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Vile   Listen
adjective
Vile  adj.  (compar. viler; superl. vilest)  
1.
Low; base; worthless; mean; despicable. "A poor man in vile raiment." "The craft either of fishing, which was Peter's, or of making tents, which was Paul's, were (was) more vile than the science of physic." "The inhabitants account gold but as a vile thing."
2.
Morally base or impure; depraved by sin; hateful in the sight of God and men; sinful; wicked; bad. "Such vile base practices." "Behold, I am vile; what shall I answer thee?"
Synonyms: See Base.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Vile" Quotes from Famous Books



... you vile beggar?" he cried; and he gave him a kick that sent him into some bushes which grew by ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various

... Opera House, then burnt down the Pantheon; Nay, still unsated, in a coat of flames, Next at Millbank he cross'd the river Thames; Thy hatch, O Halfpenny! {9} pass'd in a trice, Boil'd some black pitch, and burnt down Astley's twice; Then buzzing on through ether with a vile hum, Turn'd to the left hand, fronting the Asylum, And burnt the Royal Circus in a hurry - ('Twas call'd the Circus then, but now the Surrey). Who burnt (confound his soul!) the houses twain Of Covent Garden and of Drury Lane? {10} Who, while the British squadron lay off ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith

... can't say I didn't!" Francie said. "I thought he'd crack up my portrait and that Mr. Waterlow would like that, and Gaston and every one. And he talked to me about the paper—he's always doing that and always was—and I didn't see the harm. But even just knowing him—they think that's vile." ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James

... on the legitimate percentage of a business which does not amount to more than that. Do you suppose these men are here from charitable motives or for their health? Not at all. They are here to make money, and they do it. Five or six hundred dollars is all they pay for the vile stuff for which they charge you $5000. They rob you of manhood and ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter

... as great amazement at what her son told her as at the appearance of the genie, and said to him, "But, son, what have we to do with genies? I never heard that any of my acquaintance had ever seen one. How came that vile genie to address himself to me, and not to you, to whom he had appeared before in ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous

... of Art, he says. Look at his art, I say - look at it! Is it fit to be seen? Ask him - is it fit to be sold? And it is for this, Monsieur and Madame, that he condemns me to the most deplorable existence, without luxuries, without comforts, in a vile suburb of a country town. O non!" she cried, "non - je ne me tairai pas - c'est plus fort que moi! I take these gentlemen and this lady for judges - is this kind? is it decent? is it manly? Do I not deserve better at his hands ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson

... scorched the soup, to which Edith called attention, making no effort to emulate the manners of her father, who heroically took the last drop in his plate. Maurice, anxious that Eleanor's housekeeping should shine, thought the best way to affirm it was to say that this soup was vile, "but generally ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

... the fact that for fifteen miles round there was not one human habitation, not one woman, not one decent tavern; and in those days I was young, strong, hot-headed, giddy, and foolish. The only distraction I could possibly find was in the windows of the passenger trains, and in the vile vodka which the Jews drugged with thorn-apple. Sometimes there would be a glimpse of a woman's head at a carriage window, and one would stand like a statue without breathing and stare at it until the train turned ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... been so led away by modern theories of realism as to believe that any sort of monstrosity, being conceived as actual, might be made also an object of sympathetic emotion. Pasiphae is a creature of monstrous, unnatural lust, so vile, and so inhuman in its vileness, that it is impossible to conceive that human sympathy should be enlisted in her affair, as if it were a normal and humanly pitiable lapse from virtue. No Greek tragedian ever did attempt, or ever would have ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James

... your majesty! I am really afraid—my lips cannot easily recite those vile lines, and your majesty, besides, will be angry with ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach

... Goodwin thus comments on his death:—"Thus fell the Duke of Burgundy, who, as he had caused the Duke of Orleans to be assassinated in the streets of Paris, so, by the requital of divine justice, his own life was abandoned to vile treachery." How very unwise and unsafe are such comments upon the dispensations of Providence is most clearly evinced here. Never was a more foul murder, or more desperate defiance of all law, human ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler

... diminishing, your hostility to him increased, until one day when he was in your own house, you used language to him which left him no alternative but to quit it forever. The charges which you made against him were very grave, Jacob, and very vile; and when you made them you had no right to withhold the name of the person on whose authority you accused him; but you did; and although Ned might and did suspect one person, Michael Rust, to be the kind friend to whom he ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various

... Prince of] Heth advanced with men and horses well armed [or full of provender?]: there were three men to each chariot.(686) There were gathered together all the swiftest men of the land of the vile Hittites, all furnished with arms ... and waited stealthily to the northwest of the fortress of Katesh. Then they fell upon the bowmen of Pharaoh, into the middle of them, as they marched along and did not expect a battle. The bowmen and the horsemen of his ...
— Egyptian Literature

... me at last so vile an epithet that, in the heat of the moment, I forgot that I had a sabre in my hand, and, hitting out straight from the shoulder, I landed him on the mouth with the guard of the weapon. This, of course, ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray

... opportunity for the lower and baser parts of human nature to display themselves without restraint. When the sense of shame which ordinarily keeps these baser propensities within the bounds of decency, is once weakened by the sight of others' participation in them, our inherent sympathy with what is vile will soon break out ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... fight in the cottage. Pinkey's young man had called to take her home, and Chook had recognized him for an old enemy, a wool-washer, called "Stinky" Collins on account of the vile smell of decaying skins that hung about his clothes. Chook began to make love to Pinkey under his very eyes. And Stinky sat in sullen silence, refusing to open his mouth. Pinkey, amazed by Chook's impudence and annoyed ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone

... to forswear them for him, and to prove him to have told falsehoods of the grossest kind to the House of Commons, he again adheres to this defence. The dog returned to his vomit. After having vomited out his vile, bilious stuff of arbitrary power, and afterwards denied it to be his, he gets his counsel in this place to resort to the loathsome mess again. They have thought proper, my Lords, to enter into an extended ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... I wanted to kill myself. But her—no! We are taught that we possess our wives, body and soul, we are brought up in that faith, we are commanded to believe it—but when I was face to face with it, those words had no meaning; that belief, those commands, they were without meaning to me, they were—vile. Oh yes, I wanted to find comfort in them, I wanted to hold on to them—but I couldn't. You may force a body; how can you force a soul? No, no—cowardly! But I wanted to—I wanted to kill him and force her to come back to me! And then, suddenly, I felt as if I were pressing right on ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... hour came round; dined, and then, Fanny having a cold, and I being tired, came over to my den in the unfinished house, where I now write to you, to the tune of the carpenters' voices, and by the light—I crave your pardon—by the twilight of three vile candles filtered through the medium of my mosquito bar. Bad ink being of the party, I write quite blindfold, and can only hope you may be granted to read that which I am unable to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... It was vile-smelling stuff, so pungent that whenever the cork was taken out of the bottle the whole house knew it, but it burned with soothing fire and Tippy rose up and called it blessed before the next day ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston

... year ago the unconstitutional and vile Sheats law was passed by the legislature of Florida. It was understood that this law was particularly aimed at the Orange Park School, of the American Missionary Association, whose fiftieth anniversary ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 6, June 1896 • Various

... beautiful Dagmar!" she wailed. "It is that vile street runner Theresa, who has carried her away!" was the burden ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis

... yet knew in favour of this Mrs. Lascelles; but they were enough to cause me irritation. I wished to be honest with somebody; let me at least be honestly inimical to her. I took out my cigarette-case, and when about to help myself, handed it, with a vile pretence at impulse, ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung

... visible likeness determines Leo to confound his friends and enemies in one common description; and the picture may be heightened by some strokes from their contemporaries of the tenth century. Except the merit and fame of military prowess, all that is valued by mankind appeared vile and contemptible to these Barbarians, whose native fierceness was stimulated by the consciousness of numbers and freedom. The tents of the Hungarians were of leather, their garments of fur; they shaved their hair, and scarified their faces: in ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon

... strong amongst the good folks of the market. One morning the Artist had paused a moment to make a rough sketch of a plump, affable man who, shadowed by the green cotton awning of his stall, was selling segments of round flat cheeses of goat's milk; vile-smelling compounds that, judged from their outer coating of withered leaves, straw, and dirt, would appear to have been made in a stable and dried on a rubbish heap. The subject of the jotting, busy with his customers, was all unconscious; but an old crone who sat, her feet resting on a tiny ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd

... countreymen let vs (I pray you) consider what honour or policy can move vs to imitate the barbarous and beastly maneres of the wilde, Godlesse and slavish Indians, especially in so vile and stinking a custome? Shall wee that disdaine to imitate the manners of our neighbour France.... Shall wee, I say without blushing abase ourselves so farre as to imitate these beastly Indians, slaves to the Spaniards, refuse to the world, and as yet aliens from the Holy Covenant of God? Why ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... Black Harry again, after a stop to see if the captain would speak. 'I've got three slugs in my stomach, and you've swore three times at me to-day like a dog—that makes six in all; I intend to send six shots through your vile carcass without killing you if I can help it. You knocked me down on the deck with the butt-end of your pistol, and ordered my body to be taken below by the hands, or else you said you'd throw it overboard. For that ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson

... charged with that as a crimen which ought rather to serve as her justification, namely, her sudden riches. For the Malleus Maleficarum expressly says that a witch can never grow rich, seeing that Satan, to do dishonour to God, always buys them for a vile price, so that they should not betray themselves by their riches. Wherefore that as Rea had grown rich, she could not have got her wealth from the foul fiend, but it must be true that she had found amber on ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold

... was thinking of the debts and mother and Betty. "Yes, indeed; I'd esteem it a great honor, and I'd be grateful to you." If I had thrust myself over-head into a sewer I should have felt less vile than I did as my fears and longings uttered those ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips

... moue me to doubte of this our fact. For Israel did vniuersalie decline frome God by embrasing idolatrie vnder Ieroboam. In whiche they did continue euen vnto the destruction of their common welthe[c]. And Iuda withe Ierusalem did followe the vile superstition and open iniquitie of Samaria[d]. But yet ceased not the prophetes of God to admonishe the one and the other: Yea euen after that God had poured furthe his plagues vpon them[e]. For Ieremie did ...
— The First Blast of the Trumpet against the monstrous regiment - of Women • John Knox

... their poets, bad as Ariosto is, divide the Orlando into three parts, and take the worst of them, and although it may contain a large portion of extremely vile poetry, it will contain more of good than the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various

... now; I don't feel equal to the encounter; besides, I must dress. But what shall I do? Since that vile woman's gone I can't dress myself. I never did such a thing in my life, and I am sure it's impossible that I can," almost weeping at the hardships she was doomed to experience ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

... who had sent her husband upon this business with quaking meekness of heart, experienced the bold indignation of virtue at his account of the way people were made their own baggage-smashers, and would not be amused when he painted the vile terrors of each husband as he tremblingly unlocked his wife's store ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... she may be, or what she may be,' he said: 'but I pity her with all my heart and soul; and I can't help her, nor can I any of the people against whom a hundred tricks, but none so vile as this, are plotted every day! Well, that adds to my pain, but not to theirs. The thing is no worse because I know it, and it tortures me as well as them. Gride and Nickleby! Good pair for a curricle. ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... The prairie had been his bed, the sky his roof, himself his own policeman, judge, and executioner since boyhood. When responsibility is so centralized wide latitudes must be allowed. But the uttermost borders of that latitude were fixed with iron rigidity, and when he had thrown a vile epithet at a decent woman he knew he had broken the law of honor. He was a cur—a cur who should be shot in his tracks for the cur ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead

... silent but potential course," said the Earl, looking around him, "without a voice which speaks to our ear, but not without influences which affect, at every change, the indwellers of this vile, earthly planet. This, if astrologers fable not, is the very crisis of my fate! The hour approaches of which I was taught to beware—the hour, too, which I was encouraged to hope for. A King was the ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... vanity, though perhaps really it is his fence. Even here in Rotterdam, I have noticed a filthy ditch, from four to ten feet wide, between the house and the road. It is nearly filled with water, which is covered with a vile green scum. The wonder is, that this stagnant water does ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic

... slowly to the place where we were to camp for the night. I expected to place her under the care of the women whom we had taken prisoners, and were carrying away with us. But all refused, saying that she was a vile little Touareg, belonging to a race which carries misfortune with it ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various

... when he was so old that he could leave home, and so help the moth-er more than he had done. The first thing he did was to drive mules on the tow-path of the O-hi-o Ca-nal; here he earned $10.00 a month, but the men he met were coarse and rough, and the life rude and vile; so, with a sad heart, the young boy, fresh from his good home in the qui-et woods, took what he had made here, and went back to the place he loved. He was sick for a long while now; and as he lay on his bed, he made up his mind that he would go to col-lege, and ...
— Lives of the Presidents Told in Words of One Syllable • Jean S. Remy

... odor from the balsam-yielding Humeriads has been perceived at a distance of four miles from the shores of South America; a species of Tetracera sends its perfume as far as that from Cuba, and the aroma of the Spice Islands is wafted many miles to sea. Now the singular thing is, that vile and injurious odors are ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay

... immodest conversation, unchaste words, vile stories, and shameless jests. [Eph. 5:3-4, Eph. 4:29] Such things are not smart, as many think, but vile and despicable. We should never take part in nor listen to a conversation which we would be ashamed to have overheard by persons ...
— An Explanation of Luther's Small Catechism • Joseph Stump

... sympathy than for the gifts they brought. Some of the visiting ladies were of this character—but they were not many. They were as a few fragrant flowers amidst a dense accumulation of noxious weeds. They were examples of humility and kindness shining amidst a vile and loathsome mass ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... apprehension, if it were not matter of history that the representatives of the Christian Church, in conflicts with every giant wrong, have always been the strongest supporters, the most obsequious tools of money power and the political sharpers who have imposed their vile tyrannies upon mankind. They have alternately supplicated and domineered, crawled in the dust or mounted the house-top, as occasion served, from Gregory to the Smiths and Joneses of the present time. So that it has passed into a proverb, that ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune

... Unhappily, vile gold, or its representation or equivalent, has been, during many centuries, the sole medium through which the majority of mankind have supplied their wants, or ministered to their luxuries. It is high time that a sage should arise to expound how the discerning few—those ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... but Love and Honour. But the End is Near. When for the Maintenance of Power, the Liberties of the Peoples are subdued by Martial Supremacy and the Dictates of Ambition the State is Lost. I lie in Vile Bondage here in Morristown under charge of Disrespeck—me that a twelvemonth past left a home and Respectable Connexions to serve my Country. Believe me still your own Love, albeit in the Power of Tyrants and condemned it ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte

... with which you embarked into the cause, were only equalled by the liberality, judgment, and decision you evinced in the accomplishment of the end you had in view. The restoration of the oppressed to liberty, and a full refutation of the vile calumnies brought against our faith—both these great objects, by the aid of Gracious Providence, have been attained. The grateful thanksgivings of the liberated prisoners pronounce you their deliverer. The ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore

... their duty to themselves and their country. I felt so ashamed of their conduct that I put spurs to my horse and galloped from the field in disgust, lest, by my remaining even for a short time, I should become contaminated by some portion of their vile spirit. Thus ended my military career in the Everly troop of Yeomanry, among the members of which were many private friends, for whom I entertained a very sincere regard, and who would never have disgraced themselves in such a way had it not been for the unworthy recommendation and advice ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt

... time, and at once gave the order to beat to quarters; before it could be obeyed the fire was extinguished, and the ship's company quitte pour la peur. Not so, however, the delinquent captain of the hold, who was at once sent to expiate his fault in the durance vile of ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes

... murderer! He, of a proud hidalgo family, a vile assassin, in thought at least?" moaned the girl, wringing her hands as soon as she had stolen to the privacy of ...
— The Young Engineers in Mexico • H. Irving Hancock

... for'ard and sat down under the shade of the newly-made mainsail, which was hoisted upon an oar with a bamboo yard. There they were quite out of hearing of the vile confession of Jessop's complicity with Chard and the captain made by the wretched man, who was now sinking fast, and knew that his hours were numbered, for, as Morrison had surmised, one of his lungs ...
— Tessa - 1901 • Louis Becke

... Mr. Collier gave it in both editions of his "Notes and Emendations," in his fac-similes made for private distribution, in his vile one-volume Shakespeare, and in the "List," etc., appended to the "Seven Lectures." But in his new edition of Shakespeare's Works (6 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various

... upon our diseased tastes, for want of some goodness, some purity and honesty to relieve it. I will not say that there is none of this in Congreve. I only know, that my recollection of his plays is like that of a vile nightmare, which I would not for anything have return to me. I have read, since, books as bad, perhaps worse in some respects, but I have found the redemption here and there. I would no more place Shandy in ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... it with the last lodgers,' says the younger flea. 'They drank vile spirits, their blood was turpentine with, I fear, a dash of vitriol. How they lived at all, I know not. I always had the headache in the morning. Here however,' and the juvenile looked steadfastly down upon the plain of flesh, the wide champaign beneath him—'here ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... ancestors retrieve their fate, And see their offspring thus degenerate; How we contend for birth and names unknown, And build on their past actions, not our own; They'd cancel records, and their tombs deface, And openly disown the vile degenerate race: For fame of families is all a cheat, It's personal virtue ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe

... heard Laurana in great wrath with Lady Clementina, and threaten her—and her young lady break out to this effect—What have I done to you, Laurana, to be so used?—You are not the cousin Laurana you used to be! You know I am not able to help myself: why do you call me crazy, and frantic, Laurana? [Vile upbraider, Lucy!] If the Almighty has laid his hand upon me, should I not ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson

... for), and that because he bore the punishment in their stead they will not have to bear it, and will be delivered from the love of it; that is the healing—the being made well of that disease—the love of sinning, the vile nature that we are all born with, because our first parents disobeyed God there in the ...
— Elsie at the World's Fair • Martha Finley

... malicious ambushes, but as rough bits of road, as obstacles to reveal and to develop our strength and gaiety. There is no joy in the world so great as the joy of finding ourselves stronger than we know; and that is what God is bent upon showing us, and not upon proving to us that we are vile and base, in the spirit of the old Calvinist who said to his own daughter when she was dying of a painful disease, that she must remember that all short of Hell was mercy. It is so; but Hell is rather what we start from, and out of which we have to find our way, than ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson

... had met Rawlings tramping in the Transvaal and given him a lift. Rawlings was not particular as to locality, having inverted the theory of Dr. Pangloss, and settled to his own satisfaction that this was the worst of all possible worlds, he held all places to be more or less equally vile. So he had followed Niekerk grumblingly down the mountain pass leading to the Low Country, and had been wasting his pessimism on the desert air of the Crocodile River Valley for several weeks ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully

... heard only her bragging tongue, and was redolent of nought but the breath of her smoke-loving borrachos; when I was a prison for her convicts and a garrison for her rabble soldiery—Spain, accursed land, I hate thee: may I, like my African neighbour, become a house and a retreat only for vile baboons rather than the viler Spaniard. May I sink beneath the billows, which is my foretold fate, ere I become again a parcel of Spain—accursed land, I hate thee, and so long as I can uphold my brow will still look ...
— A Supplementary Chapter to the Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... right to complain that I should be consigned to a dungeon for life in consequence of a trumped-up case? I am satisfied that your lordships have stated the case as it stands, but I am not satisfied that I have been convicted under any law. I have been four months in durance vile, and vile durance it has been. The preachers tell us that hell is a very bad place, and the devil a very bad boy, but he could not hold a candle to ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown

... one or two from his Excellency's life-Guard, who were to have assassinated him: knowing that no person could be admitted into the magazines or among the cannon but those who were of the Artillery they have found several in our Regiment vile enough to be concerned in their diabolical Designs—these were to have blown up the Magazines and spiked the cannon. (Tell Homans, one Rotch, a fellow he bled for me in Morton's company at No 1 is taken up with his brother ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston

... fond of hunting, fond of a good dinner; and a friar even more worldly and pleasure-loving. There was a pardoner, a man who sold pardons to those who had done wrong, and a sumpnour or summoner, who was so ugly and vile that children were afraid of him. A summoner was a person who went to summon or call people to appear before the Church courts when they had done wrong. He was a much-hated person, and both he and the pardoner were great rogues and cheats and had no ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... and he gets mad. "Villains!" he yells, and he abuses them about their vile daggers hacking one another in the sides of Caesar (a little matter that ought to be worn threadbare by now), and calls them apes and hounds and bondmen and curs, and O, flatterers (which seems ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson

... miles, direction for the first fourth of the way NE., then considerably to the eastward, when we soon left the valley and commenced with an ascent over a low ridge by a vile stony road over undulating ground. On reaching the ridge a similar descent took place, where the road becomes less stony, but much intersected by ravines. We encamped about three miles from the ridge, in a rather barren narrow valley. Nothing of interest occurred on the road, except Dost ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith

... and intentions of my respectable ally. As by touch of enchanter's wand, the scales fell from my eyes; illusions vanished, and I saw myself and my associates in the right colours, myself as a miserable dupe, them as vile sharpers. So confounded was I by the suddenness of the illumination, that for a moment I stood speechless and motionless, gazing vacantly into the tempter's face. He took my silence for acquiescence, and opened his lips to ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various

... according to our calling, are to be done; and meanwhile, to be diligent in outward good works, and to serve our calling. In these things consist the true perfection and the true service of God. It does not consist in celibacy, or in begging, or in vile apparel. But the people conceive many pernicious opinions from the false commendations of monastic life. They hear celibacy praised above measure; therefore they lead their married life with offense to their consciences. They hear that ...
— The Confession of Faith • Various

... God's worst man to shrink from employing—against however vile an enemy—such an instrument as the Zayat Kiss. So thinking, my eye was caught ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer

... vermilion, was discovered upon a splendid handkerchief—it gave Mrs. P. an electric shock; but, O horror! the next thing turned up was a spangle, big as a half dime, upon one of Mrs. P.'s most superb skirts! This awful revelation, connected with the smell of vile lavender and worse patchouly, upon another piece of woman gear, threw Mrs. Pompaliner into spasms, between the motions ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley

... vile scoffer. Set an example to Europe, Madam, by doing what I am going to do. Marry again. Marry some good man who will be a strength and ...
— Great Catherine • George Bernard Shaw

... her own—and he, like a bald little blacksmith's apprentice as he is, having made some money and got out of durance, washes and dresses himself as a bridegroom and marries his master's daughter. What will be the issue of such marriages? Will they not be vile and bastard, devoid of truth and nature? 'They will.' Small, then, is the remnant of genuine philosophers; there may be a few who are citizens of small states, in which politics are not worth thinking of, or who have been detained by ...
— The Republic • Plato

... vile yet in your eyes? then by the name Of Father, let me once more sue for him, Who is the only now remaining Branch With me, of that most ancient root, whose Body You ...
— The Laws of Candy - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... shook him off, and at once recovered himself. "Wretched boys! let me see what you have been doing to-night. Oh, as usual," he said, glancing at the complete disorder which they had been effecting. "Ha! but what is this? So Brigson has introduced another vile secret among you. Well, he shall rue it!" and he pointed to some small, almost invisible flakes of a whitish substance scattered here and there over his pillow. It was a kind of powder, which if once it touched the skin, caused the most violent and ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar

... marched for the Rhine early in 1743, both in the same regiment. James was now sixteen, Edward fifteen. The march was a terrible one for such delicate boys. The roads were ankle-deep in mud; the weather was vile; both food and water were very bad. Even the dauntless Wolfe had to confess to his mother that he was 'very much fatigued and out of order. I never come into quarters without aching hips and knees.' Edward, still more delicate, was sent off on a foraging party to find something for the ...
— The Winning of Canada: A Chronicle of Wolf • William Wood

... because they are human and lack the dreadful undivided energy of the beast. And the only comfort he might seem to hold out to us is the prospect that at least this bestial race, strong only where it is vile, cannot endure: though stars and gods are powerless, or careless, or empty dreams, yet there must be an end of this ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... napkin with the address, "To Marcus Aurelius, flamen of Mars, and decurion of Pompeii"). Sometimes these paintings have a smack of humor; there are two that go together on the same wall. One of them shows a cock and a hen strolling about full of life, while upon the other the cock is in durance vile, with his legs tied and looking most doleful ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier

... sought to drag discussion of the doings of the Land League twelve years ago, and concentrated on Mr. Sexton a violent attack. He was not allowed to proceed to the end of his chapter. The charge was heinous, vile, and such as has rarely been introduced in the House in such a fashion, and soon the temper rose to a fever heat. Mr. Sexton is a dangerous man ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor

... words, With mingled falsehoods and denials loud, Man witnessed God unto his fellow man: How then himself the voice of Nature hear? Or how himself he heeded, when, the leader, He in the chorus sang a discord vile? When prophet lies, how shall the people preach? But when He came in poverty, and low, A real man to half-unreal men, A man whose human thoughts were all divine, The head and upturned face of human kind— Then God shone forth from all the lowly earth, And men began to read ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald

... very great man or a very good man without any literary culture; he may do his country and the world imperishable services in peace or war. But the older the world grows, the rarer must these unlettered geniuses become. Literature in one form or another—too often no doubt put to vile uses—has become so much part of the very texture of civilised life that a wide-awake mind can scarcely fail to take notice of it. And in any case we need not consider that kind of special genius which education does little either to make or mar. No one is likely seriously to deny ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various

... fire-bringer; Mackenzie was the child of the Wolf, or in other words, the Devil. For them to bring a truce to this perpetual warfare, to marry their daughters to the arch-enemy, were treason and blasphemy of the highest order. No phrase was harsh nor figure vile enough in branding Mackenzie as a sneaking interloper and emissary of Satan. There was a subdued, savage roar in the deep chests of his listeners as he took ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London

... them. "Truly, friends, you are hardly dealt with," said the former, as he shook hands. "We had tyrannical proceedings enough in the time of the first Charles, but it seems to me that we are even worse off now. I would that I could collect a band of honest fellows and rescue you out of this vile den." ...
— A True Hero - A Story of the Days of William Penn • W.H.G. Kingston

... "But, Liza, it's vile . . . it's insulting," said Mashenka, breathless with indignation. "It's so mean, so low! What right had she to suspect me and to rummage in ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... when the great scheme came near being wrecked. One was when Italy, the sleeping partner of the Triple Alliance, who was not made a sharer in these grandiose and vile projects, attacked and conquered the Turkish province of Tripoli in 1911, and strained to breaking-point the loyalty of the Turks to Germany. The other was when, under the guidance of the two great statesmen ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir

... totally dejected by this unforeseen blow, which even forced tears from his eyes, and compelled him to utter such expressions as were altogether unworthy so great a man. There was something very dark and vile in Marius's conduct, that displays ambition in its native and genuine colours, and shows that it extinguishes, in those who abandon themselves to it, all sense of honour and integrity.(M151) Metellus, having anxiously endeavoured to avoid a man whose sight he could not bear, arrived in Rome, ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... the bigots of the bench declared their treason vile— What though they languish'd slowly in the felon's distant isle— Shall we, the children of Reform, withhold our just applause From those who loved the people and, of course, despised ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... tried to laugh it down. Then he made the mistake of attempting to reply. I let out a few more links, and I cut him to the raw and therein rubbed winged and flaming epithets. Nor was my fine frenzy all whim and literary; I was indignant at this vile creature, who, in default of a dollar, would consign me to three months of slavery. Furthermore, I had a sneaking idea that he got a "drag" out of the ...
— The Road • Jack London

... Caesar was as a god, and she as his kinswoman had been brought up to worship in him not the man—that might be vile—but the supreme power in the Empire which he represented. She did not pause to think if he were base, tyrannical, a half-crazy despot without mind or heart or sensibilities. She knew what was said about him, she had even seen at times things from which she ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... doctors examined the fresh patients, and one forced me to swallow a dose of medicine. Why, I could not think, unless he wanted me to know what really vile stuff he ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens

... been consumed for the trip, during which time he had sat in the stuffy, superheated car, whose foul air reeked of cheap tobacco and drying garments, and listened to the guffaws of the train-crew as they regaled each other with vile stories and long accounts of revolting personal experiences ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx

... pass under a mock triumphal arch, hung with dead dogs and drowned cats; and from this point the reception assumed an outrageous character. Howls, hootings, and hisses were heard on all sides; bouquets of nettles and vile weeds were flung to them; even wreaths of spoiled fish dropped from the windows. The women were the most eager and uproarious in this carnival of insult: they beat their saucepans, threw pails of dirty water upon the horses, pelted the coachman with rotten cabbages, ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor

... Aziel, "save that no wrong can right a wrong, I almost grieve that I cried shame upon the counsel of Metem. Sweet lady, be sure of this, that I will give all I have, even to my life, to protect you from the vile fate you dread—yes, ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard

... Valadeva, they took their seats once more in that assembly. Then Rama, that oppressor of foes, spoke unto Vasudeva, saying, 'Why, O Janardana, sittest thou, gazing silently? O Achyuta, it was for thy sake that the son of Pritha had been welcomed and honoured by us. It seemeth, however, that that vile wretch deserved not our homage. What man is there born of a respectable family that would break the plate after having dined from it! Even if one desireth to make such an alliance, yet remembering all the services he hath received, who is there, desirous of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... piled in solidly, each alternate layer at right angles with the one beneath it. A cover of boards and heavy stones was piled on top. In four or five days the bates were taken up and the rotted leaves removed. A slower process was termed dew-retting; an old author calls it "a vile and naughty way," but it was the way chiefly employed ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle

... any more, I could not change the strain. My head aches, and my heart is heavy. The world appears an "unweeded garden," where "things rank and vile" ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft

... and Miss Fidget were sold, both at good prices; for the horse had won the last race at Tuam, and that put him up in the market, in spite of Bob's vile comparison between him and his owner's bullocks; and the mare was a favourite among the Roscommon gentry, who knew little Larry could ride ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope

... I not forbid—ay, and that under the heaviest penalties—any child of mine from so much as putting the head inside one of those vile heretic buildings? Would God they were every one of them destroyed! Heaven send some speedy judgment upon those who build and those who dare to worship therein! What wonder that a son turns in defiance upon his father, when he stuffs his ears with the pestilent heresies ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green

... their civilisation? Vast, I allow: but vile. Cloacae: sewers. The Jews in the wilderness and on the mountaintop said: It is meet to be here. Let us build an altar to Jehovah. The Roman, like the Englishman who follows in his footsteps, brought to every new shore on which he set his foot ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... at this tale of distress in his usual way. "Somebody ought to do something. It's a vile shame the kid being turned out ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... the war party should pour upon his head more than seven vials of theological wrath. The religious doctrines which he espoused were, odious not only because they were deemed vile in themselves but because ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... spacciare a Socrate in quella commedia ... il misero in tanto scherno e derisione del pubblico, che perfino i vasai dipingevano il suo ritratto sopra gli orci, i fiaschi, i boccali, e ogni vasellamento da piu vile servigio. Cosi quel sommo filosofo ... fu condotto a far di se par le case d'Atene una continua commedia, con solamente vederlo comparir cosi scontraffatto e ridicolo, come i ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... order of the king" upon the face of this strange spokesman of democracy, adds yet another feature of justice to the scene; in all time, travesty has been the argument of oppression; and, in all time, the oppressed might have made this answer: "If I am vile, is it not your system that has made me so?" This ghastly laughter gives occasion, moreover, for the one strain of tenderness running through the web of this unpleasant story: the love of the blind girl ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... "Because you have abused the goodwill of a generous family; because you have tortured a kind old man and a loving daughter. If you were as white as any person on earth, I would not marry you. Worse than all outward semblance is a dark and vile mind. Do what you like! ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter

... been said, and deservedly, in reprobation of the vile mixture which Dryden has thrown into the Tempest: doubtless without some such vicious alloy, the impure ears of that age would never have sate out to hear so much innocence of love as is contained in ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... that... experiment, yesterday I realised completely that I could never bear to do it.... Why am I going over it again, then? Why am I hesitating? As I came down the stairs yesterday, I said myself that it was base, loathsome, vile, vile... the very thought of it made me feel sick ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... presents mediaeval society to us under the influence of chivalry. Suitably enough, we have beside each other most lifelike pictures of the base and superstructure of the system. This, the man— free, generous; that, the serf—vile, ungrateful, kept in order by fear alone, but the necessary counterpart of the splendid figure of his master. One of our writers today has regretted the absence of a chapter in praise of the good man to set beside Solomon's picture of the virtuous woman. Bartholomew has certainly endeavoured ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele

... I hear him utter the memorable words, "I know that my Redeemer liveth, &c." and on my reminding him that Job exclaimed also, "Behold I am vile," he assented to the excellence of that language of repentance and humility. Indeed, I well remember his heartily agreeing with me in an observation I made some months before, "That a progress in religion was to be discerned by a progressive knowledge of our ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... forbears to slake, But fans the fire, from a base desire some pitiful gain for himself to reap; Or takes, in office, his gifts and bribes, while the city is tossed on the stormy deep; Who fort or fleet to the foe betrays; or, a vile Thorycion, ships away Forbidden stores from Aegina's shores, to Epidaurus across the Bay Transmitting oarpads and sails and tar, that curst collector of five per cents; The knave who tries to procure supplies for the use of the enemy's armaments; The Cyclian singer who dares ...
— The Frogs • Aristophanes

... twined its leash about one leg of its master—who was an alien from Wapping—and the spout of a zinc watering-can which a porter had left upon the platform; for which joke it had received a vile cuff on its wrinkled physiognomy from ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest

... the notion that there is anything violent or alarming about the Water Cure; and to convince the patient that every part of it is positively enjoyable. There was no shock to the system: there was nothing painful: no nauseous medicines to swallow; no vile bleeding and blistering. Sitz-baths, foot-baths, plunge-baths, douches, and wet-sheet packings, speedily began to do their work upon Mr. Lane; and what with bathing, walking, hill-climbing, eating and drinking, and making up fast friendships with some of his brethren ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... and manner of life we know nothing, except that three years before he had sworn a vile oath and been condemned to pay a fine of two sols.[400] Apparently when he took the oath he was in great wrath.[401] He was more or less intimate with Bertrand de Poulengy, who had certainly spoken to him ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France

... avail is deed so vile? Doth Herod gain by murderous guile? Of all to death so foully done Escapes triumphant ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius

... of Louvain, which was one of the vile acts of the Germans during the early days of the war, is described briefly in the report of the commission ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller

... Derby with a madwoman dragging at the bridle. He had had a sure thing then, and it was whisked away just when it would have enabled him to pass the crisis of his life. Wife, home, the old fascinating, crowded life—they had all vanished because of that vile trick of destiny; and ever since then he had been wandering in the wilderness through years that brought no fruit of his labours. Yet here was his chance, his great chance, to get back what he had and was in the old misspent days, with new purposes in life to follow and serve; and it was all ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... neutral or blind-eyed about George Harley. He had followed all the moves that had forced the war upon the nations whose spineless and inefficient governments had so long been playing the policy of the ostrich. He had nothing but detestation for the vile and ruthless methods of the German war party and nation and nothing but contempt for the allied politicians who had made such methods possible. He had followed the course of the war with pain, anguish and bated breath, thrilling at the ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton

... repression. Devar's careless acceptance of the city's grandeur had jarred; the exuberance of the joyous throng on the jetty had touched dormant chords of sad memories; even at the very portals of the hotel the building's newness had struck a bizarre note; and now, as though to emphasize the vile crime of which he had been an involuntary witness, came the stifling knowledge that somewhere in New York an expectant bride was chafing at delay—a delay caused by an assassin's dagger, while there was not lacking even the tormenting suspicion ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy

... Turquoise angrily, "can you not prevent this vile Earth Being from addressing us? It is an insult to be spoken to by one ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum

... complete set of my works to each of your children. I might have generalised on the ill-effects of those vices from a special case—my own case. Had I done so, I could have got it printed. I can get anything printed that I write. I preferred to take a newer line, and to show you how vile you are when you use matches. Everything is vile. But you are wondering, perhaps, how a great novelist becomes a small faddist. You must wait till next month, and then read my article on the immorality ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 21, 1891 • Various

... promises, shows him he has had his Hell after, as promised, and that it is a better punishment than one that leaves him with a serious "crime" entry on his Defaulter's Sheet for life.... That vile and damning sheet that records the youthful peccadilloes and keeps it a life-long punishment after its own severe punishment.... To the Rough-Riding Sergeant-Major he quietly remarks: "No good non-com makes crimes ... and don't forget that the day of riding-school brutality ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren

... aloof, would he do nothing that she might die in peace, in the joy of the final triumph of the Rougons, he who was so intelligent, so affectionate, so good? He would go to mass, would he not, next Sunday? and he would burn all those vile papers, only to think of which made her ill. She entreated, commanded, threatened. But he no longer answered her, calm and invincible in his attitude of perfect deference. He wished to have no discussion. He knew her too well either to hope to convince ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola

... "The vile Jesuits!" exclaimed the squire, wrathfully, "and but a three-month gone they were tricking their constituents with loud-voiced cries that the charge that they desired independence was one trumped up by the ministry to injure the American ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... side—stern, harsh, bare justice—when he came there to her and flung back her love and promises into her teeth. He had the right to do so, and she would not complain. But he should not leave her till he had acquitted her of the vile, missish crime of flirting with another because he was absent. Seeing that he still hardly understood her, she made her speech ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... is a palace which belonged to a family of that name. Like many houses of the sort in Italy, it fell to vile uses, and its hall of audience was turned into a lumber-room. The Operai of Vercelli, I was told, bought the palace a few years ago, restored the noble hall, and devoted a smaller room to a collection of pictures valuable for students of the early Vercellese style of ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds

... 'Vile as thou art, ofttimes in thee have met Mercy and Truth—and Peace and Righteousness Have kissed each other; and thine heart is set Ofttimes to follow what is just, redress Where thou hast trespassed, rendering; ofttimes, too, Forgiving other's trespass: to distress Thou ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... thus with a loud voice: "To be sure thou hast kept this city wonderfully pure for God's sake; the temple also continues entirely unpolluted! Nor hast thou been guilty of ally impiety against him for whose assistance thou hopest! He still receives his accustomed sacrifices! Vile wretch that thou art! if any one should deprive thee of thy daily food, thou wouldst esteem him to be an enemy to thee; but thou hopest to have that God for thy supporter in this war whom thou hast deprived of his everlasting ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus

... have lost my gait and cannot get started. It's a long time since I have done anything new; I always strike the same note. You know that some people, envious of my reputation are always throwing that defect in my face, like a vile insult." ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... awakened to life yet. The brutalisation is so extreme that while it is still fresh in one's mind, one would as soon express belief in God or man or the future of humanity or in a Utopia, or anything else of the sort, as give utterance to something that one knows to be a vile deception. What is the sense of our sentimentalising over man's dignity, his divine destiny, when such fearful, inane injustice is wrought upon innocent persons and cannot ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann

... vile temper that afternoon, certainly," he said, "and I treated you shamefully. But what I do want to make you realize is that I would have cut off my hand rather than have made you—or any one—publicly ridiculous. Will you ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner

... She hurried over all the hateful words and passages in the Bible, Shakespeare, or any other book she might be reading. The words she would not even pronounce to herself, so strongly did her delicate mind revolt from a vile idea, and sicken at the expression of it. But, nevertheless, she pored patiently over every book she could get that had a great reputation, and in this way she read many not usually given to girls, ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... the cut-flowers. They did not open their hearts to it; they made no eager response to it; it was a thing that shone upon the surface, and that was all. Their lives consequently wilted and shriveled and grew less beautiful. They were like violets made vile by the very light that was designed to make them lovely. Mr. Tryan, Mr. Jerome and Mrs. Pettifer, on the other hand, opened their hearts to the love of God as the rose opens its petals to the light of the sun. Their religion was a revelry to them. So far from its merely beating upon the surface, ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham

... he descended the slope, "must I needs bring so pure and innocent a girl to shame? Had it all to end in my doing what any other average man would have done? God bless her! It would have been too vile.... I am glad that I wasn't as bad as all that. How utterly revolting ... all in a moment ... without a word ... like some animal!" Thus he thought with disgust of what a little while before had made him glad and strong. Yet he felt ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef

... numerous bankruptcies, frauds, swindling, forgeries, and other evils of immorality, extravagance, and misery. The fair and honest dealers suffer most from the intrusion of these infamous speculators, who expecting, like other vile men wallowing in wealth under their eyes, to make rapid fortunes, and to escape detection as well as punishment—commit crimes to soothe disappointment. Nothing is done but for ready money, and even bankers' bills, or bills accepted by bankers, are not ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... man who had seen many changes, And always changed as true as any needle; His Polar Star being one which rather ranges, And not the fixed—he knew the way to wheedle: So vile he 'scaped the doom which oft avenges; And being fluent (save indeed when fee'd ill), He lied with such a fervour of intention— There was no doubt he earned his ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... abundant, needst thou envy, thou pure island stream!—and far less yon turbid river of old, not modern renown, gurgling beneath the walls of what was once proud Rome, towering Rome, Jupiter's town, but now vile Rome, crumbling Rome, Batuscha's town, far less needst thou envy the turbid Tiber of bygone fame, creeping sadly to the sea, surcharged with the abominations of modern Rome—how unlike to thee, thou pure ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... ask you, for I have not a single bribe to offer. I merely intend to marry you. I am a ne'er-do-well, a debauchee, a tippler, a compendium of all the vices you care to mention. I am not a bit in love with you, and as any woman will forewarn you, I am sure to make you a vile husband. Your solitary chance is to bully me into temperance and propriety and common-sense, with precisely seven million probabilities against you, because I am a seasoned and accomplished liar. Can you do that bullying, Bettie,—and keep it ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al

... and doubtless contract some sovereign alliance. Vain illusions! Conflicts of the heart were about to succeed to those political storms from whose effects she had just recovered. The most vainglorious of the daughters of France was destined to extinguish with the wet blanket of vile prose the brilliancy of a long ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... Sence it hez become a fixed fact that the boorish tailor, who now by accident okkepies the place uv the marter Linkin, made vacant by his untimely death by the hand uv a vile assassin (whose only redeemin trait wuz that he wuz a stanch, uncompromisin Dimocrat),—now, I say, that it's plain that this drunken sot ain't agoin to distribute the patronage amongst us who need it so much, I ask, in indignashun, wat is it that ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby

... the young orphan, who trusted him so entirely. To his generous nature, the wrong seemed all the greater because the object was so unconscious of it. "It is I who have subjected her to the insolence of this vile man," he said within himself. "But I will repair the wrong. Innocent, confiding soul that she is, I will protect her. The sanction of marriage shall shield her from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... John Christie and Janet Robertson, his spouse, for their riots committed by them on one another, these divers years bygone in back-biting, slandering, and abusing of one another with vile speeches, and in dinging (hitting), hurting, and bleeding of one another, and specially upon the last day of August last by passed, ye both enterit (attacked) one another, on the High King's Causey in presence of divers strangers, and there the said John Christie ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 2, December 1875 • Various

... prestige of royal favor and princely munificence," suffered also the drawbacks incidental to these advantages—the odium attending the unjust and despotic measures resorted to for its advancement, the vile character of royal officials, who condoned their private vices by a more ostentatious zeal for their official church, and the well-founded popular suspicion of its pervading disloyalty to the interests and the ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... the heart of a man, I will not suffer degradation!" cried Nobili. "It is because I have the heart of a man, I will not sink into an unworthy tool! This is why I refuse to live with her. She is one of a vile conspiracy. She has joined with the marchesa against me. I have been forced to marry her. I will not live ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot

... manner in which the people of the Roman provinces were outraged by the officers sent to rule over them, and we shall anticipate our story a little in tracing it. The provincial governors were, as a class, corrupt, and Verres was as vile as any of them, but he was also brutal in his manners and natural instincts, rapacious, licentious, cruel, and fond of low companions. At first, one of the Marian faction, he betrayed his associates, embezzled the funds that had been entrusted to him, and joined himself ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman

... considerable effect, and no little astonishment on some gentlemen who intended that I should say nothing. I have adopted frankly and unequivocally Lord Durham's view of government, and I think that I have done all that could be done to prevent its being perverted to vile purposes of faction. ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... this world, who are carried away by scorn and anger, utter their feelings simply and directly. Godwin's characters pause to cull their words from dictionaries. Forester's invective, when he believes that Williams has basely robbed his master is astonishingly elegant: "Vile calumniator! You are the abhorrence of nature, the opprobrium of the human species and the earth can only be freed from an insupportable burthen by your being exterminated."[81] The diction is so elaborately dignified that the contempt which was meant almost to annihilate Caleb ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead

... in a vile humor, so much could be seen at a glance. Without doing me the honor of a single glance he stared moodily in front of him, his heavy black brows knit to a ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine

... had he his imperious wife to consider, but he was appointed custodian of Mary Queen of Scots when that unhappy personage was under the ban of Queen Elizabeth and was sent prisoner to Worksop Manor. She was kept strictly in durance vile, for the Earl was a rigid warder, and did not even allow her ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard

... sickening superiority, could thus deny her, and with her all women! That stare was as if he saw her—a doll tricked out in garments labelled soul, spirit, rights, responsibilities, dignity, freedom—all so many words. It was vile, it was horrible, that he should see her thus! And a really terrific struggle began in her between the desire to get up and cry this out, and the knowledge that it would be stupid, undignified, even mad, to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... surrounded, The vile insatiate despots dare, Their thirst of power and gold unbounded, To mete and vend the light and air. Like beasts of burden would they load us, Like gods, would bid their slaves adore; But man is man, and who is ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid

... specie, in fact, is not the durability of the metal, which is less than that of steel, nor its utility, which is much below that of wheat, iron, coal, and numerous other substances, regarded as almost vile when compared with gold; neither is it its scarcity or density, for in both these respects it might be replaced, either by labor spent upon other materials, or, as at present, by bank notes representing vast amounts of iron or copper. The distinctive feature of ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... aware that their own safety depends to a very great extent upon your not getting out. Believe me, if you do not know already, that there is nothing like fear for making a good watch-dog. Farewell, friend Fairfax! You have been instrumental in sending a good many men into durance vile; you can tell me later how you like ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby

... The vile plot would no doubt have succeeded, and the deaths put down to ptomaine poisoning, as so many have been, had I not so fortunately recognised the young valet as he crossed the ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux

... good brethren, for to-morrow this Maid shall be tried by the ordeal of fire if that be the will of our governors. Then shall we see if she can work miracles or not," and so he went on gibing, while they grinned horribly upon me. Never saw I so many vile faces of the basest people come together, from their filthy dens in Paris. But as my eyes ran over them with loathing, I beheld a face I knew; the face of that violer woman who had been in our company before we came to Chinon, and lo! perched on her shoulder, chained with ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang

... up a daily paper without seeing some exposure of their many-sided viciousness. They contaminate the land with their godless depravity. Nobody can count on immunity. The highest officials in the land, the very Ministers of the Crown, are subjected to their vile disguised attempts at bribery and corruption, no humble peasant girl, no child, is safe from the befoulment of their filthy minds. We know them—our police records, the archives of our Courts of Justice, testify to their demoralizing agency. A pest, a contagion! Who can tell what proposals were ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... the monks raised the standard of the cross, recited their orisons, surrounded the spring, the white rock and the Temple of the Sun, and piled high the firewood. Then, having exorcised the locality, they called the Devil by all the vile names they could think of, to show their lack of respect, and finally commanded him never to return to this vicinity. Calling on Christ and the Virgin, they applied fire to the wood. "The poor ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham

... minister.[80] The atheistical substance of the essay, however, apart from the pique of a favourite, would have given sufficiently good grounds for a prosecution in England, and in France for that vile substitute for prosecution, the lettre-decachet. And there happened to be special causes for harshness towards the press at this moment. Verses had been published satirising the king and his manner of life in bitter terms, and a stern ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley



Words linked to "Vile" :   despicable, nauseous, loathsome, ugly, worthless, noisome, wretched, unwholesome, vileness



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