"Libertine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... round upon his new antagonist, "Mr. Pendragon! And do you suppose, Mr. Pendragon, that because I have had the misfortune to marry your sister, I shall suffer myself to be dogged and thwarted by a discredited and bankrupt libertine like you? My acquaintance with Lady Vandeleur, sir, has taken away all my appetite for the other ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... artistic and philosophic person, of high attainments, lofty aspirations, strong emotions, and capricious will," produces arguments "wide in range, of profound significance and infinite ingenuity," to defend and justify immoral intercourse with a gipsy trull. The poem consists of the speculations of a libertine, who coerces into his service truth and sophistry, and "a superabounding wealth of thought and imagery," and with no further purpose on the poet's part than the dramatic delineation of character. Prince ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... which I shall notice of this class of productions, is the portrait of the celebrated demagogue John Wilkes. This singular performance originated in a quarrel with that witty libertine, and his associate Churchill the poet: it immediately followed an article, from the pen of Wilkes, in the North Briton, which insulted Hogarth as a man, and traduced him as an artist. It is so little of a caricature, that Wilkes good humouredly observes somewhere in his correspondence, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various
... Road, Bayswater.—I am excessively gratified by the result of my first day's trial, being already the established favourite and chartered libertine of the whole Court, who split their sides at my slightest utterances. So I am no longer immeasurably alarmed by the prospect of being crossly examined—especially since WITHERINGTON, Q.C., has abandoned his brief in despair ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... bear the whole hierarchy. His mighty belly heaved and his cheeks swelled with the spiritual inflations of church power. He fixed his open eyes upon me and surveyed me from top to toe. I too made my remarks. 'He is a true son of the church,' said I.—The libertine sarcasm was instantly repelled, and my train of ideas was purified from such irreverend heresy—'He is an orthodox divine! A pillar of truth! A Christian Bishop!' Thought is swift, and man assents and recants before his eye ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... sunshine in the heart of me, My blood sings in the breeze; The mountains are a part of me, I'm fellow to the trees. My golden youth I'm squandering, Sun-libertine am I; A-wandering, a-wandering, Until ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... and soberness;" and then, turning to the royal stranger, vigorously pressed home his argument. "King Agrippa," he exclaimed, "believest thou the prophets? I know that thou believest." [140:3] The King, thus challenged, was a libertine; and at this very time was believed to be living in incestuous intercourse with his sister Bernice; and yet he seems to have been staggered by Paul's solemn and pointed interrogatory. "Almost," said he, "thou persuadest ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... by a complete defeat. Many men were lost on both sides. General Agnew, an Englishman, and General Nash, an American, were killed. The Americans had some dragoons under Pulaski, the only one of the confederated Poles who had refused to accept a pardon. He was an intrepid knight, a libertine and devotee, and a better captain than general; he insisted on being a Pole on all occasions, and M. de Lafayette, after having contributed to his reception in the army, often exerted himself to effect a reconciliation betwixt him and the other officers. Without waiting ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... me to death with her sermons and crying fits. Moll's worth two of her for that, matter—she scolds, but at least she never would look like a stuck fawn when I came home a little queer. For the matter of that, she don't mind a spree herself at times." And, emptying his glass, the libertine laughed at the remembrance ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... the soul of the madman, drunkard, libertine, the street-walker, he has also exposed the ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... will remember him-the venerable, snowy-haired man, sitting on the lounge at the house of Madame Flamingo, and on whom George Mullholland swore to have revenge. The judge of a criminal court, the admonisher of the erring, the sentencer of felons, the habitue of the house of Madame Flamingo-no libertine in disguise could be more scrupulous of his standing in society, or so sensitive of the opinion held of him by the virtuous fair, than was this daylight guardian ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... be thou my good," what is there in the system of secular ethics that should oblige me to forego my favorite indulgences, or that can impress me with the conviction that I ought to do so? True I may suffer, and suffer much, as the drunkard and the libertine do, in the way of natural consequence, and it may be prudent to be temperate in the indulgence of my sensual appetites; there may even be a sense of inward degradation, and a politic regard to the opinions of my fellow-men, which will operate to some ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... to be misled in this way. The state of affairs in which a great body of public men, not only ministers, but noble men and worthy persons of every degree, could personally address the Queen, and that almost in the form of an accusation couched in the most vehement terms, because of a libertine raid made by a few young gallants in the night, on a house supposed to be inhabited by a woman of damaged character, is inconceivable to us—a certain parochial character, a pettiness as of a village, thus comes into the great national struggle. The Queen's uncle, who ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... the latter when he tells us himself that he had never loved with passion. His death was of a piece with his life. Having been a public frequenter of brothels and the associate of the loosest company, he died like the libertine. He was taken ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... Wilde's Salome that of Brahms' German Requiem, yet whatever of beauty there may be in the shapes will divert the attention from the meanness or vileness of the non-aesthetic suggestion. We do not remember the mercenary and libertine allegory embodied in Correggio's Danae, or else we reinterpret that sorry piece of mythology in terms of cosmic occurrences, of the Earth's wealth increased by the fecundating sky. Similarly it is a common observation that while unmusical ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... bed to dream blissfully over his fat salary and his luxurious supper. The ballet-girl takes up her solitary walk for the humble home in which perhaps an infirm mother is anxiously waiting her return, exposed to such libertine insults as the midnight appearance of a young girl on the street is sure to invite. It is many hours since she dined; she is fatigued and hungry, but she sups upon a crust, or the cold remains of what was at best a meagre dinner, with possibly a cup of tea, boiled by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... acknowledge nae king ower my conscience but the King o' Kings. As for that perjured libertine on the throne, for whom there's muckle need to pray, I tell ye plainly that I consider the freedom and welfare o' Scotland stands higher than the supposed rights o' king and lords. Ye misca' us rebels! If ye ken the history o' yer ain country—whilk I misdoot—ye would ken that ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... Doating Lovers, or The Libertine Tam'd; a Comedy acted at the Theatre in Lincoln's Inn-Fields, in the year 1715, with no success: but supported to the third night, for the Author's Benefit; when the Boxes and Pit were laid together at the unusual Price of six ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 79, May 3, 1851 • Various
... example. The story of Mrs. Hamilton's woes and wrongs had spread all over the community, and proved a theme of delightful and never-ending interest to all the ladies of the station. They were unanimous in supporting her. Not one voice was raised in favour of Hamilton. He was a monster, a heartless libertine, given over to all sorts of terrible vices. Tales of the fearful doings in the desert bungalow, where Hamilton and Saidie lived the gay, bright, joyous life of two human beings, happily mated, as Nature intended all things to be, spread over the station, and the stony stare of the ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... And rescued righteous Lot who was troubled greatly by the libertine course of the wicked. Was it not a great aggravation that they not only rushed publicly and shamelessly into whoredom and adultery, but into such sins as may not be mentioned,—insomuch that they did not even spare the angels who came to Lot, and they rushed on thus in their course, ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... city of Ujjayini with mansions, cloisters, parks, temples, pools, and fountains, and he should be mad enough to commit such a crime—and for a mere trifle? [Wrathfully.] You offspring of a loose wench, you brother-in-law of the king, Sansthanaka, you libertine, you slanderer, you buffoon, you gilded monkey, say it before me! This friend of mine does n't even draw a flowering jasmine creeper to himself, to gather the blossoms, for fear that a twig might perhaps be injured. How should he commit a crime ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... the convention, Li Chia had to question Sun in his turn. They exchanged such words as are customary between educated men. Finally the libertine said: ...
— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli
... no heir? The Brahman mother suffers all the pangs Kshatriyas, Sudras or the Vassas feel. The Brahman's body, when the soul has fled, A putrid mass, defiles the earth and air, Vile as the Sudras or the lowest beasts. The Brahman murderer, libertine or thief Ye say will be reborn in lowest beast, While some poor Sudra, full of gentleness And pity, charity and trust and love, May rise to Brahma Loca's perfect rest, Why boast of caste, that seems so little worth ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... I live exempted (while I live Guiltless of pampered appetite obscene) From pangs arthritic that infest the toe Of libertine excess. The Sofa suits The gouty limb, 'tis true; but gouty limb, Though on a Sofa, may I never feel: For I have loved the rural walk through lanes Of grassy swarth, close cropped by nibbling sheep, And skirted thick with intertexture firm Of thorny boughs: have loved the rural walk O'er ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... to whom strength came by easy inheritance. Frank told Maude the little which he knew of each of them—of Grattan, the noblest Irishman of them all, of Castlereagh, whose coffin was pursued to the gates of the Abbey by a raging mob who wished to tear out his corpse, of Fox the libertine philosopher, of Palmerston the gallant sportsman, who rode long after he could walk. They marvelled together at the realism of the sculptor who had pitted Admiral Warren with the smallpox, and at the absurdity of that other one who had clad Robert ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... soon to introduce you. I need not mention her name, if you are wise. Be patient and cheerful; cultivate your talents, and take care of your good looks—no woman can afford to dispense with these, however gifted; and you will soon find yourself as free as that 'chartered libertine' the air, for which last two words I am afraid you will be malicious enough to substitute the name you will not find appended, of your true friend ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... occurrence which led to her disgrace came to light. He was a man of from twenty-five to twenty-six years of age, who idled his life away: his courage was undoubted, and being as credulous as an old libertine, he was ready to draw his sword at any moment to defend the lady whose cause he had espoused, should any insolent slanderer dare to hint there was a smirch on her virtue. Being deaf to all reports, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Scotland, where she should reign with all the power and magnificence of a queen. He was handsome, accomplished, and adored her; but Helen could not love him whom she could not esteem, for she knew he was libertine, base and cruel. That he loved her affected her not; she could only be sensible to an affection placed on worthy foundations; and he who trampled on all virtues in his own actions, could not desire them when seen in her; he therefore must love her for ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... and new ways of satisfying the lust of liberty and overstimulated desire. The poor are growing poorer, and to "keep in the ring," to live and dress beyond their means as many do, it is necessary to have an unexacting standard of morals. In this way the promiscuous libertine is evolved,—the most insidious and dangerous product of present day civilization, and the most pernicious factor in the spread of ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... of love a woman is perhaps most easily ensnared by a man who can combine passion with pleasantry and hot pursuit with social tact and diplomacy. Amadis de Jocelyn was an adept at this kind of thing—he was, if it may be so expressed, a refined libertine, loving women from a purely physical sense of attraction and pleasure conveyed to himself, and obtusely ignorant of the needs or demands of their higher natures. From a mental or intellectual standpoint all women to him were alike, made to be "managed" ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... have an easy-chair to laugh in. Why should he who makes so many joyous not have the largest mess of gladness to his share? He ought to be a favored Benjamin at the banquet of existence,—and have, above the most favored of his brethren, a double portion. He ought, like the wind, to be "a chartered libertine,"—to blow where he listeth, and have no one to question whence he cometh or whither he goeth. He ought to be the citizen of a comfortable world, and he ought to have an ungrudged freedom in it. What debt is he should not be allowed ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... his spelling is remarkably loose. He seems to spell without any particular principle in the matter, seldom rendering the same word a second time by the same combination of letters. He was at one period of his life a libertine of the loosest order, so far as morals were {25} concerned, but of the shrewdest kind as regarded personal gain and advancement. He would have loved any Lady Bellaston who presented herself, and who could have rewarded him for his kindness. He was not of the ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... has been pictured as a libertine and a pillager. His face has been caricatured so often that people have the cartooned impression of him and believe him to be ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... about me; is it not easy to imagine how a young man might make such a woman the dream of his life, how he might lay all his prayer at her feet, and how, when he learned of her fearful baseness, it might make of him a mocking libertine for the rest ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... glory as much as any man; but he desired to receive it only on his own terms. He profoundly appeals to writers endowed with "the artistic conscience" as "the martyr of literary style." In morals something of a libertine, in matters of art he exhibited the intolerance of weakness in others and the remorseless self-examination and self-torment commonly attributed to the Puritan. His friend Maxime Du Camp, who tried to bring him out and teach him the arts of popularity, he rebuffed with deliberate ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... conformity; for he doth far more insult to see a godly minister thrust out, and with him all the truth of God pressed, than to see him wear a surplice, &c. Thirdly, he saith, It twofold more scandaliseth the Atheist, libertine, and Epicure, who, by the painful minister's deprival, will triumph to see a door opened for him without resistance, to live in drunkenness, whoredom, swearing, &c. Now, for answer to his second and third pretences, we say, 1. Mr Sprint implieth ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... tears, and fell on her knees before the old libertine.—Young and innocent as she was, a dark suspicion of his purpose came like a shadow over her soul, and she ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... a king; thirty years a libertine; twenty years a repentant. Son, grandson, great-grandson, all gone, as though to leave not one of that once haughty breed. For France no hope at all; and for the house of Bourbon, all the hope there might be in the life ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... Elliston said; and her candour seemed as inevitable as Amabel's had been: each must tell the other everything; a common bond of suffering was between them and a common bond of love, though love so differing. "I knew, of course, that he was often unfaithful to me; he is a libertine; but I was the centre; he always came back to me.—I saw the end approaching about five years ago. I fought—oh how warily—so that he shouldn't dream I was afraid;—it is fatal for a woman to let a man know ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... shall the effect of this good lesson keep, As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother Do not as some ungracious pastors do, Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven, Whilst, like a puffed and wreckless libertine, Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads And recks not ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... discretion. In short, this was the safest, politest, and, at the same time, the most thorough house of accommodation in town: every thing being conducted so, that decency made no intrenchment upon the most libertine pleasures; in the practice of which, too, the choice familiars of the house had found the secret so rare and difficult, of reconciling even all the refinements of taste and delicacy, with the most gross ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... had no weakness for Laurent in the mocking and libertine sense that one gives to this word in love. It was by an act of her will, after nights of sorrowful meditation, that she said to him—"I wish what thou wishest, because we have come to that point where the fault to be committed is the inevitable ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Cecilia that you can afford to give her fresh reasons for sorrowful perplexity. And why should you stand to be blackened by scandalmongers when a few words of mine will prove that instead of weak you have been strong, instead of libertine blameless? I am not using fine phrases: I would not. I would be as thoughtful of you as if you were present. And for her sake, I repeat, the truth should be told to her. I have a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Nay, every libertine will think he has a right to insult her with his licentious passion; and should the unhappy creature shrink from the insolent overture, he will sneeringly taunt her with ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... sitting like a recording angel, invisible but hearing everything, had found in the communion of Zada and Cheever only the fervor of an amour, she could have felt that Cheever was merely a libertine who loved his wife and his home but loved to rove as well. She had, however, ghastly evidence that Cheever was only now the rake reformed; his marriage had been merely one of his escapades; he had settled ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... with the hero, has her ambition to be of use in the world—to do some good: and the task of reclaiming a bad man is extremely seductive to good women. Dear to their tender bosoms as old china is a bad man they are mending! Lord Mountfalcon had none of the arts of a libertine: his gold, his title, and his person had hitherto preserved him from having long to sigh in vain, or sigh at all, possibly: the Hon. Peter did his villanies for him. No alarm was given to Lucy's pure instinct, as might have been the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... were standing by me, and across the deck came the acridly nasal tones of the dance-hall girls. I saw the libertine eyes of Bullhammer rove incontinently from one unlovely demirep to another, till at last they rested on the slender girl standing by the side of her white-haired grandfather. Appreciatively ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... mistake, which the common retailers of character committed. Henry was said to be wholly negligent, while William was reputed to be extremely attentive to the other sex. William, indeed, was gallant, was amorous, and indulged his inclination to the libertine society of women; but Henry it was who loved them. He admired them at a reverential distance, and felt so tender an affection for the virtuous female, that it shocked him to behold, much more to associate with, the depraved ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... breaking the seal, to the fiery element. But, though sufficiently familiarized with guilt, he was not as yet acquainted with it in its basest shapes—he had not yet acted with meanness, or at least with what the world terms such. He had been a duellist, the manners of the age authorized it—a libertine, the world excused it to his youth and condition—a bold and successful gambler, for that quality he was admired and envied; and a thousand other inaccuracies, to which these practices and habits lead, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... Noel Fox's salutation, as he stooped to pat Shrap, the chartered libertine of the Capella. "Dash it all, it is cold! Makes a fellow wish he were a sheep-dog. Here, Shrap, off you go and get your whiskers trimmed. I can ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... The air, a charter'd libertine, is still, And the mute wonder lurketh in men's ears To steal his sweet and ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... Why is the stomach such a libertine and outlaw in England, and so highly respectable in the United States? No Englishman of good breeding, save he be far gone in liquor, ever mentions his stomach in the presence of women, clergymen, or the Royal Family. To ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... [Greek: eis],—(a sufficient proof to me that they understand [Greek: EN] to represent [Greek: en], not [Greek: hen]): and are followed by Tischendorf, Tregelles, and the Revisers. As for the chartered libertine B (and its servile henchman L), for the first [Greek: en] (but not for the second and third) it substitutes the preposition [Greek: EIS]: while, in ver. 20, it retains the first [Greek: en], but omits ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... Having expended all their powder and bullets, their guns had become useless. They had therefore taken bows and arrows and had become quite skilful in their use. As to religion, they never had any. The libertine life they were now practising ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... was not obliged to be married, but that I was obliged to be true to my conscience. That when I married I expected to lay the foundation of a new home, and that I would never trust my future happiness in the hands of a libertine, or lay its foundations over the reeling brain of a drunkard, and I determined that I would never marry a man for whose vices I must blush, and whose crimes I must condone; that while I might bend to grief I would not bow to shame; ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... resented these pleasantries from an ordinary stranger, but this libertine might be held to have earned his charter, and moreover I had further use for him. We were loitering on the steps between the glass veranda and the terrace at the back of the hotel. The little sunlit stage ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... his good name. In one of his marauding expeditions he became acquainted with Miss Williams, and discovering the interest the republican had in her affections, he determined to get her into his power, for the purpose of holding a check on the whig officer, whom he equally feared and hated. A libertine in principle, and a profligate in practice, he scrupled at no means to attain his object, and a violent attack on the peaceful dwelling of a defenceless woman was as consonant with his views as robbing ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... not knowledge, but a series of attitudes, the attitude of virtue, the attitude of pruriency, the attitude of good taste, the attitude of the theoretic libertine, the attitude of the satyr's vulgarity. All these poses, of course, have supplied not an iota to an understanding of the foundations of the problems of sex, biologically considered. Thus, a masculine master has coined that immortal ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... houses at Hong Kong did not wish the libertine to be disturbed in his depredations. The Chinese merchants were able to see this fact if those officials were not ready to admit it even to themselves. They knew how to throw a stone that would secure their ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... indifferent. Judge of this by a letter written some twenty days after his return—a letter to my mind among the most degrading in the whole collection—a letter which seems to have been inspired by a boastful, libertine bagman. "I am afraid," it goes, "I have almost ruined one source, the principal one, indeed, of my former happiness—the eternal propensity I always had to fall in love. My heart no more glows with feverish rapture; I have no paradisiacal evening interviews." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fumes of strong liquor was almost unbearable; it was blue with smoke, too, and Lester Armstrong always led us to believe that he had never smoked a cigar in his life; and, worst of all, from a gentleman he has suddenly turned into a libertine, if I am any ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... not try to comb out or shove back the matted locks. Wrap him in a sheet. Put him in a box. Two men will carry it down to the wagon at the door. With chalk, write on the top of the box the name of the exhausted libertine. ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... that love, law, and physic combined, triumph over the horrid machinations of this star-and-gartered libertine. ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... wealth, has a far greater chance of securing unlimited sexual indulgence and the life companionship of the fairest maid, than her brother's tutor, who may be possessed of every manly and physical grace and mental gift; and the ancient libertine, possessed of nothing but material good, has, especially among the so-called upper classes of our societies, a far greater chance of securing the sex companionship of any woman he desires as wife, mistress, or prostitute, than the most physically attractive and mentally ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... told. And he is afflicted with a double embarrassment here, as he has never left Sally without her "miss" in speaking to Fenwick, while, on the other hand, he holds a definite licence from her mother—is, as it were, a chartered libertine. But that's a small matter, after all. The real trouble is having to look Sally in the face and ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... royalism during the Terror,—in spite of his ruins, the chevalier, trimming his beard before a shabby old toilet-table, draped with trumpery lace, exhaled an essence of the eighteenth century. All the libertine graces of his youth reappeared; he seemed to have the wealth of three hundred thousand francs of debt, while his vis-a-vis waited before the door. He was grand,—like Berthier on the retreat from Moscow, issuing orders to an army ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... testimony, or form, that certain motives of those who are 'there sitting where we dare not soar', are reprehensible. Let us assume that Homer was a drunkard, that Virgil was a flatterer, that Horace was a coward, that Tasso was a madman, that Lord Bacon was a peculator, that Raphael was a libertine, that Spenser was a poet laureate. It is inconsistent with this division of our subject to cite living poets, but posterity has done ample justice to the great names now referred to. Their errors have been weighed and found to have been dust in ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... muttered, "the guilt is thine! She was pure—she was pure as the fawn unborn. O why did I hark to the cry of scorn, Or the words of the lying libertine? Wakawa, Wakawa, the guilt is thine! The springs will return with the voice of birds, But the voice of my daughter will come no more. She wakened the woods with her musical words, And the sky-lark, ashamed of his ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... concupiscence; and natural concupiscence seemeth as a spar to marriage. But when men have at hand a remedy more agreeable to their corrupt will, marriage is almost expulsed. And therefore there are with you seen infinite men that marry not, but chose rather a libertine and impure single life, than to be yoked in marriage; and many that do marry, marry late, when the prime and strength of their years is past. And when they do marry, what is marriage to them but ...
— The New Atlantis • Francis Bacon
... thoughts. Nevertheless, he arrived at last in the dark, cheerless little private office that looked out upon a yard, and found Camusot seated gravely there; this was not Coralie's infatuated adorer, not the easy-natured, indolent, incredulous libertine whom he had known hitherto as Camusot, but a heavy father of a family, a merchant grown old in shrewd expedients of business and respectable virtues, wearing a magistrate's mask of judicial prudery; this Camusot was the cool, business-like head of the firm surrounded by clerks, green cardboard ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... "Your libertine friends named you well; you would bewitch God the Father.—A few days more must pass, and then you will both ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... Wybrow, who knew that it would be ridiculous to dream of his marrying Caterina, must have been a reckless libertine to win her affections in this manner! Not at all. He was a young man of calm passions, who was rarely led into any conduct of which he could not give a plausible account to himself; and the tiny fragile Caterina was a ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... into the cave and woke the strangers, in order to get them away from the libertine. For he dared not venture a trial of strength with Barabbas. He had some trouble with Joseph, but at last they were beneath the starry sky, Mary and the child on the ass, Joseph leading it. Dismas walked in front in order to show them the way. They went slowly through the darkness; no one spoke ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... instructress had rather rendered him callous than humble. His devotion, which was quite real, kept him from no sin he had a mind to. His talk showed good-humor, gayety, even wit enough; but there was a levity in his acts and words that he had brought from among those libertine devotees with whom he had been bred, and that shocked the simplicity and purity of the English lady, whose guest he was. Esmond spoke his mind to Beatrix pretty freely about the Prince, getting her brother to put in a word ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... village, and was said never to have clasped a woman's hand in his own, and to have no conception of a closer tie than the cold fraternal one of the sect. Old Father Ephraim was the most awful character of all. In his youth he had been a dissolute libertine, but was converted by Mother Ann herself, and had partaken of the wild fanaticism of the early Shakers. Tradition whispered at the firesides of the village that Mother Ann had been compelled to sear his heart of flesh with a red-hot iron before it could ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... letter. In which her cousin (swayed by the representations of her brother) pleads in behalf of Solmes, and the family-views; and sets before her, in strong and just lights, the character of a libertine. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... mother a joint right with the father in the guardianship of the children. But twenty years ago, when our woman's rights movement commenced, by the laws of the State of New York, and all the states, the father had the sole custody and control of the children. No matter if he were a brutal, drunken libertine, he had the legal right, without the mother's consent, to apprentice her sons to rumsellers, or her daughters to brothel keepers. He could even will away an unborn child, to some other person than the mother. And in many of the states the law still prevails, and the mothers are still utterly powerless ...
— An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony • Anonymous
... various passions. There was love—that is, such love as a libertine feels; jealousy; anger at the coarse handling he had experienced; wounded self-love, for with his gold-lace and fine plumes he believed himself a conqueror at first sight; and upon the top of ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... against the Creator, and supply material for sarcasm; under the latter they form an indictment against our own nature, our own will, and teach us a lesson of humility. They lead us to see that, like the children of a libertine, we come into the world with the burden of sin upon us; and that it is only through having continually to atone for this sin that our existence is so miserable, and ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... too agreable, with a thousand amiable qualities; he is the man I love above all others; and, where women are not concerned, a man of the most unblemished honor: but his manner of life is extremely libertine, and his ideas of women unworthy the rest of his character; he knows not the perfections which adorn the valuable part of your sex, he is a stranger to your virtues, and incapable, at least I fear so, of that tender affection which alone can make an amiable woman happy. With all this, he ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... no spot on earth where one is so well known by his neighbors as at Paris, it was not long before people of my acquaintance who had seen me with Desgenais began to accuse me of being a great libertine. In that I admired the discernment of the world: in proportion as I had passed for inexperienced and sensitive at the time of my rupture with my mistress, I was now considered insensible and hardened. ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... put to sea at Cochin, and sailed towards Cambaya. In the ship there was a Portuguese gentleman, much a libertine, and one of those declared atheists who make a boast of their impiety. This was motive enough for the holy man to make acquaintance with him. He kept him company, and was even so complaisant as to entertain him with pleasant conversation. The Portuguese was ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... me very oddly that good and wise men at Cambridge and Boston should think of raising me into an object of criticism. I have always been—from my very incapacity of methodical writing—a 'chartered libertine,' free to worship and free to rail,—lucky when I could make myself understood, but never esteemed near enough to the institutions and mind of society to deserve the notice of the masters of literature and religion. I have appreciated fully the advantages of my position, for I well know ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... did not dare move, for fear that he might unwittingly injure a being so frail and delicate. All his life Kenneth had lived a clean life. He had not led the riotous, licentious kind of existence which some men of his means and opportunities think necessary to their comfort. He had never been a libertine. He had respected women; indeed, had rather ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... stonemason; chiefly in the gravestone, tomb, and monument way, and wholly of their colour from head to foot. No man is better known in Cloisterham. He is the chartered libertine of the place. Fame trumpets him a wonderful workman—which, for aught that anybody knows, he may be (as he never works); and a wonderful sot—which everybody knows he is. With the Cathedral crypt he is better acquainted than any living authority; it may even be than ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... are enigmas to him, or, if he affects to understand them at all, he thinks they arise from bad management or bad government, and can and ought to be remedied by repression or sumptuary legislation. He will be a tyrant or slave, a glutton or miser, a fanatic or libertine, a sneak-thief or highway robber, as circumstances may influence him. Think you that the common "fall back" on principle of self-interest—well or ill understood—will ever restrain such a one from doing any act of impulse or indulgence, provided ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... Baron's chambers. With the exception of two minutes, he was on the stage until the curtain fell. The Baron's effort, so precisely detailed, to reach and raise the dumb-bells from the floor; the inveterate libertine's interview with shrewd Rosa, the danseuse, who took the tips he expected would impoverish her and thus put her in his power, for the purpose of playing them the other way: the biting deliberation of his interview with his good Baroness and Henri, who comes to ruin himself to save ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... features of Fourier's private character were morality and the love of truth. He had a character both grave and dignified, religious and poetic, friendly and polite, indulgent and sincere, which never allowed truth to be profaned by libertine frivolity, nor faith to be confounded with austere duplicity. He was a man of dignified simplicity, a child of Heaven, loving God with all his heart, all his soul, and all his mind, also loving as himself his neighbor—the ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... God," he said, "that however gross and innumerable my errors and backslidings, I am no libertine." (Here Endicott's eyes flashed, but he contented himself with stroking, in a musing manner, the long tuft of hair on his chin.) "The evil we are called upon by the united voice of the suffering saints in this wilderness to suppress," continued Dudley, ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... I would not have come to you if I had not had evidence. You take exception to Lans and his ways of life, I have been informed that you have even called him a—a—libertine!" ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... bluff March—a cross between A Jester and a Libertine. He loves to make the parson race With wicked words his hat to chase; To dye with compromising rose The pious man's abstemious nose. The ladies hate him, though he shows A pretty taste for silken hose. The smoker views him with distrust, Shielding ...
— The Smoker's Year Book • Oliver Herford
... heavily to his feet. There was his mission. For the sake of that, for the sake of comrades depending on him, he would go and once more offer succor to this libertine princelet. ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... the reputation of Bully West, notorious as a brawler and a libertine. Who in all the North did not know of it? Her heart fluttered a signal ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... by so eminent an authority as John Bright. Is it indeed a fact? Wherever woman owns property which she would relieve from unjust taxation; wherever she has a son whom she would preserve from the temptations of intemperance, or a daughter from the enticements of a libertine, or a husband from the conscriptions of war, she has a separate interest which ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... law of causation, is about as valuable as the assertion that it is neither grey, nor blue, nor square. For practical purposes, it must be admitted that the inward possession of such a noumenal libertine does not amount to much for people whose actual existence is made up of nothing but definitely regulated phenomena. When the good and evil angels fought for the dead body of Moses, its presence must have been of about the same value to either of the contending parties, as that of Kant's ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... solitude, and intrude even upon his hours of society: and when by an alteration of habits, the mind is cleared of these frightful ideas, it requires but the slightest renewal of the association to bring back the full tide of misery upon the repentant libertine. ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... him to any cause of policy, The Gordian knot of it he will unloose, Familiar as his garter: that when he speaks, The air, a chartered libertine, is still. ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... terrible drinker, if we may give any credit to Father Garasse. What follows is taken out of his Doctrine Curieuse, p. 748. "I shall," says he, "recount to our new atheists, the miserable end of a man of their belief and humour, as to eating and drinking. The libertine having passed his debauched youth in Paris and Bourdeaux, more diligent in finding out tavern bushes than the laurel of Parnassus; and being towards the latter end of his life, recalled into Scotland, to instruct the young prince, James VI. continuing ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... in this folly," she cried, "to fret for that shallow idler, whose love is lighter than thistledown, whose element is the ruelle of one of those libertine French duchesses he is ever talking about. To rebel against the noblest gentleman in England! Oh, sister, you must know him better than I do; and yet I, who am nothing to him, am wretched when I see him ill-used. Indeed, ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... seemed, as was natural, very much pleased with this account of his old acquaintances, and went away greatly gratified with that and Mr. Forsyth's sententious paragraph of applause in his own (Pindemonte's) favour. After having been a little libertine in his youth, he is grown devout, and takes prayers, and talks to himself, to keep off the devil; but for all that, he is a very ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... of thoughtlessness and extravagance; but he had never been either a libertine or a profligate, although the world forbore not, when it found him humbled in his poverty, to bring such charges against him. In truth, he was full of kindness, and no parent ever loved his children with deeper or more devoted affection. The death ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... to expect, he introduced him into a room where a number of wretched creatures were expiating, under a terrible treatment, the vices which had brought them into this plight. This hideous and revolting spectacle sickened the young man. "Miserable libertine," said his father vehemently, "begone; follow your vile tastes; you will soon be only too glad to be admitted to this ward, and a victim to the most shameful sufferings, you will compel your father to thank God when you ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... heedless as a libertine, Even grown a master in the school of vice, One that doth nothing but invent deceit: For all the day he humours up and down, How he the next day might deceive his friend. He thinks of nothing but the present time: For one groat ready down, he'll pay a shilling, ...
— The London Prodigal • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... passion lookes, At this first sight, here let him lay them by, And seeke elsewhere in turning other bookes, Which better may his labour satisfie. No far-fetch'd sigh shall euer wound my brest, Loue from mine eye, a teare shall neuer wring, Nor in ah-mees my whyning Sonets drest, (A Libertine) fantasticklie I sing; My verse is the true image of my mind, Euer in motion, still desiring change, To choyce of all varietie inclin'd, And in all humors sportiuely I range; My actiue Muse is of the worlds right straine, That cannot long ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... as the prisoner of yesterday," Nekhludoff thought while watching the proceedings. "They are dangerous, but are we not dangerous? I am a libertine, an impostor; and all of us, all those that know me as I am, not only do not ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... a large purse full of coin of the realm, in the shape of broken crockery, which was generally used in financial transactions on the stage, because when the virtuous maiden rejected with scorn the advances of the lordly libertine, and threw his pernicious bribe upon the ground, the clatter of the broken crockery suggested fabulous wealth. But after the play Miss Cushman, in the course of some kindly advice, said to me: "Instead of giving me that purse don't you think it would have been much more natural if you had taken ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... wait for Cecile's questions. He informed her that this affair had reference to a woman of improper character. The young girl drew back slightly in her chair, as if to escape from contact with such a libertine. ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... up by faith. Have you ever ratified the vows she made in your behalf? When she bade you a long farewell, she commended you to the protection of Him who had promised to be a father to the fatherless." The great Augustine, in his early years, was an infidel in his principles, and a libertine in his conduct, which his pious mother deplored with bitter weeping. But she was told by her friends that 'the child of so many prayers, and tears could not be lost;' and it was verified to her happy experience, ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... is why: Women who want to love—and Dinah wanted to love as much as to be loved—have an instinctive aversion for men who are devoted to an absorbing occupation; in spite of superiority, they are all women in the matter of encroachment. Lousteau, a poet and journalist, and a libertine with a veneer of misanthropy, had that tinsel of the intellect, and led the half-idle life that attracts women. The blunt good sense and keen insight of the really great man weighed upon Dinah, who would not confess her own smallness even to herself. She said in her mind—"The doctor ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... consistently inconsistent was Henry the Third. In most instances he was "constant to one thing—his inconstancy." Like his father, he possessed two virtues: but they were not the same. Henry was not a lover of cruelty for its own sake—which John was: and he was not personally a libertine. Of his father's virtues, bravery and honesty, there was not a trace in him. He covered his sins with an embroidered cloak of exquisite piety. The bad qualities of both parents were inherited by him. To his mother's covetous acquisitiveness ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt |
