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Licentious   /laɪsˈɛntʃəs/   Listen
Licentious

adjective
1.
Lacking moral discipline; especially sexually unrestrained.



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"Licentious" Quotes from Famous Books



... of a free, I may add a licentious press to destroy me, with a view of extinguishing the principles of civil and religious liberty which I advocate, you and your party now seek to have recourse to the "glorious uncertainty of the law" to accomplish ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... the theater leads one into bad company. As a class, the performers are licentious. How can one be in their company, be moved to laughter and to tears and not be contaminated by them? One who has studied the theater tells us that the "fruits of the Spirit and the fruits of the stage exhibit as pointed a contrast as the human imagination can conceive." The famous Macready, as ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy

... declared that France was setting an example of anarchy, fraud, violence, and atheism, and that the worst part of its example was the interference in civil affairs of "base hireling mutineers" who deserted their officers "to join a furious licentious populace". He protested against a comparison between the revolution in France and the revolution of 1688, between the conduct of the soldiery on that occasion and the behaviour of some of the French troops. His speech, which was received with general applause, had a strong effect ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt

... London. He heard all this and more. He heard his sister's sufferings derided, and her virtuous conduct jeered at and brutally misconstrued; he heard her name bandied from mouth to mouth, and herself made the subject of coarse and insolent wagers, free speech, and licentious jesting. ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... taught, and the ordinances of God outwardly kept. But yet there were in that body, I mean, in the body of the visible church, a great number that were hypocrites, as this day yet are among us that profess the Lord Jesus, and have refused papistry; also not a few that were licentious livers; some that turned their back to God, that is, had forsaken all true religion; and some that lived a most abominable life, as Ezekiel saith in his vision; and yet there were some godly, as a few wheat-corns, oppressed(8) and hid among ...
— The Pulpit Of The Reformation, Nos. 1, 2 and 3. • John Welch, Bishop Latimer and John Knox

... Prussian, why should I deny it? I glory in the religion of might—I believe it were better that the old civilization were stamped into the mud of oblivion than that Prussian Kultur should be swept away by the licentious French, ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace

... consummately deplorable than in India, and, in consequence, nowhere than in the dances of that country is manifested a more simple unconsciousness or frank disregard of decency. As by nature, and according to the light that is in him, the Hindu is indolent and licentious, so, in accurately matching degree, are the dancing girls innocent of morality, and uninfected with shame. It would be difficult, more keenly to insult a respectable Hindu woman than to accuse her of having danced, while the man who should affect the society of the females justly so charged ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce

... not to yield some thought that he might make his own; and, like Milton, he loves to pay the tribute of a passing allusion to some brother poet, whose character he valued, or whose talent his ready sympathy understood. In an age when licentious writing, at least in youth, was the rule and required no apology, Virgil's early poems are conspicuous by its almost total absence; while the Georgics and Aeneid maintain a standard of lofty ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... Kaskaskias, the Peorias, the Cahokias, the Tamaroas, the Moingona, and others. Their general character and habits were those of other Indian tribes, but they were reputed somewhat cowardly and slothful. In their manners, they were more licentious than many of their neighbors, and addicted to practices which are sometimes supposed to be the result of a perverted civilization. Young men enacting the part of women were frequently to be seen among them. These were held in ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman

... new charm in his absence: on the contrary, he found it plunged more than ever in luxury, wantonness, and gluttony. Clement VI. had replenished the church, at the request of the French king, with numbers of cardinals, many of whom were so young and licentious, that the most scandalous abominations prevailed amongst them. "At this time," says Matthew Villani, "no regard was paid either to learning or virtue; and a man needed not to blush for anything, if he could cover his head with a ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... marriage was not a happy one. The chosen companion of the dissipated and licentious Count d'Artois was not likely to prove a very ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau

... The object is to move the mother earth to become fruitful." Thus the Sacred Marriage of the Sun and Earth, personated by the priest and his wife, is celebrated as a charm to ensure the fertility of the ground; and for the same purpose, on the principle of homoeopathic magic, the people indulge in licentious orgy. ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... half as good as they were. It was not long, however, before I discovered the particulars of the case: and I took some pains that the public should likewise be informed of them. The overseer was a bad, licentious man. How long and how much the slaves endured under his power I know not, but at last, he took a fancy to two of the negroes' wives, ordered them to be brought to his house, and in spite of their entreaties and resistance, compelled them to remain ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child

... The blunt, licentious Saxon words and sentences in the first text of Shakspere, have been ruthlessly expurgated by his editorial commentators, adding, no doubt, to the beauty and decency of the plays, but sadly ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce

... hardy troops, seasoned in rough mountain-campaigning, but reckless and dissolute, as soldiers are apt to be when accustomed to predatory warfare. They would fight hard for booty, and then gamble it heedlessly away or squander it in licentious revelling. Alhama abounded with hawking, sharping, idle hangers-on, eager to profit by the vices and follies of the garrison. The soldiers were oftener gambling and dancing beneath the walls than keeping watch upon the battlements, and ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving

... mean," said Tressilian, inferring, however, too surely, that this licentious ruffian must have been sensible of Amy's presence in his apartment; "'i but if," he continued, "thou art varlet of the chambers, and lackest a fee, there is one ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... hostility to Virtue—they probably knew too little about it to form a dispassionate opinion any way—but because Vice paid better. They held the cynical view that human nature will always breed a great many persons having a propensity to licentious or violent habits; that laws were made to check and punish these persons, and that they might go their pernicious ways unmolested if the Police took no notice of them. So the Police established a system of immunity which anybody could enjoy by paying ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... pulpit. Even with this profession, he had to encounter many prejudices, and men of gravity and wisdom shook their heads at what they thought his idle trifling. But if he wished to be counted respectable, and to separate himself from the crowd of foolish or licentious rimers, he must intend distinctly, not merely to interest, but to instruct, by his new and deep conceits. It was under the influence of this persuasion that Spenser laid down the plan of the Faery Queen. It was, so he proposed to himself, to be a ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church

... exposed the imprinted marks of their chains. They found thus a lucrative profession in begging, which had been interdicted by the laws. The profession did not finish with them: men of an untoward, turbulent, and licentious disposition, gladly embraced it. It spread so wide that the succeeding emperors were obliged to institute new laws; and individuals were allowed to seize on these mendicants for their slaves and perpetual vassals: a powerful preservative against this disorder. It is observed in almost every ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... Abdulla Khan, however, was continued in the government of the country by Nadir's orders; but he was soon after killed in a battle with the forces of the nawabs of Sind. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Haji Mahommed Khan, who abandoned himself to the most tyrannical and licentious way of life and alienated his subjects by oppressive taxation. In these circumstances Nasir Khan, the second son of Abdulla Khan, who had accompanied the victorious Nadir to Delhi, and acquired the favour and confidence ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... develope itself, so that during his first cruise, its natural deformity became so apparent as to cause the rest of the officers to look with fear and astonishment upon one, in whom the gifts of extraordinary talents seemed to have been lavished, only to become blended with cunning, artfulness and licentious profligacy, whose disposition was mean and avaricious, and whose temper, though not violent, ...
— Blackbeard - Or, The Pirate of Roanoke. • B. Barker

... carried on in the shrines or "high places," one of which stood outside almost every village and town. They often were accompanied by dances and other performances which were licentious and degrading. The Hebrews, of course, were pledged to worship only Jehovah. Moreover, during these first centuries in Canaan they were very poor, and had little time for the carousals which went on at the "high places" in the name of religion. Corruption usually comes with wealth ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting

... brought up on a regime of such extreme indulgence as can only be met with amongst an Oriental people. His mother had never once restrained him in a childish selfishness nor a manly vice. From a spoilt, inconsiderate, wilful childhood he passed to a cruel, passionate, licentious manhood; finally, he took to opium smoking and ruin threatened the home. His mother reaped a bitter harvest of sorrow from the planting of those wasted years, and now her urgent plea was: "My son is good at heart, and a virtuous bride will soon ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable

... even in prison in Van Diemen's Land. I am sorry to say that a licentious press invariably evinces a very great degree of contumely, while the authorities are held in respect by all well-disposed persons, though it is often endeavoured by some to bring on them the hatred ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... invent, forms schemes for its own amusement—our youths both fell in love: if passions, that were pursued on the most opposite principles, can receive the same appellation. William, well versed in all the licentious theory, thought himself in love, because he perceived a tumultuous impulse cause his heart to beat while his fancy fixed on a certain object whose presence ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald

... laughter at what she termed Barbara's country manners and prudery. There were few things in heaven or earth exempt from the ridicule of Mrs. Dearmer's tongue, and it was a loose tongue, full of coarse tales and licentious wit. She was a pretty woman, which, from the men's point of view, seemed to add piquancy to her scandalous conversation, but the fact only made Barbara's ears tingle the more. Mrs. Dearmer was in the fashion; Barbara knew that, for even at Lady Bolsover's she had often been made to blush, but ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner

... made himself an English Moliere—without Moliere's breadth and clarity—but with a corresponding vigour and strength which would have kept his work sweet. And he might have founded a school of comedy that would have got its roots deeper into our national life than the trivial and licentious Restoration comedy ever succeeded in doing. As it is, his importance is mostly historical. One must credit him with being the first of the English classics—of the age which gave us Dryden and Swift and Pope. Perhaps that is enough in ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair

... Cause" (Vol. vi., passim).—Mrs. Behn, who gained some notoriety for her licentious writings even in Charles II.'s days, was the author of a play called The Roundheads, or the Good Old Cause: London, 1682. In the Epilogue she puts into the mouth of the Puritans the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 • Various

... doublets. These courtly figures culminate in Duerer's magnificent plate of the wild man of the woods kissing the hideous, leering Jezebel in her brocade and jewels. These aristocratic women are terrible; prudish, malicious, licentious, never modest because they are always ugly. Even the poor Madonnas, seated in front of village hovels or windmills, smile the smile of starved, sickly sempstresses. It is a stunted, poverty-stricken, plague-sick society, this mediaeval society of burghers and burghers' wives; the air seems bad ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... hashish-smokers stretched out gaunt, loathsome fingers towards them; and a Sha'er recited the romance of Aboo Zeyd. But Dicky noticed that none of the sheikhs, none of the great men of the village, were at these cafes; only the very young, the useless, the licentious, or the decrepit. But by flickering fires under the palm- trees were groups of men talking and gesticulating; and now and then an Arab galloped through the street, the point of his long lance shining. Dicky felt a secret, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... persecution of the French Emperor, which had resisted the right of a neighboring people to choose their own rulers, which had held in imprisonment the first genius of the century, which had opposed the abolition of the test act, which had sustained the most licentious and most obstinate sovereign of modern times, now yielded to the more enlightened views of such statesmen as Russell and Lansdowne, Brougham and Grey. Several causes operated to bring about this auspicious change. George the Fourth, whose partiality for the Tories was only ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various

... keep a naval force in the harbor. The despatch of Lord Hillsborough, addressed to Governor Bernard, communicating this conclusion, was elaborate and able, and laid down in full the policy of the Government. The instructions were based on the pretence that Boston was "in possession of a licentious and unrestrained mob"; that it was animated by a disposition "to resist the laws and to deny the authority of Parliament"; and that the alleged "illegal and unwarrantable measures which had been pursued in opposing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various

... therefore, originally under a jealousy that partially I might have been duped. At present, in reviewing what I had written twenty years ago, I feel this jealousy much more keenly. I shrink from the bishop's malicious portraitures of our soldiers, sometimes of their officers, as composing a licentious army, without discipline, without humanity, without even steady courage. Has any man a right to ask our toleration for pictures so romantic as these? Duped perhaps I was myself: and it was natural that I should be so under ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... vices of French civilization in its most degenerate days. They debauched the Indian with brandy, swindled him out of his furs, and entered into illicit relations with the women of the tribes. They managed in general to convince the aborigines that all Frenchmen were dishonest and licentious. That the representatives of the Most Christian King should tolerate such conduct could not be regarded by the Church as anything other ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro

... other means, in aiding their comprehension of Christianity. It must, not be expected, however, that the Indians will easily forsake a mode of life that is so congenial to man, in his natural love of ease and indolence and licentious freedom. Necessity, in a measure, must compel them to do this; but the children may be educated, and trained to industry upon the soil, in the hope that they may be recovered from their savage habits and customs, to see and enjoy the blessings of civilization ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West

... saw the rather famous lithograph (of a lady and gentleman kissing each other at full speed on horseback), which owes its subject to the book, in no more romantic a place that a very small public-house in "Scarlet town," to which I had gone, not to quench my thirst or for any other licentious purpose, but to make an appointment ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... tastes; and abilities, naturally not much above mediocrity, had been improved by travel as well as study. Himself and one younger brother had been early left masters of their fate and their several portions. The younger, Geoffrey, testified a roving and dissipated turn. Bold, licentious, extravagant, unprincipled,—his career soon outstripped the slender fortunes of a cadet in the family of a country squire. He was early thrown into difficulties, but, by some means or other they never seemed to overwhelm him; an unexpected turn—a lucky adventure—presented ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... her entire control. Efforts were made to lead his teacher to check his enthusiasm for lofty exploits, and to surrender him to the claims of frivolous amusement. This detestable queen presented before the impassioned young man all the blandishments of female beauty, that she might betray him to licentious indulgence. In some of these infamous arts she was but ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... attributable to the destitution to which ecclesiastical bodies were reduced by the frequent predations of bands of robbers, the immorality of the priesthood, and the power of electing the popes falling into the hands of intriguing and licentious patrician females, whom aspirants to the holy see were not ashamed to bribe for their favors. So depraved had the general spirit of the age become that Pope Boniface VII, A.D. 974, robbed St. Peter's Church and its treasury and fled to Constantinople; while Pope John XVIII, A.D. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... time in habits of intimacy with him, and was so obliging as to delineate it at our solicitation." "In his person were collected the most opposite defects and advantages of every kind. He was avaricious and ostentatious, ... haughty and obliging, politic and confiding, licentious and superstitious, bold and timid, ambitious and indiscreet; lavish of his bounties to his relations, his mistresses, and his favourites, yet frequently paying neither his household nor his creditors. His consequence always depended on a woman, and he was always unfaithful ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... amiable and acceptable in the sight of God, and they will be useful and happy among themselves. Let it be our fervent prayer that neither canting and hypocritical emissaries from schools of artificial theology on the one hand, nor sensual and licentious crews and adventurers on the other, may ever enter the charming village of Pitcairn to give disease to the minds or the bodies of the ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine

... would choke his utterance, and his eyes be filled with tears. He fancied he had found in Virginia the dignity and wisdom of Antiope, united to the misfortunes and the tenderness of Eucharis. With very different sensations he perused our fashionable novels, filled with licentious morals and maxims, and when he was informed that these works drew a tolerably faithful picture of European society, he trembled, and not without some appearance of reason, lest Virginia should become corrupted ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre

... details. [FN: This story was told to the writer by a member of the committee.] That interested him, but matters of state he left to his time servers, to his hysterical wife, yes, to Grigory Rasputin, a dirty, ignorant, and licentious peasant, until the country blushed with shame and it became a saying, "Now we have Grigory I [Rasputin] ...
— The Russian Revolution; The Jugo-Slav Movement • Alexander Petrunkevitch, Samuel Northrup Harper,

... death; the next to chronic failure. Rightly or wrongly (and we know enough about heredity now to expect any guess as to its working in a particular case to be wrong) he attributed the best that he had inherited to a licentious connection and a nameless progenitor. Quite early he must have been intensely ambitious, and discovered in himself intellectual power; but from his twelfth year to his twenty-first there was hardly a soul to ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood

... Bloodthirsty and voluptuous alike, they were viewed with equal terror by the Frank pilgrim, the Syriac villager, the Armenian merchant, and the Saracen hadji—whose ransom and whose spoil enriched their chambers, with all that the licentious tastes of East and West united could desire. There were comparatively few of these nests of iniquity in these latter days of the Crusades, but some still survived; and Richard had seen some of their captains with their followers at ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge

... that he had let loose the reins on the neck of his lusts, that he had delighted in all transgressions against the divine law, and that he had been the ringleader of the youth of Elstow in all manner of vice. But when those who wished him ill accused him of licentious amours, he called on God and the angels to attest his purity. No woman, he said, in heaven, earth or hell, could charge him with having ever made any improper advances to her. Not only had he been strictly faithful to his wife; ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... example set up by Louis XIV. It was more spontaneous, more original, more French. The influence of Italy began to fail, and the painters began to mirror French life. It was largely court life, lively, vivacious, licentious, but in that very respect characteristic of the time. Moreover, there was another quality about it that showed French taste at its best—the decorative quality. It can hardly be supposed that the fairy creations of the age were ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke

... trains on water by means of sails, and stage lines traveling in the air with balloons. Such things would unsettle the foundations of society and induce anarchy and chaos. A canal that has no water is a licentious and incendiary canal; and it is equally improper and equally repugnant to all conservative persons when, as Mr. Robbins suggests, the boats are floated in tanks and the tanks ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)

... the Spirit and consequent immortality, nothing carnal had any importance: the body had, as it were, but a short time, and might be allowed to enjoy itself as it chose. To combat this danger of an absolutely licentious position the Church maintained that the body was as eternal as the soul, and that its future happiness depended on ...
— Landmarks in the History of Early Christianity • Kirsopp Lake

... which that of Monk stands foremost, appear in the narrative of the first of the Dutch wars under Charles. This superiority in tone and discipline gradually disappeared under the corrupting influence of court favor in a licentious government; and Holland, which upon the whole was worsted by England alone upon the sea in 1665, successfully resisted the combined navies of England and France in 1672. As regards the material of the three fleets, we are told that the French ships had greater displacement than the English relatively ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan

... might. The difficulty of deciding definitely is intensified by the fact of the Manichaeans being split into a number of sects, and statements true of some might be untrue of others. So we find St. Augustine, who had been a Manichaean, declaring that if all did not practise licentious rites, one sect (the Catharists) did, believing that they could only mortify the flesh by the exercise of bad instincts, since the flesh proceeded from demons. St. Augustine himself confesses to have taken part in various phallic ceremonies ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen

... time, was becoming unpopular. Buckingham was filling it with licentious gallants and with ladies of a type to match them. At Whitehall, there was a constant round of dissipation and libertinism. Besides the very free and easy balls, masques and banquets, there were what were ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville

... to restore its original innocence; the sacred repasts {209} imparted an intimate virtue to the soul and furnished sustenance to the spiritual life. While efforts were made to maintain the continuity of tradition, its content had slowly been transformed. The most shocking and licentious fables were metamorphosed into edifying narratives by convenient and subtle interpretations which were a joy to the learned mythographers. Paganism had become a school of morality, the priest a doctor and director ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont

... without a scruple, join in defending or destroying." Compare with these scathing words his estimate of the character of Halifax, the Whig: "The most estimable of the statesmen who were formed in the corrupt and licentious Whitehall of the Restoration. He was called inconsistent because the relative position in which he stood to the contending parties was perpetually varying. As well might the Polar Star be called inconsistent because it is sometimes to the ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson

... are considering the powers of evil were very real. Men instinctively accepted the existence of a kingdom of darkness, extending its borders over the sphere of knowledge as over the other sides of human activity. Greek was the language of some of the most licentious literature—Sappho's poems were burnt by the Church at Constantinople in 1073—and of many detestable heresies; and thus though the Council of Vienne, with missionary zeal, had recommended in 1311 that lectures in Greek—as in other languages of the heretical East—should be established ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen

... younger part of life was scandalously licentious: latterly he became, says Camden, uxorious to excess. In the early days of his favor with the queen, her profuse donations had gratified his cupidity and displayed the fondness of her attachment; but at a later period the ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... is nothing; if it would end here 'twere well. But it must after this be consigned by the shorthand writers to the public press; and from thence be transferred to the hands, nay, into the throats and lungs, of hawkers, with voices more licentious than the loud flounder-man's. And this you must hear till you are stunned; nay, you must hear ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve

... opera composers of the nineteenth century were of one mind touching the greatness of "Don Giovanni." Beethoven was horrified by its licentious libretto, but tradition says that he kept before him on his writing-table a transcript of the music for the trombones in the second finale of the opera. Shortly after Mme. Viardot-Garcia came into possession of the autograph score of the masterpiece, ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... two alone has the management of affairs; for the latter, given up to evil deeds, makes use of his power only for the indulgence of his licentious passions. ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob

... for the reason that those who work at religious and holy subjects should be religious and holy men; for it is seen, when such works are executed by persons of little faith who have little esteem for religion, that they often arouse in men's minds evil appetites and licentious desires; whence there comes blame for the evil in their works, with praise for the art and ability that they show. Now I would not have any man deceive himself by considering the rude and inept as holy, and the beautiful and excellent ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari

... Wake, and taken prisoner, with many of the monks; nor was he liberated, according to Dean Patrick, until he had paid three thousand marks. After his liberation, he returned to the monastery, and made himself more odious to the monks than before. He was depraved and dissolute, and, to satisfy his licentious desires, he is said to have made free with the treasury. He introduced two monks likewise into the monastery, who were foreigners, and quite as unscrupulous as himself, in purloining the wealth of the abbey. He was afterwards made a bishop ...
— The New Guide to Peterborough Cathedral • George S. Phillips

... undam videt, "the miller sees not all the water that goes by his mill:" no doubt, but, as in our days, these were of the commonalty, all the great ones were not so much as called in question for it. [6179]Martial's Epigram I suppose might have been generally applied in those licentious times, Omnia solus habes, &c., thy goods, lands, money, wits are thine own, Uxorem sed habes Candide cum populo; but neighbour Candidus your wife is common: husband and cuckold in that age it seems were reciprocal terms; the emperors themselves did wear Actaeon's badge; how ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... application of principles, opinions differ. Theology is as elastic as you like. Do not abandon your religion on the ground that her yoke is hard." Jansenius and his followers, on the other hand, fought uncompromisingly with the licentious spirit of the time, maintaining the austerest dogmas and denouncing any compromise or condescension. And their doctrine had a wonderful success, and penetrated everywhere. Few of the great literary men of the reign of Louis XIV. escaped ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury

... Gay belong, in the characteristic excellences of their style, to the same class of writers with Suckling, Rochester, and Sedley: the former imbibed most of the licentious levity of the age of Charles II. and carried it on beyond the Revolution under King William. Prior has left no single work equal to Gay's Fables, or the Beggar's Opera. But in his lyrical and fugitive pieces he has shown even more genius, more playfulness, more mischievous gaiety. ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt

... make it an object of scandal to the heathen and worldly people, whereby they are misled and become enemies to the faith and to the Word of God without cause, being the harder to convert since they regard Christians as licentious knaves. And the responsibility for this must be placed at the door of those who have given offense in ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther

... conduct he fully believed to be above reproach. His jealously of Barfoot did not glance at Monica's attitude towards the man; merely at the man himself, whom he credited with native scoundreldom. Barfoot represented to his mind a type of licentious bachelor; why, he could not have made perfectly clear to his own understanding. Possibly the ease of Everard's bearing, the something aristocratic in his countenance and his speech, the polish of his manner, especially in formal converse with women, from the first grave offence ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing

... keep himself from being despised. Unfortunately he succeeded. To the early precepts of this infamous pander have been attributed those excesses that disgraced the manhood of the regent, and gave a licentious character to his whole course of government. His love of pleasure, quickened and indulged by those who should have restrained it, led him into all kinds of sensual indulgence. He had been taught to think lightly of the most serious duties and sacred ties; to turn virtue into a jest, and consider ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

... With him perished his daughter, her blood mingling with her father's. The priests and the Levites threw themselves into the flames with their harps and trumpets, and, to escape the violence feared from the licentious Chaldeans, (29) the virgins who wove the curtains for the sanctuary followed their example. Still more horrible was the carnage caused among the people by Nebuzaradan, spurred on as he was by the sight of the blood of the murdered prophet Zechariah seething on the floor of the Temple. At ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... Lajos became her favorite. Of course he was not allowed to be jealous, as the young lord was still her official lover, who had the pleasure of paying everything for that licentious beauty, and besides him, there was a whole army of so-called "good friends," who were fortunate enough to obtain a smile now and then, and occasionally, something more, and who, in return, had permission to present her with rare ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... that he had just had lunch with the two desperate ruffians; and then he set down the whole bill of fare, from cocktails to coffee. He wound up with the remark that dinner would be ready about six, and would probably be a more licentious and intemperate ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry

... the Orkney men employed by the Hudson's Bay Company and those of the Canadian voyagers. Some trouble is occasionally bestowed in teaching the former and it is not thrown away, but all the good that can be said of the latter is that they are not quite so licentious ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin

... thus that the dawn of Christian Art lighted up the darkness of the catacombs. While the Roman nobles were decorating their villas and summer-houses with gay figures, scenes from the ancient stories, and representations of licentious fancies,—while the emperors were paving the halls of their great baths with mosaic portraits of the famous prize-fighters and gladiators,—the Christians were painting the walls of their obscure cemeteries with imagery which expressed the new lessons of their faith, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... cannot see any possible connection between a regenerated race, and a fashion which permits the display of the female figure upon the public streets, where men who are as yet un-regenerated, and licentious, may leer and pass vile remarks, ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad

... us to present the case of the Apostle Paul, as proof more palpable and overwhelming, on this very point. He had been falsely accused, cruelly imprisoned, and tyrannically arraigned; and that, too, before a licentious governor, an unjust and dissipated ruler, and an unprincipled infidel. The Roman law in force at the time arrested the freedom of speech, denied the rights of conscience, and even forbade the free expression of opinion in ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow

... they feel their inseparable union; that notwithstanding all the devices which have been used to sway them from their interest and duty, they are not as ready to maintain the authority of the laws against licentious invasions as they were to defend their rights against usurpation. It has been a spectacle displaying to the highest advantage of republican government to behold the most and the least wealthy of our citizens standing in the same ranks as private soldiers, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... century a decided tendency toward a recognition of her equality. Christine of Pisa, the most eminent woman of this period, supported a family of six persons by her pen, taking high ground on the conservation of morals in opposition to the general licentious spirit of the age. Margaret of Angouleme, the brilliant Queen of Navarre, was a voluminous writer, her Heptameron rising to the dignity of a French classic. A paper in the Revue des Deux Mondes, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... lovers, gay cavaliers, generous, courageous, courteous—according to the fashion of their times—and sensitive on the point of honor. They are far superior to the cold-blooded rakes of Dryden and the Restoration comedy. Still the manners and language in Beaumont and Fletcher's plays are extremely licentious, and it is not hard to sympathize with the objections to the theater expressed by the Puritan writer, William Prynne, who, after denouncing the long hair of the cavaliers in his tract, The {129} Unloveliness of Lovelocks, attacked the stage, in 1633, with Histrio-mastix: the Player's Scourge; ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... rival, for me! I choose rather to live graved in obscurity, than share with them in so preposterous a fame. Nor can I blame the wishes of those severe and wise patriots, who providing the hurts these licentious spirits may do in a state, desire rather to see fools and devils, and those antique relics of barbarism retrieved, with all other ridiculous and exploded follies, than behold the wounds of private men, of princes and nations: for, as Horace makes ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson

... is one continued round of licentious pleasures and sensual gratifications; or the gloomy enthusiast, who detests the cheerful amusements he can never enjoy, and envies the healthy feelings he can never know, and who would put down the one and suppress ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens

... powerfully endowed Church, which, while it did splendid service in converting and civilizing the natives, engrossed much of the land in the form of mainmort, and filled the new world with thousands of idle, unproductive, and often licentious friars. With an innate distrust and fear of individual initiative, it gave virtual omnipotence to royal officials and excluded all creoles from public employment. In this fashion was transferred to America the crushing political and ecclesiastical ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring

... past four hundred years the greatest evils that have afflicted the Church are traceable to a licentious Press. Printing was scarcely invented till Satan seized it for his own purposes. By it the Humanists of the fifteenth century scattered broadcast pagan ideas. The disentombed paganism continued to ferment and rot the hearts of the people ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan

... a man going outside of his tribe for a wife. It was deemed idolatry. But why kill the woman. She had not violated the laws of her tribe and was no doubt ignorant of Jewish law. Other commentators say that Zimri was notorious at the licentious feasts of Baal-poer and that the Midianitish women tempted the sons of Israel to idolatry. Hence the justice of killing both Zimri and Cozbi in one blow. It is remarkable that the influence of woman ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... not merely a rash expression, or an emotion of zeal; nothing is more real, or more exactly true: it is the situation of almost all men, even the wisest and most esteemed of the world. The morality of the younger stages of life is always lax, if not licentious. Age, disgust, and establishment for life, fix the heart and withdraw it from debauchery: but where are those who are converted? Where are those who expiate their crimes by tears of sorrow and true repentance? Where are those who, ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser

... the great prairies of the valley of the Messasebe. The Ojibways were not to ambush the scattered parties of the Iroquois. The unambitious colonists of New England and New York were to be left to till their stony farms in quiet. Meantime, the fur trade, wasteful, licentious, unprofitable, was to extend onward and outward in all the marches of the West. From one end of the Great River of the West to the other the insignia of France and of France's king were to be erected, and France's posts were to hold all the ancient trails. Even at the mouth of the Great River, ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough

... both my sister and myself, as well as my husband. He hateth me because that it was I whom he desired to marry, four years ago; but I feared him too much to become his wife, for even in those days I knew him to be a drunkard and a gambler, and a licentious man. Then although she loved him not my sister Serena became his wife, for he was a man of good property, and promised to give over his evil ways and be a good husband to her. And he hateth her and would gladly ...
— The Brothers-In-Law: A Tale Of The Equatorial Islands; and The Brass Gun Of The Buccaneers - 1901 • Louis Becke

... n.; wallow in voluptuousness &c. n.; plunge into dissipation. revel; rake, live hard, run riot, sow one's wild oats; slake one's appetite, slake one's thirst; swill; pamper. Adj. intemperate,inabstinent[obs3]; sensual, self-indulgent; voluptuous, luxurious, licentious, wild, dissolute, rakish, fast, debauched. brutish, crapulous[obs3], swinish, piggish. Paphian, Epicurean, Sybaritical; bred in the lap of luxury, nursed in the lap of luxury; indulged, pampered; full-fed, high-fed. Phr. "being full of ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... always exist in wedlock. But in Love there is such self-control and decorum and constancy, that if the god but once enter the soul of a licentious man, he makes him give up all his amours, abates his pride, and breaks down his haughtiness and dissoluteness, putting in their place modesty and silence and tranquillity and decorum, and makes him constant ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... bishop of Winchester, and Hubert de Burgh, the justiciary. The counsels of the latter were chiefly followed; and had he possessed equal authority in the kingdom with Pembroke, he seemed to be every way worthy of filling the place of that virtuous nobleman. But the licentious and powerful barons, who had once broken the reins of subjection to their prince, and had obtained by violence an enlargement of their liberties and independence, could ill be restrained by laws under a minority; and the people, no less than the king, suffered from their outrages ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume

... plays in which the popular morality is similiarly expressed. The seducer, or rascal of the piece, is always an aristocrat,—a wicked count, or licentious marquis, who is brought to condign punishment just before the fall of the curtain. And too good reason have the French people had to lay such crimes to the charge of the aristocracy, who are expiating now, on the stage, the ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... chiefly valuable as recording interesting anecdotes of eminent men of the 14th and 15th centuries. It also contains a number of quibbles or jeux de mots, and a still greater number of facetiae, idle and licentious stories. These Facetiae form, upon the whole, the most amusing and interesting part of the Poggiana printed at Amsterdam in 1720; but this collection also comprehends additional anecdotes of Poggio's life, and a few extracts from ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... text has been depraved in the same licentious way throughout, by the responsible authors of Cod. B and Cod. {HEBREW LETTER ALEF}, although such corruptions have attracted little notice from their comparative unimportance. Thus, the reading (in {HEBREW LETTER ALEF}) ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon

... to look upon their sons as saints and godly men, in whom the Spirit of the Lord was working. But when the corrupt practices within those walls were known, when men were convinced, sorely against their will, that the inmates were licentious, depraved, covetous, and tyrannical, then indeed it became hard to recognize their ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green

... by them that having deposed their Soveraign, shared amongst them the Soveraignty of Rome; and afterwards by their Successors. And by reading of these Greek, and Latine Authors, men from their childhood have gotten a habit (under a false shew of Liberty,) of favouring tumults, and of licentious controlling the actions of their Soveraigns; and again of controlling those controllers, with the effusion of so much blood; as I think I may truly say, there was never any thing so deerly bought, as these ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes

... the natural and inevitable result is an overwhelming impulse toward illicit satisfaction in self-abuse or sexual immorality. Society in self-defense and the interest of its youth must wage war upon this mercenary exploiting of the sex impulse. Licentious thinking is the great foe of continence; the saying of Jesus may be paraphrased thus with physiological correctness: "He that looketh upon a woman to lust after her hath already committed the sexual ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various

... of which they were the authors. A just but melancholy reflection imbittered, however, the noblest of human enjoyments. They must often have recollected the instability of a happiness which depended on the character of a single man. The fatal moment was perhaps approaching when some licentious youth or some jealous tyrant would abuse, to the destruction, that absolute power which they had exerted for the benefit of their people. The ideal restraints of the senate and the laws might serve to display the virtues, but could never correct the vices, of the emperor. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various

... shameful and villanous speach, saying: That he would kill her, and when she was slaine, he woulde also kill his slaue, and place him by her, that it might be reported howe she was slaine, being taken in adulterie. She vanquished with his terrible and infamous threate, his fleshlye and licentious enterprice, ouercame the puritie of her chaste and honest hart, which done he departed. Then Lucrece sent a post to Rome to her father, and an other to Ardea to her husbande, requiringe them that they would make speede to come vnto her, with certaine of their trustie frendes, for that a cruell ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter

... he had ascended the vacant throne. [68] A behavior so very opposite to that of his amiable predecessor afforded no favorable presage of the new reign: and the Romans, deprived of power and freedom, asserted their privilege of licentious murmurs. [69] The voice of congratulation and flattery was not, however, silent; and we may still peruse, with pleasure and contempt, an eclogue, which was composed on the accession of the emperor Carus. Two shepherds, avoiding the noontide heat, retire into the cave of Faunus. On a spreading ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... of the aged women found a response in the soul of the listener. "He felt his heart shake," to use his own words; he saw that he lacked the true tokens of a Christian. He now forsook the company of the profane and licentious, and sought that of a poor man who had the reputation of piety, but, to his grief, he found him "a devilish ranter, given up to all manner of uncleanness; he would laugh at all exhortations to sobriety, and deny that there was a God, an angel, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... doctrine of the synagogue; and they would gladly have extinguished the dangerous heresy in the blood of its adherents. But the decrees of Heaven had already disarmed their malice; and though they might sometimes exert the licentious privilege of sedition, they no longer possessed the administration of criminal justice; nor did they find it easy to infuse into the calm breast of a Roman magistrate the rancor of their own zeal and prejudice. The provincial governors ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... and shivers where it lights. Such humours stirr'd them up; but this war's seed Was even the same that wrecks all great dominions. 160 When Fortune made us lords of all, wealth flow'd, And then we grew licentious and rude; The soldiers' prey and rapine brought in riot; Men took delight in jewels, houses, plate, And scorn'd old sparing diet, and ware robes Too light for women; Poverty, who hatch'd Rome's greatest wits,[593] was loath'd, and all the world Ransack'd ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe

... friends, and servants, were plundered of the effects they carried with them, and which were reserved to them in the capitulation of their fortress, and in their persons were otherwise rudely and inhumanly dealt with by the licentious followers of the camp: for which outrages, represented to the said Hastings with great concern by the commanding officer, Major Popham, he, the said Hastings, did afterwards recommend ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... world and middle classes throughout France. They, no doubt, indicate clearly enough the state of general opinion at this time. But what then? Their great compeers, the giants of thought, foreshadow what it will be. The profligate novels, licentious drama, and irreligious opinions of the middle class now in France, are the result of the infidelity and wickedness which produced the Revolution. The opinions of the great men who have succeeded the school of the Encyclopedie, who have been ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various

... he could not conceive by what means such a number of licentious people, amounting, with their dependants, to above five hundred, were restrained within the bounds of any tolerable discipline, or prevented from making their escape, which they might at any time accomplish, either by stealth or open violence; as it could not be ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... beak and talons of these harpies in its entrails, impoverished by a government that robbed her at home while it humiliated her abroad, struggled vainly in its misery, and was now on the verge of another series of internecine combats—civil war seeming the only alternative to a voluptuous and licentious peace. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... innocent gallant pawn his revelling suit to make his punk a supper. An honest decayed commander cannot skelder, cheat, nor be seen in a bawdy-house, but he shall be straight in one of their wormwood comedies. They are grown licentious, the rogues; libertines, flat libertines. They forget they are in the statute, the rascals; they are blazon'd there; there they are trick'd, they and their pedigrees; they need no other ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson

... pervaded him. We find no traces of the [Greek: stigmatophobia] with which he was formerly afflicted. Nouns are wedded to obedient adjectives, adverbs to their willing verbs, by the lawful mediation of the recognized authorities of punctuation, the illegitimate and licentious disregard of which, as recklessly manifested in "It is Never too Late to Mend," indicated a disposition to entirely subvert the established morals of the language. It is pleasant to see how unreservedly Mr. Reade has abandoned his functions as apostle of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... United States with the north of Europe, heretofore much vexed by licentious cruisers, particularly under the Danish flag, has latterly been visited with fresh and extensive depredations. The measures pursued in behalf of our injured citizens not having obtained justice for them, a further and more formal interposition ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Madison • James Madison

... English Government. Besides this official proceeding he applied personally to Mr. Addington, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, requesting him to procure the adoption of legislative measures against the licentious writings complained of; and, to take the earliest opportunity of satisfying his hatred against the liberty of the press, the First Consul seized the moment of signing the preliminaries ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... learn the advantages and benefits of civil and religious liberty, and who would be happy indeed to see liberty established in their country; but liberty under the law, rational and wise liberty, liberty compatible with order and tranquillity, liberty, in a word, for good purposes,—not that savage, licentious, and tyrannical liberty, the object of which is anarchy, so well answering the private ends of its partisans, and, above all, the iniquitous views of an ambitious neighbor.... For the present, no doubt, their object is limited ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various

... afterwards both Queen of England, niece to Edgar Atheling, and mother to the Empress of Germany, the daughter, the wife, and the mother of monarchs, was obliged, during her early residence for education in England, to assume the veil of a nun, as the only means of escaping the licentious pursuit of the Norman nobles. This excuse she stated before a great council of the clergy of England, as the sole reason for her having taken the religious habit. The assembled clergy admitted the validity of the plea, and the notoriety of the circumstances upon which it was founded; giving ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... first broad rectilinear way: Admonishing loftier reaches, the rich adventurous shoots, Pushes of tentative curves, embryonic upwreathings in air; Not always the sprouts of Earth's root-Laws preserving her brutes; Oft but our primitive hungers licentious in fine ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... give fearfulness is mere Germanism; it is the work of fancy, not of imagination,[72] and instantly degrades whatever it affects to third-rate level. There is nothing more marked in truly great men, than their power of being dreadful without being false or licentious. In Tintoret's Murder of Abel, the head of the sacrificed firstling lies in the corner of the foreground, obscurely sketched in, and with the light gleaming upon its glazed eyes. There is nothing exaggerated ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin

... on the other hand, in all parts of the world, have steadily refused to enter into any marriage relations with their barbarous neighbors, or to recognize as belonging to their community any half-breeds springing from licentious and illicit connection with them. Here, too, the results are almost entirely uniform. The extinction of such barbarous tribes brought within the sphere of their competition has been rapid and almost if not ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... consoled himself for the licentious life of his empress Julia, from the fatality attending those of her name. This strange prejudice of lucky and unlucky names prevailed in modern Europe. The successor of Adrian VI. (as Guicciardini tells us) wished to preserve his ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... the dignity of their rank, and their fame in arms, all the grace and elegance of polite literature. But it is fatally true, that when the public taste is once corrupted, the mind which has been warped, seldom recovers its former tone. This difficulty was rendered still more insurmountable by the licentious spirit of our young men, and the popular applause, that encouraged the false taste of the times. I need not, in this company, call to mind the unbridled presumption, with which, as soon as genuine eloquence expired, the young men of the age took possession ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus

... Indian, or Boer and Hottentot,—the self-caste is by nature anti-social. It is always asserted that he possesses the vices of both parent races and the virtues of neither: that he is born especially with a tendency to be a liar, cowardly, licentious, and ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins



Words linked to "Licentious" :   licence, unchaste



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