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Immorality   /ˌɪmərˈælɪti/   Listen
Immorality

noun
(pl. immoralities)
1.
The quality of not being in accord with standards of right or good conduct.
2.
Morally objectionable behavior.  Synonyms: evil, iniquity, wickedness.



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"Immorality" Quotes from Famous Books



... about the terrible wickedness of the lower-class native, his gambling, his immorality, his almost fanatical desire to murder everyone he sees; and for complete and detailed lists of crimes and monstrosities appeal to any newcomer, who will be delighted to hold forth on the subject; ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various

... corrupt styles of architecture and corrupt styles of drawing and painting, as might easily be illustrated by the history of art. When the leaders of society have blunted their finer perceptions by dissipation and immorality, they are incapable of feeling the beauties which come from delicate concords and truly artistic combinations. They verge towards barbarism, and require things that are strange, odd, dazzling, and peculiar to captivate their jaded senses. Such we take to be the ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... going on between Dora and myself was a riddle to which I vainly sought a solution. That this cynic who charged every man and woman with immorality should, in the circumstances, be so absolutely undisturbed in his confidence regarding his wife seemed nothing short of a miracle. When I now think of the riddle I see its solution in a modified version of the old rule concerning the mote in thy neighbor's eye and the beam in thine own ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... you would let me circumcise the girl early in life, I believe it would be more certain." There is considerable truth in his statement. A hooded clitoris produces a constant irritation which tends to lead to habits of self-abuse and perhaps immorality. ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry

... was merely amused by Bottger's hostility. She scorned her scorn, and with the utmost scientific and ethnological support declared that clothes were immoral in origin, and the cause of immorality and extravagance, since they were not the human integument. Jambers was not quite sure what "integument" was, but she thanked God she had never had it ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... irresistible, indestructible race! In the mistress of the house, very elegant, very cultured, for example, a Madame Steno, you discover the descendant of the Doges, the patrician of the fifteenth century, with the form of a queen, strength in her passion and frankness in her incomparable immorality; while in a Florent Chapron or a Lydia you discover the primitive slave, the black hypnotized by the white, the unfreed being produced by centuries of servitude; while in a Madame Gorka you recognize beneath her smiling amiability the fanaticism of truth of the Puritans; ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget

... into the above details on the immorality of savages (39. See on this subject copious evidence in Chap. vii. of Sir J. Lubbock, 'Origin of Civilisation,' 1870.), because some authors have recently taken a high view of their moral nature, or have attributed most of their crimes to mistaken benevolence. ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... serious objection to the religions of the world. The ultimate aim of the priest is to save men's souls; and sin means conduct which leads to supernatural punishment. Owen, on the contrary, held that immorality was simply a disease to be cured, and that wrath with the sinner was as much out of place as wrath with a patient. In this sense Owen's view, as I at least should hold, defines the correct starting-point of any social reformer. He has ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen

... generation seeketh after a sign" (Matt. 12:39; see also 16:4; Mark 8:38) could only be interpreted by the Jews as a supreme reproof. That the descriptive designation "adulterous" was literally applicable to the widespread immorality of the time, they all knew. Adam Clarke in his commentary on Matt. 12:39, says of this phase of our topic: "There is the utmost proof from their [the Jews'] own writings, that in the time of our Lord, they were most literally ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... case of immorality before this tribunal the evil is intensified. The matter is gone into minutely, with much freedom of expression. Nor does it end there. The members of the Panchayat return to their homes, and, with the fullest detail, repeat to wife and children the incidents that the inquiry has disclosed. ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin

... could not ascertain what happened as regards the price which had been paid for the girl. A couple betrothed in childhood are not subject to any restrictions as to meeting and mutual companionship, nor is there any mutual avoidance, nor any increased probability, based on their betrothal, of immorality between them; though in the more usual case of betrothal between children of different communities they in ordinary course are not likely to ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson

... very difficult to accomplish this. Their military organisation had to be broken up, their immorality suppressed, their prejudice against labour overcome. That this was by no means impossible was proved by many past examples. The Wa-Kwafi, living to the south and west of them, as well as the Njemps on the Baringo lake, are either of pure Masai extraction or ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... payments herself, and looked on them as certain signs of immorality. That every man should take his drop of drink, consume it noiselessly, and pay for it immediately—that was her idea of propriety ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... our territory; even supposing that our own people should be driven out and our lands given to the slaves—what would become of them? We know their character. They look not one day ahead. There would be famine, riot, pestilence, anarchy. And the worst men of the race would hold the rest in terror. Immorality would be at a premium, sir. The race would lose what it had gained. But, on the other hand, put into practice a plan for gradual freedom based on good conduct; you would see whites and blacks living in peace. The negro would ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson

... liberty should be allowed to men? Liberty of conscience?—But we should see them all profiting by the permission to become atheists. Liberty of education?—But parents would be paying professors to teach their sons immorality and error; besides, if we are to believe M. Thiers, education, if left to the national liberty, would cease to be national, and we should be educating our children in the ideas of the Turks or Hindoos, instead of which, thanks to the legal despotism of the universities, they ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat

... intercourse, viz. by violent straining, coughing, or sneezing, the stoppage of the urine, etc., so that the entireness or the fracture of that which is commonly taken for a woman's virginity or maidenhead, is no absolute sign of immorality, though it is more frequently broken by copulation than ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous

... innovation as brilliantly successful as this could hardly be inaugurated without raising a whirlwind of jealousy and opposition. The struggle was long and arduous. Directors of theatres and concert halls, furious to see a part of their public tempted away, raised the cry of immorality against the new-comers, and called to their aid every resource of law and chicanery. At the end of the first year Salis found himself with over eight hundred summonses and lawsuits on his hands. After having made every effort, knocked at every door, ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory

... the second place—to-morrow you will forget my sincerity along with the other lessons of the past. In this transaction, to speak grossly and precisely, I was the irreproachable man; but the subtle intentions of my immorality were defeated by the moral simplicity of the criminal. No doubt he was selfish too, but his selfishness had a higher origin, a more lofty aim. I discovered that, say what I would, he was eager to go through the ceremony of execution, and I didn't say much, ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... that the whole exhibition of the sex is just a little prononcee. They have no intellectual resort, but lead a life of decided ease and pleasure much too closely bordering upon the sensuous, their forced idleness being in itself an incentive to immorality and intrigue. The indifferent work they perform is light and simple; a little sewing and embroidery, followed by the siesta, divides the hours of the day. Those who can afford to keep their victorias wait until nearly sunset for a drive, ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... stand side by side, and she admits him into hers. And so the king is highly delighted, since he likes ——-' I will not go any further, gentlemen, for the virtuous frankness of the German princess might in this assembly be charged with immorality." ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac

... a preparation for the work now so sorely needed. These years of faithful seed-sowing have made the soil dead ripe for a harvest in our day. A strange religiousness utterly lacking both in religion and in morality, abominably repugnant in its gross immorality, honey-combs the life of these people. The cry of need here ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon

... he personally had the greatest respect for authority, and never ... no, never!... could be a revolutionist—but he could not but express his ... disapprobation at the sight of such licence! Then he made a few general observations on morality and immorality, good-breeding, and the ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev

... Amelie, Le Gardeur de Repentigny, was her elder by a year—an officer in the King's service, handsome, brave, generous, devoted to his sister and aunt, but not free from some of the vices of the times prevalent among the young men of rank and fortune in the colony, who in dress, luxury, and immorality, strove to imitate the brilliant, dissolute ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... wise diplomacy is all that will ever be needed in this so civilised era; that when the evil day comes something will happen (it certainly will), the whole concluding, very often, with a fervent essay on the immorality of war, all about as much to the point as carrying a dove through the ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling

... instrument"—Cyn and Nattie exchanged looks of intelligence—"you have here going, when I knew you were not in the room. And now, as I said, I know all! I pass over the audacity of such proceedings on my premises, but their utter immorality is too much for me to bear! Yes! I found a wire, and know where it leads! Into the room of two young men! That any young woman should so immodest as to establish telegraphic communication between her bed-room and the bed-room of two young ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer

... changed, and with solemn power they gave the warning of the judgment, employing the very words of Scripture, "Fear God, and give glory to Him; for the hour of His judgment is come." They reproved the sins of the people, not only condemning immorality and vice, but rebuking worldliness and backsliding, and warning their hearers to make haste to flee from ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White

... serve in Virginia; for Persons of immoral Lives, or weak Parts and mean Learning, not only expose themselves, but do great Prejudice to the Propagation of the Gospel there; and by bad Arguments or worse Example, instead of promoting Religion, become Encouragers of Vice, Profaneness, and Immorality. Whereas were such confined to the narrow Limits of a Parish or two in England, where their Knowledge and their Name would scarce extend farther than the Circumference of their own Country; then neither could their bad Learning nor Example ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones

... inherent wrong in doing away with Paolo. On the contrary, his death would be a benefit to the community at large, and an advantage to Marzio in particular. Not a pecuniary advantage either, for in Marzio's strange system there would have been an immorality in murdering Paolo for his money if he had ever had any, though it seemed right enough to kill him for an idea. That is, to a great extent, the code of those persons who believe in nothing but what they call great ideas. ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford

... began with civility enough, had he had a little less of his odious rapture; for he flung his arms about me, Jenny in presence. A husband's fondness is enough to ruin these girls. Don't you think, Harriet, that there is an immorality in it, ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson

... the same staunch standing true to principle in these Oriental countries as in Great Britain the state of immorality described in the pages of this book could never have developed to the extent it did. But Christians yielded before what they considered at least unavoidable, and, not abiding living protests, must take their share of blame for the state of matters. A higher moral public opinion ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell

... rich and fashionable, of the character of artificial life, he had not the remotest experience. He could not see or understand the distinctions and barriers that to the world are more impassable than those of ignorance, stupidity, and even gross immorality. He would learn, to his infinite surprise, that even in a Western democratic city men would be welcomed in society whose hand no pure woman or honorable man ought to touch, while he, a gentleman by birth, ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe

... the establishment and maintenance of French posts throughout the West. To the last Frontenac remained an advocate of the policy which sought to place France in control {153} of the Great Lakes and the Mississippi. Champigny complained of the expense and the Jesuits lamented the immorality which life in the forest encouraged among young men. It was an old quarrel renewed under conditions which made the issue more important than ever, for with open war between French and English it became of vital moment to control points ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby

... willing to play in that million-dollar success called Gossip. It was offered her. The lead was one of those saccharine parts, vulgar, false, and slyly carnal. She didn't in the least object to it on the ground of immorality, but the bad writing bothered her. There was, for example, a line in which she was supposed to beat her breast and say: "He's my mate! He's my man! And I'm his woman!! I love him, I ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber

... defence; but the inevitable eye of common sense, distinguishing between necessity and choice, between coarseness and corruption, between a man's passively yielding to and actively inviting and encouraging the currents of false taste and immorality which he must encounter, will find that plea nugatory, and bring in against the ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... words uttered by thee do not recommend themselves to me. Do what may be agreeable to thee, O ruler of men. But thou shall have to repent for acting according to these words; for, words that are fraught with such immorality can never bring prosperity in the future. Even this was foreseen by the learned Vidura ever treading the path of truth and wisdom. Even the great calamity, destructive of the lives of the Kshatriyas, cometh as destined ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... purpose. That is the justification of fiction. The novelist has a high vocation, if he could only see it; he can inculcate submission to authority, hope, charity, obedience—in fact, all the higher virtues; he can become a handmaid of the Church. And now, when irreligion, and immorality, and scepticism are rampant, we must ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham

... time gave vent to their malignity in various accusations, we do not read that they ever sought to cast so much as a solitary stain upon His youthful reputation. The most malicious of the Jews failed to fasten upon Him in after life any charge of immorality. Among those constantly admitted to His familiar intercourse, a traitor was to be found; and had Judas been able to detect anything in His private deportment inconsistent with His public profession, he would doubtless have proclaimed it as an apology for his perfidy; ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... black servant, and my Lady Thrum would take that opportunity of mentioning when he was knighted, and how he got his foreign order, and deploring the sad condition of OTHER musical professors, and the dreadful immorality which sometimes arose in consequence of their laxness. Sir George was a good deal engaged to dinners in the season, and if invited to dine with a nobleman, as he might possibly be on the day when Mrs. Smith requested the honour of his company, he would write back "that he should ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray

... upon the propriety of lending their influence to a system fraught with such consequences. The system positively denies the distinction between good and evil. It declares that we can not sin; that we are God, and God can not offend against himself; that sin is all simply an old lie; that impiety, immorality and vice of frightful mien are wedded in eternal decrees, and that man can ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 7, July, 1880 • Various

... was often because the mothers were ignorant. The chief cause of the wide prevalence of these diseases was the double standard of morals, the belief that a chaste life for a man is incompatible with health and that the consequences of immorality end with themselves and will not be transmitted. She urged women to unite in the demand for a higher standard of morals among men. Mrs. Gilman spoke strongly on the necessity for more vigorous measures for a quarantine of the infected and health certificates ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... of the gentler sex, had been somewhat loosened. In short, the young Misses Fleming failed at all times to observe that degree of propriety which should ever characterize the pure in heart, and were, by many, accused of immorality. How far this accusation was true, we shall not attempt to say, but, doubtless, there were not wanting many tongues to spread ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison

... grouped around, I will not say the conception of unity, but the mere unstable fact of union, the great soul of Italy still lies prostrate in the tomb dug for her three centuries ago by the Papacy and the Empire,—the cause is to be found in the immorality ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various

... she got some good advice from the answers in response to her letters, which restrained her. Still, her view of everything was different. She was different. Black was not as black to her as to Maria; a spade was not so truly a spade. She recognized immorality as a fact, but it did not seem to her of so much importance. In one sense she was more innocent even than Maria, for she had never felt the true living clutch of vice on her soul, even in imagination; she could not. The devil to her was not of enough consequence to enable her to sin in the truest ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... all the vials of the Apocalypse been emptied of the wrath of God. And so, till the nations have emerged from spiritual darkness; till God's Word is an open book, and duly honoured in all lands; till immorality has ceased to weaken the bonds of social happiness, discontent to rankle in the bosom of the people, and ambition to fire the breasts of kings, the world may expect ever and anon to hear the voice of Joel sounding out this trumpet call, "Prepare ye war; wake up the mighty ...
— The Angels' Song • Thomas Guthrie

... laws of his caste, to renounce some of the most sensible and healthful amusements which a university life offers. He must lead a very humdrum sort of life indeed. It is not enough that he should be free from the stains of vice and immorality; that his principles and habits should be those of a gentleman; that he should avoid excesses, and be observant of discipline; this the university would have a right to expect from all who are candidates for her ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various

... deliberate, planned, stage performance, a gross piece of juggling imposition. Now we do not object per se to M. Renan's taking that view of it. He has a perfect freedom of choice. We do object to the immorality, the essential blindness to right and wrong, which lead him to apologize for the cheat, and try to prove it a perfectly innocent and justifiable thing. We protest against confounding eternal distinctions, against debauching conscience by proving wrong right, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... figure grew rigid and her voice was loud and high. 'Necessary for a young lady to go to a court house. To hear low people speaking of low crimes. To listen to cases of the most shocking kind; cases of low immorality; cases of a kind, of a nature of a—a—class that you are not supposed to know anything about. Really, Stephen! . . . ' She was drawing away her hand in indignation. But Stephen held it tight, ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker

... Russian General, was not that Rasputin was a wizard, but that the Court laboured under the superstitions of a Russian peasant; and Rasputin, who had some mesmeric power, used it to gratify his avarice, immorality, and taste for intrigue at the expense of Russian politics and society. At last, on 29 December, he was doomed by a conclave of Grand Dukes, Princes, and politicians who informed the police of what had been done. ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard

... and Fletcher's play of 'Monsieur Thomas') virtues without which a man is despicable. On this point, as on many others, those who have, for ecclesiastical reasons, tried to represent the first half of the seventeenth century as a golden age have been altogether unfair. There is no immorality of the court plays of Charles II.'s time which may not be found in those of Charles I.'s. Sedley and Etherege are not a whit worse, but only more stupid, than Fletcher or Shirley; and Monsieur Thomas is the spiritual father of all Angry lads, Rufflers, Blades, Bullies, Mohocks, Corinthians, ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley

... when you take into consideration the fact, that amongst the slave population no safeguard is thrown around virtue, and no inducement held out to slave women to be chaste, you will not be surprised when we tell you that immorality and vice pervade the cities of the Southern States in a manner unknown in the cities and towns of the Northern States. Indeed most of the slave women have no higher aspiration than that of becoming the finely-dressed mistress of some white man. And at Negro ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown

... baptisms, taking place beneath palm-trees, is one thing; and to go to the Sandwich Islands and see the missionaries dwelling in picturesque and prettily furnished coral-rock villas, whilst the miserable natives are committing all sorts of immorality around them, is ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... who, not having had the opportunities of knowing men, or seeing the world, had this defect. On the contrary, I should be apt to look upon it as an outward fence or inclosure to his virtue, which might keep off the lighter attacks of immorality, the Hussars of vice, as I may say, who are not able to carry on a formal siege against his morals; and I should expect such a one to be docile, humane, good-humoured, diffident of himself, and therefore most likely to improve as ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... with what color of consistency or reason can she place herself in the moral chair, and affect to be shocked at the execution of her own orders; adverting to the exact measure of wickedness and injustice necessary to their execution, and, complaining only of the excess as the immorality, considering her authority as a dispensation for breaking the commands of God, and the breach of them as only punishable when contrary to the ordinances of man? Such a proceeding, gentlemen, begets serious reflection. It would be better, perhaps, for the masters ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... the young lady was in her knickers: oh, well, she rather roundly told them off, perhaps, but nobody minded. The fact that ladies wore knickers and black silk stockings thrilled nobody, any more than grease-paint or false moustaches thrilled. It was all part of the stock-in-trade. As for immorality—well, what did it amount to? Not a great deal. Most of the men cared far more about a drop of whiskey than about any more carnal vice, and most of the girls were good pals with each other, men were only there to act with: even if the act was a private love-farce ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence

... I was dead arose no doubt from the [20] combined efforts of some malignant students, expelled from my College for immorality, to kill me: of their mental design to do this I have proof, but no fear. My heavenly Father will never leave me comfortless, in the amplitude of His love; coming nearer in my need, more tenderly to [25] save ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy

... able-bodied fellow, with Speug's assistance induced the Bailie to leave the cab and convoyed him upstairs and to the door of the Rector's class-room. At this point the great man fell into low spirits, and bemoaned the failure of a strenuous life, in which he had vainly fought the immorality of Muirtown, and declared, unless he obtained an immediate tonic, he would succumb to a broken heart. He also charged Speug with treachery in having brought him to the County Gaol instead of to the Black Bull. It was painfully explained him that he was now in the Seminary, and within that ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren

... shun the young man, first naming Mrs. Plume and then Elsie as the cause and corespondent. One after another Graham had demolished these possibilities, to the end that even Wren was ashamed of his unworthy suspicions. Then it was Natzie who was the prey of Blakely's immorality, and for that, Janet declared, quite as much as for stabbing the soldier, the girl had been sent to the cells. It was late in the day when she managed to find Angela away from her father, who, realizing what Natzie had done and suffered to save his own ewe lamb, ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King

... progenitor, who had first cheated his neighbors and then squandered his ill-gotten gains in riotous living. Of these tales, as of certain questionable novels in a slightly different line, the eventual moral is considered quite competent to redeem the general immorality ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell

... greater reason for blushing had you persevered in it; for what is so unbecoming—what can appear worse to you, than disgrace, wickedness, immorality? To avoid which, what pain is there which we ought not (I will not say to avoid shirking, but even) of our own accord to encounter, and undergo, and ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... matters not how virtuous and pious they may be; it is certain to elate them, and to excite them to acts of indiscretion, and sometimes to acts grossly vicious. It is so common for Southern slaves who arc apparently pious, when exposed to temptation to fall into acts of gross immorality, that many unthinking persons in the South have come to the conclusion that there is no sincere piety among them; that they are insincere and hypocritical in their professions and pretentious. A gentleman ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward

... has a fine appetite) looked pleased. When she looks pleased, she looks nice. When she looks nice, I chuck her under the chin. It isn't immorality—it's only habit. ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins

... household and in the minor offices. One of the first acts of George III., was a proclamation "for the encouragement of piety and virtue, and for preventing and punishing of vice, profaneness, and immorality." This was naturally looked upon as a token of his majesty's virtue and devotion, which view was borne out by his after character; for although the proclamation may be considered in the light of a dead letter as regards actual operation, it was enforced, or recommended, by his example; and example ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... indeed cruel.—It was to feel most painfully alone; but she rejoiced to think, that she should spare him the care and perplexity of the suit, and meet him again, all his own. Marriage, as at present constituted, she considered as leading to immorality—yet, as the odium of society impedes usefulness, she wished to avow her affection to Darnford, by becoming his wife according to established rules; not to be confounded with women who act from very different ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft

... those who advocate any such doctrines, any such social change, are either dismissed as impossible, utopian dreamers, or denounced as revolutionary demagogues, as "prophets of iniquity," "preachers of immorality," "advocates of villany," as enemies of society, and so on; and if this fails of its desired effects, other means are found by which their influence is undermined and their teachings discredited in the minds of those ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens

... communes where close intermarriage among relations has been the practice for generations—he is safe to be regarded as an inspired messenger and duly honoured as such. Charges of every kind of vice have been laid at the door of the Khlystsy; their secret services have been called cloaks for immorality, and doubtless on occasion have been used as such; but, as the character of their congregation stands for high honesty and industry, it is surely more charitable to assume that their worst feature is their extreme secrecy, and ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various

... right in saying that they are all of Oriental origin. Pythagoras borrowed from thence his kindred theory of the metempsychosis, or transmigration of souls. But he was more consistent than modern philosophers; he recognised a downward development as well as an upward, and made morality and immorality the crisis and turning-point of change—a bold lion developed into a brave warrior, a drunken sot developed into a wallowing pig, and Darwin's slave-making ants, p. 219, would have been formerly ...
— Samuel Butler's Canterbury Pieces • Samuel Butler

... for "gross immorality and oppression." In 1691 tried to intrude with malignants on kirk, but was ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various

... morality and fulfills all ethical laws. What health is to the body, what sweetness is to the lark's song, what perfume is to the rose, that morality is to culture and character. Drunkenness and gluttony have not more power to blear the eye than immorality to degrade the soul. When Homer tells us that Ulysses escaped unharmed from the enchanted palace, but suffered injury from his unfaithfulness to a friend, the poet wishes us to know that it is easier to recover from the poison of Circe's cup than to escape the effect of disobedience ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis

... woman, complex, subtle too, with a naturally noble character and fine understanding, a woman who, like so many women, might have been anything, and was far worse than nothing—a hopeless, helpless slave, the victim of the morphia habit, which had gradually degraded her, driven her through sloughs of immorality, wrecked a professional career which at one time had been almost great, shattered her constitution, though not all her still curious beauty, and ruined her, to all intents and purposes, body and soul. The man and the woman met, and in ...
— The Collaborators - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens

... scientist does he pass judgment, for there is no experimental science which deals with such matters. Physics concerns itself solely with what it can see and handle—nothing else. The actions, therefore, of right and wrong, justice and injustice, morality and immorality are simply unintelligible to it, just as unintelligible as they are to the most highly developed animal. It is the fully developed mind or intelligence alone which apprehends the sublime conception of duty, and the indefeasible claims which it has upon the allegiance of the will, and, ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... one thing worse than French immorality, it is French morality. This is a moral book, a la Francaise, and weak as ditch-water. Nor is the ditch-water improved ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various

... on the judiciary at the previous session was disagreed to by a vote of 57 yeas and 108 nays. This decision of the House of Representatives against an impeachment on the charges then made was entirely justified. This imposing process was not authorized for misconduct, immorality, intoxication or neglect of duties, such as were alleged in the report of the committee, but only for high crimes or misdemeanors. The House properly made this distinction, and here the accusations against the President would have ended, ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... institution that comes in for straight and cross-arm jabs, now to the stomach, now to the head, but seldom sparring for breath. For does he not say that "wherever a man goes, men will pursue him with their dirty institutions"? The influence of property, as he saw it, on morality or immorality and how through this it mayor should influence "government" is seen by the following: "I am convinced that if all men were to live as simply as I did, then thieving and robbery would be unknown. These take place only ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives

... her bodily; we cannot hunger or perish with cold in her company; we cannot fight with dogs and wolves as she must do; we cannot, with her, go into the dens of immorality and fever; but we can determine upon some way of helping her, and I think we shall only be too thankful to join her friends who by giving of their means are participating in so grand ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various

... Empire is no more; No longer Roman eagles sweep the sky. The pampered luxury of Rome soon bore Its wonted fruit—gross immorality; And weakened thus, and by internal strife, Great Caesar's Empire ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats

... works. Luther, on the other hand, had been accused—like the Apostle Paul before him (Rom. 3 31)—that the zealous performance of good works had abated, that the bonds of discipline had slackened and that, as a necessary consequence, lawlessness and shameless immorality were being promoted by his doctrine of justification by faith alone. Before 1517 the rumor had already spread that Luther intended to do away with good works. Duke George of Saxony had received no good impression ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther

... poet into a realm into which poetry never ventured before. His battle is now, not with flesh and blood, but with the subtler powers of darkness grown vocal and argumentative, and threatening to turn the poet's faith in good into a defence of immorality, and to justify the worst evil by what is highest of all. Having indicated in outward fact "the need," as well as the "transiency of sin and death," he seeks here to prove that need, and seems, thereby, to degrade the highest truth of religion ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones

... proof of her shameless depravity, and which I have omitted on account of its indecency, occurred, it would appear, not less than ten years ago. Yet, notwithstanding her alleged ill qualities and habits of gross immorality, he has not only constantly refused to part with her; but after thirteen long years, brings her to England as an attendant on his wife and children, with the avowed intention of carrying her back along with his maiden daughter, a young lady returning from school! Such are the ...
— The History of Mary Prince - A West Indian Slave • Mary Prince

... Though I declare, Charity Oliver, there are times when I don't know which is furthest behind the times—your head, or the coquelicots you insist on wearing upon it. But now I hope you'll admit I was right, and there's a mystery about Nanjivell. Whether 'tis mixed up with his immorality or separate I won't pretend to decide, or not ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... the presence, and forced into his gondola with very unequivocal signs of disgrace. This unwonted interruption of the ceremonies clouded many a brow, for the sensibilities of a Venetian noble were quick, indeed, to reprehend the immorality of political discontent, though the conventional dignity of the class suppressed all other ill-timed exhibition ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper

... of New Orleans at this period the year 1816-1817 was deplorable. For vice and immorality, it doubtless bore away the palm from every city in Christendom or heathen lands. Gaming houses, and vile, disgusting receptacles of vice and infamy, were thickly scattered over every part of the city. Midnight brawls and robberies ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... "Resolved—That in the opinion of this meeting it is unjustifiable to induce intending emigrants to take up their abode in the midst of the vice and immorality which notoriously prevail in the penal colonies; but that such persons should be encouraged to settle in countries, where they will not only be likely to thrive in fortune, but to lead good lives, and bring up ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... may be conducted in righteousness and be eminently useful to Thy people over whom he presides, by encouraging due respect for virtue and religion, by a faithful execution of the laws in justice and mercy, and by restraining vice and immorality. ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission

... 2—Anon., Representation of the Impiety and Immorality of the Stage (1704) and anon., Some Thoughts Concerning the Stage ...
— Reflections on Dr. Swift's Letter to Harley (1712) and The British Academy (1712) • John Oldmixon

... she scrupulously judged all literature by its success or failure in this particular quality. It seemed to her as wholesome to feed her daughter's growing fancy on an imaginary line of pious heroes, as it appeared to her moral to screen her from all suspicion of the existence of immorality. She did not honestly believe that any living man resembled the "Heir of Redclyffe," any more than she believed that the path of self-sacrifice leads inevitably to happiness; but there was no doubt in her mind that she advanced the cause of righteousness when she ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... the English establishments on these coasts traces of grand designs for the future are evident. The mass of the people, being originally composed of the unfortunate and of wrong-doers, might have propagated immorality and corruption, if the Government had not taken in good time means to prevent such a sad result. A house was founded in the early days of the settlement for the reception of young girls whose parents were too poor and too constrained in their circumstances ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott

... Germans gave themselves over to immorality and disgusting brutality during the night of the 8th and 9th in a cellar where several women had taken refuge from the bombardment. All these unhappy women were vilely ill-treated. Mlle. X., aged 71; Mme. Y., aged 44, and her two daughters, one aged 13 ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times

... Janet the sense of exhilaration, of life on a higher plane she had begun to feel, and filled her with degradation, she hated Lise, felt for her sister no strain of pity. A proof, had she recognized it, that immorality is not a matter of laws and decrees, but of individual emotions. A few hours before she had seen nothing wrong in her relationship with Ditmar: now she beheld him selfish, ruthless, pursuing her for one end, his own gratification. As a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... evil-doing, evil courses; wrongdoing; wickedness, viciousness &c adj.; iniquity, peccability^, demerit; sin, Adam^; old Adam^, offending Adam^. immorality, impropriety, indecorum, scandal, laxity, looseness of morals; enphagy^, dophagy^, exophagy^; want of principle, want of ballast; obliquity, backsliding, infamy, demoralization, pravity^, depravity, pollution; hardness ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... part of their character by some travellers. It is regarded in France as a sort of professional accomplishment, without which it is in vain to attempt exercising a trade; and it is hardly thought to indicate immorality of any kind, more than the obviously false expressions which are used in the ordinary intercourse of society in England, or the license of denying oneself to visitors. That it should be so regarded is no doubt ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... tire des coups de fusil, je me sens une grande colere contre le gouvernement et le cure de l'endroit. Quand au voleur, il me plait, s'il est energique, car il m'amuse.' It was the energy of self-assertiveness that pleased Beyle; that of self-restraint did not interest him. The immorality of the point of view is patent, and at times it appears to be simply based upon the common selfishness of an egotist. But in reality it was something more significant than that. The 'chasse au bonheur' which Beyle ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... These accusations of immorality are, probably, greatly exaggerated by the enemies of the Jansenists; yet one may gather, even from the tenor of Montgeron's defence, that there was more or less truth in the charges brought against the conduct of some of the convulsionists, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various

... that I dislike your poesy [1]? I have expressed no such opinion, either in print or elsewhere. In scribbling myself, it was necessary for me to find fault, and I fixed upon the trite charge of immorality, because I could discover no other, and was so perfectly qualified in the innocence of my heart, to "pluck that mote from ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron

... his fervent and fiery expression of this longing for the infinite, characterizing, whether pure or perverted, almost the whole of Byron's poetry, breaking out sometimes in imprecations and despair, and not to his immorality, that his great popularity is to be attributed. Even in the midst of the most unhappy scepticism, it was the haunting passion of his soul. Alas! that this longing for the food of heaven should have been ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... vindication for themselves which they did not require; or whether they had cause really to believe the majority of the monastic bodies to be as they affirmed—whether, that is to say, there really were such cases either of flagrant immorality, neglect of discipline, or careless waste and prodigality, as to justify the general censure which was pronounced against the system by the Parliament ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude

... reverse of what it was also taken to mean"? I prefer plain terms; and "without doubt he shall perish everlastingly" seems to be an awkward way of denying the endlessness of punishment. You cannot denounce the immorality of the old dogmas with the infidel, and then proclaim their infinite value with the believer. You defend the doctrine by showing that in its plain downright sense,—the sense in which it embodied popular imaginations,—it was false and shocking. The proposal to hold ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen

... painful duty to protect children from cruelty, criminal neglect, or immorality by legal removal from their parents' control. Here a society for the protection of children will often render valuable assistance. Such a society is likely to be hampered in its work by the unwillingness ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond

... On the peculiar immorality which has rendered The Prince unpopular, and which is almost equally discernible in the Discourses, we have already given our opinion at length. We have attempted to show that it belonged rather to the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... thoughtlessness, oddity, and vehement sensibility: his belief, in short, in the dispensing power of genius and social feeling in all matters of morality and common sense;' adding, that these vices and erroneous notions 'have communicated to a great part of his productions a character of immorality at once contemptible and hateful.' We are afterwards told, that he is perpetually making a parade of his thoughtlessness, inflammability, and imprudence; and, in the next paragraph, that he is perpetually ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... distraction, like a game of tennis or of whist. The only thing that can justify it, the effort to carry it as far as one can (which you can't do without time and singleness of purpose), she regards as just the dangerous, the criminal element. It's the oddest hind-part-before view, the drollest immorality." ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... Adam did not, to use the words of the old Geneva Bible, "make himself breeches," till he knew sin: the meaning of the passage in the text is merely that, as a child advances in age, he commonly proceeds in the knowledge and commission of vice and immorality.] ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... the individual family, and not a public business at all; though they allow that where parents are unable to maintain them schools may be erected by the taxpayers' money. They also deprecate legislation against intemperance, immorality, and prostitution, because they think such laws do not remove the evils themselves, but merely attack their visible signs, and relieve moral trespassers of part of their responsibility by protecting them against certain consequences of their acts. They are opposed ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough

... and Ovid," says the writer of the Preface, who is certainly Burton, "to our own time, Western authors have treated the subject either jocularly or with a tendency to hymn the joys of immorality, and the gospel of debauchery. The Indian author has taken the opposite view, and it is impossible not to admire the delicacy with which he has handled an exceedingly difficult theme. ....Feeling convinced that monogamy is a happier state than polygamy, ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... important passages in despatches for the purposes of publication, or wars undertaken on unjustifiable and really selfish pretexts, calculated to convince one, that even in Europe in the nineteenth century, the transaction of political affairs has been purged of the taint of immorality, however different, and I may even add, comparatively innocent, may be the outward manifestations of ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta

... stipulation without consciousness of participation in wrong. Here is a real difficulty, but it seems to me not insuperable. It will not do for us to say to you, in justification of non-performance, "the stipulation is immoral, and therefore we cannot execute it;" for you deny the immorality, and we cannot ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden

... open available to the commonalty for purposes of pastime and sport. Under such circumstances who can wonder that they should lounge away their unemployed time in the skittle-grounds of ale-houses and gin-shops? or that their immorality should have increased with the enlargement of the town, and the compulsory discontinuance of their former healthful and harmless pastimes? It would be wise to revive, rather than seek any further to suppress them: wiser still would it ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 475 - Vol. XVII, No. 475. Saturday, February 5, 1831 • Various

... these young men are El-morani. They dwell in a separate manyatta. With them dwell promiscuously all the young unmarried women of the tribe. There is no permanent pairing off, no individual property, no marriage. Nor does this constitute flagrant immorality, difficult as it may be for us to see that fact. The institution, like all national institutions, must have had its origin in a very real need and a very practical expediency. The fighting strength of the tribe must be kept up, and by the young ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White

... all, in the sense in which the contemporary tragedy—the "heroic play"—was artificial. It was, on the contrary, far more natural, and, intellectually, of {172} much higher value. In 1698 Jeremy Collier, a non-juring Jacobite clergyman, published his Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage, which did much toward reforming the practice of the dramatists. The formal characteristics, without the immorality, of the Restoration comedy, re-appeared briefly in Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer, 1772, and Sheridan's Rival, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... course, the whole question of Zola. I am grown up, and I do not worry myself much about Zola's immorality. The thing I cannot stand is his morality. If ever a man on this earth lived to embody the tremendous text, "But if the light in your body be darkness, how great is the darkness," it was certainly he. Great men like Ariosto, Rabelais, and Shakspere fall in foul places, flounder in violent ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton

... well-nigh impossible for one who feels keenly on these questions to treat the reign of Henry VIII. in a reasonably judicial spirit. No period illustrates more vividly the contradiction between morals and politics. In our desire to reprobate the immorality of Henry's methods, we are led to deny their success; or, in our appreciation of the greatness of the ends he achieved, we seek to excuse the means he took to achieve them. As with his policy, so with his character. (p. vi) There was nothing commonplace about him; his good and his bad qualities ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... Beautiful Moral Essays, which they try to cram down everybody's throat, but never practise themselves. She formerly kept a boarding-house in the city, where, at table regularly after soup, she would regale those present with long dissertations on the shocking immorality of the present day, varying the monotony, perhaps, by allusions to the boarders who had just left. "Mr. SIMPSON was a pleasant-spoken young man as I want to see, and as good as the bank, but I'm afraid he was agettin' dissipated;" ...
— Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 37, December 10, 1870 • Various

... indeed, had married his first wife for the sake of a child, and his second for the child's sake. He had thus achieved a younger family so numerous that it had kept him from providing properly for Jane. It was what Tanqueray called the "consecrated immorality" of Jane's father that had set ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair

... very real danger to the individual who fails to establish some sort of genuine relation with the people who surround him. We are all more or less familiar with the results of isolation in rural districts; the Bronte sisters have portrayed the hideous immorality and savagery of the remote dwellers on the bleak moorlands of northern England; Miss Wilkins has written of the overdeveloped will of the solitary New Englander; but tales still wait to be told of the isolated city dweller. In addition to the lonely young man recently come to town, ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams

... II of Cobbett's Magazine, there is an article on "Doctrinaire Government and the factory system," and a quotation is made from a speech by Oastler, asserting that "the factory system has caused a great deal of the distress and immorality of the time, and a great deal of the weakness of men's constitutions." Oastler said he would not present fiction to them, but tell them what he himself had seen. "Take," he said, "a little child. She shall ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End

... mission and awful message of this angel is yet future; but the testimony of his predecessor will have made the tyranny, idolatry, immorality and profligacy of civil despots and mercenary ministers so palpable and glaring, that the vengeance of the Lord proclaimed by the last messenger will appear to be just. In this way the "two witnesses smite ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele

... appeared hitherto on the tree of mankind, and that Christianity, for the life of nations, has not only, like other religions, powers of preservation, but also powers of renovation and renewal which other religions are wanting. Even all the errors of superstition and immorality, of intolerance and lust of power, of so many of its advocates and confessors, at which the adversaries of the Christian view of the world so willingly point, are but a confirmation of its value. For they show us how divine and heavenly ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid

... people are going to be let do what they want to, then I call it simple immorality. [She goes indignantly to the oak chest, and perches herself ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw

... worst, and said, "Why, sir, this book is so eagerly sought after, that I have the utmost difficulty in keeping up the requisite supply." It is a melancholy reflection, that in a country where education is at every one's door, and poverty at no one's, such unblushing exhibitions of immorality should exist. ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... reproach to the profession which he disgraced, grovelling in his tastes, indiscreet, if not licentious, in his habits, he lived unhonoured and died unlamented, save by those who found amusement in his wit or countenance in his immorality."[B] ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... edition—that revised by Paine—which was suppressed. Symonds, who ministered to the half-crown folk, and who was also publisher of replies to Paine, was left undisturbed about his pirated edition, and the new Society for the suppression of Vice and Immorality fastened on one Thomas Williams, who sold pious tracts but was also convicted (June 24, 1797) of having sold one copy of the "Age of Reason." Erskine, who had defended Paine at his trial for the "Rights of Man," conducted the prosecution of Williams. He gained the victory from ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... St.—in a city I don't care to name. I suppose that constitutes me a moral woman in your world of cautious morality. But in my eyes I'm a moral leper. Not because I did not marry, but because I did. Married for every reason in the world except love. No marriage ceremony in the world can condone the immorality of that! Society may, but God doesn't. From your point of view, then, I'm a respectable woman. ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... to find how bitterly he resented the attack on Bassett. The "Advertiser" spoke of the leader as though he were a monster of immorality and Dan honestly believed Bassett to be no such thing. His loyalty was deeply intensified by the hot volleys poured into the Boordman Building; but he was not disturbed by the references to himself. He winced a little bit at being called a "stool pigeon"; ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson

... I cannot yet, understand how one like her could ever have been born, or could exist in such surroundings as hers; and the fact that she has existed here, her beautiful nature untainted, unsullied by the coarseness, the vulgarity and the immorality about her, to me seemed an indication that she was of an altogether different type, born in another and far higher sphere. I saw she was unhappy, and I determined to win her confidence, and in so doing, from a vague suspicion I have gradually arrived ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour

... Philadelphia. "This low writer," as Pope called him, is now remembered only for a couple of vicious lines in the Dunciad, and for the ignominious part he plays in Franklin's Autobiography. For many months he was a continual drain on Franklin's pocket, and seems to have been the boy's evil genius in immorality as well. ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More

... legislators, disguises, but ought not to disguise, the other fact, that these two men are simply playing the part of receivers or "fences." There probably never was a more striking illustration of the immorality in which, as it was long ago remarked, any principle of government is sure to land people if pushed to its last extreme, than the theory which is now urged on our attention—that superiority of numbers will justify fraud; or, in other words, that if the number of ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin

... The solemn immorality, amounting to outrageous indecency, of those scenes between the assorted lovers when they make "double" love, and behind the mask of their legitimate attachments follow their "elective affinities," is a thing that may well stagger the puritan reader. The puritan ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys

... mental activity, it comes with pain upon the thought that he was also a kind of modified pirate. His thoughts and feelings went away from his charts and compasses and touched upon vice and crime. Immorality ruins man's thought. Let the name be Columbus, or Aaron Burr, or Byron, a touch of immorality is the death of thought. "Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are beautiful, whatsoever things are of good report," these seek, say, and do, ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various

... artist, "what people are sure to call it, 'Whistler's little joke.' On the contrary, it is an indignant protest against the idea that there is any immorality in ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler

... an offence against ethics to try to dispose of an unpalatable generalisation by characterising it as "insulting." But nothing that man could do would be likely to prevent the suffragist resorting to this aggravated form of intellectual immorality. ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright

... by address evidently was not designed to lessen the impartiality and independence of the judge by subjecting him to removal at the mere will of the executive and legislature, but that he might be removed for corruption, neglect of duty, incapacity, immorality, or other disgraceful conduct, after notice, hearing, and deliberation. For the executive and legislature, or even the majority of the people, to remove a judge because they do not like his opinions as to what the constitution requires or forbids ...
— Concerning Justice • Lucilius A. Emery

... the too frequent conversion of the house into a factory. (d) The influence of factory life is towards a loss of moral stamina rendering more easy of operation the conditions of alcoholism and general immorality. How great has been this increase in industrialism, fostered as it has been by conditions both natural and artificially created by unwise legislation, is shown in the figures from the last census. The number of factory operatives increased forty ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman

... history, that, while raising her monuments to gigantic genius, she is compelled so often to record an immorality of parallel proportions. It is right that the infamy of Mirabeau should be as eternal as his greatness. He was a man who, in his political, as in his private life, had no sense of right for its own sake, and from whom conscience never ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various

... do with morality. That is rather a shocking statement, perhaps, but it is a true one. It may be balanced by saying that civilization has nothing to do with immorality either. The early Christians were looked upon as very uncivilized people by the Romans of their time, and the meanest descendants of the Greeks secretly called the Romans themselves barbarians. In point of civilization and what ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... jealous of the pope's legates and refused to support them. Not only the laity but many of the clergy had been seduced: the heretics had translated large portions of scripture (translations which still remain to us) and constantly appealed to the scriptures in opposition to the canon laws and the immorality of Rome. They had a full parochial and diocesan organisation and were in regular communication with the heretics of other countries. It was clear that the authority of Southern France was doomed, unless some vigorous steps to assert her authority were speedily taken. ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor

... the serious Attention of every Christian, especially at a Time when Vice and Immorality seems to have an Ascendency over Religion, and the Prince of the Power of the Air reigns with ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 4: Quaint and Curious Advertisements • Henry M. Brooks

... not replaced, and was used as a stepping-stone at the Ship Inn at Weybridge; it still lies on one side of the Green. The streets of Seven Dials attained a very unenviable reputation, and were the haunt of all that was vicious and bad. Terrible accounts of the overcrowding and consequent immorality come down to us from the newspaper echoes of the earlier part of the nineteenth century. The opening up of the new thoroughfares of New Oxford Street, Shaftesbury Avenue, and Charing Cross Road, have done much, but the neighbourhood is still a slum. The seven streets remain in their ...
— Holborn and Bloomsbury - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant

... instituted. The censors were designed at first merely to preside over the taking of the census, but they afterwards obtained the power of punishing, by a deprivation of civil rights, those who were guilty of any flagrant immorality. The patricians retained exclusive possession of the censorship, long after the consulship had ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith

... and is on that account the protectress of purity and married women. Faultless herself in her fidelity as a wife, she is essentially the type of the sanctity of the marriage tie, and holds in abhorrence any violation of its obligations. So strongly was she imbued with this hatred of any immorality, that, finding herself so often called upon to punish the failings of both gods and men in this respect, she became jealous, harsh, and vindictive. Her exalted position as the wife of the supreme deity, combined with ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens

... in the dark; that is to say, to prevent, where it can be done, all publicity of anything directly or indirectly tending to inculpate it of oppression, tyranny, or even negligence; and to conceal the immorality of the people so nearly connected with its own immoral power. It is true that many vices and crimes here, as well as everywhere else, are unavoidable, and the natural consequences of corruption, and might be promulgated, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... hesitate to draw any general conclusion, with regard to their taste, from the particular exhibition of a woman flayed alive, were they not in the constant practice of performing other pieces that, in point of immorality and obscenity, are still infinitely worse; so vulgarly indelicate and so filthy, that the European part of the audience is sometimes compelled by disgust to leave the theatre. These are such as will not bear description, nor do ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... lament, the great and powerful might dispose of the souls and bodies of their serfs; rare honesty might be oppressed by consuming usury; offices, honors, and titles might be gambled for; justice and punishment might be bought and sold; vice and immorality might universally prevail—Anna would not know it. She would neither see nor hear any thing of this outside world! The palace is her world, in which she is happy, ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... because the conditions of what is licit are so accommodating and wide, a certain negative virtue (it can hardly be called continence or chastity) pervades Mohammedan society, in contrast with which the gross and systematic immorality in certain parts of every European community may be regarded by the Christian with shame and confusion. In a purely Mohammedan land, however low may be the general level of moral feeling, the still lower depths of fallen humanity are unknown. ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir

... together, preserved me, thro' this dangerous time of youth, and the hazardous situations I was sometimes in among strangers, remote from the eye and advice of my father, without any willful gross immorality or injustice, that might have been expected from my want of religion. I say willful, because the instances I have mentioned had something of necessity in them, from my youth, inexperience, and the knavery of others. I had therefore a tolerable character to begin the world with; ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin

... without much private injury to the individuals who partake of them. It is, however, not a little remarkable, that till lately, on the very opposite side of the road, the neighbourhood has exhibited scenes of vice, immorality, and indecency, which it is the great object of this Charity if possible to prevent, by an endeavour to reclaim the miserable and deluded wretches from their evil ways. I remember the late John Home Tooke related in the House of Commons a curious anecdote, in allusion to himself ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... animation and bonhomie of this little town, there is a dark side to social life, and in the train of intemperance and unthrift among the manufacturing population, we find squalor and immorality. After several weeks' sojourn in that Utopia of all socialistic dreamers—a land without a beggar!—I found myself here, once more, in the domains of mendicity, though it is not to be found to any great extent. The custom of putting out infants to nurse is, fortunately, ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... efflorescence soon came to an end. Again confusion reigned supreme, and customs and convictions deteriorated under foreign influence. Prophets like Elijah and Elisha, feverish though their activity was, stood powerless before the rank immorality in the two states. The northern kingdom of Israel, composed of the Ten Tribes, passed swiftly downward on the road to destruction, sharing the fate of the numberless Oriental states whose end was inevitable by reason of inner decay. The inspired words ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow

... however, retained their popularity notwithstanding the exertions of their clerical rivals, who diligently endeavoured to bring them into disgrace, by bitterly inveighing against the filthiness and immorality of their exhibitions. On the other hand, the itinerant players sometimes invaded the province of the churchmen, and performed their mysteries, or others similar to them, as we find from a petition presented to Richard II. by the scholars of St. Paul's School, wherein ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... should have smelt the "immoral conduct" of Maxim Gorky, was really very fortunate for the latter. He is now relieved from the impertinence of interviewers and prominent personages. He must feel as if he had recovered from some loathsome disease. Immorality has after all many desirable qualities. What if chickens gaggle, pharisaic goats piously turn up their eyes, and ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various

... all the untrained impulses and natural instincts of animals, there is surprisingly little sexual immorality among the tribes. It seems that the women are naturally chaste. For there is no conventional standard among their own people by which they are judged. If an unmarried squaw has a child, there are deploring clucks, but the girl's parents care tenderly ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith

... the Vice-Chancellor's authority to punish immorality within the bounds of the University town of Cambridge is to be done away with, will he still retain the then quite superfluous title ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various

... being carefully sifted by the Sheriffs or their Substitutes, forwarded in a documentary form to Edinburgh. It would scarce be wise to attempt extemporizing an official code in a newspaper article; but the laws of such a code might, we think, be ranged under three heads,—immorality, incompetency, and breach of trust to the parents. We would urge the dismissal, as wholly unqualified to stand in the relation of teacher to the youthhead, of the tippling, licentious, or dishonest schoolmaster; further, we would urge the dismissal (and ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... anything good to eat to console him for being caught,—nothing but a little bunch of feathers which he never would look at if he knew what it was. Don't you think that fly-fishing is something of a piscatorial immorality?" ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke

... inadequate method of arriving at the truth. The primary difficulty, of course, is to reach a classification. The one adopted by Mr. Warner in his book on American charities is: 1. Causes indicating misconduct; 2. Causes indicating misfortune. Under the first head come drink, immorality, laziness, shiftlessness and inefficiency, crime and dishonesty, a roving disposition. Under the second head come lack of normal support, matters of employment, matters of personal capacity, such as sickness or death in family, etc. The trouble with such a classification is that one ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various

... a synonym which included all things theatrical in one comprehensive ban of immorality and vice, with degrees, of course, but in no case without deserving censure from the eminently respectable, well-born British matron. She could not have been more upset had the heroine of the story been the under housemaid; and indeed she placed actressess and housemaids ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page

... with judgments: stricken us, and healed us; scattered us, and gathered us: but alas, alas, we were 'eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage.' Many, very many, wasting their time, health, and substance, in all manner of immorality, and our rulers caring for none of these things; yea, many of them practising the same things; and Oh, God's own saved people sitting still, restraining testimony before men and prayer before God. What were we to expect but that God should say, ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham

... fleabites. Their dwellings are extremely filthy, and swarm with vermin, as the fowls, goats, or even a cow or two, generally increase the domestic party. It is well known that Paphos in Cyprus was the supposed birthplace of Venus, and that the island was at one time celebrated for the beauty of women and immorality: the change has been radical, as I believe no women are more chaste, and at the same time less attractive, than the Cypriotes of the present time. They are generally short and thickset; they are hardly ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker



Words linked to "Immorality" :   anomy, quality, evilness, degeneracy, depravation, anomie, irreverence, depravity, violation, devilry, wrongness, deviltry, evildoing, corruption, corruptibility, wantonness, transgression, putrefaction, licentiousness, immoral, morality, unrighteousness, foul play



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