"Immoral" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... legal expenses are you say paid; and if they were not, I should feel myself bound, as the head of the family, to defray them, but I can go no further. I cannot bring myself to sanction an expenditure for certainly very unnecessary, perhaps, and I much fear it, for illegal and very immoral purposes." ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... have you?" said Walters admiringly. "Is it the way they say it is? Gee, these French are immoral. Look at this woman here. She'll sleep with a feller soon as ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... other arbitrary course of study, is a mental strait-waistcoat. It has a more immoral and degenerating effect upon the mind because it is applied directly. If physical restraint acts perniciously upon the reasoning powers, a far greater degree of harm must be caused by direct mental restraint. Yet nobody, from Arnold and Thring down to the professional crammer ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... suspiciously-red noses of the newspaper men should have smelt the "immoral conduct" of Maxim Gorky, was really very fortunate for the latter. He is now relieved from the impertinence of interviewers and prominent personages. He must feel as if he had recovered from some loathsome disease. Immorality has after all many desirable qualities. What if chickens gaggle, pharisaic ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... her father had been a man of immoral habits was not new to her. His predilection for fast women had long ago made it impossible for her to live in the same house with him for more than a week at a time. But that he had trampled in the mire the lifelong friendship of an honourable man ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... story first appeared, by marrying a widow whom he had been forced by Mr. Darrow to love before her husband died. Mr. Darrow manufactured, with five strokes of his pen, an engine and a tunnel to crush the life out of the poor fellow, whom an immoral romancer would have allowed to live on and marry the lady, and with perfect propriety too, since the hero and the heroine were both of them the very models of virtue, in spite of the love which they did not seek, and which Mr. Darrow deliberately and almost brutally thrust into their ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... one other aspect of this great subject, which is almost peculiar to New England, the home of reform. Certain Puritanical pessimists have argued that the use of tobacco is immoral. There are few, except our own sober people, who would admit this question at all. We would treat this prejudice with the respect due to all sincere reforms. And we have attempted to show, that, since all races have used and will ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... the aims and the experiences of the old fighting and sporting days had passed away, and nothing was left but ceaseless toil, these essentially combative people, to whom violent and continuous excitement was the very breath of life, became, for a while at least, knavish and immoral, sunk almost to one dead social level, and totally uninteresting because, in their new life of peaceful tillage—a life far more suited to their English law-givers than to themselves—they were apparently incapable of maintaining that complete, vigilant interest in their ordinary surroundings ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... to every question. If thou hast genius and poverty to thy lot, dwell on the foolish, perplexing, imprudent, dangerous, and even immoral, conduct of promise-breach in small things, of want of punctuality, of procrastination in all its shapes and disguises. Force men to reverence the dignity of thy moral strength in and for itself,—seeking no excuses or palliations from fortune, or sickness, or a too full mind that, in opulence of ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... and old-fashioned canons of decorum renders "American girlhood" synonymous with flippant pertness. Moulded by two women who were imbued with the spirit of Richter's admonition: "Girls like the priestesses of old, should be educated only in sacred places, and never hear, much less see, what is rude, immoral or violent"; the pate tendre of Leo's character showed unmistakably ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... whoops of Indian warriors. Advancing a few paces farther, a sudden turn of the road brought them in sight of two drunken soldiers, who were cursing and swearing and hallooing in a manner quite outrageous and immoral; and now and then, by way of adding a little spice to this part of their entertainment, firing off their pistols into the tree-tops. And this it was that had given rise to those wild rumors that had thrown the whole country into such a terrible panic. ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... us with other facts, which at a first glance appear highly immoral; I am referring to certain phases of sexual love among the lower animals, and his ghoulish revelations concerning the horrible bridals of the Arachnoids, the Millepoda, and ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... poetry other than dramatic, the Restoration critics were at one in judging blank verse too "low" for a poem of heroic dimensions; and though Addison gave it the preference in epic poetry, Johnson was its persistent foe, and regarded it as little short of immoral. But for that matter, Gray could endure no blank verse outside of Milton. This is curious, that rhyme, a mediaeval invention, should have been associated in the last century with the classical school of poetry; while blank ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... connotation therewith, and it is hard to change the point of view of ages when it affects personal indulgence so profoundly. The white man has been taught, down as many ages, perhaps, that these physical acts have moral connotation and are illicit when divorced therefrom, yet he is as careless and immoral in this country as the Indian is careless and unmoral. And the white man's careless and immoral conduct is the chief obstacle which those who would engraft upon the Indian the moral consciousness must ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... understands the fascination so well; and it gives so much pleasure to—twenty-two, that it is almost immoral for an old fogy like myself to monopolise it. I don't understand you in the ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... fanatic.) Now any man is free to accept the last horn of this dilemma, if he chooses. It is a free country. But if he takes that, we insist that he is logically bound to call Christianity a cheat, a delusion, a snare and a curse to humanity! He shall not ask us to swallow the monstrous and immoral proposition, that this outrageous lie and imposture is the glory, the blessing ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... branch of commerce, while it was regarded as conducive to the welfare of the community, or compatible with humanity and justice. But they were competent to withdraw their countenance from it, when it was found to be immoral, and injurious, and disgraceful to the state. They, who engaged in it, knew the terms under which they were placed, and adopted it with all the risks with which it was accompanied; and of consequence it was but just, that they should ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... present—that is, offer their votes to whatever party will promise further concessions to Irish Nationalism; and they will probably find no more difficulty in getting an English party to consent to such an immoral bargain ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... to Parliament for relief; we did with the question what some one proposed we should do with poisons—make them so costly that only wealthy men should be able to afford the luxury of suicide. So long as men believed that divorce was immoral, I don't think any one complained that it should be limited to persons in affluence. We are a lord-loving race, we English, and are quite ready to concede that our superiors should have more vices than ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... an immoral man or woman than a bad-tempered one. An immoral person can often be a very charming companion, quite easy to live with—if you take the various excuses for sudden absences at their face value, and don't probe too deeply into ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... powerless! What other wretch save thee would think of acting thus?' Then that foremost king of Bharata's race eyed with pity that perpetrator of wicked deeds, and believing that he had lost his senses, said, 'Mayst thy heart grow in virtue! Never set thy heart again on immoral deeds! Thou mayst depart in peace now with thy charioteers, cavalry and infantry.' Thus addressed by Yudhishthira, the prince, O Bharata, was overpowered with shame, and bending down his head, he silently and sorrowfully wended his way to the place where the Ganga debouches ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... successful results. It may mean a private society or a chartered company for the improvement of human live stock. But for the present it is far more likely to mean a blatant repudiation of such proposals as indecent and immoral, with, nevertheless, a general secret pushing of the human will in the repudiated direction; so that all sorts of institutions and public authorities will under some pretext or other feel their way furtively towards the Superman. Mr Graham Wallas ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... disobedience in such case will generally leave little soreness, except the thing forbidden should be in its own nature wrong, and then, indeed, 'Don Worm, the conscience,' may begin to bite. But Robert felt nothing immoral in playing upon his grandfather's violin, nor even in taking liberties with a piece of lumber for which nobody cared but possibly the dead; therefore he was not unhappy, only much disappointed, very empty, and somewhat gloomy. There was nothing to look forward to now, no secret full of riches ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... his mission. He argued that his work could, at the worst, give only temporary advantage to Germany. So far as there is any evidence to show, Lenine has been personally incorruptible. Holding lightly what he scornfully derides as "bourgeois morality," unmoral rather than immoral, willing to use any and all means to achieve ends which he sincerely believes to be the very highest and noblest that ever inspired mankind, he would, doubtless, take German money if he saw that it would help him to achieve his purposes. He would do so, however, without any thought ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... Parvati, his goddess wife, by his side, and all the emblems of his authority, as scepter and sword, around him. The statue seems to express the joy of sovereignty, and, though somewhat mutilated, it is noticeably free from the immoral suggestions which have been intimated in many descriptions of it. Entrance to the statue is flanked by great guardian statues, and the whole chancel, so to speak, is enclosed by a broad and lofty corridor, in the manner ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... serve to promote and intrench the business of prostitution. These conditions are as real as any other factors and will block reform until they are squarely met. One of these is the excessive profit on property used for immoral purposes. The fact that such property is often owned by persons who pass as respectable members of society does not make the problem easier. Then there is the intimate connection between the sale of intoxicating liquors and commercialized prostitution, ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... official capacity. He had the gift of words to an uncommon degree, and I do not forget his crushing blow at the reputation of the poet Burns, as delivered under the auspices of the Thrums Literary Society. "I am of opeenion," said Bowie, "that the works of Burns is of an immoral tendency. I have not read them myself, but such is ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... all mercy and all love and no justice. That would have meant no moral laws; for why have moral laws, if there would be no penalty, no justice? That would have meant a premium on crime. That would have meant the debased, the debauched, the immoral, the drunken, the fiend, on a level with the chaste, the pure, the upright, the true. That would have meant unbridled rein to passion and lust and every other evil inclination, and no penalty following. That would have meant Hell in trying to get ...
— God's Plan with Men • T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin
... are!" said Sir Peter. "Finicky and immoral, that's what I call it! That's the way trouble begins, the more children the less nonsense. Why don't you have more children instead of sitting sneering at ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... intense delight! If the natural conscience murmurs in whispers at moments, the acquired superposed conscience immediately imposes silence, concealing personal hatreds under public pretexts: the guillotined, after all, were aristocrats, and whoever comes under the guillotine is immoral. Thus, the means are good and the end better; in employing the means, as well as in pursuing the end, the function ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... terrible mystery. We can see how in the pre-Adamic ages higher should have succeeded lower dynasties. To be low was not to be immoral; to be low was not to be guilt-stained and miserable. The sea anemone on its half-tide rock, and the fern on its mossy hill-side, are low in their respective kingdoms; but they are, notwithstanding, worthy, ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... twelve members. It soon became so popular that applications for admission became very frequent. Six months passed rapidly away, when Keimer, who was an exceedingly immoral and worthless man, and was fast going to ruin, in some fit of drunkenness, or ungovernable irritation, entered the office, and assailed Franklin with such abuse, that he took his hat, and repaired to his lodgings, resolved never ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... vollum, Mr. Lindsay," the Deacon said. "I understand it is not the work of that great and good mahn who I thought wrote it. I did not see anything immoral in it as fur as I read, but it belongs to what I consider a very dangerous class of publications. These novels and romances are awfully destructive to our youth. I should recommend you, as a young mahn of principle, to burn the vollum. At least I hope you will not leave ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... my Lord, as his brother-in-law came up the slope. "Will that heart of yours be always so susceptible, you romantic, apoplectic, immoral man?" ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... earn. Sensier saw what seems to have been the first sketch for "The Sower" as early as 1847, and it existed long before that, while "The Winnower" was exhibited in 1848; and the overheard conversation is said to have taken place in 1849. There was nothing indecent or immoral in Millet's early work, and the best proof that he felt no moral reprobation for the painting of the nude—as what true painter, especially in France, ever did?—is that he returned to it in the height ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... absolute shame by the consciousness that if such a life were possible we should speedily revolt against the comforts that flattered the body while they ignored the soul. In Arden there is no such compromise with our immoral desires to get results without work, to buy without paying for what we receive. Nature keeps no running accounts and suffers no man to get in her debt; she deals with us on the principles of immutable righteousness; she treats ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... view. We must not lose sight of the ethical and religious bearing of science, and not be content with merely regarding it as a means of exploiting the material world. Instead of harnessing the forces of nature to true human ends, to happiness, we have allowed them to be used for any purpose, moral or immoral, by any one who by cunning or pushing has gained control of them. We have dehumanized the world, and allowed it to ride rough shod ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... equal tact, took their illustrations from the familiar atmosphere of song and story and national tradition in which their readers lived. A secondary purpose, which they obviously had in view, was also to remove from certain of the popular tales the immoral implications which still clung to them from their heathen past, and to reconsecrate ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... of this pontiff occasioned no particular disquietude at the Spanish court, where his immoral life had been viewed with undisguised reprobation, and made the subject of more than one pressing remonstrance, as we have already seen. His public course had been as little to its satisfaction; since, although a Spaniard by birth, being a native of ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... should all be down on me like this,' said Mark; 'there's nothing positively immoral in writing books—at least when it never goes any further. But I daresay you're right, and I believe you mean to be kind at any rate, uncle. I'll take your offer. I'll read steadily, and get called, and see if I'm good for anything at the Bar, since it seems I'm ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... Dupont: every character is a term in a syllogism, every scene is dictated by an imperious craving for symmetry. The main theorem may be stated in some such terms as these: "The French marriage system is immoral and abominable; yet the married woman is, on the whole, less pitiable than her unmarried sisters." In order to prove this thesis in due form, we begin at the beginning, and show how the marriage of Antonin Mairaut and Julie Dupont is brought about by the dishonest cupidity of the ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... the least doubt that from his own orthodox point of view the situation was growing immoral. For Sue to be the loved one of a man who was licensed by the laws of his country to love Arabella and none other unto his life's end, was a pretty bad second beginning when the man was bent on such a course as Jude purposed. This conviction ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... he replied, showing me a translation of the "Sorrows of Werther"; "that is a novel I picked up some time ago. It has afforded me great pleasure, though immoral." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... meanwhile continued as before, with the same infatuations and dissipations. He liked to dine and drink well, and though he considered it immoral and humiliating could not resist the temptations of the bachelor circles in ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... beings.' But when he begins to deduce from this precept any of the actual duties of morality, he fails, almost grotesquely, to show that there would be any contradiction, any logical (not to say physical) impossibility, in the adoption by all rational beings of the most outrageously immoral rules of conduct. All he shows is that the consequences of their universal adoption would be such as no one ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill
... fortunate for Walter that Stoffel brought this knowledge home with him. Even to-day there are people who find something immoral in the words "Theatre" and "Player"; but at that time it was still worse. The satisfaction, however, of imparting knowledge and appearing wise put Stoffel in an attitude of mind on this occasion that ordinarily would have been irreconcilable ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... petticoats and morning wrappers, with bare arms, with coal black hair twisted up onto the nape of their neck, with embroidered Oriental slippers which showed their ankles and silk stockings, they looked like the immoral figures of some symbolical painting, by the side of the dying man. Between the easy-chair and the bed, there was a table covered with a white cloth, on which two plates, two glasses, two forks and two knives, were waiting for the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... worst of crimes is poverty, and that our first duty—a duty to which every other consideration should be sacrificed—is not to be poor. "Poor but honest," "the respectable poor," and such phrases are as intolerable and as immoral as "drunken but amiable," "fraudulent but a good after-dinner speaker," "splendidly criminal," or the like. Security, the chief pretence of civilization, cannot exist where the worst of dangers, the ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... even murder; there may be surrounding circumstances which greatly condition the moral quality of the actual act. But lying is specific, exact, scientific. Its capacity for precise determination, indeed, makes its presence or non-presence the only accurate gauge of other immoral acts. Murder, for example, is nowhere regarded as immoral save it involve some repudiation of a social compact, of a tacit promise to refrain from it—in brief, some deceit, some perfidy, some lie. One may kill freely when the ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... and earnest asseverations, to make protestations of his innocence: all his fervor was exercised on that point: when he mentioned the witnesses, whose perjuries had bereaved him of life, his expressions were full of mildness and of charity. He solemnly disavowed all those immoral principles, which over-zealous Protestants had ascribed without distinction to the church of Rome: and he hoped, he said, that the time was now approaching, when the present delusion would be dissipated; and when the force of truth, though ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... Christian faith of which the Bishop of Manchester speaks as highly as the Bishop does; but who will have nothing to do with the Christian Churches, because in their apprehension and for them, the profession of belief in the miraculous, on the evidence offered would be simply immoral. ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... Orme," I said, drawing a long breath. "The most dangerous man, the most singular, the most immoral ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... comfortably rich. 2. The decently comfortable. 3. The very rich, who are apt to be irreligious. 4. The very poor, who are apt to be immoral. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... an excellent heart and reflecting mind, a great share of sensibility, and a temper peculiarly formed for the enjoyments of social life. "But this gentleman, madam, who is her gallant this evening,—is his character unexceptionable? Will a lady of delicacy associate with an immoral, not to say profligate, man?" "The rank and fortune of Major Sanford," said Mrs. Richman, "procure him respect; his specious manners render him acceptable in public company; but I must own that he is not ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... rustics by his general courtesy. Courtesy and the spirit of neighborliness go a great way amongst country people; and the worst construction of the case was, that he might be an embarrassed gentleman from Manchester or Liverpool, hiding himself from his creditors, who are notoriously a very immoral class of people. At length, however, a violent suspicion broke loose against him; for it was ascertained that on certain nights, when, perhaps, he had extra motives for concealing the fact of having been abroad, he drew woollen ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... like St. Peter, or the average politician is like Abraham Lincoln. A Puritanic theater would become bankrupt in a twelvemonth. The great mass of those who frequent the playhouse go there for strong, passionate excitements..I do not affirm," says Dr. Cuyler, "that every popular play is immoral, and every attendant is on a scent for sensualities. But the theater is a concrete institution, it must be judged in the gross and to a tremendous extent it is only a gilded nastiness. It unsexes womanhood by putting her publicly in ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... interested Napoleon in his project, submerged frequently for an hour or more, and blew up a hulk in Brest harbor. But the greybeards in the French navy frowned on these novel methods, declaring them "immoral" and "contrary to ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... taboo from the first. The earlier issues of the first five cantos were doubly anonymous. Neither author nor publisher subscribed their names on the title-page. The book was a monster, and, as its maker had foreseen, "all the world" shuddered. Immoral, in the sense that it advocates immoral tenets, or prefers evil to good, it is not, but it is unquestionably a dangerous book, which (to quote Kingsley's words used in another connection) "the young and innocent ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... came the Punch and Judy show, Tommy's culminating triumph. All the way to Redlintie had Mr. McLean sent for the Punch and Judy show, and nevertheless there was a probability of no performance, for Miss Ailie considered the show immoral. Most anxious was she to give pleasure to her pupils, and this she knew was the best way, but how could she countenance an entertainment which was an encouragement to every form of vice and crime? To send these children to the ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... immoral principle, which is only too popular to-day, in relation to religion and to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... has its shrine and idols and ancestral tablets, which last are worshipped with more devotion than the idols. In consequence of their religion the people are degraded and immoral. One-third of all female children born in the city of Amoy are slain. In the villages throughout this whole region, it is supposed that about one-half are destroyed. They do not exhibit sympathy for each other and for those in distress, which ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... but still it carries within it the germ of an excellence, which, sooner or later, must in the progress of national genius arrive at its full development. Meanwhile, it is a consolation to know that nothing really immoral is ever permanently popular, or ever, therefore, long deleterious; what is dangerous in a work of genius cures itself in a few years. We can now read "Werther," and instruct our hearts by its exposition of weakness and passion, our taste by its exquisite and unrivalled simplicity of construction ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... you were so given to moral reflections." To Alice, who had just come into the room to settle where they should spend their Sunday, Valencia explained with mock demureness the subject of their talk. "Mr. Farnum and I are deploring the immoral money madness of New York and the debilitating effects of modern civilization. Will you deplore ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... startle readers of especial prudery. The translator, however, felt that he had no choice between shocking these and sinning against his original. Readers of a larger culture will make allowance for such a strait, will not be so very frightened at an amount of plain-speaking, neither in itself immoral, nor, on the whole, impertinent. Had he docked his work of everything condemned by prudish theories, he might have made it more conventionally decent; but Michelet would have been puzzled to recognize himself in the poor maimed cripple that ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... that is all the more reason why women should be trained, by the perusal of a higher, broader, deeper literature, to distinguish the good novel from the bad, the moral from the immoral, the noble from the base, the true work of art from the sham which hides its shallowness and vulgarity under a tangled plot and a melodramatic situation. They should learn—and that they can only learn ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... easier to say at once that all drinking ought to be suppressed, than to consider how, in actual circumstances, sobriety can be judiciously encouraged; and by assuming a good self-evident law and denouncing your opponents as immoral worshippers of expediency, you place yourself in an enviable position of moral dignity and inaccessibility. No argument can touch you. These abstract rules, too, have the convenience of being strangely ambiguous. ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... fashionable Delilah story was a brilliant invention. There is nothing dearer to the heart of the English middle classes and working men than the belief that every woman with a dress allowance of more than L200 a year is a courtesan. The suggestion that these immoral Phrynes were bartering their charms for power to thwart the will of the people was just the sort of thing to raise a ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... whenever Russians get excited there'll be fiendish cruelties; Russians are like that—the most cruel devils in earth or hell. Bolshevist Russians are no worse in that way than Czarist Russians. Except when I am listening to their music I loathe the whole race; great stupid, brutal, immoral, sentimental savages.... When I think of them I feel a kind of nausea, oddly touched with fear, that must be hereditary, I suppose. After all, my father, as a child of five, saw his mother outraged ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... day of leisure. But never have I heard one objectionable word there, still less have I ever seen anything that could be called immoral. No; but do you know when and where I have met with ...
— Ghosts - A Domestic Tragedy in Three Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... admirable, and though vice could not be destroyed, it was no longer suffered to plume itself in the eyes of the world. The Spectator had delivered virtue from its position of contempt, and 'set up the immoral man as the object of ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... birth-rate before the War of nearly 50, at Roumania with its birth-rate of 42, at Chile and Jamaica with nearly 40. No nonsense about birth-control there! No shirking by women of the sacred duties of perpetual maternity! No immoral notions about claims to happiness and desires for culture. And then he turns from, those great centres of prosperity and civilisation to Australia, to New Zealand, and his voice is choked and tears fill his eyes as he sees the goal of "Race-Suicide" nearly in sight ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... in 1754, and belonged to one of the most illustrious families in France. He was destined to the Church against his will, being from the start worldly, ambitious, and scandalously immoral; but he accepted his destiny, and soon distinguished himself at the Sorbonne for his literary attainments, for his wit and his social qualities. At twenty, as the young Abbe de Perigord, he was received into the highest society of Paris; his noble ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... rapacious, that it grasped even at morsels of nourishment it could not obtain, in the desire to strengthen itself. Thus he had actually come to believe that Lord Henry was a charlatan; he was prepared to prove that he had immoral intentions against every girl in his immediate neighbourhood, and he was completely satisfied that, like Mrs. Delarayne, Lord Henry was ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... titillation in your nose by a single pinch? Why, it's something you call love, a terribly moral thing, though personified by a little fellow with pinions. Yes, wondrously moral; and sometimes, as in your case, immoral. Well, what is it produced by? The face of the said Miss F—— painted as a sun picture in the camera at the back of your eye, where there is a membrane without a particle of nitrate of silver in its composition, and which yet receives ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... pure: impure and sinful desires, far from being the sign of liberty, are the bit and bridle that hinder its fiery course toward God. The same thought, less vividly put, is found in a modern theologian—Dr. Moberly. "The real consummation of either moral or immoral character," he writes, "would exclude the ambiguity which was offered as the criterion of free will.... Full power to sin is not the key to freedom. On the contrary, all inherent power to do wrong is a direct infringement of the ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... egoist, who insists that his own advantage is his only proper aim. It assures him that he is throughout seeking his own advantage, when he aims at self-realization. On the other hand, it assures the man to whom egoism appears repellant and immoral, that self- realization implies that one must love one's neighbor as oneself. The immemorial quarrel between self-love and benevolence appears to be adjusted to the mutual ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... grinning to himself as the blows fall and slyly concealing his enthusiasm as the coins jingle into his hat. I am one of those who labor proudly at the immemorial task of idealizations. I am the public who passes laws proclaiming things wrong, immoral, contrary to my "best instincts." Thus I have after many centuries succeeded in creating a beautiful conception—a marvelous person. This marvelous person represents what I might be if I had neither ambition nor corpuscles, ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... in their false custom, Immoral ditties are their delight; Vain and tasteless praise they recite; Falsehood at all times do they utter; The innocent persons they ridicule; Married women they destroy, Innocent virgins of Mary they corrupt; As they pass their lives away in vanity, Poor innocent ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... derangement of the entire house; and at best the bath was not hot; it always lost its virtue on the stairs and landing. And to splash—one of the most voluptuous pleasures in life—was forbidden by the code. Mrs Nixon would actually weep at a splashing. Splashing was immoral. It was as wicked as amorous dalliance in a monastery. In the shop-house godliness was child's ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... choosing their lovers. Their fancy must be taken, and their favour must be earned. Mr. Borrow quotes, in proof of their virtue, one trait which does honour to his own, and especially to his simplicity: he declares that an immoral man of his acquaintance offered several gold ounces to a pretty gitana, and offered them in vain. An Andalusian, to whom I retailed this anecdote, asserted that the immoral man in question would have been far more successful if he had shown the girl two or three piastres, and that to offer ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... widely known society of young persons of both sexes (called Media Nocte) endeavored to draw the prince into its circle at The Hague; but his friend and tutor, the Baron Schulenberg, making him aware of the immoral nature of the society, the prince abruptly left one of their convivial meetings, and resolved immediately to quit The Hague. The Prince of Orange was much surprised at this self-command, and when the prince arrived in the camp before Breda, said to him, "Cousin, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is immoral—immoral from ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... Inherited prejudices in favor of hoary ignorances It is easier to stay out than get out Man is the only animal that blushes—or needs to Meddling philanthropists Melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy Moral sense, and there is an Immoral Sense Most satisfactory pet—never coming when he is called Natural desire to have more of a good thing than he needs Neglected her habits, and hadn't any Never could tell a lie that anybody would doubt No nation occupies ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Mark Twain • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
... in the throes of difficulties concerning baptism by immersion and might possibly have seen a connection, it must be admitted that he did not. He considered feminine bathing an immoral subject, and gave her some of his ideas on the depravity ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... chancellor, "you admit yourselves out of court, since, if one Christian marries another, the law of France obtains, and this contract which Mirza produces is abhorrent to the law of France, being immoral." ...
— The Turquoise Cup, and, The Desert • Arthur Cosslett Smith
... full-dress, and we took turns arraying ourselves in it for the Dexterville weekly parties. These gatherings interested me chiefly as outbreaks of the peculiar American humor that was very taking to me, in and out of the newspapers. Dancing being tabooed as immoral and contaminating, the young people had recourse to particularly energetic kissing games, which more than made up for their deprivation on the other score. It was all very harmless and very funny, and the winter wore away pleasantly enough in spite of hard luck ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... to shorten the working hours on principle, except to a moderate degree, unless any exceptionally unfavourable conditions of work are present, is, in my opinion, an immoral endeavour, and a complete miscomprehension of the real value of work. It is in itself the greatest blessing which man knows, and ill betide the nation which regards it no longer as a moral duty, but as the necessary ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... quality" of his plays, as he often phrased it. His whole theatrical career was a rebuke to the salacious. He originally owned Edward Sheldon's dramatization of Suderman's "The Song of Songs." On its production in Philadelphia it was assailed by the press as immoral. Frohman immediately sold it to A. H. Woods, who presented it with enormous financial success in ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... Talk with James Teare on the immorality of drinking. Query:—Is it per se a sin to drink a little? He does not affirm it in pure abstract, but says that no action can be purely abstract; and that as to uphold an immoral system is immoral, as the drinking system is immoral, as moderate draughts uphold the drinking system, and, in fact, cannot be drunk by the community without giving birth to drunkenness—ergo, ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... thief into a philosopher, and sometimes a philosopher into a thief. I am not speaking, however, of the mere impulse of animal want, but of this condition where the counter-acting forces are dormant. And for this reason you and I can draw no immoral conclusion from the doctrine of circumstances. We could not be like the moral leper who infests the dark regions of the city—we could not be like the child of sin and shame who broods there—without losing ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... a Moral sense, and there is an Immoral Sense. History shows us that the Moral Sense enables us to perceive morality and how to avoid it, and that the Immoral Sense enables us to perceive immorality and how to enjoy it. -Pudd'nhead ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and nobles, he never descended to gross adulation, and never wrote a line of approval of the usurpation of Henry IV., although his bread depended on Henry's favor, and he was also the son of the king's earliest and best friend. He was not a religious man, nor was he an immoral man, judged by the standard of his age. He probably was worldly, as he lived in courts. We do not see in him the stern virtues of Dante or Milton; nothing of that moral earnestness which marked the only other great man with whom he was contemporary,—he who is called ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... exhorters, shocked at the spectacle of millions of perfectly decent and law-abiding Americans showing an utter disregard of the Prohibition law, are prone to insist that to violate this law, or to abet its violation, is just as immoral as to violate any other criminal law. The thing is on the statute-books—nay, in the very Constitution itself —and to offend against it, they say, is as much a crime as to commit larceny, arson or murder. But they may repeat this doctrine until ...
— What Prohibition Has Done to America • Fabian Franklin
... would do so effectively. Wherewith came on the question of raffles, an inexhaustible one, since some maintained that they were contrary to English law, and were absolutely immoral, while others held that it was the only way of disposing of really expensive articles. These were two statues sent by Mrs. White, and an exquisite little picture by Mrs. Grinstead, worth more than any one could ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... more clearly than where people talk so much. But when I come home I require something. I see, I see. Instead of an idle, fashionable lounging-place for nincompoops from London, instead of flirtation and novel-reading, vulgarity, show, and indecent attire, and positively immoral bathing, we will now have industry, commerce, wealth, triumph of mechanism, lofty enterprise, and international good-will. A harbor has been the great want of this coast; see what a thing it is at Newport! We will now have a harbor and floating docks, without any muddy, ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... reared this daughter in her situation, assuredly without the slightest assistance from outsiders, and with heavy sacrifices—if I had reflected on the view of life which this woman had formed, I should have understood that there was, decidedly, nothing bad or immoral in the mother's act: she had done and was doing for her daughter all that she could, that is to say, what she considered the best for herself. This daughter could be forcibly removed from her mother; but it would be impossible ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... him what is more solid, and what he then more wanted, money. Some of the people in power, it seems, were lovers of music, and tho' they did not care to own it, they were wise enough to know that there was nothing scandalous or immoral in the diversions of the theatre. Sir William therefore, when he applied for a permission called what he intended to represent an opera; but when he brought it on the stage, it appeared quite another thing, which when printed had ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... young man only from his conduct. You know—you are obliged to know, that he is recklessly dissipated, selfish, and immoral." ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... quarterly magazine, the Liberal. The idea was Shelley's, and if Shelley had lived, it might not have resulted quite so disastrously, for Shelley was absolutely untiring as a helper of lame dogs over stiles. As it was, the excursion distinctly contradicted the saying (condemned by some as immoral) that a bad beginning makes a good ending. The Hunt family, which now included several children, embarked, in November of all months in the year, on a small ship bound for Italy. They were something like a month getting down the Channel in tremendous weather, and at ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... carried the war into the enemy's camp at once. He did not linger over loose excuses for licence; he declared at once that the Censor was licentious, while he, Bernard Shaw, was clean. He did not discuss whether a Censorship ought to make the drama moral. He declared that it made the drama immoral. With a fine strategic audacity he attacked the Censor quite as much for what he permitted as for what he prevented. He charged him with encouraging all plays that attracted men to vice and only stopping those which ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... subject of physical, and we may add, moral education, to the field which is here opened, and which, if not improved, as it may be, for noble and useful ends, will certainly be perverted for low and immoral purposes. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... immoral. (a) It rests on the old idea of retribution. (b) It tends to weaken the sacredness of human life. (c) It endangers the lives of innocent people. (d) Executions and the sensational newspaper accounts which follow have a ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... The immoral newspaper stops not at the unclean advertisement. It is so much for so many words, and in such a sheet it will cost no more to advertise the most impure book than the new edition of Pilgrim's Progress. A book such ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... bond, and thereby, for example, it aids us to see that, altho romance is ever young and ever true, what is known as "neo-romanticism," with its reckless assertion of individual whim, is anti-social, and therefore probably immoral. ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... Prussian. Bernhardi believes in the morality, one might almost say in the sanctity, of war. To him war is not a necessary evil, but, on the contrary, the source of every moral good. To him it is pacificism which is an immoral doctrine, because it is the doctrine of the materialist, who believes that enjoyment is the chief end of life. It is the militarist who is the true idealist because he assumes that humanity can only ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... whatever. They were simple if not altogether innocent expletives—imaginative phrases wherewith to round off a sentence. When he said "I'll bet you so and so," nobody ever thought of taking him up; but still I could not help thinking it my duty to put him down. The habit was an immoral one, and so I told him. It was a vulgar one—this I begged him to believe. It was discountenanced by society—here I said nothing but the truth. It was forbidden by act of Congress—here I had not the slightest intention of telling a lie. I remonstrated—but ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... might be some excuse for the tax. We would get some benefit from it, but it gives a big part of the tax to local option localities where the people are always shoutin' that liquor dealin' is immoral. Ought these good people be subjected to the immoral influence of money taken from the saloon tainted money? Out of respect for the tender consciences of these pious people, the Raines law ought to exempt them from all contamination from the plunder ...
— Plunkitt of Tammany Hall • George Washington Plunkitt
... all his life, had a secret dread of Absolute Beauty. It had always been like a fetish to him, something to fear, really. For it was immoral and against mankind. So he had turned to the Gothic form, which always asserted the broken desire of mankind in its pointed arches, escaping the rolling, absolute ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... Camillo received an anonymous letter, which called him immoral and perfidious, and warned him that his adventure was known to all. Camillo took fright, and, in order to ward off suspicion, began to make his visits to Villela's house more rare. The latter asked him the reason for his prolonged ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... on hypnotized persons and crimes have been committed by them. It is a dangerous power exercised by men of evil mind and a sure means to their evil ends. It is likewise detrimental to physical and moral health. Finally, he who subjects himself to such influence commits an immoral act by giving up his will, his free agency, into the hands of another. He does this willingly, for no one can be hypnotized against his will; he does it without reason or just motive. This is an evil, and to it must be added the responsibility of any evil he may be ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... according to him Mr. Browning prescribes action at any price, even that of defying the restrictions of moral law. He thus, we are told, blames the lovers in 'The Statue and the Bust' for their failure to carry out what was an immoral intention; and, in the person of his 'Don Juan', defends a husband's claim to relieve the fixity of conjugal affection by varied adventure in the world of temporary loves: the result being 'the negation of that convention under which we habitually view life, ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... truth. Pure Will is, and must be by its very nature, perfectly free, for the more it is hindered, or hampered, or controlled in any way, the less is it independent volition. Therefore, pare Will, free from all restraint can only act in, or as, Moral Law. Acting in accordance with very mean, immoral, obstinate motives is, so to speak, obeying as a slave the devil. The purer the motive the purer the Will, and in very truth the purer the stronger, or firmer. Every man has his own idea of Will according to his morality—even as it is said that every man's conception of God is himself infinitely ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... defeats than of the Battle of Jena. He would stop to shake his fist at the river, and spit contemptuously, and mouth noble insults—he did not stoop to less than that. He would call him "rascal," "wild beast," "immoral." And if such words were intended to restore to the boy's mind a sense of justice, it must be confessed that they failed in their object; for childish logic leaped to this conclusion: "If a great man like that had no morality, ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... conviction must necessarily follow. I was accused of having conspired to take Eliza Armstrong from her parents without their consent. My defence was that her mother had sold the child through a neighbour for immoral purposes. I never alleged that the father had consented, and the judge ruled with unmistakable emphasis that her mother's consent, even if proved, was not sufficient. Here I may interpolate a remark ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... artificial poet is a disgusting dealer in trifles: nothing but the predominance of strong and unstimulated feeling will give that inspiration without which it is worse than an empty sound. When the passion is factitious, the excitement has always an immoral tendency; but the delineation of real and amiable sentiments calls up a sympathy in other bosoms which thus confirms and fixes them where they would otherwise die away. The memory may preserve what is artificial, but, when it becomes stale, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... admire and unable to comprehend, they must seem inexplicable as abnormal. To the professional Radical they are so many proofs of innate inferiority: for they are full of pretentiousness and affectation; they teem with examples of all manner of vices, from false English to an immoral delight in dukes; they prove their maker a trickster and a charlatan in every page. To them, however, whose first care is for rare work, the series of novels that began with Vivian Grey and ended with Endymion is one of the pleasant facts in modern letters. These books abound ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... persons who have inhabited or occupied them. Every city has its own mental atmosphere which has its effect upon persons moving into them. Some are lively, some dull, some progressive, some old-fogyish, some moral, some immoral—the result of the character of the early settlers and leading spirits, of the place in question. Persons moving into these towns are affected by the mental atmospheres thereof, and either sink to the general level, or else, if strong enough, ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... substance. Proverbs are art—cheap art. As a general rule they are not true; unless indeed they happen to be mere platitudes, as for instance the proverb, "Half a loaf is better than no bread," or "A miss is as good as a mile." Some proverbs are simply imbecile, others are immoral. That one evolved out of the naive heart of the great Russian people, "Man discharges the piece, but God carries the bullet," is piously atrocious, and at bitter variance with the accepted conception of a compassionate God. It would indeed be an inconsistent occupation ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... without the least sense of sympathy for any pain, who devoured a cobra alive with as much indifference as he had just shown in petting it, was the result. He was a human snake. I had long before reading the wonderfully original work of Doctor Holmes reflected deeply on the moral and immoral influences which serpent worship of old, in Syria and other lands, must have had upon its followers. But Elsie Venner sets forth the serpent nature as benumbed or suspended by cold New England winters and New England religions, moral and social influences; the Ophites of old and the Cairene ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... and keeps things very straight here. That part of it seems to me simply ungentlemanly. And in any case, you have no business to hurt the people who care for you, even if you think they ought not to be distressed. I don't say it is immoral, but I say it is a low business from beginning ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... unwelcome characteristics, but is also deprived of most of its power, and it may very easily become an ally of unrighteousness, and an indulgence to sin. The reproach that the Christian doctrine of salvation through faith is immoral in its substance derives most of its force from forgetting that 'repentance towards God' is as real a condition of salvation as is 'faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.' We have here the Apostle's deliverance about one of these twin thoughts. We have three stages—the root, the stem, the fruit; ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... aunt or stepmother, in another that the mother is an invalid or a sweated worker too overwrought to do much for him, or, though a good-hearted soul, she is careless and dirty or ignorant, or that she is immoral and reckless, and so on and so on. Our haphazard sample of ten Scotch cases gives instances of nearly all these alternatives. And from these proximate causes one might work back to more general ones, to the necessity of controlling the ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... religion secures to politics; but if we reflect a moment, we will see without trouble that religious opinions blind and lead astray equally the rulers and the people, and never enlighten them either in regard to their true duties or their real interests. Religion but too often forms licentious, immoral tyrants, obeyed by slaves who are obliged to conform to their views. From lack of the knowledge of the true principles of administration, the aim and the rights of social life, the real interests of men, and the duties which unite them, the princes are become, in almost every land, ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... new state. The legislature was to consist of but a single house. In a section excluding from the legislature "ministers of the gospel, attorneys at law, and doctors of physics," those were declared ineligible for office who were of immoral character or guilty of "such flagrant enormities as drunkenness, gaming, profane swearing, lewdness, Sabbath-breaking and such like," or who should deny the existence of God, of heaven, and of hell, ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... glooming was becoming altogether too realistic for his peace of mind. As time went on and he saw nothing of Lucy Melville, he began to realise that perhaps, after all, he was making a mistake somewhere. At certain recklessly immoral moments he even thought a very little of proving false to art. To such depths ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... Poe, two of the world's great short-story writers, were remarkably unlike in their aims. Hawthorne saw everything in the light of moral consequences. Poe cared nothing for moral issues, except in so far as the immoral was ugly. Hawthorne appreciated beauty only as a true revelation of the inner life. Poe loved beauty and the melody of sound for their own attractiveness. His effects, unlike Hawthorne's, were more physical than moral. Poe exalted the ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... can be little will-training by words, and the understanding can not realize the ideals of the will. All great things are dangerous, as Plato said, and the truth itself is not only false but actually immoral to unexpanded minds. Will-culture is intensive, not extensive, and the writer knows a case in which even a vacation ramble with a moralizing fabulist has undermined the work of years. Our precepts must be made very familiar, copiously illustrated, well wrought together ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... in its train; the opportunity of a small part; the gratification of ambition. There is no more immorality than in other trades, but there is an amount of humiliating and degrading philandering, a mauling sensuality which is more degrading than any violent abduction. To be immoral a certain amount of courage is required; but the curse of modern theatrical conditions is this corrupt debauchery. Many girls have come to me explaining their difficulties, and many in asking my advice ended up with the persistent cry of the modern woman, "I do so want to ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... surrounds them, then the fate of these tribes is sealed." What that fate would be may be gathered from one of Bishop Hills' first letters in 1860. He found that of one tribe more than half had been cut off in a dozen years by drink and dissolute habits; and the traffic in Indian females for immoral purposes was openly carried on, from L40 to L60 per head being paid for them. "Victoria," wrote Mr. Duncan, "although it is 500 miles from Fort Simpson, will always prove the place of attraction to these tribes, and to many even further away. There they become demoralised and filled with disease; ...
— Metlakahtla and the North Pacific Mission • Eugene Stock
... the new word of command. 'Fight forward, not backward! March with the course of economic evolution, not against it. The competitive system can never be restored, neither is it worthy of restoration, having been at best an immoral, wasteful, brutal scramble for existence. New issues demand new answers. It is in vain to pit the moribund system of competition against the young giant of private monopoly; it must rather be opposed by the greater ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... immoral and selfish letter. Ernest knew exactly how it would strike Miss Ironsyde; but he also knew that many people without principle ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... on the subject of the commerce in imitations of the mediaeval works so extensively carried on in Italy. Of course, a trade based on deception is in every way to be condemned and regretted. It is not only immoral, but it generates demoralization. But it is to be observed that in very many cases—especially in those branches where art-industry approaches the most nearly to art proper—the artist or artisan who produced ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... difference of opinion among the Greeks. The people, the orators, and many of the poets praised them; but the philosophers either disapproved them openly, or passed them by in silence. Socrates says no word in their favor in all his reported conversations. Plato complains of the immoral influence derived from believing that sin could be expiated by such ceremonies.[262] They seem to have contained, in reality, little direct instruction, but to have taught merely by a ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... legitimate interest and scandalous usury is by no means clearly drawn. There is at least one good excuse for demanding high interest. It is notoriously hard to collect bad debts. Many and many a clever debtor has persuaded an Athenian jury that ALL taking of interest is somewhat immoral, and the banker has lost at least his interest, sometimes too his principal. So long as this is the case, a banker's career has its drawbacks; and Demosthenes in a recent speech has commended the choice by Pasion's ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... dictates of their untutored minds, the natural consequences are gross ignorance of the Scriptures, a shameful profanation of the Sabbath, and a total neglect of all the duties of religion, accompanied with a general prevalence of disorderly and immoral conduct." This application met with a generous response from Bishop Ryder, Edward Protheroe, Esq., the Earl of Liverpool, the Right Hon. N. Vansittart, Edward Machen, Esq., Lord Calthorpe, Lady Olivia Sparrow, ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... pleasure and gaiety, that, when the barriers were withdrawn, license and debauchery were necessary to satisfy appetites which a long-enforced abstinence had made abnormal. In Vanburgh's "Provoked Wife," a comedy, like so many others of the time, at once very immoral and very entertaining, Sir John Brute thus excuses the virtues of his early life: "I was afraid of being damned in those days; for I kept sneaking, cowardly company, fellows that went to church, said grace to their meat, and had ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... sharpened in sense and appreciation by them, while his stronger stomach did not pay him back next day as Killigrew's invariably did. Carminow was full of stories, all, needless to say, of a sanguinary nature; Killigrew capped them, or tried to, by would-be immoral tales of Paris; and Ishmael said very little, but, with his deadly clarity of vision for once working beneficently, sat there aware how young and somehow rather lovable they were through it all, while he himself, whom they were obviously treating as so so much younger in the ways of the world, ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse |
