"Profanity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was rolling in through the Golden Gate. He addressed the ball. He jumbled around on his feet and took a couple of practice swings. Perfection was in every movement. Then, as he drove, the Wildcat sneezed. There followed a blast of profanity whose equal the Wildcat had not heard since his army days. He edged over towards the Mud Turtle. "Neveh seed a boy change so quick. Heah he is, pleasant one minnit, an' den he hits dat ball an' goes hog wild. ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... make up a profane man. Some acts will not serve; a habit must be demonstrated, and though that were showed, yet there must be also a notoriety of it, which imports a man to be famous for looseness and profanity, and there are none almost, if any in the land, who have been professed enemies from the beginning, and continue so to this day. James Graham was not such. It is the matter of our sad complaint, that whilst many are enemies, they make profession ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... donkey drooped between the shafts. In avoiding a suicidal pedestrian, Tabs misjudged the room that he had to spare. He felt a jolt, guessed what had happened, and jammed on his brakes. A policeman in front of him was holding up a magisterial hand. Behind him a stream of familiar trench profanity was gathering in volume; under other circumstances he would have found a certain enjoyment in the sound. He looked back and saw what he expected: the barrow overturned; the flowers scattered, the donkey surprised out of its drowsiness, thrown on its back and ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... sanctity 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, ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... of the 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 ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... hottest place because he thought it was his duty to be there, and not because he was fearless. "The man who says he isn't afraid under fire, is a liar. I am afraid," he frankly said, with a touch of that profanity which Grant never used, "and if I followed my own impulse I should turn and get out. It is all a question of the ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... 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 life of ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... beautiful 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
... a shock to the conscience and a revolt of the heart. As the deer recoils by instinct from the tiger, as the very look of the scorpion deters you from handling it, though you never saw a scorpion before, so the very first line in some ribald profanity on which the tinker put his black finger made Lenny's blood run cold. Safe, too, was the peasant boy from any temptation in works of a gross and licentious nature, not only because of the happy ignorance of his rural life, but because of a more enduring safeguard,—genius! Genius, that, manly, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to service. He did so with becoming propriety till the close of the service, when, instead of the solemn departing air, he struck up the monarch's old favourite, "Brose and Butter." The scheme, though bordering on profanity, succeeded in the manner intended. The king proceeding hastily to the organ-gallery, discovered Cockpen, whom he saluted familiarly, declaring that he had "almost made him dance." "I could dance too," said Cockpen, "if I had my lands again." The request, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... of laughter. As it was, he felt compelled to retire up the canon until he could recover his gravity. There he confided the joke to the tall pine-trees, with many slaps of his leg, contortions of his face, and the usual profanity. But when he returned to the party, he found them seated by a fire—for the air had grown strangely chill and the sky overcast—in apparently amicable conversation. Piney was actually talking in an impulsive, girlish fashion to the Duchess, who was ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... Abel Day, piously. "Entomology must be an awful interest-in' study, though I never thought of observin' words myself, kept to avoid vulgar language an' profanity." ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... his face and several teeth missing. His clothes were in rags and he never wore shoes. He boasted of never washing unless "the old one" stood over him with a stick, and his language was worse than both his manners and his looks. An unbroken stream of profanity and obscenity poured from his rarely silent mouth, and he heaped withering scorn on ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... weakness for whiskey and water, it is fair to assume that the average real philosopher lives up to his own lights and by them; whereas I, at least according to Josephine, am liable to be frightfully inconsistent. She has never forgotten my profanity on the occasion when we discovered after dinner that the soot had come down in the drawing-room and was over everything in spite of the fact that the chimney had been swept three weeks before. Now, if there is one thing ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... you call this a saloon for gentlemen, or a corral for swearing cattle? Or do you mean to say that the conversation of two gentlemen upon delicate professional—and—er—domestic affairs—is to be broken upon by the blank profanity of low-bred hounds over their picayune gambling! Take them my kyard, sir," choked the Colonel, who was always Southern and dialectic in his excited as in his softest moments, "and tell them that Colonel Starbottle will nevah dyarken these ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... set his own word firmly against them. One of these also is a law of the Decalogue itself. There can be little doubt that the third commandment is quoted and criticised by our Lord, in this discourse. That commandment forbids, not chiefly profanity, but perjury; by implication it permits judicial oaths. And Jesus expressly forbids judicial oaths. "Swear not at all." I am aware that this is not the usual interpretation of these words, but I believe that it is the only meaning that the words will bear. Not to insist upon this, however, several ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... burst into loud profanity, the effect could not have been more shocking. "Oh!" said Sylvia, vexed and put out. She began to walk forward. Morrison in his turn gave an exclamation which seemed the vent of long-stored exasperation, and said with heat: "Look here, Page, you're getting to be a perfect monomaniac on the subject! ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... nobody, except those at the head of the row, is sure of his pittance those that are behind regard enviously and with suppressed anger the person ahead of them. First come outcries, then jeering and then scuffling; the women rival the men in struggling and in profanity,[4268] and they hustle each other. The line suddenly breaks; each rushes to get ahead of the other; the foremost place belongs to the most robust and the most brutal, and to secure it they have to ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the history of subscriptions. The whole work, verse, prose, and portrait, won public attention, and kept it: and though some critics signified their displeasure at expressions which bordered on profanity, and at a license of language which they pronounced impure, by far the greater number united their praise to the all but general voice; nay, some scrupled not to call him, from his perfect ease and nature and variety, the Scottish ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... no profanity in my house. Stand aside! Dost thou not hear me? Am I to be disobeyed in my ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... when he answered frankly that the stealing was his own idea, they forthwith proceeded to beat him lustily with their ramrods, at the same time showering on him epithets that showed they had at least learned the profanity of the traders. They staked him out at night, tied so that he could move neither hand nor foot; and during the day he was bound on an unbroken horse, with his hands tied behind him so that he could not protect his face from ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Santa Fe, speaking friendly but serious. "You know how strongly I feel about profanity—even when, as in the present instance, justly aroused resentment lends to it a colorable excuse. And also, my dear brother, I beg you to temper with charity your views as to Brother Green's present whereabouts. It is sufficient for all purposes of human justice that he has passed away. And now, ...
— Santa Fe's Partner - Being Some Memorials of Events in a New-Mexican Track-end Town • Thomas A. Janvier
... accidental meeting with a pair of pretty eyes. He—the uncrowned king of a to-be-glorious throne! He—the affianced husband of the Princess Elodie of—Hell! He refused to think of it! And again the horse he rode and the Park trees heard a bit of Paul Zalenska's English profanity that should have made them hide in shame over ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... come, or how, I don't know," Maddy replied. "It's been a week since I heard him make the threat, then he made it twice in one night, accompanied by all the profanity he could muster. He and his gang were dissolving partnership on account of recent publicity. Two of 'em would go over to Las Vegas to look over the new dam at Boulder, one was returning to Denver and this Count Como—he ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... lips a torrent of profanity burst as Murphy laid a heavy hand on his shoulder and faced him eastward. I drew the blue paper from my wallet, whispered to Murphy, and handed it to him. He shoved it inside the breast of his hunting-shirt, cocked his rifle, and ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... with no success, and with a stream of eloquence which my limited knowledge of profanity would never allow me to translate into plain English, he rolled up his trousers, grabbed the halter of my mule, and without further ado plunged into the water and made for ...
— Six Days on the Hurricane Deck of a Mule - An account of a journey made on mule back in Honduras, - C.A. in August, 1891 • Almira Stillwell Cole
... soon he might venture to write to Amabel, on whom alone he could depend; but he felt it a sort of profanity ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... elsewhere; and yet withal so peaceable, that they embraced a voluntary Exile in a squalid, horrid, American Desart, rather than to live in Contentions with their Brethren. Those good Men imagined that they should leave their Posterity in a place, where they should never see the Inroads of Profanity, or Superstition: And a famous Person returning hence, could in a Sermon before the Parliament, profess, I have now been seven Years in a Country, where I never Saw one Man drunk, or heard one Oath sworn, or ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... for a second and then looked rather sheepish. I had heard of a certain wordy battle between him and a Territorial Sergeant whom he had set out to teach. Marigold encountered a cannonade of blasphemous profanity, new, up-to-date, scientific, against which the time-worn expletives in use during his service days were ineffectual. He ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... the horrible vileness of such an action, that the officer not only regretted the action, but also gave money for furnishing them again:—he moreover told them, He was sorry for the errand they were going upon, for it would not prosper, and the profanity of that army would ruin them. About or after this, he went up to a hill and prayed; and being interrogated by some acquaintances, What answer he got? He replied, That he had fought with neither small nor great, but with the duke himself, ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... 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, and from her the pond was named. ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... uncompromising afternoon, pouring in through manifold windows, tears away every illusion, and reveals the whole coarseness and commonness and all the repulsive details of this most alien and unmaidenly revel. The very pose of the dance is profanity. Attitudes which are the instinctive expression of intimate emotions, glowing rosy-red in the auroral time of tenderness, and justified in unabashed freedom only by a long and faithful habitude of unselfish devotion, are here openly, deliberately, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... there is anything I dislike, it is flippancy or profanity, and this young man had both to a major degree. Besides, I loathe the modern musical journalist, flying his flag one week for one piano house and scarifying it the next in ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... to his face an expression of unusual savageness, even for a slave-driver. Tobacco and rage had worn his teeth short, and nearly every sentence that escaped their compressed grating, was commenced or concluded with some outburst of profanity. His presence made the field alike the field of blood, and of blasphemy. Hated for his cruelty, despised for his cowardice, his death was deplored by no one outside his own house—if indeed it was deplored ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... "Profanity is always objectionable to a gentleman," declared Tom dryly, running over ere the newcomer could regain his feet. Once more Reade bent and rose. As he did so, Eugene Black shot through the tent doorway, landing on the ground a ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock
... and Stuart had left the house he had been mulling over, with the fascination of a rising gorge and a bitter resentment, paragraphs of encomium upon his hated guest. Had he ever indulged himself in the luxury of profanity it would have gushed now in torrents of curses over Stuart Farquaharson, upon whom life seemed to lavish her gifts with as reckless a prodigality as that of a licentious monarch for an ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... building, saying, "this beam is rotten and must come down; this roof is decayed and must be stripped off; this floor is unsafe and must be pulled up." He does not propose to his disciples to enter upon a wholesale denunciation of profanity and licentiousness. He points out and condemns many of these things it is true; but the main lever of his teaching is the assertion of the great gospel principles. For these he seeks a place of lodgment everywhere. The old tables of the law contained ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.
... after that, and was astonished by his powers of story-telling and of mimicry; still more, perhaps, by a curious, dry scepticism, expressed facetiously and sometimes with profanity, which was evident in almost everything he said. This it was which chiefly pleased the waiter and the muleteers, who were his usual listeners, since they were together on the road. They would laugh and curse him in religious terms for a blasphemer and a wicked atheist, reproofs which he ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... at once they hears Peg-leg beller from where's he layin' on the lounge (they ain't figured on his bein' so contiguous), and he gives it to be understood, does Peg-leg, as how the next one-lunger that indulges in whatsoever profanity will ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... rushing, as the guards about the Embassy went furiously back to their proper posts to keep anybody from slipping out Two men remained swearing bitterly over a dummy made of old clothes and pillows. But their profanity was in vain. ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... knew about the parrot. The Dummy had slipped it into the ward more than once and its profanity had delighted the patients. The Avenue Girl had been glad to see it too; and as it sat on the bedside table and shrieked defiance and oaths the Dummy had smiled benignly. John and the dove—the girl and ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... chief mourner punished him for what he thought his 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 ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... a page with narratives of this kind. But my object is to expose the error and folly of our present system of dealing with crime. When a criminal court claims to anticipate the judgment of the Great Assize in the case of a hooligan convicted of some vulgar act of violence, the silliness and profanity of the claim may pass unnoticed. But when the "punishment-of-crime" system is applied to criminals of the type here described, the imbecility of it must be apparent to all. With such men crime is "the business of their ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... civilization and progress. The electric light is a good thing, but how pale and feeble it looks by the light of a good woman's eyes. The telephone is a great invention. It is a good thing to talk at, and murmur into and deposit profanity in; but to take up a conversation, and keep it up, and follow a man out through the front door with it, the telephone has still much to ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... the buildings of Vassar College and as it rained that would be impossible. It was quite a long drive from the station to Vasser College and papa and I had a nice long time to discuss and laugh over German profanity. One of the German phrases papa particularly enjoys is "O heilige maria Mutter Jesus!" Jean has a German nurse, and this was one of her phrases, there was a time when Jean exclaimed "Ach Gott!" to every trifle, ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... the 4th of July, when an excursion party of country people took possession of the cars, witnessed a scene and heard language past belief. Men, women, and children drank from whisky bottles that continually circulated, and a wild orgy resulted. Profanity, indecent talk on topics that even the license of the sixteenth century would not have tolerated, and freedom of manners that even Teniers would have shrunk from putting on ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... 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 ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... and the world attracts man downward into the foul pits of vice, immorality, intemperance, gambling, profanity, anger, jealousy, worldly fashions, and all the forms and phases of evil. God would have men come out of these horrible pits, wash themselves in the pure water of his Word, and take a lowly seat at his table. Then with joy he will say to each: ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... 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 of ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... of the rural community do not differ greatly from those of the town. The most common rural vices are profanity, drunkenness, and sexual immorality. Profanity is often a habit rather than a defect in moral character, and is due sometimes to a narrow vocabulary. It is a mark of ignorance and boorishness. In many localities it is less common than ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... with the grime of innumerable crowded families. Everything was slight, thin, and money-saving in the architecture; and if a child cried, a shrill-tongued woman vociferated, or a laborer, angry or drunk, indulged in the general habit of profanity, all the other inmates of the abode were at once aware of the fact. By the majority, such sounds were no more heeded than the rumble in the streets, but to poor Mrs. Jocelyn and Mildred, with natures like AEolian harps, the discords of such coarse, crowded life were often horrible. ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... his wife is of her's, I suppose. Moreover, he knows we know nothing of his work and explains it in simple language. Does it not occur to you," I inquired, "that his avoidance of slang and dialect and foreign words and profanity is part of the freedom of the other side of the wall? Think of what we have lived through in the last twenty years! We have listened to a tale of the ends of the earth and the teller of it neither foams at the mouth nor talks in a strange technical jargon ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... the honest miner, the less honest saloon-keeper, and the capitalist, the degree of whose claim to that laudatory adjective was not to be so easily fixed. No one seemed out of place in the crazy, zigzag streets, no sound seemed foreign to this new, conglomerate atmosphere. The fluent profanity of the mule-driver, the shrill laugh of the dance-hall; the prolonged rattle and final roar of the ore-chute, the steady pick of the laborer at the prospect-hole;—each played its part to burden ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... through the Luxembourg Gardens, may perhaps startle certain gentle souls, but the Dorian delicacy of what might for a moment appear blasphemous robs this charming Idyll of any gross or merely popular profanity. It is a book for those who have passed through more than one intellectual Renaissance. Like the "Golden Ass" of Apuleius it has a philosophical justification ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... annoyance passed over the Colonel's ugly good-humoured face. To treat the radiant creature who had swum into his ken as a subject for psychological observation savoured of profanity. With ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... ten minutes, and no sound of the coming west-bound express. Up ahead we could hear the flutter and flap of the blow-off; for the black flier was as restless as the fat drummer who was snapping his watch, grunting "Huh," and washing suppressed profanity down ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... affected very differently the three men, to whom her coming was equally surprising. Her husband, after an exclamation which savoured of profanity, stared at her with a doubtful and malicious frown upon his forehead. With Wingate she exchanged one swift glance of mutual understanding. Phipps, after his first start of surprise, welcomed her with ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... us 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, ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... and steamboats, markets, shops, and post-offices, those places must be, and are, conducted with order and decency. The only great resorts from which woman is excluded by law are the election places; and the violence, rowdyism, profanity, and obscenity of the gathering there in our largest cities are sufficient to drive decent men, even, away from the polls. If our wives, sisters, and daughters were going to the polls, we should go with them, and good order would ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... 