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Pernicious   Listen
adjective
Pernicious  adj.  Having the quality of injuring or killing; destructive; very mischievous; baleful; malicious; wicked. "Let this pernicious hour Stand aye accursed in the calendar." "Pernicious to his health."
Synonyms: Destructive; ruinous; deadly; noxious; injurious; baneful; deleterious; hurtful; mischievous.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Pernicious" Quotes from Famous Books



... has not a word to say of hatred and contempt; he is simply occupied with a theoretical exposition of how certain arrangements, for instance, the three-class suffrage, is pernicious. I am unable to confute this teaching. But I have this to say with respect to the organic unity of human nature, that if the doctrine is true then it follows that every normally constituted working man must come to hate and distrust not only these arrangements and institutions ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... and now, at any rate, you find out what good sense there was in Hezekiah's "Answer him not."—No, no,—keep your temper.—So saying, the Little Gentleman doubled his left fist and looked at it as if he should like to hit something or somebody a most pernicious punch with it. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... lighter reading is on the increase at Rugby, he withdraws Hallam and sends down Thackeray and Jerrold. He never undersells and he gives no credit. His business is a ready-money one, and he finds it his interest to maintain the dignity of literature by resolutely refusing to admit pernicious publications among his stock. He can well afford to pay the heavy fee he does for his privilege; for his novel speculation has been a decided hit—of solid advantage to himself and of permanent utility to ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various

... would merely encourage him to assert that what he was ruthlessly establishing was the absolute good. Doubtless such conscientious tyrants would be wretched themselves, and compelled to make sacrifices which would cost them dear; but that would only extend, as it were, the pernicious egoism of that part of their being which they had allowed to usurp a universal empire. The twang of intolerance and of self-mutilation is not absent from the ethics of Mr. Russell and Mr. Moore, even as it stands; and one trembles to think what it may become in the mouths of their disciples. ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana

... money. They have worried me for four years and more, for nothing but the ghosts are left when one loses place and consequence before the world. It was a national bank, and the charge was misapplication of funds. He had money enough for all the sane uses of any man, but the pernicious ambition to be greater assailed him, even old ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... the horsemen and chariots that pass on the way to the Hippodrome. By this inquisitive gaping she fills her head with a thousand useless and distracting fancies; I am not always at home, and so it will be best to have the pernicious window walled up." ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... Ages, (vol. iii. p. 359), gives the following view of these misconceived glories of history:—"The crusades may be considered as martial pilgrimages on an enormous scale; and their influence upon general morality seems to have been altogether pernicious. Those who served under the cross would not indeed have lived very virtuously at home; but the confidence in their own merits, which the principle of such expeditions inspired, must have aggravated the ferocity ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various

... also, once they are convinced that their religion demands that they should wear garments manufactured in India only and eat food only grown in India, decline to wear any other clothing or eat any other food. Lord Curzon set the fashion for tea-drinking. And that pernicious drug now bids fair to overwhelm the nation. It has already undermined the digestive apparatus of hundreds of thousands of men and women and constitutes an additional tax upon their slender purses. Lord Hardinge can set the fashion for Swadeshi, and almost the ...
— Third class in Indian railways • Mahatma Gandhi

... poor slave, or even to the over-taxed subject, peace is no peace, but a constant and systematised struggle, often more pernicious in its effects than even the anarchy of open war. A war of this kind numbers its slain by millions, for the victims of famine are victims of political crime on the part of a nation's rulers. I have no time now to talk of these things. Perhaps, boy reader, you and I may meet on this ground ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... future which shall unite the best qualities of the critical with the best qualities of the organic periods; unchecked liberty of thought, unbounded freedom of individual action in all modes not hurtful to others; but also, convictions as to what is right and wrong, useful and pernicious, deeply engraven on the feelings by early education and general unanimity of sentiment, and so firmly grounded in reason and in the true exigencies of life, that they shall not, like all former and present creeds, religious, ethical, and political, ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill

... borrow that of my neighbors, yet the works of the garden and orchard at this season are fascinating, and will eat up days and weeks; and a brave scholar should shun it like gambling, and take refuge in cities and hotels from these pernicious enchantments. For the present I stay in the ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... Gronow formed his fellows in line and resumed his march quite coolly, leaving me alone on the roadside to meditate over martial law and my pernicious taste ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... language in the higher forms of comedy is always pure and clear, and sometimes exquisite in the simplicity of its sincere and natural grace, the stiffness and density of his more ambitious style may perhaps be attributed to some pernicious theory or conceit of the dignity proper to a moral and philosophic poet. Nevertheless, many of the gnomic passages in his tragedies and allegoric poems are of singular weight and beauty; the best of these, indeed, would not discredit the fame of the very greatest ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... industry. The waste products of the mine thrown into streams contaminate the water supply, so that the mineral is taken into the system gradually, and a very small per cent of any of the salts taken into the system in this way is pernicious. Water which contains any salt of lead to the extent of more than one-tenth of a grain to the gallon is unfit to drink. Such water when used continually is likely to produce colic from the resulting intestinal irritation, ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture

... wine, confectioneries, and dainty dishes at the dinners, suppers, and merry-makings, to which they invited him, because every host likes those cheerful guests of God with nimble jaws, who say as many words as they put away tit-bits. This abbot was a pernicious fellow, who would relate to the ladies many a merry tale, at which they were only offended when they had heard them; since, to judge them, things ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... the plough my tail is all flead; and, in short, after having laboured from morning till night, when I am brought in, they give me nothing to eat but sorry dry beans, not so much as cleaned from sand, or other things as pernicious; and, to heighten my misery, when I have filled my belly with such ordinary stuff, I am forced to lie all night in my own dung; so that you see I have reason to ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous

... of the royal guard took charge of Hooper, the order of whose execution was arranged by a mandate from the crown. As "an obstinate, false, and detestable heretic," he was to be burned in the city "which he had infected with his pernicious doctrines;" and "forasmuch as being a vainglorious person, and delighting in his tongue," he "might persuade the people into agreement with him, had he liberty to use it," care was to be taken that he should not speak either at {p.193} the stake or on his way to it.[445] ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude

... of Notes goes on with unabated energy between Germany and the U.S.A. At home a brief period has been set to the pernicious activities of importunate inquisitors by the adjournment of the House till mid-September. "Dr. Punch" is of opinion that the Mother of Parliaments is sorely in need of a rest and needs every hour of a seven weeks' holiday. In the Thrift ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch

... Verart, determined, for the more thorough justification and proof of the whole matter; that an investigation should be made by the auditor Don Pedro de Bolivar, with regard to the injuries and other pernicious consequences which were being caused to the public welfare, and which gave occasion to the complaint of the ecclesiastical cabildo about the assistance rendered to the archbishop by the said father Fray Raymundo Verart—[all the more] as his illustrious Lordship had, before the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various

... the first is superior, and is the only sort adapted to the home market: the latter, with most of the inferior sorts, is exported to Arabia,* Persia, and some parts of India, where it is burned to perfume with its smoke their temples and private houses, expel troublesome insects, and obviate the pernicious effects of unwholesome air or noxious exhalations; in addition to which uses, in the Malayan countries, it is always considered as a necessary part of the apparatus in administering an oath. It is brought down from the country for sale in large cakes, called tampang, covered with ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... use of this liquor is not very injurious; there, its evil effects are counteracted by profuse perspiration. But one half the quantity that may be drunk with impunity on the coast, will be very pernicious in the cool mountainous regions. An old and very just maxim of the Jesuits is, "En pais caliente, aguardiente; en pais frio, agua fria" (in the warm country, brandy; in ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi

... of the same pernicious design, he, the said Warren Hastings, did enter into an agreement to withdraw a very great body of the British troops out of the Nabob's dominions,—asserting, however truly, yet in direct contradiction ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... manual workers we oppose the combination of both kinds of activities; and instead of "technical education," which means the maintenance of the present division between brain work and manual work, we advocate the education integrale, or complete education, which means the disappearance of that pernicious distinction. Plainly stated, the aims of the school under this system ought to be the following: To give such an education that, on leaving school at the age of eighteen or twenty, each boy and each girl should be endowed with a thorough knowledge of science—such a knowledge as might ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various

... of the session the House of Lords came again upon the scene. It seriously damaged the Bill by its amendments, and would have destroyed it but for the skill with which the head of the Government handled these amendments, accepting the least pernicious, so as to enable the Upper House without loss of dignity to recede from those which were wholly inadmissible. Several times it seemed as if the conflict would have to pass from Westminster to the country, and, in contemplating ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.

... They have overthrown the faith of some. Others they may seduce. That "scoffers should arise, in the last days walking after their own lusts; that some should deny the Lord that bought them, and that many should follow their pernicious ways," were foretold by an inspired apostle, and "they turned ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee

... of his, and this I did. We turned our wretched horses' heads once more in the direction of our little tank, and had good reason perhaps to thank our stars that we got away alive from the lone unhallowed shore of this pernicious sea. We kept on twenty-eight miles before we camped, and looked at two or three places, on the way ineffectually, for some signs of water, having gone forty-seven miles; thermometer in shade 103 degrees, the heat increasing one degree a day for several days. When we camped we were hungry, thirsty, ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... a desperate craving for the opium-like drug, adulation; persistently seeking the society of those whose white, pink-tipped fingers fill the pernicious pipe most deftly and ...
— The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith • Arthur Wing Pinero

... Malton, in Yorkshire, in order to renew their licenses to retail beer, the worthy magistrate addressed one of them (an old woman), and said he trusted she did not put any pernicious ingredients into the liquor; to which she immediately replied: "I'll assure your worship there's naught pernicious put into our barrels that I know of, but the ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon

... Blas, at the entrance of the gulf of California, had attended him with the greatest care. I relate this fact as affording evidence that men born under the torrid zone, after having dwelt in temperate climates, sometimes feel the pernicious effects of the heat of the tropics. The negro was a young man, eighteen years of age, very robust, and born on the coast of Guinea; an abode of some years on the high plain of Castile, had imparted to his organization that ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... superlative of all enjoyments, the heart-felt satisfaction of having done their duty to their God and country, in giving robust, healthy and virtuous citizens to the State. The effeminacy of exotic fashion has not at present extended its pernicious influence so far as to induce them to commit the rearing of their children to mercenary nurses, who are sometimes the very dregs of a people; and whose vicious habits of taking a drop of the good creature to drown sorrow, does not promise redundancy of health and vigour to those suckled by ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks

... mentioning that dangerous and empirical morality, which cures one vice by means of another. But envy is so base and detestable, so vile in its original, and so pernicious in its effects, that the predominance of almost any other quality is to be desired. It is one of those lawless enemies of society, against which poisoned arrows may honestly be used. Let it therefore ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... to have a decided influence on the odor of an individual. Gambrini, quoted by Monin, mentions a young man, unfortunate in love and violently jealous, whose whole body exhaled a sickening, pernicious, and fetid odor. Orteschi met a young lady who, without any possibility of fraud, exhaled the strong odor of vanilla from the commissures of ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... kingdom, call'd you children, You owe me no subscription; then, let fall Your horrible pleasure; here I stand, your slave, A poor, infirm, weak, and despis'd old man: But yet I call you servile ministers, That will with two pernicious daughters join Your high engender'd battles 'gainst a head So old and white as this. ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese

... glory, So empty is their upper storey. Of Clan Macdonald this is one, Of Allan Mor of Moy the son; He brought to me a sonsy vessel To satiate my thirsty whistle. The poet proved himself unwise When him he did not eulogise. The bards—I own it with regret— Are a pernicious sorry set, Whate'er they get is soon forgot, Unless you always ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various

... to the Canadian discussions. The Ministers have on the whole come out of them discreditably. Peel has worried and mauled them sadly, and taken a tone of superiority, and displayed a real superiority, which is very pernicious to a Government, as it tends to deprive them of the respect and the confidence of the country. Brougham's harangues in the House of Lords have not done them half the mischief that Peel's speeches have done them in the House of Commons, because Peel has a vast moral weight and Brougham has none. In ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... hereafter—(Mason). The terrifying suggestions of Satan [the dog's barking] give believers much present uneasiness, yet they often do them great good, and seldom eventually hurt them; but the allurements of those worldly objects which he throws in their way are far more dangerous and pernicious. Many of these are very attractive to young persons; but all parents who love the souls of their children should employ all their influence and authority to restrain them from those vain pleasures which 'war against the soul,' and ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... fungi, similar to those of young yeast, and some which were excessively large, a variety never found in bottom yeast. Fully appreciating the microscopic examination, and aware of the danger which the spread of the fungi could cause, the manager resorted to all known means to retard its pernicious influence. Fresh yeast was employed, and the fermenting vats throughly cleaned, both inside and out, but the phenomena reappeared, showing that the transmission took place through the air. A microscopic examination ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 315, January 14, 1882 • Various

... and he founds that necessity, as I have more than once observed elsewhere, upon a principle deduced from the most refined reason and discernment. He represents, in several places, that man of himself is very frequently ignorant of what is advantageous or pernicious to him; that, far from being capable of penetrating the future, the present itself escapes him; so narrow and short-sighted is he in all his views, that the slightest obstacles can frustrate his greatest designs; that the Divinity alone, to whom all ages are present, can impart ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... industry, but none of it has much more than a mechanical ingenuity about it. It was rather original in composition, but poor in drawing, lighting, and coloring; and its example upon the painters of the time was pernicious. ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke

... the silly colors," he said, "and useless dawns on hill-slopes facing South, and butterflies flapping along them as soon as the sun rose high, and foolish maidens coming out to dance, and the warm mad West wind, and worst of all that pernicious influence Love." ...
— Fifty-One Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]

... myriads of plants are invaded by the irrepressible mania to ascend as high as possible and to receive the first, the most burning, perhaps the most pernicious, but the most liberal kiss of the sun. And they all hasten to arrive as though fearing to be superseded in the ascent as much by the colossal tree destined to brave centuries—if its massive roots are not ruined ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti

... determined to save your life. Word has leaked through from Petrograd that your name has been triple-starred on the Smolny's Index Expurgatorius. Karslake's too. An honour legitimately earned by your pernicious collaboration in the Vassilyevski bust. Karslake's already taken care of, but you're still in the limelight, and that makes you a public nuisance. If you linger here much longer the verdict will undoubtedly be: Violent death at the hands ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... my opinion, I set about the following dramatic attempt upon that horrid vice of Gaming, of all others the most pernicious to society, and growing every day more and more predominant amongst all ranks of people, so that even the examples of a Prince, and Princess, pious, virtuous, and every way excellent, as ever a people were blessed with, ...
— The Female Gamester • Gorges Edmond Howard

... of books makes them worse than they ever were before. But it isn't the books that ruin them; the misfortune is that they make improper use of books! That is why study doesn't come up to ploughing and sowing and trading; as these pursuits exercise no serious pernicious influences. As far, however, as you and I go, we should devote our minds simply to matters connected with needlework and spinning; for we will then be fulfilling our legitimate duties. Yet, it so happens that we too know a few characters. But, as we can read, it behoves us ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... Reform party struck out on an independent course and held its first and only national convention. Seventeen States were represented. * The Labor party, however, had yet to learn how hardly won are independence and unity in any political organization. Rumors of pernicious intermeddling by the Democratic and Republican politicians were afloat, and it was charged that the Pennsylvania delegates had come on passes issued by the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Judge David ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth

... the statute shall fetch away the goods to help forward the composition. These are tricks I can give too good an account of, having more than once suffered by the experiment. I could give a scheme, of more ways, but I think it is needless to prove the necessity of laying aside that law, which is pernicious to both debtor and creditor, and chiefly hurtful to the honest man whom ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe

... a fact that all our more pernicious weeds, like our vermin, are of Old World origin. They hold up their heads and assert themselves here, and take their fill of riot and license; they are avenged for their long years of repression by the stern hand of European agriculture. We ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs

... lies not in any danger from Negro domination, for of all the classes of her population the Negro is the least capable of working her injury and the least disposed to do so. Her real danger lies in the pernicious activity of her dominant political leaders who perpetuate their control by overriding local and national authority to the diminution of both public and private security. Law has been dethroned and the respectable and industrious portion of the people must witness the spectacle and endure ...
— The Disfranchisement of the Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 6 • John L. Love

... who, in earlier and later life, come, in vocal trouble, to seek help from the experienced teacher, and the abundance of testimony as to the satisfactory results; the repeated evidences of failure to produce rightly trained voices wholly by so-called inspirational methods; the frequent evidences of pernicious vocal results from the forcing of young voices in the overintense and hasty efforts made in preparing for prize speaking, acting, and debating,—all these may not come to the understanding of the ordinary observer; they may not often, perhaps, come ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter

... have the responsibility of governing a society can argue that it is incumbent on them to prohibit the circulation of pernicious opinions as to prohibit any anti-social actions. They can argue that a man may do far more harm by propagating anti-social doctrines than by stealing his neighbor's horse or making love to his neighbor's wife. They are responsible for the welfare ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... astride; 390 To run a-tilt at men, and wield Their naked tools in open field; As stout ARMIDA, bold TRALESTRIS, And she that wou'd have been the mistress Of GUNDIBERT; but he had grace, 395 And rather took a country lass; They say, 'tis false, without all sense, But of pernicious consequence To government, which they suppose Can never be upheld in prose; 400 Strip nature naked to the skin, You'll find about her no such thing. It may be so; yet what we tell Of TRULLA that's improbable, Shall be ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... the great man of the Shi' coming, take the wrappings off the head of the spear and bend your face over it; the heat of the spear, the stench of it, all its pernicious and acrid qualities will prevent ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens

... concocted the fraud? The woman could hardly have done so without the man's connivance. It took him all the morning to think the matter out, and then he had not made up his mind. To reverse the verdict would certainly be a thorn in his side,—a pernicious thorn,—but one which, if necessary, he would endure. Thorns, however, such as ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope

... and mend their ways. I have sent the delinquents to work apart, separated from one another; and have also reprimanded them, and informed them that they must do right. Thus, by the aid of God, this commonwealth is entirely reformed. They do not follow the pernicious practice of gambling, because they are occupied, and because they know that he who is engaged in these practices cannot be my friend. Among other men, gambling might be more endurable; but here they attack one another with knives, blaspheme, and steal, and do great harm to one another. ...
— The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 4 of 55 - 1576-1582 • Edited by E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson

... them wee found a father Jesuit that told us that wee should not find what wee thought to find, and that he had put a good order, and that it was not well done to distroy in that manner a Country, and to wrong so many Inhabitants. He advised me to leave my Brother, telling me that his designs were pernicious. Wee see ourselves frustrated of our hopes. My Brother told me that wee had store of merchandize that would bring much profit to the french habitations that are in the Cadis. I, who was desirous of nothing but new things, ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson

... Sweden, and England, at The Hague, on the 13th of January, 1668. But this proved to be one of the most futile confederations on record. Charles, with almost unheard-of perfidy throughout the transaction, fell in with the designs of his pernicious, and on this occasion purchased, cabinet, called the Cabal; and he entered into a secret treaty with France, in the very teeth of his other engagements. Sweden was dissuaded from the league by the arguments of the French ministers; ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan

... and in like manner, religious poetry, is religion so conveyed. The thing conveyed, however, must harmonise with the medium, for poetry will not consent to give an enduring form to what is false or pernicious. It has often been remarked, with a kind of superstitious wonder, that poems of an immoral character never live long; but the reason is, that it is the characteristic of immorality to tie down man ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various

... of mankind. "The natural and original man," said he, "lived in the woods: the roots and fruits of the earth supplied his simple nutriment: he had few desires, and no diseases. But, when he began to sacrifice victims on the altar of superstition, to pursue the goat and the deer, and, by the pernicious invention of fire, to pervert their flesh into food, luxury, disease, and premature death, were let loose upon the world. Such is clearly the correct interpretation of the fable of Prometheus, which is the symbolical portraiture of that disastrous epoch, when man first applied fire to culinary ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock

... writings of the greatest men. The new comedy never could have raised its head, had the middle comedy continued to be supported by a succession of such wits as Aristophanes, with new supplies of envenomed personal satire. Fortunately, however, the stage was pretty well cleared of that pernicious kind of writing when Menander, the amiable and the refined, came forth ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various

... the proper place to state that we are ever in great danger of deceiving ourselves on this subject. If the individuals who follow practices usually regarded as pernicious, while their habits in other respects are just like those of other persons around them who have similar strength, &c. of constitution,—if these individuals, I say, were wholly to escape disease, through life, or if they were to be so much more free from it, ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott

... legislature of such colony, exception being made in regard to the produce of duties payable to His Majesty, under any Act passed prior to the eighteenth year of his late Majesty, George III. This exception is important for the purpose of illustrating the pernicious system under which duties had been collected. Even so late as the year 1833, Messrs. Simonds and Chandler, the New Brunswick delegates to the imperial government, were complaining that duties were collected at the several custom-houses in New Brunswick upon wine, molasses, ...
— Wilmot and Tilley • James Hannay

... practice had been long felt and deplored by the advocates for freedom of deliberation in this body, without being able to attain a remedy. The scenes of this day however have for a while suspended, and I trust forever abolished the pernicious and degrading practice of court conventions. Tuesday gave them leisure to organize their forces and reconnoiter the points of attack. On Wednesday these veteran lobby members of a county convention each knew ...
— A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector

... Apollo's lyre, the seven strings of which are said to represent the seven planets. As his darts are reported to have destroyed the monster Python, so his rays dry up the noxious moisture which is pernicious to vegetation and fertility. ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway

... for them," she explained; "they get so hungry, and sometimes they starve to death right out here. Papa says they are pernicious birds; but I don't care—do you mind their ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow

... are most liable to be affected in that way, work is suspended, the labourers retire to their respective provinces to recruit, and generally return in the autumn, restored by their native air. Temperance, cleanliness, and a milk-diet appear to be the best preservatives from the pernicious ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various

... breakfast I started down the little creek, hunting for some first flowers of spring. I had scarcely got out of sight of camp, when the firing toward the front, though faintly heard, seemed too steady to be caused by the pernicious habit which prevailed of the pickets firing off their guns on returning from duty, preparatory to cleaning them. A sense of apprehension took possession of me. Presently artillery was heard, and then I ...
— "Shiloh" as Seen by a Private Soldier - With Some Personal Reminiscences • Warren Olney

... and we had been at sword points a year ago but for Lord Aberdeen's cowardly, pernicious love of peace. But he is always whining about 'war destroying wealth and commerce'—as if wealth and commerce were of greater worth than national honour and ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... indeed necessary to their happiness. I have only a word or two to say about one special cause of over-work—the ambitious desire of doing great or clever things, and the hope of accomplishing them by immense efforts: hope as vain as it is pernicious; not only making men over-work themselves, but rendering all the work they do unwholesome to them. I say it is a vain hope, and let the reader be assured of this (it is a truth all-important to the best interests of humanity). No ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... countenance the union of Dalmatia and Croatia. Von Thurn's idea of favouring the harmless Italianized party was thought very admirable and was now once more put into action. This party was very much concerned to keep its head above water; the rising tide of nationalism and equality and of other pernicious French notions made as much appeal to them as they did to Metternich. What he stood out against, they also hated; for the national spirit, fostered by the union of the two Slav provinces, would swamp them. If Dalmatia, on the other hand, remained ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein

... the fuchsia indoors is the pernicious red spider. For details of the proper reception to be given him see ...
— Gardening Indoors and Under Glass • F. F. Rockwell

... received several wounds in separating the flesh, continued his operations, having only touched the injured parts with caustic. A drunken invalid having also wounded himself, had an abscess, which doubtless showed the pernicious action of the dead flesh, but the cholera morbus did not attack him. In fine, foreign Savans, such as Moreau de Jonnes and Gravier, who have recognized, in various relations, the contagious nature ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest

... injury done by vernal frosts; fish, eggs, seeds, resist congelation; animals do not resist the increase of heat; frosts do not meliorate the ground, nor are in general salubrious; damp air produces cold on the skin by evaporation; snow less pernicious to agriculture than ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... satanic doctrine. Although they were not as yet drowned, like Pharaoh and his army in the Red Sea, France had great reason to rejoice and praise God that the king had annulled the Edict of January, and other pernicious laws made during his minority. As for himself, said the good friar, he was ready to die, like another Simeon, since he had lived to see the edicts establishing "the Huguenotic liberty" repealed, and ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... their place, like discords in a musical progression; and accepted them and found them picturesque, as we accept and admire, in the habitable face of nature, the smoky head of the volcano or the pernicious thicket ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... you that have come from near and far should now listen and hearken to what I shall proclaim. Now the wise have manifested this universe as a duality. Let not the mischief-maker destroy the second life, since he, the wicked, chose with his tongue the pernicious doctrine.' ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller

... hoped he only spoke these words to try her virtue. But he said: 'Believe me, on my honour, my words express my purpose.' Isabel, angered to the heart to hear him use the word Honour to express such dishonourable purposes, said: 'Ha! little honour to be much believed; and most pernicious purpose. I will proclaim thee, Angelo, look for it! Sign me a present pardon for my brother, or I will tell the world aloud what man thou art!' 'Who will believe you, Isabel?' said Angelo; 'my unsoiled name, the austereness of my life, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... Dr. Lyster[33] says of the many Venomous Insects harbouring and corrupting in a new found-out Species of Mushroms had lately in deliciis. Those, in the mean time, which are esteemed best, and less pernicious, (of which see the Appendix) are such as rise in rich, airy, and dry [34]Pasture-Grounds; growing on the Staff or Pedicule of about an Inch thick and high; moderately Swelling (Target-like) round and firm, being underneath of a pale saffronish hue, curiously radiated in parallel ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn

... already collected a great quantity for present use, but remembering how nearly poisoned we had been, he was afraid to cook any roots. Robin, however, knew well what were good to eat and what were pernicious, and we had perfect ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston

... the condition of the English farm labourer—so hopeless, so cheerless. Our Scottish peasants have more education, more energy, and are more disposed to emigrate. Their wages are fixed more by custom than by competition, and their independence has not been sapped by centuries of a most pernicious poor law system; yet, though I think their condition very much better than those of the same class south of the Tweed, it is nothing like that of the ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence

... a fresher colour, and a more attractive appearance; but repeated waterings are highly pernicious, as they neutralize the natural juices of some, render others bitter, and make all others vapid ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various

... it was well known that it is only by being totally consumed by fire that a man-shark can be thoroughly destroyed, and prevented from taking possession of the body of some harmless fish shark, who would then be incited to do all the pernicious acts ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various

... overcast as with the lowering shadow of a tragic fate. The harsh way in which he was brought up by his martinet father, without the slightest regard for his somewhat delicate health, no doubt laid a foundation for this pensive sadness, which, under a pernicious Court atmosphere, and with the terrible recollections crowding about his family history, gradually changed into the ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... enters into France, he must enter it as into a country of assassins. The mode of civilised war will not be practised; nor are the French, who act on the present system, entitled to expect it." Mallet du Pan himself had declared that there ought to be no pernicious mercy, and that humanity would be a crime. In reality, the difference between his tone and the fanatic who superseded him ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... physiological process can be good or bad according as it is or is not carried out under certain arbitrary external conditions, which render it licit or illicit. An act of sexual intercourse under the name of "marriage" is beneficial; the very same act, under the name of "incontinence," is pernicious. No physiological process, and still less any spiritual process, can bear such restriction. It is as much as to say that a meal becomes good or bad, digestible or indigestible, according as a grace is or is not pronounced ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... several who have employed their thoughts on that subject imagine themselves reduced, to wit, of thinking either that Real Space is God, or else that there is something beside God which is eternal, uncreated, infinite, indivisible, immutable. Both which may justly be thought pernicious and absurd notions. It is certain that not a few divines, as well as philosophers of great note, have, from the difficulty they found in conceiving either limits or annihilation of space, concluded it must be divine. And some of late have set ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley

... Rowland could not think of Roderick's theory of unlimited experimentation, especially as applied in the case under discussion, as anything but a pernicious illusion. But he saw it was vain to combat longer, for inclination was powerfully on Roderick's side. He laid his hand on Roderick's shoulder, looked at him a moment with troubled eyes, then shook his head mournfully and ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James

... complaint has rendered the renewal of the discussions which result in the removal of them necessary, while in the meantime injuries are sustained by merchants and other individuals of the United States which can not be repaired, and the remedy lingers in overtaking the pernicious operation of the mischief. The settlement of general principles pervading with equal efficacy all the American States can alone put an end to these evils, and can alone be ...
— A Compilation of Messages and Letters of the Presidents - 2nd section (of 3) of Volume 2: John Quincy Adams • Editor: James D. Richardson

... excuse nor blame her for thus deciding and transacting. Should I censure, a majority of my readers—nearly all of the masculine portion—would pick holes in my unpractical philosophy, scout my reasoning as illogical, brand my conclusions as pernicious—winding up their protest with the sigh of the mazed disciples, when stunned by the great Teacher's deliverance upon the subject of divorce, "If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good ...
— At Last • Marion Harland

... until the close of the reign of Alexander Severus, 385* A.D. After that time they were held in much less estimation, as the science fell into the hands of freedmen and plebeians, who practiced it as a sordid and pernicious trade. With the reign of Constantine, the credit of the profession revived, and the youth of the empire were stimulated to pursue the study of the law by the hope of being ultimately rewarded by honorable and lucrative offices, ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... Glenoro was something of an event to all the inhabitants, for he was willing to stop everywhere and anywhere and tell the latest news. Old Andrew considered him a most pernicious individual and a breeder of evil in the Glen, and for that reason as well as on general principles, Coonie took a particular delight in libelling the ruling elder. He pulled up as he reached Duncan's gate. He never passed without a few words with the old man. ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith

... often starts with sudden arrest of sweating. There is great prostration, with feeble, rapid pulse, frequent and shallow breathing, and lowered temperature, ranging often from 95 deg. to 96 deg. F. The patient usually retains consciousness, but rarely there is complete insensibility. The pernicious practice of permitting children at seaside resorts to wade about in cold water while their heads are bared to the burning sun is peculiarly adapted ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various

... economically profitless, alike to the victor and the vanquished. This is the pacifism of the socialist who holds that the ties of common labor and economic state are fundamental, and divisions into nationality are secondary and unimportant; and that militarism belongs to the pernicious state of society which perpetuates capitalism and privilege and to government as a function of ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge

... of the harvest-season, the brewers should be allowed to increase the output of beer by one-third, brought a swarm of hornets about the CHANCELLOR'S head. Mr. LEIF-JONES (irreverently known as "Tea-leaf JONES") was horrified at the thought that more grain and sugar should be diverted to this pernicious liquid; Mr. DEVLIN and other champions of the trade were almost equally annoyed because the harvest-beer was to be of a lower specific gravity. The storm of "supplementaries" showed no sign of abating, until the SPEAKER, who rarely fails to find the appropriate ...
— Punch, Volume 153, July 11, 1917 - Or the London Charivari. • Various

... the New Testament supersedes in a great measure the necessity of studying the previous revelation contained in the Old Testament. Few will openly avow this, but too many inwardly cherish the delusion in a vague and undefined form; and it exerts a pernicious influence upon them, leading them to undervalue and neglect the Old Testament Scriptures. Even if the idea under consideration were in accordance with truth, it would still be to every earnest Christian a matter of deep historical interest to study the way ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows

... it is extremely pernicious. Oxygen, when in a state of combination with other substances, loses, in almost every instance, its respirable properties, and the salubrious effects which it has on the animal economy when in its unconfined state. Carbonic acid is not only ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet

... calculated to harden the heart, and destroy entirely that truth which is the conservative principle in character. Their influence is and must be always against the free progress of humanity. The more I see of its working, the more I feel how pernicious it is, and were I a European, to no object should I lend myself with more ardor, than to the extirpation of this cancer. True, disband the Jesuits, there would still remain Jesuitical men, but singly they would have infinitely ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... Blackall, not for the former, but for the latter articles. He thought it very manly not only to have his cigar-case, but his snuff-box. Lemon never failed to ridicule him to the other boys for his affectation of manliness. He did this to prevent them from following so pernicious ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston

... rather depressed folk, clad in much-worn European clothes that somehow became them very ill. They gave a melancholy account of the spiritual condition of the Sisas, who since the death of their last pastor, they said, were relapsing rapidly into heathenism under the pernicious influence of Menzi, the witch-doctor. Therefore Kosa sent his greetings and prayed the new Teacher to hurry to their aid and put a stop ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard

... and petty frauds soon became designated as Yankee tricks. There was nothing ennobling in their pursuits. The honorable profession of law dwindled into pettifogging tricks. Commerce was degraded in their hands by fraud and chicanery. The pernicious and grasping nature everywhere cultivated, soon fastened upon the features. Their eyes were pale, their features lank and hard, and the stony nature was apparent in the icy coldness of manner, in the deceitful grin, and lip-laugh, ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... silence which lasted so many years has brought forth nothing but evil. If a girl remains ignorant of physiological facts, the shock of the eternal realities of life that come to her on marriage is always pernicious and sometimes disastrous. If, on the other hand, such knowledge is obtained from servants and depraved playfellows, her purity of mind must be smirched ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly

... TOH is not always pernicious; certain spots become credited with the presence of TOH of benign influence. Thus, tradition relates of a streamlet (Telang Ading) falling over the rocky bank of the Baram river some little distance below the mouth of the AKAR, that a wild ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... to attempt the sovereignty of Athens. The neighbouring tribes assisted the exiles with forage and shelter. Many cities accorded the celebrated noble large sums of money, and the Thebans outdid the rest in pernicious liberality. A troop of Argive adventurers came from the Peloponnesus to tender to the baffled usurper the assistance of their swords, and Lygdamis, an individual of Naxos, himself ambitious of the government of his ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... to make them return to the fulfilment of their duty. Exemplary punishments were inflicted, which procured a partial result. But that subversive idea was one of fatal consequences, and produced some pernicious fruits so lasting that they have come down almost to ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various

... Constitution, has become little more than a tradition. To many it doubtless will seem that any rule of law which operates to prevent the nation, in the great exigency of war, from taxing a portion of the property of its citizens is pernicious and should be changed. ...
— Our Changing Constitution • Charles Pierson

... compound interest. Our merchants and master manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods, both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits; they are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains; they complain only ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... exchange would enable Congress, by drawing on that fund, to call so large a quantity of paper presently out of circulation, as to appreciate the rest, and give time for taxation to work a radical cure. Without this remedy of the evil, very pernicious consequences may follow ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various

... to life; it is a mode of amplifying experience and extending our contact with our fellow-men beyond the bounds of our personal lot. All the more sacred is the task of the artist when he undertakes to paint the life of the people. Falsification here is far more pernicious than in the more artificial aspects of life. It is not so very serious that we should have false ideas about evanescent fashions—about the manners and conversation of beaux and duchesses; but it is serious that our sympathy with the perennial joys and struggles, the toil, ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke

... hath caused herself to be called the maid, a liar, pernicious, deceiver of the people, soothsayer, superstitious, a blasphemer against God, presumptuous, miscreant, boaster, idolatress, cruel, dissolute, an invoker of devils, apostate, schismatic ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards

... of the two Americas are making to-day. Spurious material includes all that mass of objects made by whites and sold as of Indian manufacture; some of it follows native models and methods; the rest is fraudulent and pernicious. The question whether similarities in technology argue for contact of tribes, or whether they merely show corresponding states of culture, with modifications produced by environment, divides ethnologists. (See ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... abuses more than sufficient to justify a strong Opposition. But the party opposed to Walpole, while they stimulated the popular fury to the highest point, were at no pains to direct it aright. Indeed they studiously misdirected it. They misrepresented the evil. They prescribed inefficient and pernicious remedies. They held up a single man as the sole cause of all the vices of a bad system which had been in full operation before his entrance into public life, and which continued to be in full operation when some of these very brawlers had succeeded to his power. They thwarted his best measures. They ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... them subjected to the constant fear that they might be sick. And when boys and girls wake up to the full consciousness that their parents' worries are foolish, unnecessary, and self-created, the mental and moral influence upon them is far more pernicious than many even of our ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James

... consolidating their scattered and demoralized forces, and they kept the Rumanians from balking the Bolshevist work of preparing another attack. As one of their French critics[148] remarked, they dealt exclusively in negatives—some of them pernicious enough, whereas a positive policy was imperatively called for. To reconstruct a nation, not to say a ruined world, a series of contradictory vetoes is hardly sufficient. But another explanation of their attitude was ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... extinguish the duties or the rights of men; but it often renders their exercise impracticable. The same circumstance of distance renders the noxious effects of an evil system in any community less pernicious. But there are situations where this difficulty does not occur, and in which, therefore, those duties are obligatory and these rights are to be asserted. It has ever been the method of public jurists to draw a great part of the analogies on which they form the law of nations from ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... material, and it is by observance of these two laws, that man's first estate is to be regained. He must, therefore be temperate, and sober, and wise in the regulation of his appetites and passions, banishing those pernicious inventions, whereby he degradeth and engendereth disease in a glorious structure that ought to be the temple of the Holy Ghost, and must diligently cultivate all noble aspirations, weeding out selfishness and gross desires, loving his neighbor as himself, and the Lord his God with ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... they would not allow them their meed of reward even though they attain to the highest excellence of conduct, simply because they have not commendable ancestors. I know not if there could be a more pernicious doctrine than this: that there is no punishment for the wicked offspring of good parents, and no reward for the good offspring of evil parents. The law judges each man upon his own merit, and does not assign praise or blame according ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich

... would never have done, unless he had thought emulations and dissensions between the noblest men to be of great public benefit. Yet this maxim is not simply to be granted, without restriction, for if animosities go too far, they are very dangerous to cities, and of most pernicious consequence. ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... extremely important that the second object, the real design of the poem, should be beneficial to society. But the real design in the Iliad was directly the reverse. Its obvious tendency was to inflame the minds of young readers with an enthusiastic ardor for military fame; to inculcate the pernicious doctrine of the divine right of kings; to teach both prince and people that military plunder was the most honorable mode of acquiring property; and that conquest, violence and war were the best employment of nations, ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... of reconciling himself with the murderers of his father. On the contrary, he addressed a letter to the magistracy of Brussels, denying with vehemence "any intention of joining the party of the pernicious Spaniards," warmly protesting his zeal and affection for the states, and denouncing the "perverse inventors of these calumnies against him as the worst enemies of the poor afflicted country." The magistrates replied by expressing their inability ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... at the moment of the political atmosphere," said Miss Petrie; "for although, certainly, much has been done in this country in the way of striking off shackles and treading sceptres under foot, still, Lady Rowley, there remains here that pernicious thing,—a king. The feeling of the dominion of a single man,—and that of a single woman is, for aught I know, worse,—with me so clouds the air, that the breath I breathe fails to fill my lungs." Wallachia, as she said this, put forth her hand, and raised her chin, and extended her ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... with grave severity, "many a camp would be down on you for turnin' loose a pernicious varmint like that in it; but, bein' as we all escaped without loss of life, we'll overlook it. You can play square with us ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry

... what was due to it; the sadder side of his life was ever under its shadow; his occasional distrust of friends: his fear of enemies: his broken health and shattered spirits, all came of his indulgence in the pernicious thing. When I remember this I am more than willing to put by all thought of the little annoyances, which to me, as to other immediate friends, were constantly occurring through that cause, which seemed at the moment so ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine

... mortal men's peevishness and folly) such brutish stories were suppressed, because ad morum institutionem nihil habent, they conduce not at all to manners, or good life. But they will have it thus nevertheless, and so they put note of [324]"divinity upon the most cruel and pernicious plague of human kind," adore such men with grand titles, degrees, statues, images, [325]honour, applaud, and highly reward them for their good service, no greater glory than to die in the field. So Africanus ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... advertisements by which our ancestors promised to give rewards for the recovery of stolen goods "and no questions asked." Such advertisements he declares to be "in themselves so very scandalous and of such pernicious Consequence, that if Men are not ashamed to own they prefer an old Watch or a Diamond Ring to the Good of [the] Society it is a pity some effectual Law was not contrived to prevent their giving this public Countenance to Robbery for the ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden

... waxed vigorous and eloquent. He objected, like Wycliffe, to the union of Church and State. Of all the bargains ever struck, the most wicked, ruinous and pernicious was the bargain struck between Church and State, when Constantine the Great first took the Christians under the shadow of his wing. For three hundred years, said Peter, the Church of Christ had remained true to her Master; ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton

... the Sister; "but another priest has gone wrong, and this," pointing to Carmen, "is the result of his pernicious teachings." ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... pernicious than forestalling other people's patronage, Atlee. Not but if this thing was to be done ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... consequences, he had expressed sorrow, but had advised forgiveness and the reinstallation of the discharged one. The crime was, after all, not so very serious. Most butlers exacted commissions from tradespeople, so he had been told. Of course it was all wrong, a pernicious system and all that, but they did do it. And many employers winked at the system. Hapgood was an exceptional fellow, really quite exceptional. Aunt Lavinia had treated him as one of the family, almost. Captain Dan, to whom these statements were made, ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln

... you suppose that women are likely to acquire influence in the state, it is prudent to enlighten their understandings, that they may not make an absurd or pernicious use of their power. You appeal to history, to prove that great calamities have ensued whenever the female sex has obtained power; yet you acknowledge that we cannot with certainty determine whether these evils have ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth

... make slight reference to unimportant matters before coming to the main point of their visit—if it have a main point at all. As it is with the Red men now, so was it with the Bethucks at the time we write of. True, the pernicious practice of smoking tobacco had not yet been introduced among them, so that the social pipe was neither offered, desired, nor missed! but the Indian accepted a birch-bark basket of soup with placid satisfaction, and consumed it with slow felicity. Then, being offered a formidable ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne

... admitted into Eurasia, as it was recognized by all intelligent people who took a warm interest in human progress that the use of tobacco in the form of cigarettes had an injurious effect on the young, through the pernicious habit of inhaling the smoke. Coffee and tea were put up in three grades at one dollar a package, the packages weighing in proportion to grade, and sugar was made and sold in two grades, viz., common sugar and refined. The common was put up in twenty-five-pound ...
— Eurasia • Christopher Evans

... the highest objects; and if they cannot be allowed a god to revile or renounce, they will speak evil of dignities, abuse the government, and reflect upon the ministry, which I am sure few will deny to be of much more pernicious consequence, according to the saying of Tiberius, deorum offensa diis curoe. As to the particular fact related, I think it is not fair to argue from one instance, perhaps another cannot be produced: yet (to the comfort of all those who may be apprehensive of persecution) blasphemy we know is freely ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift

... pustules, and when the animals are lying upon dry straw; for the friction of the bed against the pustules destroys their pellicles, and permits the purulent matter to escape; and the influence of this purulent matter is most pernicious. The fever is increased, and also the unpleasant smell from the mouth, and that of the faeces. In this state there is a disposition which is rapidly developed in the lungs to assume the character of pneumonia. This last complication is a most serious one, and almost ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... to be a remarkable book, we think no one will deny. That is a pernicious book to place in the hands of the confiding and uniformed, we think we have also shown. That the book is a deliberate and wicked creation of a diseased mind, is apparent upon every page. Having placed our judgment thus upon record, let ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... the same writings, and in the course of the same discussion, the fallacy of this very inference is repeatedly pointed out and insisted upon in a great variety of ways; and it has been chiefly for the sake of showing the pernicious influence which preformed opinion may exert—viz., even to blinding the eyes of one of the most clear-sighted and thoughtful men that ever lived to a glaring contradiction repeated over and over again in the course of a few pages,—it ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes

... sentimental Southern novels that had contented themselves with glorifying a vanished society which, when the veil is stripped, was not heroic in all its phases, for it was based upon an institution so squalid as human slavery, and to those even more pernicious books which, by luridly portraying the unquestioned vices of reconstruction and the frightful consequences which resulted from giving the Negro the ballot, simply aroused useless passions and made the way out of the existing wilderness still more difficult. So the best public ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick

... wholly from the Chippewas and Ottowas, the latter of whom have, by a recent order, been placed under my charge. I am fully satisfied that ardent spirits are not necessary to the successful prosecution of the trade, that they are deeply pernicious to the Indians, and that both their use and abuse is derogatory to the character of a wise and sober government. Their exclusion in every shape, and every quantity, is an object of primary moment; and it is an object which ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake

... beguiles us for the time, it dies away in sound, or melts from before, the eye. And this I say, strikingly illustrates the brevity of life. The brevity of life! It is a trite truth, and yet how little realized! Probably there is nothing, more common, and yet there is nothing, more pernicious, than the habit of virtual dependence upon length of days. Thus the best ends of our mortal being are lost sight of; the solemn circumstances, the suggestive mysteries of life, are misconstrued. The heavens, which give a myriad hints of worlds beyond the grave, ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin

... me the following anecdote of a physician in his native town:—This man, who was eminent in his profession, and highly respected by all who knew him, secretly indulged in the pernicious habit of dram-drinking, and after a while bade fair to sink into a hopeless drunkard. At the earnest solicitations of his weeping wife and daughter he consented to sign the pledge, and not only ardent ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... opinion, the sensation-seekers, the sentimental preachers, the lecturers, the amateurs of the thus called representative men, these oratorical falsifiers of history, but considered here as luminaries, are already at their pernicious, nay, accursed work. ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski

... should not be accounted most pernicious wherein the balance is most against us? And whether this be ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley

... compulsion, as they truly say, is more and more pervading all departments of industry. It is idle to contend that the State which, while prohibiting other forms of Sunday trading, gives a special privilege to the most pernicious of all, has not the right to limit or to withdraw it, and the legislature which levies vast sums upon the whole community for the maintenance of the police as well as for poor-houses, prisons and criminal ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... propensity, and adopts through passion what reason would reject. At other times it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility, instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations has ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various

... particularly with young students. There is no surer method of blighting the interest of students, of murdering their minds, and of ossifying the instructor than to persist in the pernicious habit of the formal lecture. Some men plead large classes in excuse. If they were honest with themselves they would usually find that they like large classes as a subtle sort of compliment to themselves. Given the opportunity ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... is true, I have taken considerable pleasure collecting spoons in some of the many cities I visited, all of them wonderfully unique," she went on to say, with a sigh; "but perhaps, after all, it is a useless and pernicious habit, since it may tempt some weak ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson

... future destinies of democratic society should unite, and that all should make joint and continual efforts to diffuse the love of the infinite, a sense of greatness, and a love of pleasures not of earth. If amongst the opinions of a democratic people any of those pernicious theories exist which tend to inculcate that all perishes with the body, let men by whom such theories are professed be marked as the natural foes of ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... that was pouring into Italy in the embezzlement of the public money by the Scipios. The resistance of Perses, king of Macedon, could not restore independence to Greece; it ended in the annexation of that country, Epirus and Illyricum. The results of this war were to the last degree pernicious to the victors and the vanquished; the moral greatness of the former is truly affirmed to have disappeared, and the social ruin of the latter was so complete that for long marriage was replaced by concubinage. The policy and practices of Rome now literally became infernal; ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... from Europe may not have their share of guilt in leaving so dreadful a remembrance of them amongst this unhappy race. The disorder now is but too common here, though they do not seem to regard it, saying, that its effects are not near so pernicious at present as they were at its first appearance. The only method, as far as I ever heard, that they make use of as a remedy, is by giving the patient the use of a sort of hot bath, which they produce by the steam of certain green plants laid ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr

... corroborative testimony to the demoralizing influence on political life which results from the coalitions at the second ballots. Insufficient attention, however, has been directed to one aspect of this influence, its pernicious effect upon the inner working of parliamentary institutions. The deputy who is elected as the result of a coalition of forces at the second ballot finds himself in an extremely difficult and unstable position. Instead of being the representative ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys

... days together by the floods or piercing cold. No wonder that physical strength is soon impaired by an idle life, stimulants, and the eternal cigarette, or that moral laxity should follow the daily contamination of spicy scandal and pernicious French literature. I have heard Siberians assert that Yakutsk is the most immoral city in the world, and (with a mental reservation regarding Bucharest) I felt bound to agree with them. For if only one-half of the tales which I heard concerning the gay ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... she was compelled to lead was all unsuited to her nature—it was artificial and constrained,—and she was often unhappy. Why? Why, indeed! She did her best,—but she made enemies everywhere. Again, why? Because she had a most pernicious,—most unpleasant habit of telling the truth. Like Socrates, she seemed to say—"If any man should appear to me not to possess virtue, but to pretend that he does, I shall reproach him." This she expressed silently in face, voice, and manner,—and, like Socrates, ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... temporal advantage in any way, but solely for religious instruction; and declares, with apparent sincerity, that his only desire is to secure the salvation of his soul. He says concerning their own superstition, that he knows it is utterly false and pernicious; and that, having for three years read the Bible, and compared the various sects with it, he is persuaded that they have forsaken the word of God, and imposed upon men many human inventions, designed not for the ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson

... talk of the contemporary sociological school about averages and general laws and predetermined tendencies, with its obligatory undervaluing of the importance of individual {262} differences, as the most pernicious and immoral of fatalisms. Suppose there is a social equilibrium fated to be, whose is it to be,—that of your preference, or mine? There lies the question of questions, and it is one which no study of averages ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... not yet become acquainted with tennis, the most delightful of light exercises, and foot-ball had not yet been regulated according to the rules of Rugby and Harrow. The last of the pernicious foot-ball fights between Sophomores and Freshmen took place in September, 1863, and commenced in quite a sanguinary manner. A Sophomore named Wright knocked over Ellis, the captain of the Freshman side, without reason or provocation, and was ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns

... care not for Liberty's mould, Liberty charms not me; What's Freedom but an idler's vision, Vain, pernicious, Often vicious, Of things ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy

... that “The contemptible rage for novel-reading is a pernicious and deplorably prevalent taste, which vitiates and palls the appetite for literary food of a more nutritive and wholesome kind. . . . I am well assured, that novels and political tracts are the only things generally read.” . . . Though disavowing ...
— Anna Seward - and Classic Lichfield • Stapleton Martin

... been taught to entertain for the blacks makes us fancy many things that are founded neither in reason nor experience; and an unwillingness to part with property of so valuable a kind will furnish a thousand arguments to show the impracticability or pernicious tendency of a scheme which requires such a sacrifice. But it should be considered, that, if we do not make use of them in this way, the enemy probably will; and that the best way to counteract the temptations they will hold out will be to offer them ourselves. An ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... Dr. Hunter upon two of his children illustrates, in a striking manner, the pernicious effects of even a small portion of intoxicating liquors in persons of this tender age. To one of the children he gave, every day after dinner, a full glass of sherry: the child was five years of age, and unaccustomed to the use of wine. To the other child, of nearly the same age, and equally ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.

... point of strict morality) and take it all for truth. We substitute a real for a dramatic person, and judge him accordingly. We try him in our courts, from which there is no appeal to the dramatis personae, his peers. We have been spoiled with—not sentimental comedy—but a tyrant far more pernicious to our pleasures which has succeeded to it, the exclusive and all devouring drama of common life; where the moral point is every thing; where, instead of the fictitious half-believed personages of the stage (the phantoms of old comedy) ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... Raphael Poe, was also apparently going about his business. The cathedral had not seen nor heard the Liturgy of the Russian Orthodox Church or any other church, for a good many decades. The Bolsheviks, in their zeal to protect the citizens of the Soviet Unions from the pernicious influence of religion, had converted it into a museum ...
— The Foreign Hand Tie • Gordon Randall Garrett

... other intuitions, such as justice and veracity, but a derivative authority. It appears, then, that there may be occasions on which they are not valid. To some famous intuitionists this has seemed to be a pernicious doctrine. ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton



Words linked to "Pernicious" :   baneful, pestilent, noxious, deadly, subtle



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