"Lewdness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... natural inclinations in man and woman were very agreeable to God. Holding in her imperial hands the register of cardinal sins, she fancied that she could be indulgent for six of them, and keep all her severity for the seventh, lewdness, which in her estimation could ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... instructions for my behaviour as I followed to a tittle. Though I had no design to be an ecclesiastic, yet since I wore a cassock I was resolved to acquire some reputation at the Pope's Court. I compassed my design very happily, avoiding any appearance of gallantry and lewdness, and my dress being grave to the last degree; but for all this I was at a vast expense, having fine liveries, a very splendid equipage, and a train of seven or eight gentlemen, whereof four were Knights of Malta. I disputed in the Colleges of Sapienza (not to be compared ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... to me sent,[265] Is dead; all fowls her exequies frequent! Go godly[266] birds, striking your breasts, bewail, And with rough claws your tender cheeks assail. For woful hairs let piece-torn plumes abound, For long shrild[267] trumpets let your notes resound. Why Philomel dost Tereus' lewdness mourn? All wasting years have that complaint now[268] worn. Thy tunes let this rare bird's sad funeral borrow; Itys[269] a great, but ancient cause of sorrow. 10 All you whose pinions in the clear air soar, But most, thou friendly turtle-dove, deplore. ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... This latter belief made it a rare thing for young girls to brave the attempt; but, sometimes, the candidates were numerous and the horrible butchery of the young girls which took place formed a terrible expose of their lewdness. To kill an innocent girl was equally a matter which would be forever avenged by the ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... for long service and travail abroad, while they sat at home—some for shedding his blood in defence of his prince's cause and country, while they with safety, all careless in their cabins, in luxe and lewdness, did sail in a sure port—some selling his antient patrimony for purchase of these lands, while they must have all by gift a God's name—they nothing regarding, I say, what injury to thousands, what undoing to most men, what danger of uproar and tumult throughout the ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... won, other defects are easily corrected. This is why God particularly asks for the heart. By this means alone would be prevented the drunkenness, blasphemy, lewdness, enmity, and robbery which are prevalent in the world. Jesus Christ would reign universally, and the Church everywhere ...
— A Short Method Of Prayer And Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... stage-entrance blocked by people waiting to see the woman come out. She was lithe and supple, like a panther, and wore close-fitting gowns to reveal her form. It seemed that her play must have been built with one purpose in mind, to see how much lewdness could be put upon a stage without interference by the police.—And now his companion told him how this woman had been invited to sing at a banquet given by the magnates of a mighty Trust, and had gone after midnight to the most ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... preach about these and explain them as at once moral and spiritual virtues. But when the understanding is not elevated, the love, if it is merely natural, does not see these virtues, but instead of justice it sees injustice, instead of sincerity deceit, instead of chastity lewdness, and so on. If it then thinks of the things it spoke of when its understanding was in elevation, it can laugh at them and speak of them merely as serviceable to it in captivating the souls of men. From all this it can be seen ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg
... your witness too, that you would have allured me to lewdness, have seduced a hopeful young man, as I am; you would have enticed youth: Mark ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... and settled the rest, I walked down to the common prison, where I could enjoy more air and room. But I was not long there when the execrations, lewdness, and brutality that invaded me on every side, drove me back to my apartment again. Here I sate for some time, pondering upon the strange infatuation of wretches, who finding all mankind in open ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... She having come in afterwards, thought fit to be a stepmother to Phronime in deed as well as in name, giving her evil treatment and devising everything possible to her hurt; and at last she brings against her a charge of lewdness and persuades her husband that the truth is so. He then being convinced by his wife, devised an unholy deed against the daughter: for there was in Oaexos one Themison, a merchant of Thera, whom Etearchos took to himself as a guest-friend ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... she caught glimpses of foul interiors, crowded with men and women released from their toil, taking their evening pleasure. From coloured posters outside the great theatres and music halls, vulgarity and lewdness leered at her, side by side with announcements that the house was full. From every roaring corner, scintillating lights flared forth the merits of this public benefactor's whisky, of this other ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... drawing sense out of absurdity, and grave instructions from lewdness. There is a great modern wit, Sir Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, who in his treatise entitled "The Wisdom of the Ancients" has done more for you that way than all your ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... passing when prudery governed the discussion of sex. Lewdness exists in concealment, suggestion is more provocatory than frankness. The morbidness of men who condemned themselves to celibacy has influenced the world; their fear of sex led to a misguided silence shrouding the wrecks of many ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... century women began to act in their representations, and even down to the sixth century we find them associating themselves with Pantomime, and mention is made of a celebrated Mima, who was ultimately raised to the imperial throne. Through the lewdness of the Mimis and mimas in Pantomime, their dress, or rather lack of dress, Pantomimes were denounced, not only by the early Christian writers, but also by some of the Pagan writers, like Juvenal, as ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... adultery, according to the Lord's precept, Matt. xix. 9. To the same cause are to be referred manifest obscenities, which bid defiance to the restraints of modesty, and fill and infest the house with flagitious practices of lewdness, giving birth to adulterous immodesty, and rendering the whole mind abandoned. To these things may be added malicious desertion, which involves adultery, and causes a wife to commit whoredom, and thereby to be divorced, Matt. v. 32. ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... her, "By Allah, O daughter of the Sovran Supreme, this is indeed a mighty matter: and haddest thou heard tell of this mortal among women thou haddest marvelled at him all thy days. Indeed, he loveth thee with passionate love; yet, O King's daughter, he seeketh not lewdness, but desireth thee only in the way of lawful wedlock. Had we known that maids can do without men, we had impeached him from his intent, albeit he sent thee no messenger, but came to thee in person; and he telleth us he hath burnt the feather dress; else had we taken it from him." Then one ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... wrote sold handsomely. Almost as many fine things have been said about "Robinson Crusoe" as about Niagara Falls, or sunrise and sunset. The world has decided to consider it Defoe's masterpiece, and to neglect all else that he wrote for it. Nor can the world be blamed. The deliberate and dangerous lewdness of Defoe is one of the most deplorable things in letters. We shelve much of Smollett, much of Fielding, without great regret, but it is lamentable that works of powers and perceptions so supreme as "Moll Flanders" and "Colonel ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... where they can be protected and tolerated by codes and standards modified in their favor, is of very great importance. It accounts for many inconsistencies in the mores. In this way there may be nakedness without indecency, and tales of adultery without lewdness. We observe a conventionalization in regard to the Bible, especially in regard to some of the Old Testament stories. The theater presents numerous cases of conventionalization. The asides, entrances and exits, and stage artifices, require ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... patient and God-fearing man, for all his predial tithes were impropriated by his lord, that was an absentee and a sheriff in London—did little to stem that current of lewdness that had set in strong with the Restoration. And this was from no lack of virtue in himself, but rather from a natural invertebracy, as one may say, and an order of mind that, yet being no order, is ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... it not most monstrous? Who ever saw a young man seiz'd and bound For rapes and lewdness in ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... Zion; nor these neither, under the name and notion of superstition, heresy, schism, profaneness; for the heretic will not call his doctrine heresy; nor the superstitious, his innovation superstition; nor the schismatic, his turbulent practices schism; nor lastly, the profane person, his lewdness profaneness; tho' they love the ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... will be moved, Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven, So lust, though to a radiant angel linked, Will sate itself in a celestial bed, And prey ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... it till to-morrow His company ever wearys me I broke wind and so came to some ease I would fain have stolen a pretty dog that followed me Instructed by Shakespeare himself Lady Batten how she was such a man's whore Lately too much given to seeing of plays, and expense Lewdness and beggary of the Court Look askew upon my wife, because my wife do not buckle to them None will sell us any thing without our personal security given Quakers do still continue, and rather grow than lessen Sat before Mrs. Palmer, ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Diary of Samuel Pepys • David Widger
... letter, in God's name. Be not disquieted. I reverence your hoary hair. Although in your son I find too much folly and lewdness, yet in you I ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... of the other patriarchs. It was there that the violation of the first table commenced—in the contempt manifested for Jehovah and his Word. This was followed later by such gross offenses as oppression, tyranny and lewdness, which Moses explicitly mentions and names first as the cause of evil. Consult all history, study the Greek tragedies and the affairs of barbarians and Romans of all times, and you find lust the mother of every kind of trouble. It can not be ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... dealings between man and man and in public life equity and justice. And so, if we are to ascribe to fortune the acts of wisdom, let us ascribe justice and sobriety to fortune also, aye, and let us put down to fortune stealing, and picking pockets, and lewdness, and let us bid farewell to argument, and throw ourselves entirely on fortune, as if we were, like dust or refuse, borne along and hurried away by a violent wind. For if there be no wisdom, it is not likely that there is any deliberation or investigation ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... Hisbo leaped, to smite him unaware. Rash hope! brave Pallas caught him, rushing on, And through the lung his sword a passage won. Then Sthenius he slew; beside him bled Anchemolus, of Rhoetus' stock the son, The lewd defiler of his stepdame's bed. Fate stopped his lewdness now, and ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... some, who take their first degrees Of lewdness in our middle galleries: The doughty bullies enter bloody drunk, Invade and grabble ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... some who believe well enough but who, through lewdness of living, fall out of good hope of salvation. And then I very little marvel that they are loth to die. Howbeit, some who purpose to mend and would fain have some time left them longer to bestow somewhat better, may peradventure be loth to ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... too much, that is all; he wrote the DEBACLE and he wrote LA BETE HUMAINE, perhaps the most excruciatingly silly book that I ever read to an end. And why did I read it to an end, W. E. G.? Because the animal in me was interested in the lewdness. Not sincerely, of course, my mind refusing to partake in it; but the flesh was slightly pleased. And when it was done, I cast it from me with a peal of laughter, and forgot it, as I would forget a Montepin. Taine is to me perhaps the chief of these losses; ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and tales of African lewdness were being related, a thing happened which none could disbelieve, none call in question. This was the appearance of an immense meteor in the sky, shooting over half the heavens, with a slight curve, from east to west. It had ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... you please: Your lease is out, good master conjurer, and I am come to fetch your soul and body; not an hour of lewdness longer ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... life, every wicked work, committing one iniquity after another and exercising all manner of villainy that can be named. Now reverse the order. Reasoning according to your own logic: while before you willingly witnessed, heard and uttered things shameful and unchaste, and sought lewdness, lending your bodies to it, let impurity now be distressing to your sight and hearing; let the body flee from it; be pure in words and works. All the members of the body, all its functions, are ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... the foot of the Taurus, to the great grief of her husband. Capitolinus, who has written the life of Antoninus, and also Dion Cassius, accuses the empress of scandalous infidelity to her husband, and of abominable lewdness. But Capitolinus says that Antoninus either knew it not or pretended not to know it. Nothing is so common as such malicious reports in all ages, and the history of imperial Rome is full of them. Antoninus loved ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
... stream, the torrent of our guilt. Far as thou mayst give life to virtue's cause; Let not the ties of personal regard Betray the nation's trust to feeble hands: Let not fomented flames of private pique Prey on the vitals of the public good: Let not our streets with blasphemies resound, Nor lewdness whisper where the laws can reach: Let not best laws, the wisdom of our sires, Turn satires on their sunk degenerate sons, The bastards of their blood! and serve no point But with more emphasis to call ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... is needed to realize the moral declension of that time, as it is portrayed—to use a single example—in the sermon by the Bishop of Litchfield before the Society for the Reformation of Manners, in 1724. Lewdness, drunkenness, and degeneracy, he said, were well nigh universal, no class being free from the infection. Murders were common and foul, wanton and obscene books found so good a market as to encourage the publishing of them. Immorality of every ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... drama as contrary to Holy Writ, as destructive of religion, and as a menace to public morality. Against plays, players, and playgoers they waged in pulpit and pamphlet a warfare characterized by the most intense fanaticism. The charges they made—of ungodliness, idolatrousness, lewdness, profanity, evil practices, enormities, and "abuses" of all kinds—are far too numerous to be noted here; they are interesting chiefly for their unreasonableness and for the violence ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... conclusion he could deceive none, for all were become mistrustful of him. He had great vices, but scarce any vertues to correct them: He had in him some vices that were less hurtful, which corrected his more hurtful ones. He was during the active part of life given up to sloth and lewdness to such a degree, that he hated business, and could not bear the engaging in any thing that gave him much trouble, or put him under any constraint. And, tho' he desired to become absolute, and to overturn both our religion and our laws, yet he would neither run the risque, nor give himself the ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... trust her to man when he sweareth, Ne'er let her hope to find or truth or faith in his pleadings, Who whenas lustful thought forelooks to somewhat attaining, 145 Never an oath they fear, shall spare no promise to promise. Yet no sooner they sate all lewdness and lecherous fancy, Nothing remember of words and reck they naught of fore-swearing. Certes, thee did I snatch from midmost whirlpool of ruin Deadly, and held it cheap loss of a brother to suffer ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... in nature, animals, and plants, show us the caresses of love and advise us to share them? Animals are eager to unite in their own fashion, but the various marriages of quadrupeds, birds, fishes, and reptiles are far from equalling in lust the nuptials of the trees. The greatest extremes of lewdness that the pagans have imagined in their fables are outstripped by the simple flowers of the field, and, if you knew the irregularities of lilies and roses you would take those chalices of impurity, those vases of scandal, away ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... according to Tully, ought to be the mirror of life, the exemplar of manners, and picture of truth; whereas those that are represented in this age are mirrors of absurdity, exemplars of folly, and pictures of lewdness; for sure, nothing can be more absurd in a dramatic performance, than to see the person, who, in the first scene of the first act, was produced a child in swaddling-clothes, appear a full-grown man with a beard in the second; or to represent ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... of these religious impressions: whatever tended to increase population being held in honour. Those images and Priapi so frequently found in the temples of the ancients, and even in their houses, and which we consider as objects of indecent lewdness, were, in their eyes, but so many sacred motives exciting them to propagate ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... any one measures happiness by purple and power; if any one brought up among flatterers and slaves has never had a conception of liberty, frankness and truth; if any one has wholly surrendered himself to pleasure, full tables, carousals, lewdness, sorcery, and deceit, let him go to Rome." There was no Bible either to preach against it or to interfere with it. These things were the product then, as they are now, of infidelity. Whenever the world wishes a civilization so barbarous as that, the reviler of the Bible ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... would give me leave, improved it, but with this caution always, that I have set forth the entertainments of vice in their proper colours, lest young people might be led to take them for innocent diversions, and from figures not uncommon in modern authors, learn to call lewdness gallantry, and the effects of unbridled lust the starts of too warm an imagination. These are notions which serve to cheat the mind and represent as the road of pleasure that which is indeed the highway to the gallows. This, ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... many examples of persons who were found innocent and eminent saints, though they had been condemned by the world upon circumstances; as that of a certain monk, who brought to that city a Jewess whom he had converted, but was accused as guilty of lewdness with her, and cruelly scourged; for he said nothing to justify himself, out of a desire of humiliation and suffering. But his innocence and sanctity were soon after brought to light. St. John employed Sophronius and John Moschus in reducing to the faith ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... of the Sum of Theology," by Thomas Aquinas, question 94, p. 230, "Sums" up all the Romish system in this comprehensively blasphemous oracular adage. "By the command of God, it is lawful to murder the innocent, to rob, and to commit lewdness; and thus to fulfil his ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... whenever the occasion demands; as, for instance, the fording of a stream, or when a number of both sexes happen to be bathing at the same time in the village pool. This does not lead to immodesty or lewdness, and a person who is careless about the acts, which are not considered proper in Tinguian society, is an object of scorn quite as much as he would be in a more ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... custom of promiscuous bathing is very ancient, and existed among the Romans, from whom it was learnt by the Greeks, but gave rise to such shameful lewdness, that it was prohibited by Hadrian and Antoninus. This law seems to have fallen into oblivion, as even the Christians in after times fell into the practice, and gave occasion to many decrees of councils and synods for its prohibition; yet with little effect, as even priests and monks ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... lusts of your ignorance. That is, that you should not exhibit such ostentation and lead such a course of life as before, and that you be not found in the same condition in which you formerly were. Once you were godless, and lived in lewdness, gluttony, drunkenness, avarice, pride, anger, envy and hate, which was an evil, heathen-like state, and one of unbelief, and when you had gone into such a state like the blind, you have not known what you have done. Avoid now those same evil lusts. Here you perceive how he makes the ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... Bernese"—wrote Sebastian Wagner to Zwingli—"appear to me not so morally corrupt as our people of Zurich. Their dress and their manners have a certain air of ancient Swiss simplicity." Bullinger also says, "Before the preaching of the Gospel Zurich was almost like Corinth in Greece. Much lewdness and frivolity prevailed, because diets were held there and many strangers flocked in, where the embassies of lords and princes were staying." George Mangolt of Constance tells us that he heard Zwingli himself say from the pulpit in the year 1520, that on a former visit to Zurich "he found ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... prostitution;— When all the ills of conquered states shall cling thee, Vice without splendour, Sin without relief[fw][475] Even from the gloss of Love to smooth it o'er, But in its stead, coarse lusts of habitude,[476] Prurient yet passionless, cold studied lewdness, Depraving Nature's frailty to an art;— When these and more are heavy on thee, when 90 Smiles without mirth, and pastimes without Pleasure, Youth without Honour, Age without respect, Meanness and Weakness, and a sense of woe 'Gainst which thou wilt not strive, and dar'st not ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... had an evil name on account of a propensity which led her at times to commit actions that seem worthy only of a demon of lewdness. This was, however, only the hysteria of a moment, not the settled habit of her life. On one notable occasion, by diverting the attention of the bestial pig-god Kama-pua'a, and by vividly presenting to him a temptation well adapted to his ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... regulated by the weather, and assemblies will depend upon the moon! The Platonists imagine, that the future punishment of those who have in this life debased their reason by subjection to their senses, and have preferred the gross gratifications of lewdness and luxury, to the pure and sublime felicity of virtue and contemplation, will arise from the predominance and solicitations of the same appetites, in a state which can furnish no means of appeasing them. I cannot but suspect that this month, bright with sunshine, and fragrant with perfumes; ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... sweet a creature. Ergo habetantur enses pulchritudine, the edge of a sharp sword (as the saying is) is dulled with a beautiful aspect, and severity itself is overcome. Hiperides the orator, when Phryne his client was accused at Athens for her lewdness, used no other defence in her cause, but tearing her upper garment, disclosed her naked breast to the judges, with which comeliness of her body and amiable gesture they were so moved and astonished, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... "Restrained within due limits of propriety; free from indecency or lewdness; not excessive or extreme; moderate." A Christian's apparel should be modest in cut, that is, in the way it is made; it should cover the body as a modest person would cover it, not displaying those parts that ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... cursing and swearing; tippling-houses; want of respect for parents; idleness; extortion in shopkeepers and mechanics; and the riding from town to town of unmarried men and women, under pretence of attending lectures—"a sinful custom, tending to lewdness." ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... innumerable matters of great importance to improve. There is the disagreement between the princes and the states; usury and avarice have burst in like a flood, and have become lawful [are defended with a show of right]; wantonness, lewdness, extravagance in dress, gluttony, gambling, idle display, with all kinds of bad habits and wickedness, insubordination of subjects, of domestics and laborers of every trade, also the exactions [and most ...
— The Smalcald Articles • Martin Luther
... pornography, of the majority of young men. Guy de Maupassant has described this contrast in a most striking manner in his romance entitled "Une Vie." I know a number of cases in which the complete ignorance of young married women with regard to sexual relations, combined with the cynical lewdness of their husbands, has transformed the exalted love of a young girl into profound disgust, and has sometimes even caused mental disorders. Although not very common, the psychoses resulting from the deception and shock of the nuptial night are not very rare. But what is much worse ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... not, indeed, a greater error than that which universally prevails among the vulgar, who, borrowing their opinion from some ignorant satirists, have affixed the character of lewdness to these times. On the contrary, I am convinced there never was less of love intrigue carried on among persons of condition than now. Our present women have been taught by their mothers to fix their thoughts only on ambition and vanity, and to despise the pleasures of love as unworthy ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... published his Vision of Judgment—the most quaintly preposterous panegyric ever penned—he prefixed to it a long explanatory note, in the course of which he characterizes Don Juan as a "monstrous combination of horror and mockery, lewdness and impiety," regrets that it has not been brought under the lash of the law, salutes the writer as chief of the Satanic school, inspired by the spirits of Moloch and Belial, and refers to the remorse that will overtake him on his death-bed. To which Byron, inter alia: "Mr. Southey, with ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... words, thus coupled together, is sufficient to excite disgust. Yet with this 'moderate chastity' you must be, and ought to be, content, if you have entered into marriage with one, in whom you have ever discovered the slightest approach towards lewdness, either in deeds, words, or looks. To marry has been your own act; you have made the contract for your own gratification; you knew the character of the other party; and the children, if any, or the community, are not to be the sufferers for your gross and corrupt ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... assuredly would have been its fate had the Anglo-Saxons remained its undisturbed possessors. "In the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries," says Mr. Worsaae, "the Anglo-Saxons had greatly degenerated from their forefathers. Relatives sold one another into thraldom; lewdness and ungodliness were become habitual; and cowardice had increased to such a degree that, according to the old chroniclers, one Dane would often put ten Anglo-Saxons to flight. Before such a people could be conducted to true freedom and greatness it was necessary that an entirely ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... may be right, good friend," quoth Rachel Harmer, as she sat beside her spinning wheel, and spoke to the accompaniment of its pleasant hum. "And yet, methinks, the vice and profligacy of this great city, and the lewdness and wanton wickedness of the Court, are enough to draw down upon us the judgments of Almighty God. The sin and the shame of it must be rising up before Him ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... man denying seems respectable. How can we fancy a lie told by a gentleman in golden uniform, or a lady in a lace dress? But if the defenders of the civilization of Rossia and of the noble manners of its aristocracy knew all the cruel judgments of Rossian masters, the lewdness, recklessness, indecency, and shallowness often concealed beneath their artificial good breeding and apparent courtesy, they would learn that laces may cover coarse tissues, and gold hide corroded brass. The gaudy dress and uniform serve but to permit more daring ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... a mistaken idea that this spring infects those who drink of it with an unnatural lewdness. It will not be out of place to explain how this idea came to spread throughout the world from a mistake in the telling of the tale. It cannot be that the water makes men effeminate and unchaste, as it is said to do; for the ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... puppets and by all that bevy of profligate girls. But still more despicable are those from old till now numberless dissolute roues, one and all of whom maintain that libidinous affections do not constitute lewdness; and who try, further, to prove that licentious love is not tantamount to lewdness. But all these arguments are mere apologies for their shortcomings, and a screen for their pollutions; for if libidinous affection be lewdness, still more does the ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... the sister from the mistress or the acquaintance of the hour, and had many times to check my American curiosity and cold, criticising stare. For it was curious to see young men and women from the lowest social strata meet and mingle in a public hall without lewdness or badinage, but even with gentleness and consideration. The truth is, however, that the class of women known as victims of the social evil do not sink within many degrees as low in Europe as they do in this country, either in their own opinion or in that ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... Travel and the higher education have opened the storage vats of foreign degeneracy and piped them into our land. Certain young men who have been 'finished' abroad, where they filled their souls with Latin lewdness, have turned it into fiction and a source of profit. Women buy their books and rush through them, and only touch the low places. There they lie entranced, thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks in Vallombrosa. Like the women in the sack of Ismail, they ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller
... "My lord, at a time when nonsense, dullness, lewdness, and all manner of profaneness and immorality are daily practised on the stage, I have prevailed on my modesty to offer to your lordship's protection a piece which, if it has no merit to recommend it, has at least no ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... which is warm for the time, but by good luck, of short duration. This friendship is hastily produced, by their being accidentally thrown together, and pursuing the course of riot and debauchery. A fine friendship, truly; and well cemented by drunkenness and lewdness. It should rather be called a conspiracy against morals and good manners, and be punished as such by the civil magistrate. However, they have the impudence and folly to call this confederacy a friendship. They lend one another money, for ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... Jews it was ordained and commanded that every one must be married. Therefore also the young were early provided for [married], so that the virgin state was held in small esteem, neither were public prostitution and lewdness tolerated (as now). Therefore adultery was the most common form ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... died at the hands of the inland caciques Caonabo and Guarionex and their warriors, who attacked and destroyed both the fort and the village of Guacanagari. At the same time it was stated that the Spaniards had made themselves hateful to the natives by their domineering disposition and their lewdness and covetousness. The finding in some of the native huts of objects that had belonged to the colonists, as well as other suspicious circumstances, caused Father Boil and other companions of Columbus to doubt the chief's story and insist that sanguinary vengeance be taken. ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... poplar, rejoicing in the season of spring, when the plane-tree whispers to the elm. If you do these things which I say, and apply your mind to these, you will ever have a stout chest, a clear complexion, broad shoulders, a little tongue, large hips, little lewdness. But if you practise what the youths of the present day do, you will have in the first place, a pallid complexion, small shoulders, a narrow chest, a large tongue, little hips, great lewdness, a long psephism; and this deceiver will ...
— The Clouds • Aristophanes
... passion to revenge the scoffs and jeers with which the tyrant Aristion irritated him and his wife Metella, by continually taunting them from the wall and insulting them. This Aristion was a compound of lewdness and cruelty, who combined in himself all the worst of the vices and passions of Mithridates, and now had brought as it were a mortal disease in its last extremities upon a city which had come safe out of so many ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... an altar of earth; and again, in regard to His Godhead, we must confess His equality with the Father—and this is "not to go up" to the altar by steps. Moreover we should not couple the doctrine of Christ to that of the Gentiles, which provokes men to lewdness. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... both drowned, although they might have waded out on either side, but it was an evident judgement of God upon them, for they were wicked persons. One of them, a little before, being reproved for his lewdness, and put in mind of hell, answered that if hell were ten times hotter, he had rather be there than he would serve his master, &c. The occasion was because he had bound himself for divers years, and saw that, if he had been at liberty, he ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... Al-Bundukani, or the Caliph Harun Al-Rashid and the, vi. David and Solomon, Story of, i. Destiny or that which is written on the Forehead, i. Dethroned Ruler, whose reign and wealth were restored to him, Tale of the, i. Devotee accused of Lewdness, Tale of the, i. Disciple's Story, The, i. Druggist, Tale of the Singer and the, i. Drummer Abu Kasim became a Kazi, How, iv. Duenna and the King's Son, The Linguist-Dame, the, vi. Eighth Constable's History, ii. Eleventh Constable's ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... by some magic, As jugglers playen at these feastes great." Of sundry doubts they jangle thus and treat. As lewed* people deeme commonly *ignorant Of thinges that be made more subtilly Than they can in their lewdness comprehend; They *deeme gladly to the badder end.* *are ready to think And some of them wonder'd on the mirrour, the worst* That borne was up into the master* tow'r, *chief How men might in it suche thinges ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... the group, a drawing back from his lordship. He observed it, trembling between chagrin and rage. "What's here?" he cried, and laughed contemptuously. "Oh, ah! You'll follow where his grace leads you! Ye've followed him so long in lewdness that now yell follow him in conversion! But as for you, sir," and he swung fiercely upon Caryll, "you and your precious story—will you maintain ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... Celebrated shrines become the dens of a prostitution which forms part of the homage rendered to the gods; the religious rites of ancient Asia, and those of Greece which fell under their influence, are notorious for their lewdness. The temples of false deities, too often defiled by debauchery, are too often also dishonored by frightful sacrifices. The ancient civilization of Mexico was elegant and even refined in some respects; but the altars were stained, every ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... forswearing, joined to the most abominable lewdness, was the stated practice of the ship's crew; adding to it that, with the most insufferable boasts of their own courage, they were, generally speaking, the most complete cowards that I ever met with. And I was ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... become an exchange, the criminal trial a mine of gold for the jurymen. No law is any longer obeyed save only this one, that nothing is given for nothing. All virtues have vanished; in their stead the awakened man is saluted by impiety, perfidy, lewdness, as new denizens. "Alas for thee, Marcus, with such a sleep and such an awakening!"— The sketch resembles the Catilinarian epoch, shortly after which (about 697) the old man must have written it, and there lay a truth in the bitter turn at ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... against vices, only because they are charged upon persons who are no longer in power? Every body knows, that certain vices are more or less pernicious, according to the stations of those who possess them. For example, lewdness and intemperance are not of so bad consequences in a town rake as a divine. Cowardice in a lawyer is more supportable than in an officer of the army. If I should find fault with an admiral because he wanted politeness, or an alderman for not ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... would be endless to enumerate such as arise from the excess of play or gaming: The cheats, the quarrels, the oaths and blasphemies among the men; among the women, the neglect of household affairs, the unlimited freedoms, the indecent passion; and lastly, the known inlet to all lewdness, when after an ill run, the person must answer the defects of the purse; the rule on such occasions holding true in play as it does in law; quod non habet ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... the law, and all were successfully challenged. This grand jury, early in October, found indictments against Brigham Young, "General" Wells, G. Q. Cannon, and others under a territorial statute directed against lewdness and improper cohabitation. This action caused intense excitement in the Mormon capital. Prosecutor Baskin was quoted as saying that the troops at Camp Douglas would be used to enforce the warrant for Young's arrest if ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... worthy to be plunged in a pludde and laid in powder of lewdness and of shame. It might well be that thou makest only in mirth ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... See lewdness and theology combin'd,— A cynic and a sycophantic mind; A fancy shar'd party per pale between Death's heads and skeletons and Aretine!— Not his peculiar defect or crime, But the true current mintage of the time. Such were the establish'd signs and tokens given To mark a loyal churchman, sound ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... they may please men." But dissimulation consists, not in the mere intention, but in the outward action: wherefore a gloss on Job 36:13, "Dissemblers and crafty men prove the wrath of God," says that "the dissembler simulates one thing and does another: he pretends chastity, and delights in lewdness, he makes a show of poverty and fills his purse." Therefore hypocrisy is not the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... under the joint influence of the following things: the fatally arisen rupture between corporal and spiritual desires, - the sharp contrast between English purity and English lewdness that, with its incomprehensible contradiction, has as exciting an effect as the dog in the duck-yard, who decoys the inquisitive ducks into the mouth of the strangler, - and finally the accursed self-contempt that makes one say: "There's ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... appetite, or encourage them in every irregular indulgence. No man of honour who sees a poet endowed with a large share of natural understanding, prostituting his pen to the vilest purpose of debauchery and lewdness, can think of him but with contempt; and his wit, however brilliant, ought not to screen him from the just indignation of the sober part of mankind. When wit is prostituted to vice, 'tis wit no ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... lewdness, no indecent speech, Th' apartment of the tender youth to reach. Far be from thence the glutton parasite, Who sings his drunken catches all the night. Boys from their parents may this rev'rence ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus |
