gives him up as heedless, perhaps as obstinate. If advice is afterwards asked, his manners are cold and repulsive. Or perhaps he frowns him away, telling him he never follows his advice, and therefore it is useless to give it. So common ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... result of environment there was no visible sign to show how it infected her. We simply had to take Mr. ESMOND'S word for it. To me the menage seemed to be of the most respectable. But, of course, you can always attribute anything to your surroundings. One environment is vicious and so drives you to vice; another is virtuous with the same effect. Constance might condemn hers, but it never had a chance with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 21, 1920 • Various
... I could tell you how to conquer or get rid of these rebellious States." Looking up quickly, with a marked change of expression, Lincoln said: "That reminds me of two boys in Illinois who took a short cut across an orchard, and did not become aware of the presence of a vicious dog until it was too late to reach either fence. One was spry enough to escape the attack by climbing a tree; but the other started around the tree, with the dog in hot pursuit, until by making smaller circles than it was possible for his pursuer to make, he gained sufficiently ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... consists of bats and closures. You will have marvelled that so large a percentage of bricks can appear to have been delivered broken; but this you would have been able to account for had you watched the builder at work, noting his vicious practice of halving a sound brick whenever he wants a bat. It is an instinct, deep-rooted in bricklayers, against which unprofessional remonstrance is useless—an instinct that he fights against with difficulty whenever popular prejudice calls for full bricks on the face. So when the wall ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... I laughed at her fears—the sharks were not man-eaters, as we knew by their black-tipped fins, though the species were dangerous when bad weather made the fish on which they preyed scarce; then they became vicious and daring enough, and would at times actually tear the oars out of the hands of a boat's crew. However, Lucia would not come, saying she would await the return of the men and pluck the plover which they were sure to bring ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... Protestant: but I am ready to assert that there are no people in the world better qualified, upon the whole, to be intrusted with the education of youth. Their moral system and discipline are truly admirable. Their pupils, in after life, are seldom vicious and licentious characters, and are in general men of learning, science, and possessed of every elegant accomplishment. I execrate the conduct of the liberals of Madrid in murdering last year the helpless fathers, by whose care and instruction two of the finest minds of Spain ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... about slavery are peculiar. I find many men who, in their hearts, think of it just as I do. The land groans under it; and, bad as it is for the slave, it is worse, if anything, for the master. It takes no spectacles to see that a great class of vicious, improvident, degraded people, among us, are an evil to us, as well as to themselves. The capitalist and aristocrat of England cannot feel that as we do, because they do not mingle with the class they degrade ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... come and gone, and left their single-hearted, friendly subjectfolk pretty much what they found them. The people had suffered and survived through a thousand wars, and apparently prospered on under all governments and misgovernments. When the court was most French, most artificial, most vicious, the citizen life must have remained immutably German, dull, and kind. After all, he said, humanity seemed everywhere to be pretty safe, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... who are theatre-goers, of Mr. PENLEY in petticoats, now actually playing "Charley's" irresistibly comic Aunt at the Globe Theatre. But it is all good, and not too good to be true. Likewise, my dear Madame, you have given us two life-like sketches, one of a car-driver with his vicious mare, and the other of Molly's little dog. In conclusion, I congratulate you, Mrs. HUNGERFORD, as also the publisher, Mr. HEINEMANN, on having secured so good a specimen of the material for sale in this Hungerford ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 18, 1893 • Various
... elected by a system of circle votes, by which the vote of one rich man voting in circle number one counts as much as thousands voting in circle number three. It is the recognition by Bethmann-Hollweg that this vicious system must be changed that brought down on him the wrath of the Prussian country squires, who for so long have ruled the German Empire, filling places, civil and military, with their ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard
... minutes beating about with the smoking torches cleared the scene of the vicious little insects, those not stupefied by the smoke beating a hasty retreat back to their home in the hollow log which bruin had ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... laugh. It was practically impossible not to confide in Bernard Monck. "She wants to get right away from that vicious little termagant of a mother of hers. There's no love between them and never will be, so what's the use of pretending? She wants to get into a wholesome bracing, outdoor atmosphere with someone who knows how to love her. She'll probably ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... trail. That was sufficient for him. But he surveyed the surrounding mountains well before he spoke. They had halted in a sort of cup-like hollow, with towering sides surmounted by huge glaciers down which the wind was now whistling with vicious force. There were only two exits from this vast arena. The one by which the travellers had entered it, and the other directly ahead of them; the latter was only to be approached by a wide ledge which skirted ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... six men carrying large oval lanterns, also inscribed with the name of the house; and after them came a representative collection of the officials of the proud establishment, a few foxy old women and a crowd of swaggering men, spotty and vicious-looking. The Orian (Chief Courtesan) reached the cross-roads. There, as if moved by machinery or magnetism, she slowly turned to the left. She made her way towards one of a row of small, old-fashioned native houses, on the road down which ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... "that you are an enemy to Reviews."[89] "Far from it," replied Lysander, "I think them of essential service to literature. They hold a lash over ignorance and vanity; and, at any rate, they take care to bestow a hearty castigation upon vicious and sensual publications. Thus far they do good: but, in many respects, they do ill—by substituting their own opinions for those of an author; by judging exclusively according to their own previously formed decisions in matters of religion and politics; and by shutting out from your view the ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... it. He it was who had given a shrill shout, and as I ran across a piece of waste ground to see what was the matter, I saw him crouching on the ground, while over him stood a big bully, whom I had before seen at the door of a low grog-shop; making a vicious cut at the "nigger" with a heavy stock-whip. He was a burly, powerful fellow, and, as Jacky was unarmed and only half clad, the cut of a thong like that was bad punishment. As soon as I appeared the Maori gave a yell of satisfaction. "You know Fishook, black-fellow, ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... formed in time the habit of playing on the steps or around the old windlass well in the backyard. Herr Carovius procured forthwith a mean dog and named him Caesar. Caesar was tied to a chain, to be sure, but his snarls, his growls, his vicious teeth were hardly calculated to inspire the child with a love for the place near him. She soon stopped playing ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... that most men, the intelligent and virtuous as well as the ignorant and vicious, are intolerant of other individualities. They are uncharitable by defect of sympathy and defect of insight. Society, even the best, is apt to be made up of people who are engaged in the agreeable occupation ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... societies were abjectly begging the jewelers to let loose a little of it they refused—they were selling it to profiteering spendthrifts at a hundred and fifty dollars an ounce. The condition isn't much better right now; it's a vicious circle. As long as the price stays high it will be used for jewelry, and as long as it is used for jewelry the price will stay high, and scientists will have to fight the jewelers for what little ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... wrinkles, to raise your lids frankly, and change the fiends to confident, innocent angels, suspecting and doubting nothing, and always seeing friends where they are not sure of foes. Don't get the expression of a vicious cur that appears to know the kicks it gets are its desert, and yet hates all the world, as well as the kicker, for what ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... wasps, and, like the honey-bee, always die after inflicting a wound, for their stings are torn from their bodies and left in the victim. The pain inflicted is about the same as that caused by the sting of the honey-bee. But they are not as vicious as most stinging insects: they will submit to considerable rough treatment before resorting to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... stiller flood, and turns into an island a rock that lies in its course. On either side of the rock juts out a sheer ridge, thick with divers trees, which screen the river from distant view. Biorn had also a dog of extraordinary fierceness, a terribly vicious brute, dangerous for people to live with, which had often singly destroyed twelve men. But, since the tale is hearsay rather than certainty, let good judges weigh its credit. This dog, as I have heard, was the favourite of the giant Offot (Un-foot), ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... greatly reduced, especially of the juvenile kind. The spare time of our youth would be taken up for about three months in a year with a clean, pure, pleasant, agreeable occupation instead of searching for mischief and quasi-vicious adventures. Have no juvenile crime and the adult crime is reduced to a minimum, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... learning, literature, refinement, and luxury can do for a man who has them all at command; but there was something within him that spurned this ignoble existence, and called for higher aims and worthier exertion. He was not vicious, he never had been vicious, or, as somebody else said, his vices were all refined vices; but a life of mere self-indulgence, although pursued without self- satisfaction, is constantly lowering the standard and weakening the forces of virtue lessening the whole man. ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... us, that an accident fell out in the early part of the Earl's life, which in its consequences confirmed him in the pursuit of vicious courses. ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... were I of a petty nature. There were people who, willfully blind to the facts, held me responsible, in the face of all reason, for the Grass itself. Although it is difficult to believe, there have been many occasions when I have been denounced by demagogues and my blood called for by vicious mobs. ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... But the vicious envy that was in the Wolf mind of A'tim started a line of proper villainy. Let the Bull grow fat. If the worst came to the worst—if no other meat was to be had—when the Frogs, and Moles, and such Waterfowl as might ...
— The Outcasts • W. A. Fraser
... bands of Filipinos known as bolomen are so called because their principal weapon is the long, broad-bladed, vicious-looking knife called the bolo, with which they do their deadly work. They make many boasts of their prowess and skill in taking human life, and one of their proudest feats is to sever the head from the ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... inquiries on foot, and had selected for him a horse which, for speed and bottom, had no superior in the State. One of Mrs. Wingfield's acquaintances, however, upon hearing that she had purchased the animal, told her that it was notorious for its vicious temper, and she spoke angrily to Jonas on the subject in the presence of Vincent. The overseer excused himself by saying that he had certainly heard that the horse was high spirited and needed a good rider, and that he ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... and, though ordinarily he had a good temper, when he was angry he could be very mean. Accordingly, as though reasoning to himself that he had done his share in carrying his rider so many miles, when he felt the sharp cut of the lariat he resented it. And his resentment took the form of a vicious lunge forward of his head, which enabled him to get the bits in his teeth, with which advantage no one ...
— Comrades of the Saddle - The Young Rough Riders of the Plains • Frank V. Webster
... the Societe Grand Guignol de Cinema's busy day. On the beach at Petiteville cameras were rattling away like machine guns, orders from the producer were hissing through the air with the vicious hum of explosive bullets, and weary supers were marching and counter-marching in a state ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 14, 1920 • Various
... from the Baron. Fisher, more and more astonished, made no resistance, but suffered himself to be led, or pushed, toward the door. Dr. Rapperschwyll opened the door wide enough to give the American exit, and then closed it with a vicious slam. A quick click informed Fisher that the key had been ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... inevitable next move. He stood stock still. The Master put his hand once more on Lad's ruff; but none too tightly. And he nodded toward the clutter of newspapers and wooden plates. Higham's language soared spoutingly to high heaven. But he turned back and, with vicious grabs, cleared the lawn of its ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... that is left of the once living person, whereas after an honourable and spotless existence my illustrious but unthinking lord will be blended with a variety of baser substances and passed from hand to hand, his immaculate organs serving to reward murderers for their deeds and to tempt the weak and vicious to all manner of ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... may happen in two ways. First by reason of the very inclination of a vicious habit which we call malice, and, in this way, to sin through malice is not the same as to sin against the Holy Ghost. In another way it happens that by reason of contempt, that which might have prevented the choosing of evil, is rejected or removed; ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... people. Why will you attribute the turbulence of our people to any cause but the right—to any cause but your own scandalous oppression? If you tie your horse up to a gate, and beat him cruelly, is he vicious because he kicks you? If you have plagued and worried a mastiff dog for years, is he mad because he flies at you whenever he sees you? Hatred is an active, troublesome passion. Depend upon it, whole nations have always some reason for their hatred. Before you refer the turbulence of the Irish ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... and relit his cigarette, which he had permitted promptly to smolder out. "The Force ain't what it was. Most of the boys nowadays join so they can ride a horse cross-lots, pack a pair of guns, and give rein to the predilections of a vicious ancestry. They're bad rams, ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... vice and crime. Surely we can leave to our general assembly, chosen by the people and constantly responsible to them, the framing of such wise regulations, distinction and taxes as will discriminate between enjoyment and vicious ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... that America shall answer them. The Progressive party is the helping hand to those whom a vicious industrialism has maimed and crippled. We are for the conservation of our natural resources; but even more we are for the conservation of human life. Our forests, water power and minerals are valuable and must be saved from the spoilers; but men, women ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... needed more, to give them so much pity as she did, for she had a great scorn of dishonesty. Her heart, which was full of compassion for the yielding, the weak, the erring, was not yet able to spend much on the actively vicious—the dishonest and lying and traitorous. The honor she paid the honesty of these women helped her much to pity the sunlessness of their existence, and the poor end for which they lived. It looked as ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... to me that one might possibly get command over this wild herd, and bring them into training, at least. All I could now do was to walk up to Blanche—Mademoiselle de Melcy, a young baronne—the eldest, tallest, handsomest, and most vicious—stand before her desk, take from under her hand her exercise-book, remount the estrade, deliberately read the composition, which I found very stupid, and, as deliberately, and in the face of the whole school, tear ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... his associates were congratulating themselves upon the success of their vicious schemes, and encouraging each other to persevere if another drill was ordered. They were curious to know what the captain was doing with the officers on the quarter-deck; but they concluded that it was only a meeting to "howl" over the miserable discipline ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... ran towards the main hatch I recognized the aptness of the comparison. It was that sort of vicious, snarling, yelping clamour which arises all at once ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... of lightning, and a vicious bolt descended upon the Washington Monument, and, twisting round it, seemed to envelop the great shaft in a pulsating corkscrew of blinding fire. The report that instantly followed made the White House dance upon its foundations, ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... his territories on his return, that for nearly fifteen days he was employed with great solicitude in making the necessary preparations for so distant a journey; till his wife, and, according to the common vicious licence of the country, his relation in the fourth degree, Guendolena, (Gwenllian), daughter of Madoc, prince of Powys, by female artifices diverted him wholly from his noble purpose; since, as Solomon says, "A man's heart deviseth his way, but the Lord directeth his steps." As Rhys ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... advice before going farther. Previous to placing a number of coops containing the old ducks close together, ascertain carefully whether there are any vicious ones amongst them—some are very savage, and will immediately peck to death any unwary little one which enters a coop not its proper home. It is best in these cases to isolate the old bird and her brood altogether, if you have plenty of room, or, failing that, ...
— Wild Ducks - How to Rear and Shoot Them • W. Coape Oates
... be seen that he no longer attacked; was all on the defensive, trying only to escape. Again he broke away and crawled toward safety. The ring howled with mingled derision and delight. Balbus, cursing, his face congested with rage, again threw him back, and again the vicious gray fell upon him with ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... Edwards's delicate health and her expected confinement they decided to go abroad. She was feverishly anxious for him to begin his real work at once, to prove himself; and it might be easier to forget her one vicious month when the Atlantic had been crossed. They put their affairs to rights hurriedly, and early ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... purest constancy to the first, the only object of her love. We have seen the measure of his sensibilities in other relations. They were not more refined in this; and he proved himself unworthy of the admirable woman with whom his destinies were united, by indulging in those vicious gallantries, too generally sanctioned by the age. [66] Ferdinand, in fine, a shrewd and politic prince, "surpassing," as a French writer, not his friend, has remarked, "all the statesmen of his time in the science of the cabinet," ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... Canadian is on the whole sober and industrious; but when he breaks away from sobriety and industry he becomes a vicious element in the general organism. Yet his vices are of the surface, and do not destroy the foundations of his social and domestic scheme. A French Canadian pony used to be considered the most virile and lasting stock on the continent, and it is fair to say ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... a heartless, as she was a vicious and a miserable woman. Instead of the yearnings of maternal love, she regarded her innocent child merely as the offspring of that monster, whom she execrated and feared with a preternatural hate. If she looked upon him with any feeling more lively than that of indifference, it was with ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... the use of strong language, and the abuse of strong drink. The future patron, who has enjoyed for some years the advantages of a neglected training in the privacy of the domestic circle, will have been sent to a public school. Like a vicious book, he will soon have been "called in," though not until he has been cut by those who may have been brought in contact with him. Having thus left his school for his school's good, he will find no difficulty in persuading his parents that the high spirits of an ingenuous ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 5, 1890 • Various
... security of United States bonds deposited in the treasury. These notes, prepared under the supervision of proper officers, being uniform in appearance and security and convertible always into coin, would at once protect labor against the evils of a vicious currency and facilitate commerce by cheap ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... communication between the two oceans. The imperfection of political institutions may for ages have converted into deserts places where the commerce of the world should be found concentred; but the time approaches when these obstacles shall exist no longer. A vicious administration cannot always struggle against the united interest of men; and civilization will be carried insensibly into those countries, the great destinies of which nature itself proclaims, by the physical configuration of the soil, the immense windings of the rivers, and the proximity ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... law provided that a conviction must be grounded upon the oaths of two witnesses, it was needful for him, in order to the carrying on his intended mischief, to find out an associate who might be both sordid enough for such an employment and vicious ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... carrying an intimacy at the bayonet's point was Van Tromp's stock-in-trade. With an older man he insinuated himself; with youth he imposed himself, and in the same breath imposed an ideal on his victim, who saw that he must work up to it or lose the esteem of this old and vicious patron. And what young man can bear to lose a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in the Amalgamated deal loaning in one transaction an amount so great that if it had been lost, the bank's entire capital would have been more than completely wiped out. That my readers may not base their conclusions upon this one transaction of this mighty engine of the "System," vicious as it shows on the surface and destructive as it really was to the thousands who were parties to it, I will later in this story show the National City Bank in another section of the Amalgamated deal, doing things which in intention and ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... a remedy for unemployment, drink, slums, disease, and many forms of vice; a remedy that is within the reach of everyone, and that costs only the relinquishing of a foolish prejudice and the adoption of a natural mode of living plus the effort to overcome a vicious habit and the denial of pleasure derived from the gratification of corrupted appetite. Nature will soon create a dislike for that which once was a pleasure, and in compensation will confer a wholesome and beneficent enjoyment ...
— No Animal Food - and Nutrition and Diet with Vegetable Recipes • Rupert H. Wheldon
... ever to get through all this? They are like ants—you can't count them. My dearest Gorgo, what will become of us? Here are the Royal Horse Guards. My good man, don't ride over me! Look at that bay horse rearing bolt upright; what a vicious one! Eunoe, you mad girl, do take care!—that horse will certainly be the death of the man on his back. How glad I am now that I left the child ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... has been the matter with him this morning. He's been drunk, dead drunk, by about half-past nine in the morning. At the same time we must remember that when a man has been in hard training for a boat race, or anything of that sort, or if he has been reading hard on tea, which is almost as vicious a habit as alcoholism, he can get drunk on very little alcohol when the strain is taken off. In fact, I have known a man get drunk on a pint of bitter and a beef-steak; but there doesn't seem any ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... receive the blow, and the butcher, with one eye closed by Henry's fist, but the other gleaming savagely, raised the cudgel to finish him, Henry saw a huge tongue of flame pour out at them all, from outside the church, and a report, that sounded like a cannon, was accompanied by the vicious ping of shot. Cole screamed and yelled, and dropped his cudgel, and his face was covered with blood in a moment; he yelled, and covered his face with his hands; and instantly came another flash, another report, another cruel ping ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... provided with an abundant and goodly supply of food, for a whale of good size and quality was driven ashore there, and they secured it, and flensed it, and had then no lack of provisions. The cattle were turned out upon the land, and the males soon became very restless and vicious; they had brought a bull with them. Karlsefni caused trees to be felled, and to be hewed into timbers, wherewith to load his ship, and the wood was placed upon a cliff to dry. They gathered somewhat of all of the valuable products of the land, grapes, ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... by Covington, Levy had not been neglectful of the case which had been intrusted to him by his new client. Without much difficulty Buckner was located in New Orleans, and identified as the proprietor of a low dive which had become the rendezvous for the most vicious outcasts of the city. Drink and debauchery had long since destroyed the physical advantages he had possessed over other men at the time of his marriage. The death of his child, to whom he had given as much ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... land-jobber's vault, and the miser's bag,—can but be noted in their day, and with their day forgotten. It is his cue to utter silken and smooth sayings,—to condemn Vice so as not to interfere with the pleasures, or alarm the consciences of the vicious,—to praise and champion Liberty so as not to give annoyance or offence to Slavery, and to commend and glorify Labor without attempting to expose or repress any of the gainful contrivances by which Labor is plundered and degraded. ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... bamboo chair creaks angrily as Beauvayse in his turn sits up and drops his own long legs on either side of it, and drives the foot-rest back under the table seat with a vicious punch. "Don't remind me of the cottage at Cookham, will you? It's one of the things I want to forget ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... of them before, either in Scripture, or in that valuable code of morality which the writing-master proposes to youth as the pattern of their imitation. "I have sometimes observed," he will say, "that vicious intercourse has a tendency to undermine good morals;" and he illustrates his position by the fate of an early friend, who went to the dogs from keeping bad company. Or again, "It may be safely affirmed," he observes, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... I was frightened for him. As a general, he ought, of course, to know how to ride. As a native Hungarian, he must have been born to the saddle, if not in it. Nevertheless, I trembled for him, though the creature he had mounted was far from being either vicious or spirited; and then, too, when he tried waltzing, he reminded me, and others I am ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... filed within, what are they but amusements? Not vapid, waterish amusements, but good strong stuff; dealing in round abuse and blackguard names; pulling off the roofs of private houses, as the Halting Devil did in Spain; pimping and pandering for all degrees of vicious taste, and gorging with coined lies the most voracious maw; imputing to every man in public life the coarsest and the vilest motives; scaring away from the stabbed and prostrate body-politic, every ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... A few minutes later she walked rapidly down the passage, and as she passed Judge Sawyer, seized hold of his hair at the back of his head, gave it a spiteful twitch and passed quickly on, before he could fully realize what had occurred. After passing she turned a vicious glance upon him, which was continued for some time after taking her seat by the side of her husband. A passenger heard Mrs. Terry say to her husband: "I will give him a taste of what he will get bye and bye." Judge Terry was ...
— 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
... 1808, Tecumseh and the prophet removed to a tract of land on the Tippecanoe, a tributary of the Wabash, where the latter continued his efforts to induce the Indians to forsake their vicious habits, while Tecumseh was visiting the neighboring tribes and quietly strengthening his own and the prophet's influence over them. The events of the early part of the year 1810 were such as to leave but little doubt of the hostile intentions of the brothers. The prophet was ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... to find things lost or stolen, and the like. They were often called white witches, as in England. There was a man called Kristen, who pretended to have wonderful powers. A certain Bonde did not believe in him, and one day told him that he had a sow possessed with a devil. The sow was simply vicious. Kristen at once offered to drive the devil out of the sow. He instructed the Bonde and his men not to open the door of the stable in which the pig was, even if they saw him (Kristen) come and knock and shout, ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... love," he said sadly, when he talked with his daughter in the last few days; "but your prosperity I am to have no share in. Well, I suppose I have no right to complain. My life has been an erring one; but poverty is the most vicious companion that a man can consort with. If I had come into six or seven thousand a year, I might have been as starch in my notions as a bishop; but I have been obliged to live, Diana—that was the primary necessity, and I learnt ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... at least, pleased with all efforts made to entertain himself. Place the code of politeness beside that of vulgarity and see if the one does not contain all virtue, the other vice. Is not good temper virtuous and polite, bad temper vicious and vulgar? Is not self denial virtuous and polite, selfishness vicious and vulgar? Is not truth virtuous and polite, scandal vicious and vulgar? Take every principle in the conventional code of the perfectly well-bred, ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... other human animals, and becoming lower and more degraded every day. To look forward through two long years of misery and apprehension to the return of—his son. His son—a strange yearning towards the vicious creature he had carelessly glanced at that morning, took possession of him. He started up again, and seized his hat. He would go down, even though it were nearly midnight, and get the gaoler to ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... distinguished by their several sorts of gravity: their discourses are such as belong to their age, their calling, and their breeding; such as are becoming of them, and of them only. Some of his persons are vicious, and some virtuous; some are unlearned, or (as Chaucer calls them) lewd, and some are learned. Even the ribaldry of the low characters is different: the Reeve, the Miller, and the Cook are several men, and distinguished from each other, as much as the mincing lady prioress, and the broad-speaking ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... hymn. Fixing his small and vicious eyes upon Mrs. Armine, the man with the beard joined in. A horn sounded. Nigel got into the carriage, and the train moved slowly out of the station. Mrs. Armine stared at the man with the beard, who kept his eyes upon her, always roaring his hymn, until he was out of sight. His expression was ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... correcting what is amiss in it. I view in the same light the innovations making here. The new organization of the judiciary department is undoubtedly for the better. The reformation of the criminal code is an immense step taken towards good. The composition of the Plenary court is indeed vicious in the extreme; but the basis of that court may be retained, and its composition changed. Make of it a representative of the people, by composing it of members sent from the Provincial Assemblies, and it becomes a valuable member of the constitution. But it is said, the court will not ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... once unctuous and full of vicious meaning, only irritated Dora. But Lucy raised herself from the sofa, and looked suddenly round at her father. Her eyes were streaming, her hair in disorder, but there was a suspicion and intelligence in her look which seemed to give her back self-control. She ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... my copy have down set it in print, to the intent that noble men may see and learn the noble acts of chivalry, the gentle and virtuous deeds that some knights used in those days, by which they came to honour, and how they that were vicious were punished and oft put to shame and rebuke; humbly beseeching all noble lords and ladies and all other estates, of what estate or degree they be of, that shall see and read in this said book and work, that they take the good and honest ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... individuals possess an inherent power, or fascination, over certain creatures, otherwise I should be unable to account for many feats which I have witnessed, and, indeed, borne a share in, connected with the taming of brutes and reptiles. I have known a savage and vicious mare, whose stall it was dangerous to approach, even when bearing provender, welcome, nevertheless, with every appearance of pleasure, an uncouth, wiry-headed man, with a frightfully seamed face, and an iron hook supplying the place of his right hand, one whom ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... from the learned and good man, John Bulkley. The direction to repair the fences, is to take heed in the admission and government of our members; we must guard the church by our Master's laws, and keep out stray and vicious cattle from the fold! And, above all things, set a trustworthy and vigilant watch over that old black bull, who is the devil, and who has already broken into our enclosures and sought to desolate and lay waste the fair grounds ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... be convinced, he might very easily have discovered that highwaymen and housebreakers did frequent the theatre, and that nothing was more probable than that a laughable representation of successful villany should induce the young and the already vicious to imitate it. Besides, there is the weighty authority of Sir John Fielding, the chief magistrate of Bow Street, who asserted positively, and proved his assertion by the records of his office, that the number of thieves was greatly increased at the time when that opera ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... There is, perhaps, a little too much formal insistence on veraciousness, and one is rather inclined to suspect, despite Muellers brave defence of the Hindu in this regard, that lying came very naturally to a people whose law-givers were so continuously harping on the beauty of truth. The vicious caste-system necessarily scheduled immorality in accordance with the caste order, as certain crimes in other countries are estimated according to the race of the sinner rather than according to any abstract standard. In the matter of precept we know ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... Towle's plans were mapped out to the army and their orders despatched with a vicious snap that plainly said: "Whoever attempts to put the Whitney machine in a hole will be shown no mercy." The morning papers announced that Whitney had picked up the gantlet Governor Wolcott had thrown at his feet, and—all roads led up ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... at a glance that the Snuggery was an utterly vicious place. Vice never so much as thought of wearing any disguise here. No glimmer of wit played over the foul substance of the songs that were sung, and hid it in dazzle from too close observation. No relic of youth and freshness, no artfully-assumed innocence and vivacity, concealed ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... began the vicious circle. For that—though you make round eyes at my associating her with 'vice'—is simply what it has been. It's their mutual consideration, all round, that has made it the bottomless gulf; and they're really ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... and uncertain visits. Friends she had none, nor did she dare to make any. The only person whose conversation she could rely on to relieve the tedium of the long weeks was her landlady, Mrs. Jacobs, the widow of a cheesemonger, who had ruined a fine business by his drinking and other vicious propensities, and out of a good property had only left his wife the leasehold of a house in Lincoln's Inn Fields, which, fortunately for her, had been settled upon her at her marriage. Like most people who have seen better days—not but ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... the ranks, and turning his rawboned, vicious-looking chestnut horse with its tail to the house-door, he pressed his knuckles sharply upon the animal's loins, just behind the saddle. The horse lashed out furiously, each kick of his iron-shod ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... constituted the belief of mankind; but ultimately recognizing the fact that the temporal punishments of the existing laws were wholly inadequate to the prevention of crime, and conceiving the idea that the ignorant and vicious masses could be governed with a surer hand by appealing to the sentiments of hope and fear in relation to the rewards and punishments of an imaginary future life, the ancient Astrologers resolved to remodel the dogmatic elements of religion so as to include that doctrine. But realizing the necessity, ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... who were consumed with a desire for honors and power; all were young and beautiful; except Lucretia, all were vicious, graceful, seductive scoundrels, and, as such, among the most charming and attractive figures in the society of old Rome. For only the narrowest observer, blind to everything but their infamous deeds, can paint the Borgias simply as savage and cruel brutes, tiger-cubs ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... strongest bulwark of any government, and particularly of those constituted like ours, may effectually be broken down and destroyed—I mean the attachment of the people. Whenever this effect shall be produced among us; whenever the vicious portion of population shall be permitted to gather in bands of hundreds and thousands and burn churches, ravage and rob provision-stores, throw printing-presses into rivers, shoot editors, and hang and burn obnoxious persons ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... was much to learn. "Obstinate as a mule" is a good old proverb, and the party had plenty of reason for learning its truth. They had heard too of the vicious nature of these same animals. They were used as beasts of burden, and they seemed to have made up their minds to be a burden to every one there. The old Yankee, who had made many a journey with mule teams, had taught them, and taught them well, all he could about ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... created an immense opportunity for labor. The eighteenth coolly and deliberately set Europe at the task of depopulating whole districts of western Africa, and of transporting the captives, by a necessarily brutal, vicious and horrible traffic, to the new civilization of America." The European was impartial between African and Indian; he was equally ready to enslave either; but the Indian was not made for captivity,—he rebelled or ran away or died; the more ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... friendly Rhimes, For raking in the dunghill of their crimes. To name each Monster wou'd make Printing dear, Or tire Ned Ward, who writes six Books a-year. Such vicious Nonsense, Impudence, and Spite, Wou'd make a Hermit, or a Father write. Tho' Julian rul'd the World, and held no more Than deist Gildon taught, or Toland swore, Good Greg'ry[48] prov'd him execrably bad, And scourg'd his Soul, with drunken ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... a Divine Providence, but they maintained such a fatal necessity that they blunted the edge of all virtuous efforts and excused themselves in vicious conduct. Both Stoics and Epicureans doubted the immortality of the human spirit, and thereby opened the way ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 8, August, 1880 • Various
... Difference between the Virtuous and the Vicious lies in the Mind, where the Author of Clarissa has placed it; Lovelace says well, when he views the persecuted ...
— Remarks on Clarissa (1749) • Sarah Fielding
... workmen, when the speculators failed of their object. All this while the country was the sufferer;—for whoever gained, the result, being upon the whole a loss, fell on the nation, together with the task of maintaining a poor, rendered effeminate and vicious by over-wages and over-living, and necessarily cast loose upon society. I cannot but think that the necessity of making some fund beforehand, for the provision of those whom they debauch, and render only fit for the almshouse, in prosecution of their own adventures, though it operated ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... front of the house, where she might look at them from time to time as she sat sewing at her dining-room window. One of these was a young sorrel horse, of great beauty of form, and fleetness of foot, but of so wild and vicious a nature, that, for fear of accident, she had forbidden any one to mount him, although he had already reached his full height ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... the two the kind of intimacy so common with the noble and the valet of the old French regime, and indeed, in much Lilburne more resembled the men of that day and land, than he did the nobler and statelier being which belongs to our own. But to the end of time, whatever is at once vicious, polished, and intellectual, ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... said that the fool always finds a greater fool to listen to him. We might add that the false, the ugly and the vicious have each a fibre in the human heart to serve their purpose. Then let the true orator, the good man, armed with holy eloquence, seek to paralyze the fatal influence of those orators who are apostles of ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... and was blown up with gunpowder one Saturday afternoon, seven boys being temporarily buried beneath the ruins, and Peter himself losing both eyebrows? And when an old lady living next the school laid a vicious complaint against Speug and some other genial spirits for having broken one of her windows in a snowball fight, he made no sign and uttered no threat, but in the following autumn he was in a position to afford a ripe pear to each boy in the four upper forms—except the Dowbiggins, who ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... open the door. The boy and I arranged a secret rap—an idea that pleased him mightily—and until she heard the single knock followed by two quick sharp ones, she was not to answer. But in wandering around among these people it was difficult to think of them as vicious. The Italian element was a laughing, indolent-appearing group; the scattered Jewish folk were almost timid and kept very much to themselves. I didn't find a really tough face until I came to the water ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... was:—"Oh, people mine, thou knowest that I cannot go into State affairs... purify thy soul, and if in such a disposition of mind thou reformest thy city, then, people of Florence, thou shalt have inaugurated the reform in all Italy!" Carnival masks and vicious books were burned, a law of charity and another against usurers were passed— and the democracy of Florence remained where it was. The old spirit had gone. By too much trusting to government, they had ceased to trust to themselves; they were unable to open new issues. The State had only to step ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... had climbed into the pung, and given Old Gameleg a vicious cut. Swinging out of the yard they went; and the Widder Poll ran after until, just outside the gate, she reflected that she never could overtake him and that her ankles were weak; then she returned ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... day—Salama rowing, and little Kahdra lazily paddling at the bow—a wonderful city, with its narrow ways begrimed with the dirt of ages, and its balconied houses looking as if disease and sin had soaked into them and given them a vicious tottering beauty, horrible and yet lovely too. We saw the swarming life of the bazaar, the white turbans coming and going, diversified by the rose and yellow Hindu turbans, and the caste-marks, orange and red, on ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... don't—you'll see those two ghouls hanging around; and the minute they're gone, well, you never saw anything like it, the way they will fight for the loot. Charley's got a whole room filled up with bedding, and stoves and tables and chairs; and George—he's vicious—he takes nearly everything and piles it up down in his warehouse. It isn't his, ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... himself, he professedly "follows the plan" of Le Sage, in "Gil Blas" (a plan as old as Petronius Arbiter, and the "Golden Ass" of Apuleius); but he gives more place to "compassion," so as not to interfere with "generous indignation, which ought to animate the reader against the sordid and vicious disposition of the world." As a contrast to sordid vice, we are to admire "modest merit" in that exemplary orphan, Mr. Random. This gentleman is a North Briton, because only in North Britain can a poor orphan get such an education as Roderick's "birth ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang |
