"Pestilent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... test; and then, I think, they find a great abundance of men who fancy they know something, although they know little or nothing. Hence those who are put to the test by them are angry with me, and not with them, and say that "there is one Socrates, a most pestilent fellow, who corrupts the youth." And when any one asks them by doing or teaching what, they have nothing to say, for they do not know; but, that they may not seem to be at a loss, they say such things as are ready ...
— Apology, Crito, and Phaedo of Socrates • Plato
... later days. In those times, there was no question but how to get rid of it, root and branch, the sooner the better. A gleam of zeal, nay we will call it, however basely alloyed, a glow of real enthusiasm and love of truth, may have animated the minds of these men, as they looked abroad on the pestilent jungle of Superstition, and hoped to clear the earth of it forever. This little glow, so alloyed, so contaminated with pride and other poor or bad admixtures, was the last which thinking men were to experience in Europe for a time. So it is always in regard ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... entering Unter den Linden from the Friedrichstrasse. There was not a sound but the high whirr of airplanes keeping guard over a city that seemed stifled in the embrace of death, its life current switched off by the proudest achievement of its pestilent laboratories. ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... against another in furious strife for the possession of some shelter for which pigs would scarcely have quarrelled. "Oh, Lord God Almighty," he ends, "turn and convert the heart of the king from this pestilent habit, that he may know himself to be but man, and that he may show a royal mercy and human compassion to those who are driven after him not by ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... and all to consult the common safety. And God be praised for his infinite goodness, in raising such a spirit of union among us at least in this point, in the midst of all our former divisions; which union, if it continues, will in all probability defeat the pernicious design of this pestilent enemy to ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... life of mind Mr. Eagles's letter is. Such letters always bring me to think of Harriet Martineau's pestilent plan of doing to destruction half of the intellectual life of the world, by suppressing every mental breath breathed through the post office. She was not in a state of clairvoyance when she said such a thing. I have not heard from her, but you observed ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... class, which are also your own, there is even a show of public virtue. He who is a captious, impracticable, dissatisfied member of his little club or coterie is immediately set down as a bad member of the community in general, as no friend to regularity and order, as 'a pestilent fellow,' and one who is incapable of sympathy, attachment, or cordial co-operation in any department or undertaking. Thus the most refractory novice in such matters becomes weaned from his obligations to the ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... However, the rulers of the Church grew more and more alarmed at the circulation of the book. At length Archbishop Arundel, a zealous but not very learned prelate, complained to the Pope of "that pestilent wretch, John Wycliffe, the son of the old Serpent, the forerunner of Antichrist, who had completed his iniquity by inventing a new translation of the Scriptures"; and, shortly after, the Convocation of Canterbury forbade such translations, under penalty ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... "one important part of thy engagement is forgotten—thou art farther to promise, that while thus left at liberty, thou wilt not preach or teach, directly or indirectly, any of those pestilent heresies by which so many souls have been in this our day won over from the kingdom of light to the ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... the gradual emasculation of the monsters of Greek myth under the pestilent influence of the Apollo Belvedere. The chimaera was a creature of whom any healthy-minded people would have been proud; but when we see it in Greek pictures we feel inclined to tie a ribbon round its neck and give it a saucer of milk. Who ever feels that ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... these attempts at intimidation, perched beside the percher, and again put something into his maw. This time she did not feed the nestling. As she took her departure, she told the come-outer—or so I fancied—that there was a man under the tree, a pestilent fellow, and it would be well to get a little out of his reach. At all events, she had scarcely disappeared before the youngster was again on the wing. It was wonderful how much at home he seemed,—poising, backing, soaring, and alighting with all the ease and grace of an old ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... they were too indiscriminate. They were in reality founded on a false principle. They took for granted that there was something radically corrupt and wicked in the body and in the physical system. According to this mode of viewing things, the body was a loathsome and pestilent prison, in which the soul was locked up and enslaved, and the eyes, the ears, the taste, the smell, were all so many corrupt traitors in conspiracy to poison her. Physical beauty of every sort was a snare, a Circean enchantment, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... adequate to describe, were I to speak for ever. This morning I found this woman," (here he pointed to his wife,) "who was born for the ruin of my peace and the destruction of my life, in the arms of a young gallant, who is now shut up in the bed-chamber of this pestilent duena." ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... pronounced the dread sentence against the rats of Autun, Macon, and Lyons. These examples are sufficient precedents. It will be well for the council, however, not to publish the bull either just before or just after a rain; for nothing can kill this pestilent heresy when the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... admitted, by Augustine when he exhorts his Christian brethren not to celebrate that solemn day like the heathen on account of the sun, but on account of him who made the sun. In like manner Leo the Great rebuked the pestilent belief that Christmas was solemnised because of the birth of the new sun, as it was called, and not because ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... tell you, sare, vat I was doing," interrupted Le Breton recklessly. "I vas on my vay to ze soute aux poudres to blow you and all ze people to ze devil to keep company wiz your inqueezatif first leftenant. And I would have done eet, too, but for zat pestilent midshipman, who have ze gripe of ze devil himself. Peste! you Eengleesh, you are like ze bouledogue, ven you take hold you not ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... not gather with Christ, but scatter abroad, because it is possible that the sacrament of baptism can be common to us if we are the wheat of the Lord with the covetous within the Church and with robbers and drunkards and other pestilent persons, of whom it is said, "They shall not inherit the kingdom of God," and yet the vices by which they are separated from the kingdom of God ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... reorganising the system which a blind rebellion against them had thrown into deplorable and fatal confusion? Let the century which had come to such an end be regarded as a mysteriously intercalated episode, and no more, in the long drama of faith and sovereign order. Let it pass as a sombre and pestilent stream, whose fountains no man should discover, whose waters had for a season mingled with the mightier current of the divinely allotted destiny of the race, and had then gathered themselves apart ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... say to him that some of his people required to be reminded of the great fundamental doctrine of the worthlessness of all human efforts and motives. Some of them were altogether too much pleased with the success of the Temperance Society and the Association for the Relief of the Poor. There was a pestilent heresy about, concerning the satisfaction to be derived from a good conscience,—as if anybody ever did anything which was not to be hated, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... steadfast truth the sand Of men and time and circumstance dost sway! The slave-cloud dwindles on this golden day, And over all the pestilent southern land, Breathless, the dark expectant millions stand, To watch the northern sun rise on its way, Cleaving the stormy distance—every ray Sword-bright, sword-sharp, ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... imputed based things into the blessed grace of the gospel. But not to look so far back. Paul was one of the pipes through which God conveyed this grace to the world; and what was he counted for his so doing, but 'a pestilent fellow, and a mover of sedition—throughout the world' (Acts 24:5,6). But, behold, no imputation can stick on the grace of God—not stick long; for that, like honey, will purge itself of what filth is put ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... bananas. Live chickens were kept under the bed in one of these rooms. The fruit which is ripened in these places is sold daily in every section of the city, and people who live with healthful surroundings, far away from this pestilent hole, are risking the health of themselves and their children, unwittingly, by purchasing fruit that cannot help but have absorbed something of the poison from the atmosphere of these filthy, crowded quarters. ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... much of that writer Ouid, and that writer Metamorphosis,[xi:1] and talke too much of Proserpina and Juppiter. Why, heres our fellow Shakespeare puts them all downe, I,[xi:2] and Ben Jonson too. O that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow! he brought vp Horace giuing the Poets a pill,[xi:3] but our fellow Shakespeare hath giuen him a purge that made him ...
— Kemps Nine Daies Wonder - Performed in a Daunce from London to Norwich • William Kemp
... he cried cheerfully. "'Art a late bird, as usual, and I am at that pestilent task ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... betwixt ancient trash and new, 'Twixt Cant and Blasphemy—the two Rank ills with which this age is curst— We can no more tell which is worst, Than erst could Egypt, when so rich In various plagues, determine which She thought most pestilent and vile, Her frogs, like Benbow and Carlisle, Croaking their native mud-notes loud, Or her fat locusts, like a cloud Of pluralists, obesely lowering, At once ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... insupportable. But then, again, the thought would come back that every hour that passed without an alarm was another step towards a safe haven; and who could say that in a week or so things might not be, at least, no worse than they were before this pestilent little galvanic battery broke ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... care not a fig for the Renaissance or its morals. I count its people but a pestilent herd of daubers, rhymers, cutthroats, and courtesans. Their hubris has lost its glamour of beauty and has coarsened into vulgar insolence. They offend me by their riotous swagger, their insistence on the animal joy of living; chiefly by their perpetual ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... all the arts of French rhetoric, but effects nothing. 'To let the Austrians come in for the finishing stroke,—-Excellence, it will be to let them gain, in History, a glory which is of your earning. Daun and Austria, not Soltikof and Russia, will be said to have extinguished this pestilent King; whom History will have to remember!' [Choiseul's Letter (not DUC de Choiseul, but COMTE, now Minister at Vienna) to Montalembert, "Vienna, 16th August;" and Montalembert's Answer, "Lieberhausen [means LIEBEROSE], 31st August, 1759:" in Montalembert, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... though he was now unwieldy and had done no service in the late campaigns by reason of his age, he still longed for the command in a distant war beyond the seas. While Sulla was with the army completing some matters that still remained to be finished, Marius kept at home and hatched that most pestilent faction which did more mischief to Rome than all her wars; and indeed the deity[189] showed by signs what was coming. Fire spontaneously blazed from the wooden shafts which supported the military standards, and was quenched with difficulty; and three crows ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... banished brothers remain at Careggi. "Two thousand crowns of gold to him who will bring to the Signory at Florence the head of either of the outlawed Medici; five thousand crowns to him who will deliver to the Signory the bodies of these pestilent rebels alive." Thus read the cruel ban of their native city and, first, Pietro, and next, Giovanni, turned from the familiar scenes of their loved country-house and fled in great secrecy toward Bologna. But the ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... the Persian army at Marathon redoubled the wrath of King Darius against the Athenians. He resolved in his autocratic mind to sweep that pestilent city and all whom it contained from the face of the earth. And he perhaps would have done so had he not met a more terrible foe even than Miltiades and his army,—the all-conqueror Death, to whose might the greatest ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... priesthood of Zeus the Liberator, to whom I myself founded a temple, while I bestow liberty upon you." He, as I say, made these offers to the Samians; but one of them rose up and said: "Nay, but unworthy too art thou 126 to be our ruler, seeing that thou art of mean birth and a pestilent fellow besides. Rather take care that thou give an account of the money which ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... all the causes of misery and vice in this island removed. War and contention cease. Unwholesome trades and manufactories do not exist. Crowds no longer collect together in great and pestilent cities for purposes of court intrigue, of commerce, and vicious gratifications. Simple, healthy, and rational amusements take place of drinking, gaming, and debauchery. There are no towns sufficiently large to have any prejudicial ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... Knox was the life and soul. There is no mistaking his hand in the letter to Mary of Guise, or in the epistle to the Catholic clergy. That letter is courteously addressed "To the Generation of Anti-Christ, the Pestilent Prelates and their Shavelings within Scotland, the Congregation of ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... room there is none for the wicked; and nought For the souls that with teeming corruption are fraught. The world would be small, were its oceans all land, To harbour and feed such a pestilent band. ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... But why should she be sacrificed? Were there no nurses in the country to be hired, but that she must go and remain there for a month at the bedside of a pestilent fever? There is no ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... cursed and pestilent war prevailed between France and England, and which has not yet finished, (*) it happened, as was often the case, that a French soldier was taken prisoner by an Englishman, and, a ransom having been fixed, he was sent under a safe-conduct, signed by Lord Talbot, to his captain, ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... hate revealed, Tattered khaki and shattered grey And the splintered wrecks of a battlefield. Thank God for the end that is sure and swift, For the fate that comes with a leap and bound, But what if God leaves you alone to drift To the lingering death in the pestilent ground? ...
— The Story of the "9th King's" in France • Enos Herbert Glynne Roberts
... are doublets and cloths and a thousand sharp razors to shave off the Kazi's beard, except he fear my resentment and adjudge the bag to be my bag.' Now when the Kazi heard what I and the Kurd avouched, he was confounded and said, 'I see ye twain be none other than two pestilent fellows, atheistical-villains who make sport of Kazis and magistrates and stand not in fear of reproach. Never did tongue tell nor ear hear aught more extraordinary than that which ye pretend. By Allah, from China to Shajarat Umm Ghaylan, nor from Fars to ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... him away. My Lord, if you take not some Course with this pestilent Fellow, to stop his Mouth, we shall not be able to ...
— The Tryal of William Penn and William Mead • various
... the world abounds with pestilent books particularly against this doctrine of the Trinity; it is fit to inform you, that the authors of them proceed wholly upon a mistake: They would shew how impossible it is that three can be one, and one can be three; whereas the Scripture saith no such ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... which, even at its best, would be so deplorably imperfect, were rationally carried out, still it would not be so absolutely pestilent and debasing as it is. Physical education, rightly practiced, is a fine and indispensable process in right living. If the system had for its end the rearing of really robust and healthy creatures, it would mean something. On the contrary, however, anybody who ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... good thing to be a favourite. I well-nigh lost mine office, because one frosty morning Master Varney thought I smelled of aqua vitae; and this fellow can appear before him drunk as a wineskin, and yet meet no rebuke. But then he is a pestilent clever fellow withal, and no one can understand above one ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... governing a country so turbulent, and so much infested by the intrigues and animosities of the great Macbeth, a powerful nobleman, and nearly allied to the crown, not content with curbing the king's authority, carried still farther his pestilent ambition; he put his sovereign to death; chased Malcolm Kenmore, his son and heir, into England; and usurped the crown. Siward, whose daughter was married to Duncan, embraced, by Edward's orders, the protection of this distressed family: he marched an army into Scotland; and having defeated ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... man, bating he is a pestilent Roundhead and Puritan," said Whitaker, "is no bad neighbour. What has he done to ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... revolution of fortune that confounded everybody. The detested guardians of the city jail were themselves to tenant it; or, by a worse fate still, were to be consigned unpitied, and their case unjudged, to the dark and pestilent dungeons which lay below the Landgrave's castle. A few scattered cries of triumph were heard from the crowd; but they were drowned in a tumult of conflicting feelings. As human creatures, fallen ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... in Somerset and Devon, in York, Northumberland, and Cumberland, the attack upon witches on the part of the people was going on with undiminished vigor. If no great discoveries were made, if no nests of the pestilent creatures were unearthed, the justices of the peace were kept quite as busy ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... thing, a century and a half later, which was the charge launched, and justly launched, against Napoleon, that under his dominion France was not content even with her extended limits, but Germany, and Italy, and Spain, apparently without any limit to this pestilent and pernicious process, were to be brought under the dominion or influence of France, and national equality was to be trampled under foot, and national rights denied. For that reason, England in the struggle ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame the earth seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy the air, look you—this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... world-wide forces, the hunger-struggle of nations, were shaking the roof above their heads. Theoretically they knew it. But they could escape in time; they had a cosy little corner preserved for themselves, safe from these pestilent worries. Fate has a grudge against the foolishly secure. If he laughed now, it ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... when referring to the teaching of the members of the pre-Reformation church. No doubt it might be deemed sufficient proof of this to subjoin the examples furnished in chapter xviii. on the "Notis" or marks by which "the trewe Kirk is decernit fra the false," where the old church is designated the "pestilent synagoge," "the filthie synagogue," and "the horrible harlot, the kirk malignant"[142]—the last words no doubt meant as a translation of the Vulgate rendering of Psalm xxvi. 5, ecclesiam malignantium,[143] translated "the congregation of evil doers" in our authorised English version. But I may ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... flavour as of musk or benzoin, for either of which it can be substituted. Gerard says: "If you do but take a piece of the root, and hold it in your mouth, or chew the same between your teeth, it doth most certainly drive away pestilent aire." Icelanders eat both the stem and the roots raw with butter. These parts of the plant, if wounded, yield a yellow juice which becomes, when dried, a valuable medicine beneficial in chronic rheumatism and gout. Some have said ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... so well how to burn, torture and imprison; you who drink, with hyena-like delight, in the cup of your deceit, the blood of the liberators; we pardon you, and, together with you, that butcher soldiery, the pestilent ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... abounding a smoke in the chimney, you would think there must be a brave supper cooking in the great bowels below. Sea fowls are pecking at the small crabs, shell-fish, and other sea candies and maccaroni, which the Right Whale sometimes carries on his pestilent back. And all the while the thick-lipped leviathan is rushing through the deep, leaving tons of tumultuous white curds in his wake, and causing the slight boat to rock in the swells like a skiff caught nigh the paddle-wheels of an ocean steamer. ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... but a pestilent archer that seeketh but base hire. I only am my lord's man, sworn to aid him in his vow." "I also," quoth Walkyn, "an so ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... to think that many of our rural clergymen, intent on shielding their congregations from pestilent doctrine and latitudinarism, are actuated by much the same spirit as the Sultan Omar when he set fire to the great Library at Alexandria. The Bible is no doubt the best of books, and it may be that the Confession ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... sun had doubtless inflamed his blood so that he became stupefied and unconscious. I went, therefore, for a barber that he should come and bleed my brother, and restore his senses to him. Now as ill-luck would have it the first barber I lighted upon was this pestilent fellow. When I found him he was engaged in shaving a customer, and because that customer was a good one he would not leave him to attend to my brother, but first finished his shaving and then came with me. Having first delayed so long, ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... causes have through all ages tainted the atmosphere of Sardinia, may be gathered from the remarks and sarcasms of a host of early authors. Martial, in mentioning the hour of death, celebrates salubrious Tibur at the expense of this pestilent isle: ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... baskets, which they filled with fish and carried back to the camp. On returning, we again launched the canoes and started off again—to meet with some disappointment, for although the gatala still bit freely and several eels were also taken, some scores of the small, pestilent, lagoon sharks were swimming about and played havoc with our lines. These torments are from two to four feet in length, and their mouths, which are quite out of proportion to their insignificant size, are set with rows of teeth of razor-like keenness. The moment a baited hook was seen ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... crew is this Which just have fled! Foul suckers that drop off When they no more can on their victims gorge! This Tigellinus.... Within his sunshine basked and buzzed and stung; And, now the shadow comes, off, like a fly— A pestilent and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... plays cards too well. The campaigners are shrewd fellows, and they know this, so they start the 'Plan of Campaign' on the Portumna properties, and get a lot of English windbags to come there and hobnob with some of the most mischievous and pestilent parish priests in all Ireland—and then you have the dreadful story of the 'evictions,' and all the rest of it. Lord Clanricarde, or his agent, or both of them, getting out of temper, will sit down and ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... Acts 5:37, and Josephus four several times, once here, sect. 6; and B. XX. ch. 5. sect. 2; Of the War, B. II. ch. 8. sect. 1; and ch. 17. sect. 8, calls this Judas, who was the pestilent author of that seditious doctrine and temper which brought the Jewish nation to utter destruction, a Galilean; but here [sect. 1] Josephus calls him a Gaulonite, of the city of Gamala; it is a great question where this Judas was born, whether in Galilee on the west side, ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... into action, and his activity is at once blind and tremendous. Since the world is not the abode of unmixed integrity, he looks upon it as a den of thieves; since its institutions may obstruct the advancement of worth, and screen delinquency from punishment, he regards the social union as a pestilent nuisance, the mischiefs of which it is fitting that he in his degree should do his best to repair, by means however violent. Revenge is the mainspring of his conduct; but he ennobles it in his own eyes, by giving it the colour of a disinterested ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... art not," said Don Quixote; "for not only art thou not sage silence, but thou art pestilent prate and perversity; still I would like to know what three proverbs have just now come into thy memory, for I have been turning over mine own—and it is a good one—and none occurs ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... a numerous offspring he rear'd. Then the master grew sensible what he had done, And fain he would have his new guest to be gone; But now 'twas too late to bid him turn out, A well rooted possession already was got. The old trees decay'd, and in their room grew A stubborn, pestilent, poisonous crew. The master, who first the young brood had admitted, They stung like ingrates, and left him unpitied. No help from manuring or planting was found, The ill weeds had eat out the heart ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... Pym and his snarls To the Devil that pricks on such pestilent carles! Hold by the right, you double your might; So, onward to Nottingham, fresh for the fight, Marching along, fifty-score strong, Great-hearted ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... unhealthiness &c adj.; nonnaturals^; plague spot; malaria &c (poison) 663; death in the pot, contagion; toxicity. Adj. insalubrious; unhealthy, unwholesome; noxious, noisome; morbific^, morbiferous^; mephitic, septic, azotic^, deleterious; pestilent, pestiferous, pestilential; virulent, venomous, envenomed; poisonous, toxic, toxiferous^, teratogenic; narcotic. contagious, infectious, catching, taking, epidemic, zymotic^; epizootic. innutritious^, indigestible, ungenial; uncongenial ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... ordinary judgment, when one was heard to speak foolishly, to say he had been sick of the calentura, which is the Spanish name of their burning ague; for, as I told you before, it is a very burning and pestilent ague. The original cause thereof is imputed to the evening or first night air, which they term la serena; wherein they say and hold very firm opinion that whoso is then abroad in the open air shall certainly be infected to the death, not being of the ...
— Drake's Great Armada • Walter Biggs
... wyse is ther sent ouer to be prynted the booke that Frythe made last against the blessed sacrament answering to my letter, wherewyth I confuted the pestilent treatice that he hadde made agaynst it before. And the brethen looked for it nowe at thys Bartlemewe tide last passed, and yet looke euery day, except it be come all redy, and secretly runne among them. But in the meane whyle, ther is come ouer a nother booke againste the blessed ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.03.23 • Various
... was an outlaw proud, A prouder ye never saw; Through Nottingham and Leicester shires He thought his word was law, And he strutted through the greenwood wide, Like a pestilent jackdaw. ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... of all nations they, by theory, most exclusively sanctioned the pretensions of old ones. Not before forty-three could a man stand for the consulship; and we have just noticed a case where a man of pestilent activity in our own times had already become dyspeptically incapable of command at forty-two. Besides, after laying down his civil office (which, by itself, was often in the van of martial perils), the consul had to pass into ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... cruelly executed as a traitor. The fate of this noble-hearted patriot is a fatal blot upon his conqueror's memory, but it should not be forgotten that Edward was profoundly convinced of the legality of his own claims over Scotland, and that Wallace to him was merely a pestilent rebel, who had earned his doom by treason to his lord and by the cruelties he had inflicted upon Englishmen. The same year the king prepared a new constitution for the conquered kingdom, divided ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... came to be looked upon by the landlords of Wiltshire as a visionary and dangerous man. His own landlord, the Duke of Somerset, was of this way of thinking, and after some remonstrances at second-hand which proved unavailing, his Grace resolved that this "pestilent Scotchman" must be got rid of. A bill in Chancery was filed against him on some pretext or other, with the view of putting an end to his tenancy. Years of irritating and ruinous litigation followed, the ultimate ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... I have no great acquaintance with this man, nor do I desire to have further knowledge of him; however, this I know, that he is a very pestilent fellow, from some discourse that, the other day, I had with him in this town; for then, talking with him, I heard him say, that our religion was naught, and such by which a man could by no means please God. Which sayings of his, my Lord, your Lordship very well knows, what necessarily thence ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan
... an alternative, sir captain; but it depends upon your charity. It is that you put us ashore on one of the islands of this pestilent archipelago, and leave us to ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... problem in an ancient author why dedications and other bundles of flattery run all upon stale musty topics, without the smallest tincture of anything new, not only to the torment and nauseating of the Christian reader, but, if not suddenly prevented, to the universal spreading of that pestilent disease the lethargy in this island, whereas there is very little satire which has not something in it untouched before. The defects of the former are usually imputed to the want of invention among those who are dealers in that kind; but I think with a great deal ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... and swifts, untirable on their wings, but too gentle to hold their own in a jostling crowd, soared away after the midges and May-flies and pestilent gnats that rise from marsh and pond to hold their joyous dances under the blue dome. Continually rushing open-mouthed after these, they have stretched their gape from ear to ear; but their bills have dwindled by disuse and left only ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... dealing of witches and witchmongers is notably detected; the knavery of conjurers, the impiety of inchanters, the folly of soothsayers, the impudent falsehood of cozeners, the infidelity of atheists, the pestilent practices of pythonists, the curiosities of figure-casters, the vanity of dreamers, the beggarly art of alcumstrie, the abomination of idolatrie, the horrible art of poisoning, the virtue and power of natural magic, and all the conveniencies of legerdemaine and juggling, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... begging for the right to govern can be more easily imagined than endured. In short, I cannot help thinking that when, unable longer to bear with patience the evils entailed by the vices and follies of its inhabitants, I sailed away from the accursed island of Tamtonia, I left behind me the most pestilent race of rascals and ignoramuses to be found anywhere in the universe; and I never can sufficiently thank the divine Power who spared me the disadvantage and shame of being one of them, and cast my lot in this favored land of goodness and right reason, the blessed abode of public ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... hissing, and filled the room with such nauseous effluvia as rendered it hardly supportable. Thus the squnck, or stonck, of Ray's Synop. Ouadr. is an innocuous and sweet animal; but, when pressed hard by dogs and men, it can eject such a pestilent and fetid smell and excrement, that nodding can ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... Hop-o'-my-thumbs! Look at me! See how I have increased in weight the last five years—all solid bone and muscle. I defy any four draymen to move me an inch if I am not in the mind to it; and to be blown off to the antipodes as if I were the down of a pestilent thistle, I am not in the mind for that, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "This man is a pestilent fellow," said the community. "He troubles us overmuch with this vision that he has knowledge of. Come, let us ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce
... with a silk pocket handkerchief, instead of blowing it up with a match and train, is rarely successful; and, after three or four other and much guiltier victims than Lenny had been incarcerated in the stocks, the parish of Hazeldean was ripe for any enormity. Pestilent jacobinical tracts, conceived and composed in the sinks of manufacturing towns—found their way into the popular beer-house—heaven knows how, though the Tinker was suspected of being the disseminator by all but Stirn, who still, in a whisper, accused the Papishers. And, finally, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... Paul did. For to him there was no consciousness of undermining, but the change was instantaneous. He left Jerusalem a bitter persecutor, exceeding mad against the followers of the Nazarene, thinking that Jesus was a blasphemer and an impostor, and His disciples pestilent vermin, to be harried off the face of the earth. He entered Damascus a lowly disciple of that Christ. His conversion was not an underground process that had been silently sapping the foundations of his life; it was an explosion. And what caused it? ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... undersigned memorialists cannot withhold them from the Hon. General Assembly of Rhode Island. They invoke the General Assembly to exercise their constitutional powers, promptly and decisively, for the correction of a long-continued, and wide-spread, and pestilent social evil. They ask them, most respectfully and earnestly, to withdraw, as soon as may be, all legislative sanction of the lottery system, and to save Rhode Island from the enduring reproach of being among the last States ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... is little that goads us with fiercer despair (Those who buy, you perpend, stock, debenture or share, Such as speculate mainly; investors are rare—) Than this growl ill-conditioned of pestilent Bear! ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 12, 1892 • Various
... every day taking place; filling the homes of the land with discontent, bickerings, disorder, and continual strife, from the jostling together of antipathetic elements; cursing society with the influences derived from character formed and nurtured in such pestilent domestic atmospheres; and sending out thousands of unhealthy, misorganized, wrongly educated beings, the fruit of these disunions, to work ill both to themselves and their race. The world has much yet to learn with ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... insalubrity; unhealthiness &c. Adj.; nonnaturals[obs3]; plague spot; malaria &c. (poison) 663; death in the pot, contagion; toxicity. Adj. insalubrious; unhealthy, unwholesome; noxious, noisome; morbific[obs3], morbiferous[obs3]; mephitic, septic, azotic[obs3], deleterious; pestilent, pestiferous, pestilential; virulent, venomous, envenomed; poisonous, toxic, toxiferous[obs3], teratogenic; narcotic. contagious, infectious, catching, taking, epidemic, zymotic[obs3]; epizootic. innutritious[obs3], indigestible, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... pestilent toe!" groaned the sufferer. "Sir William won't hear of my moving yet. I do think he is the most completely obstinate and pig-headed man that I have ever met. I tell him that he has mistaken his profession, and that I could find him a post at Constantinople. ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... order that there should be no mistake about the matter, kindly printed a complete bill of the play, to be seen still in Van Meteran, for the comfort of all true Catholics, and confusion of all pestilent heretics; which document, of course, the seminary priests used to enforce the duty of helping the invaders, and the certainty of their success; and from their hands it soon passed into those of the devout ladies, who were ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... into the heart; For nature is far more unkind Than the thousands that struggle apart. Dark, wild, inescapable dust, In fiercest, untamable clouds, That men into misery helplessly thrust, And bury in agony-shrouds; A simoom of sorrow whose pestilent breath To the strong and the weak, to the young and the old, Brings despair that is reckless of possible gain, And the awfullest anguish of death; Till the soul in its rage uncontrolled, Droops low in the horrible sickness and sorrow ...
— Oklahoma and Other Poems • Freeman E. Miller
... e mundo,' as Tully quoth. Nay, wonder not at my fervour, good youth; where the general weal stands in jeopardy, a little warmth is civic, humane, and honourable. Now there is settled of late in this town a pestilent Arabist, a mere empiric, who, despising anatomy, and scarce knowing Greek from Hebrew, hath yet spirited away half my patients; and I tremble for the rest. Put forth thine ankle; and thou, Hans, breathe ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... years has supported the corruptions here against France; and even the King of Naples would drop flat as a pricked bubble if Austria had not maintained that iniquity also. We who have lived in Italy all these years, know the full pestilent meaning of Austria everywhere. What is suffered in Lombardy exceeds what is suffered elsewhere. Now, God be thanked, here is light and hope of deliverance. Still you doubt whether the French are free enough themselves to give freedom! Well, I won't argue the question about what 'freedom' is. ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... say it till Doom," cried his servant, "for my wife has gone away with that pestilent king, and he has got the double of ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... disappointed Nullifiers and a few uncompromising Abolitionists, and we can recollect the time when Calhoun and Garrison were both classed by practical statesmen of the South and North in one category of pestilent "abstractionists." Negro Slavery was considered simply as a fact; and general irritation among most politicians of all sections was sure to follow any attempt to explore the principles on which the fact reposed. That these principles had the mischievous vitality which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... the line of road is nearly impassable, and that a long succession of formerly cultivated estates presents now a series of pestilent swamps, overrun with bush, and productive of ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... to reign in a kingdom that belonged to others, and to make dilapidations in their mother's government after he had killed her; but besides all this, that he introduced a spurious successor, and proposed to give the kingdom of their ancestors to that pestilent fellow Antipater:—that he would now appease the ghosts of Hyrcanus and Mariamne, by taking vengeance on him; for that it was not fit for him to take the succession to the government from such a father without bloodshed: ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... into the carriage out of this pestilent throng, that I may the better hear thee," said the governor. The Escribano entered the carriage, when in a twinkling the door was closed, the coachman smacked his whip, mules, carriage, guards, and all dashed off at a thundering rate, leaving ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... wells and brought on the Black Death, had pierced the host, killed children for their blood, blasphemed the saints, and done all that the imagination of defalcating debtors could suggest. But the Roman Jews were merely pestilent heretics. Perhaps it was the comparative poverty of the Ghetto that made its tragedy one of steady degradation rather than of fitful massacre. Nevertheless bloodshed was not unknown, and the song died on Rachel's lips, though the ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Valhal's joy, Much less to earth's. Thy sister I have seen, Have talked with her beneath the temple's night, But Balder's peace I have not therefore broken." They let me say no more. Abhorrent cries Flew through the thing, and those who nearest stood Drew back as from a pestilent disease; And when I looked around, their superstition Had palsied every tongue, and blanched each cheek So lately glowing with expectant joy. And then king Helge triumphed. With a voice As sad, as awful as the ghostly vala's In Vegtam's song, when she for Odin ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... most important is a college play, entitled "The Return from Parnassus," dating 1601-02. In it a much-quoted passage makes Burbage, as a character, declare: "Why here's our fellow Shakespeare puts them all down; aye and Ben Jonson, too. O that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow; he brought up Horace, giving the poets a pill, but our fellow Shakespeare hath given him a purge that made him bewray his credit." Was Shakespeare then concerned in this war of the stages? And what could have been the nature of this "purge"? Among several suggestions, "Troilus and Cressida" ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson |