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 of H. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... prithee." Dame La Theyn looked upon pious language as profanity when uttered in an unconsecrated place. "But if it were the Almighty that put these notions into thy head, I pray He'll take ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... whose character as a man, with all its dark shades of violence, rage, and profanity, has a nobleness and sweetness that win our hearts, while his greatness rests on a far broader basis than that of his conquests, though they are unrivalled. No one else so gained the love of the conquered, ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... General Chaffee replied, with less of profanity than of truth in his terms. And the attempt was given ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... ordinary boss could never get along with the devils who made up the crew. He declared further that Latisan was of a sort to suit desperadoes and had put into the crew some kind of fire which made the men dangerous to vested interests on the river. He devoted himself to Latisan with subdued profanity, despite the presence of the young woman. He averred that Latisan himself had no love for Flagg—nobody up-country gave a tinker's hoot for Flagg, anyway. He insisted, desperate in spite of certain modifying private convictions, ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... from 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. He was waiting for an extra ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... dwelling does not deform the scene. Already the birds resort to it, to build their nests, and you may track to its door the feet of many quadrupeds. Thus, for a long time, nature overlooks the encroachment and profanity of-man. The wood still cheerfully and unsuspiciously echoes the strokes of the axe that fells it, and while they are few and seldom, they enhance its wildness, and all the elements ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... have thought about it a good deal and have made up my mind that the people do not speak these words because they always mean what they say, but because they have grown into the habit of saying unkind things. And the profanity! And the vulgarity! It is dreadful to listen to the language used by many men, and even boys, in ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... Feejee cannibalism and the destruction of the tender germ of life, to swallow an oyster was to mask murder. A still selecter circle denounced the chains that shackled the tongue and the false delicacy that clothed the body. Profanity, they said, is not the use of forcible and picturesque words; it is the abuse of such to express base passions and emotions. So indecency cannot be affirmed of the model of ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... He knows that in me He is able to restore to more than pristine beauty all which I, by my sin, have destroyed; to reconsecrate all which I, by my profanity, have polluted; to cast out the evil deities that desecrate and deform the shrine; and to make my poor heart, if only I will let Him come in to the ruined chamber, a fairer temple ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... we're out here in a hopen boat for pleasure and the fun o' the thing," was the boatswain's sarcastic comment upon their behaviour, prefaced by a stream of profanity, as the vessel disappeared from ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... the Laird of Culteraws, and minister at[632] in Annandale, left his church and emitted a declaration bearing what stings he suffared in his conscience for conforming with the present church governement, which he fand to be a fertile soyle for profanity and errors of all kinds, and theirfor he gives all to whom thir presents may come to know that he disapproves of the said governement and of his bypast complyance, and that in tyme coming he will forsake the ministrie, since he cannot exercise it unlesse he wound his soull farder by that sinfull ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... idolatry. The house of our king hath been much defiled by idolatry. The king is now in covenant, and to renew the covenant, let the royal family be reformed; and, that it may be a religious family, wherein God will have pleasure, let it be purged, not only of idolatry, but of profanity and looseness, which hath abounded in it. Much hath been spoken of this matter; but little hath been done in it. Let the king and others, who have charge in that family, think it lieth upon them, as ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... of the coarseness and profanity of villany increased almost to the depth of a sentiment as he listened ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... mostly English, with whose masters Samoset, as sachem of the Indians in those parts, had both traded and feasted, learning their language, their manners, and, what was worse, their habits of strong drink and profanity, neither of which however seemed to have taken any great hold upon him, being reserved rather as accomplishments and proofs that he too had ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... 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, incredible, ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... party—Anhauser Busch will effect prohibition as soon—We will not waste time and money in fighting Brewers and Distillers but the cause of them. We want to prohibit the tyranny and unlawfulness in preventing woman from a voice in the Government, Compulsory education, no games on Lord's Day, no profanity ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... struck the brass bed-post savagely with his heavy fist. With a burst of profanity he ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... the mean time he kept up a running fire of admonitions like the above, chiefly directed to the need of watching against the vigilance of our d——d officers. I picked up the boat, took it up the bank, and then threw my coat open, disclosing my sword and my sash as officer of the day. Oh! the profanity and billingsgate that followed beggars description. I thought I had heard swearing before, but never anything to touch this fellow, and I really could not blame him very much. He had simply hailed the wrong ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... noise. The shouting and yelling, which had gained the camp its infelicitous title, were not permitted within hearing distance of Stumpy's. The men conversed in whispers or smoked with Indian gravity. Profanity was tacitly given up in these sacred precincts, and throughout the camp a popular form of expletive, known as "D—n the luck!" and "Curse the luck!" was abandoned, as having a new personal bearing. Vocal ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... from the rear continued to shout and, in another moment, a man seized the reins beside me. Together we managed to pull the horse into a walk. Then the man, whom I recognized as the Colton coachman, vented his feelings in a comprehensive burst of profanity. I interrupted ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... speaks of the past, but it has been remarked that whenever the stalwart form of a certain policeman passes her door, her clean, delicate face assumes an expression which can only be described as frozen profanity. The Strong ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... shouting as they ran among the swings and merry-go-rounds and other attractions of the fair. I may safely aver that language more vile and depraved, revealing knowledge and thoughts more vile and depraved, I have never heard from any grown men or women in the worst part of the town. At mere profanity, of course, these girls would be easily defeated by men, but not in absolute vileness. The quiet working men among whom they ran looked on in amazement and disgust; they had never heard anything in all their lives to equal the abomination of these girls' language. ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... and, on the whole, quicker. One could improve upon them, too, with imagination and wit and a natural gift for terms. That Samuel Clemens maintained his promise as to drink and cards during those apprentice days is something worth remembering; and if he did not always restrict his profanity to moments of severe pressure or sift the quality of his wit, we may also remember that he was an extreme example of a human being, in that formative stage which gathers all as grist, later to refine it for the uses ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... plunderings added greatly to the burden and tyranny of his reign. But the ordinary doings of a tyrant were not the worst things about William Rufus. Effeminate fashions, vices horrible and unheard-of in England, flourished at his court and threatened to corrupt the nation. The fearful profanity of the king, his open and blasphemous defiance of God, made men tremble, and those who were nearest to him testified "that he every morning got up a worse man than he lay down, and every evening lay down a worse man than ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... me a definition of poetry.' 'Tres-volontiers;' and he proceeded to his library, brought me a Dr. Johnson, and overwhelmed me with a definition. Shade of the immortal Shakespeare! I imagine to myself the scowl of your spiritual eye upon the profanity of that scurrilous Ursa Major. Think of poetry, dear B——, think of poetry, and then think of Dr. Samuel Johnson! Think of all that is airy and fairy-like, and then of all that is hideous and unwieldy; think of his huge bulk, the Elephant! and then—and ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... time you turned in. There's your bunk," pointing to a shelf in the dark and damp look-out house. Paul prepared to retire while the men continued their stories. The river-men of that time were rather given to profanity, so their yarns were freely interspersed with oaths. Suddenly Tom said in ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... am astonished and deeply grieved that you could read and enjoy anything like this, for it is full of profanity; and reading or hearing such expressions is very likely to lead to the use of them. Max, do you ever ...
— Elsie's New Relations • Martha Finley
... only one way to get the attention of the crew, and that was by an overpowering blast of profanity. I called to my assistance every ear-splitting, soul-sizzling oath that I could ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... to have been 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 ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... touching in the Flemish peasant's relation with his Deity. It is all very vague to him: a jumble of veneration and familiarity, of sanctity and profanity, without any thought of being familiar, or any idea of ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... got much of a voice," said Turnbull, who snatched at every chance of cheap profanity. "As a matter of fact, MacIan, it isn't the voice of God, but it's something a jolly sight more important—it is the voice of man—or rather of woman. So I think we'd ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... died full of profanity and curses, heaping upon their executioners all manner of abuse. They seemed to be animated by no understanding of a life hereafter, and were concerned only in their animal instinct to hold on to this one as long as they might. Yet Stinson, of a good Indiana family, ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... 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 ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... away! Well, 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 ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... twenty sawmills. The management dams the flood when the curtain rises and the players begin to speak; the music lovers damn it from the moment the curtain falls. They are absorbed in volumes of silent profanity between the acts; for the orchestra is literally drowned in the roar of the rushing element. There was nothing that interested me more than a copy of Alice Polk Hill's "Tales of the Colorado Pioneers"; and to ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... little as he slowly hung up the receiver. For a moment he stared desolately at Mr. Yollop and then recovering himself gradually rushed with ever increasing velocity into the most violent hurricane of profanity that ever was centered upon the frailty of woman. Running out of expletives he at last subsided into an ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon
... the souls of men and scourging them with serpents, or driving them with tridents, or dragging them with chains into the flaming mouth of hell. Even in the most hidden and sacred places of the medieval cathedral we still find representations of Satanic power in which profanity and obscenity run riot. In these representations the painter and the glass-stainer vied with the sculptor. Among the early paintings on canvas a well-known example represents the devil in the shape of a dragon, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... on Barney alternately beat him and questioned him, interspersing their interrogations with lurid profanity. ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... shoulder and stopped. He said "Damn!" quite distinctly—and she did not condemn him for that manly lapse into profanity. She looked and saw his friend Leonard advancing. He drew nearer; he raised his hat to Miss Winchelsea, and his smile was almost a grin. "I've been looking for you everywhere, Snooks," he said. "You promised to be on the Piazza ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... to his family, good to himself, he was sober, 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 that he contributed with celerity, if with an inward lack of willingness. ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... stores running down to sweepings of bread-lockers and scrapings of sugar-casks. It was just like the East Wind's nature to inflict starvation upon the bodies of unoffending sailors, while he corrupted their simple souls by an exasperation leading to outbursts of profanity as lurid as his blood-red sunrises. They were followed by gray days under the cover of high, motionless clouds that looked as if carved in a slab of ash-coloured marble. And each mean starved sunset left us calling with imprecations upon the West Wind even in its ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... in the least given up to the Americans."[22] On another occasion he said, that "as attorney-general he had a right to set aside every charter in America."[23] What followed? Notwithstanding his youthful profligacy, the open profanity of his public and private speech, and his living in public and notorious contempt of matrimony,—he was made Lord Chancellor and elevated to the peerage in 1778! Him ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... torrent of abusive profanity. Some of those present had been witnesses of the previous affair, and realizing what the pastoral visit might mean, they added their voices to the uproar. The language was emphatic rather than concise. The women, too, gave free rein to their ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... please your honor," answered Tippit, "but I say we have been guilty of no profanity which, at the proper time, I expect to satisfy the court of. We offer the testimony now for two purposes: first, to assist the judgment of the court in coming to a conclusion, whether the words were spoken or not, because if we prove the prisoner's ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... Eastern hall. Miao Y, with a face beaming with smiles, made way for her to walk in. "We've just been filling ourselves with wines and meats," dowager lady Chia observed, "and with the josses you've got in here, we shall be guilty of profanity. We'd better therefore sit here! But give us some of that good tea of yours; and we'll get off so soon as we have had a cup ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... 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
... again remarked the hunter, contemptuously, at the menace and profanity of the haughty officer. "Natural enough, though, mayhap, for a bag of wind to blow, if it does any thing. He is rather smart at—der—swearing, too, I think. But even at that, I guess he would have to haul in his horns a little, if old Ethan Allen ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... You will make them understand that the lax discipline of the march cannot be permitted here. You will instruct them to shave every day, not every week. You will impress on them particularly that there must be an end to the profanity and blasphemy of singing Christian hymns on the march. I have to reprimand you, Centurion, for not only allowing this, ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... in a passion, and one or two when they were not; but that a woman should deliberately preface her words with oaths was something new and shocking to her. Lady Enville's strongest adjurations were mild little asseverations "by this fair daylight," or words no nearer profanity. However, startled as she was, Clare came out of ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... 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 ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... did not reply. But her heart leaped to think how well she knew the answer. No need to speak of it, though. It would be almost profanity to talk to this women, who knew about as much of it as an African fetish-worshipper knows of the Eternal—of that love which counts fidelity not by months and years; which, though it has its root in mortal life, stretches out safely and fearlessly ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... father's faith indeed, subtle and even beautiful as it was, was built upon axioms which it seemed to him a kind of puerile perversity to deny. Religion came to him in definite and traditional channels, and to seek it in other directions appeared to him a species of wanton profanity. ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... rector, authoritatively; 'you are standing in the chamber of the dead, and such profanity is out of place here—no more ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... a waiter and headed for Petkoff. "What's going on here?" he bellowed over the crash of dishes and the rising wave of Russian profanity. ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... mean?" Just then down went the man on my right with a sharp cry, and followed by the one on the left, both apparently severely wounded. The thought of my shocking conduct, in thus indulging in wicked profanity at such a time, flashed upon me, and I almost held my breath, expecting summary punishment on the spot. But nothing of the kind happened. And, according to history, Washington swore a good deal worse at the battle of Monmouth,—and Potter was more ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... own child comes in from the street, and has learned to swear from the bad boys congregated there, it is a very different thing to you from what it was when you heard the profanity of those boys as you passed them. Now it takes hold of you, and makes you feel that you are a stockholder in the public morality. Children make men better citizens. Of what use would an engine be to a ship, if it were ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... fifteen hundred men were released from the machines, which had to be kept going to keep the city alive. With that many men, intelligent mechanics all, Tommy and Smithers worked wonders. Smithers drove them mercilessly, using profanity and mechanical drawings instead of speech. Denham withdrew twenty men and labored on top of one of the towers. Toward sunset of the second day, vast clouds of steam bellied out from it at odd, irregular intervals. Nothing else manifested itself. Those irregular belchings of steam ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... a dogged determination which would have lasted upon the part of either, the man or the beast, until death. Rough scenes and inhuman, Bye had witnessed until blase; but nothing before like this. The man used quirt, rowel, and profanity like a fiend. The pony, panting, quivering, bucking, struggling, covered with foam and streaming with blood, shrilled with the impotent anger of a demon. Even the impassive cowboy spectators ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... thing, so I proposed that he should whistle instead; and now he sometimes pipes up so suddenly and shrilly that it makes me jump. How would that do, instead of swearing?" proposed Miss Celia, not the least surprised at the habit of profanity, which the boy could hardly help learning among ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... other gospel unto you, let him be accursed."[183] Nor until we can in some measure feel this holy indignation against sin, and this burning desire to see all tyranny, superstition, bribery, licentiousness, and profanity, crushed and banished from the earth, can we pray in truth "Thy kingdom come." Still less can we be prepared for the rejoicings of heaven over the conquest of the enemies of God and man: "Rejoice over her, thou heaven, ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... recalled certain actions and certain characteristics of the stranger which had made them suspicious from the start. His prodigal disposition of the box of matches impressed most of them as reckless dare-devilism; his haste, anxiety, and a single instance of mild profanity told others of his viciousness. One man was sure he had seen the stranger's watch chain in farmer Grover's possession; and another saw something black on his thumb, which he now remembered was a ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... April 12, 1776). Even supposing that at this time he was ignorant of his character, though the supposition is a wild one, he would at once have been set right by Boswell and the Thrales (post, under March 15, 1776). It is curious, that this anecdote imputing profanity to Johnson is not quoted by the Edinburgh reviewer. On the whole I think that the Diary is genuine, and accordingly I have quoted ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... painted as their own 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 ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... from 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 ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... Tuttle!" and in walked a big bulk of a man, six feet and more tall, with shoulders broad and burly and legs like tree trunks. Ellhorn turned toward him a beaming face and broke into a string of oaths. But his profanity was cordial and joyous. It bloomed with glad welcome and was fragrant with ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... jocularity which he only too often exhibits. Mr. Masson, trying to propitiate the enemy, admits that "to address the historian Josephus as 'Joe,' through a whole article, and give him a black eye into the bargain, is positively profane." I am not sure as to the profanity, knowing nothing particularly sacred about Josephus. But if Mr. Masson had called it excessively silly, I should have agreed heartily; and if any one else denounced it as a breach of good literary manners, ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... pell-mell, he sings, as Carlyle says, "with a wild burst of spiritual enthusiasm, the charms of the rearward part of certain men; and what a royal ecstatic felicity there is in indisputable survey of the same." "He rises," adds Carlyle, "to the heights of Anti-Biblical profanity, quoting Moses on the Hill of Vision." To Soubise and Company the poet ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... In spite of her profanity and ignorance she was a good neighbor and in time of trouble no one was readier to relieve any distress in the coulee. However, it was upon Mrs. Randal and the widow Green that my mother called for aid, and I do not think Mrs. Whitwell was ever quite welcome even ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... gun. In half an hour we reached a lonely lake surrounded by swamps, and woods of mixed timber. The sunset red was purpling all the horizon belt of pines, and the peace of the still hour was on lake and swamp. With some little sense of profanity I raised the hoodoo horn to my mouth, gave one or two high-pitched, impatient grunts, then poured forth the softly rising, long-drawn love-call of a cow Moose, all alone, ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... and reflection, superstition and profanity, deliberate atrocity and fear of judgment, are united in the same nature; and to make the complex still more strange, the play-wright has gifted these tremendous personalities with his own wild humour and imaginative irony. The result is almost ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... 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 ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... its restoration immediately followed the change of his faith. Dr Johnson was pleased, when Andrew Miller said that he "thanked God he was done with him," to know that Miller "thanked God for anything;" and so, when we consider the blasphemy, profanity, and filth of Dryden's plays, and the unsettled and veering state of his religious and political opinions, we are almost glad to find him becoming "anything," although it was only the votary of a dead and corrupted ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... grass, the roots of which cause much profanity in this country, there are some 250,000 pounds annually imported at from three to ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... against 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 beans descended to his plate, and he ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... 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 reformer; but, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... we are in the neighborhood, we must see the locality to which—in mild and humorous profanity—States people are sometimes assigned; and therefore proceed to Halifax and thoroughly "do" that sedate, ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... Penn 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 them, which ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... sergeant; the sergeant, with cane held horizontally across and behind his thighs, his face upturned with the rest, and "Irishman" on every feature of it. And so the vision fleeted, and Byfield's language claimed attention. The man took the whole vocabulary of British profanity at a rush, and swore himself to a standstill. As he paused for second wind I ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... describes him as dispensing to the old wise men the spiritual blessings of love, meekness, and perfect faith, in return for their gifts and their homage. It appears to me bad taste, verging on profanity, to represent him plunging his little hand into the coffer of gold, or eagerly grasping one of the gold pieces. Neither should he be wrapped up in swaddling clothes, nor in any way a subordinate figure in the ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... Ursula's fancy were profanity; then eagerly snatched it up and laughed, confessing how angry he should be if anybody dared to ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... their mother, suddenly; "did you see that?" A big lumpish figure on the crossing had loomed up at the mare's head, a rough hand had seized her bridle, and a raw voice with a rawer brogue had vented a piece of impassioned profanity on both beast and driver. "Well, I don't thank that policeman for hitting Mabel on the nose, I can tell him. August, did you ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... reasoning. They abetted those very tendencies in his nature which required to be checked. Their countenance, as clergymen, would allay the scruples and misgivings he might otherwise have felt, and stimulate to still wilder recklessness whatever profanity he might be tempted to indulge in. When he had let loose his first shafts of satire against their stricter brethren, those New Light ministers heartily applauded him; and hounded him on to still more daring assaults. ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... had sneezed myself into a condition of pale blue profanity that a newly married couple of grip germs had taken a notion to build a nest somewhere on the outskirts of my solar plexus, and two hours later they had about 233 children attending the public school in my medusa ...
— You Should Worry Says John Henry • George V. Hobart
... some person who offered a good deal of resistance. Among the foreign and unintelligible cries and howls which rang through the market-place, my heart leaped up, in natural though unsanctified pleasure, as I heard the too well-known but unexpected accents of British profanity. ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... 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 ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... Veemie whispered, calling upon her nearest approach to profanity. But they continued to stare after him, by unspoken accord moving to the fence and leaning over it, farther and farther, to keep him in sight ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... Ileen 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
... chanced to be that poor man in the seedy garments, and had been endeavoring to serve my Maker for even half a century, I would have felt like muttering audibly, "You go to hell!" (I am not much given to profanity, but when I am sorely aggravated and vexed in spirit, I declare to you that it is such a relief to me, such a solace to my troubled soul, and gives me such heavenly peace, to now and then allow a word or phrase to escape my lips which can serve ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... the one reserved for the authorities, were literally packed with prisoners. Passing by the windows, Nekhludoff listened to the sounds within. Everywhere he heard the rattling of chains, bustle, and the hum of conversation, interspersed with stupid profanity; but nowhere did he hear, as he expected, any reference to the dead comrades. Their conversation related more to sacks, drinking-water, and the choice of seats. Looking into the window of one of the cars, Nekhludoff saw some guardsmen removing the handcuffs ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... and profanity the Belgian officer succeeded in persuading his trembling command to fire a volley after the retreating apes. A ragged, straggling volley it was, but at least one of its bullets found a mark, for as the jungle closed about the hairy rescuers, Chulk, who bore Werper across one ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... profanity with no satisfactory result. His language, whether eloquent or fiery, beat upon an unresponsive ear. But being in that condition that demands sympathy, he found the mere talking a relief, and presently drifted into a recital of ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... Steele had waddled out to the tent, and had arrived at a moment when there was a particularly strong outburst of profanity on the part of one of the rough men. Though this was nipped in the bud as Mrs. Steele entered the tent, it caused her to reproach herself more bitterly than before. She promptly took Whitey under her wing and told him that, crowded ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... thrown into jail, where I passed a most uncomfortable night, being unable to sleep because of the profanity of my fellow-prisoners, two clergymen, whose theological training had given them a fertility of impious ideas and a command of blasphemous language altogether unparalleled. But along toward morning the ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... the triple pledge against alcohol, tobacco, and profanity, and even as early as 1875 we find a mention of this pledge as the one used by the children's society of Ilion, which then numbered two hundred members. In 1875 Syracuse had a juvenile society called Cold Water Templars, ...
— Two Decades - A History of the First Twenty Years' Work of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of the State of New York • Frances W. Graham and Georgeanna M. Gardenier
... becomes far more complicated when evil is socialized. The simplest and most familiar form of that is the boys' gang. Here is a group of young humans who get their fun and adventure by pulling the whiskers of the law. They idealize vice and crime. Leadership in their group is won by proficiency in profanity, gambling, obscenity, and slugging. The gang assimilates its members; there is regimentation of evil. It acts as a channel of tradition; the boy of fifteen teaches the boy of twelve what he has learned from the boy ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... 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 in that capacity. His Christian example and ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... 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
... among them. As you go in and out among them they acquire a 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 ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... She met the men returning from the stables; admired Jones and smiled at him, upon which he murmured "Oh fie!" as he passed her. The troop broke ranks and dispersed, to lounge and gossip until mess-call. Cumnor and Jones were putting a little snow down each other's necks with friendly profanity, when Jones saw the peddler standing close and watching them. A high collar of some ragged fur was turned up round his neck, disguising the character of the ancient army overcoat to which it was attached, and spots and long stains extended down the legs ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... by nature as well as by task, being precisely that part of the commonwealth which has been thrust down for its coarseness or unworthiness (by coarseness I mean especially insensibility and irreverence—the "profane" of Horace); and when this ceases to be so, and the corruption and profanity are in the higher instead of the lower orders, there arises, first, helpless confusion, then, if the lower classes deserve power, ensues swift revolution, and they get it; but if neither the populace nor their rulers deserve it, there follows mere darkness and dissolution, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... seemed able to keep away from it. Our imaginations got astir with it. We made up for lost time and went round it and through it and over it exhaustively. I recall prolonged discussion of polygamy on the way to Royston, muddy November tramps to Madingley, when amidst much profanity from Hatherleigh at the serious treatment of so obsolete a matter, we weighed the reasons, if any, for the institution of marriage. The fine dim night-time spaces of the Great Court are bound up with the inconclusive finales of mighty hot-eared wrangles; the narrows of Trinity ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... open. She whispered the word as if it were profanity. Suddenly she turned and ran down the rim corridor, screaming ...
— The Guardians • Irving Cox
... below, came frequent sounds emitted or caused by the tipsy young Hercules in the brown doublet. Now he bellowed for wine, now he thundered forth profanity, now he filled the place with the noise of Gargantuan laughter; now he sang at the top or the depth of his big, full voice; then could be heard the crash of furniture in collision. These sounds continued until far into ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... assembled sophomores seemed in quite as bad a plight, and some of them were inclined to indulge in profanity, which, although it relieved their feelings for the moment, did not suggest any ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish |
