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Vile   /vaɪl/   Listen
Vile

adjective
(compar. viler; superl. vilest)
1.
Morally reprehensible.  Synonyms: despicable, slimy, ugly, unworthy, worthless, wretched.  "Ugly crimes" , "The vile development of slavery appalled them" , "A slimy little liar"
2.
Causing or able to cause nausea.  Synonyms: loathsome, nauseating, nauseous, noisome, offensive, queasy, sickening.  "Nauseous offal" , "A sickening stench"



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"Vile" Quotes from Famous Books



... "That's vile!" flushed Prescott indignantly, as he got up to make the circuit of the room. "The Gardiner fellows have always been good, fair sportsmen. They wouldn't be back of ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock

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

... from the beginning, they were not born until the sons of God had degenerated. But seculum (olam) connotes a second predicate, that of substance, so that Moses explains the nature of the power in which they trusted to have been secular or worldly. They despised the ministry of the Word as a vile office; therefore they seized upon another office, a secular one. The very same thing our Papists have done. It has pleased them better to hold ample revenues and worldly kingdoms than to be hated of all men for ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther

... the cruel measure of wholesale expatriation, it was not put in execution till every resource of patience and persuasion had been tried in vain. The agents of the French Court, civil, military, and ecclesiastical, had made some act of force a necessity. We have seen by what vile practices they produced in Acadia a state of things intolerable, and impossible of continuance. They conjured up the tempest; and when it burst on the heads of the unhappy people, they gave no help. The Government of Louis ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... try to run, Fletcher?" he asked, as he found Tom and his two companions seated in "durance vile," ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston

... before ladies. She was not slow to believe evil of her neighbors, maintaining, indeed, that to be spoken of at all was proof sufficient of undesirable conduct; but she would never investigate a charge, preferring rather to accept it in its vile integrity than to soil her hands by attempting to unweave its dirty threads; hence she would be pitiless, repellent, but she would never make herself the focus of gossip. She was a human being if you will, a Christian in creed and name assuredly; but beyond and above all things she was a well-mannered, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various

... burthen of idolatrous praise, which to our thinking had all the bad effects of calumny, we should be able to find at bottom something that could be applauded without impairing our veracity, deceiving the public, or joining the multitude in burning the vile incense of flattery under the boy's nose, and hiding him from the world and from himself in a ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold

... sensibilities, made him weary of this slow, gross body, and passionately to long for a more corresponding, swift, and pure investiture, it was Paul. And in his theory of "the glorious body of Christ, according to which our vile body shall be changed," he relieved his impatience and fed his desire. What his conception of that body was, definitely, we cannot tell; but doubtless it was the idea of a vehicle adapted to his mounting and ardent soul, and in many particulars ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

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

... conditions improved, and at 4.30 P.M. Atkinson and Dimitri started with the two dog-teams, though it was still blowing hard and very thick. They travelled, with one rest for the dogs, until 4.30 P.M. the next day, but had a very hazy idea where they were most of the time, owing to the vile weather: once at any rate they seem to have got right in under White Island. When they camped the second time they thought they were in the neighbourhood of Lashly's tent, and in a temporary clearance they saw the flag which Lashly had put up on the sledge. Evans was still alive, and Atkinson ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... that when I git to be a man, I'll be a missionarer like her oldest brother, Dan, As was et up by the cannibuls that lives in Ceylon's Isle, Where every prospeck pleases, an' only man is vile! But gran'ma she has never been to see a Wild West show, Nor read the Life of Daniel Boone, or else I guess she'd know That Buff'lo Bill an' cow-boys is good enough for me! Excep' jest 'fore Christmas, when I'm good as I ...
— Love-Songs of Childhood • Eugene Field

... practical Labarthe, who had joined the procession with the idea of getting into the front rank, and of obtaining as soon as possible an income of thirty thousand francs a year. What would it matter to this second individual if that vile Pascal should boast of having stolen a march on the most delicate, the most powerful of the heirs of Balzac, since I, the new Labarthe, was capable of looking forward to an operation which required about as much delicacy as some of the performances ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various

... I am not such a man, Not such as thou, a traitor to thy brother; Nay, more, thy friend: But friend's a sacred name, Which none but brave and honest men should wear: In thee 'tis vile; 'tis prostitute; 'tis air; And thus, I puff ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden

... is very like a dish of spinach, and very like a vile daub, or like anything else ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various

... usurp his rights. Thou wilt proclaim aloud to all the world That thou dost own him for no son of thine. Thou wilt not nurse a bastard's alien blood Upon thy heart, that beats so nobly; never! Thou wilt—and this the Czar expects from thee— Give the vile counterfeit the lie, with all The righteous indignation ...
— Demetrius - A Play • Frederich Schiller

... order on the margin of the paper; the affairs of state were all settled in a couple of hours. Literary compositions, in prose and verse, military reviews, meals, and conversation, filled up the rest of the day. "Frederick," says Voltaire, in his vile and mischievous "Memoires," "governed without court, council, or religious establishment" (culte). It was during this brilliant period of the king's reign that the French poet passed some ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various

... document Buonaparte sets forth in fiery phrase the early enthusiasm of republicans for the return of Paoli, and their disillusionment when he surrounded himself with venal men like Pozzo di Borgo, with relatives like his nephew Leonetti, with his vile creatures in general. The misfortunes of the Sardinian expedition, the disgraceful disorders of the island, the failure of the commissioners to secure Ajaccio, are all alike attributed to Paoli. "Can perfidy like this invade the human heart?... What fatal ambition overmasters ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... disclosed to us, from the smallest atom of dust, to the stupendous majesty of Thy million worlds in the air,—give we beseech Thee, to this perished clay which once was man, the beauty which transforms vile things to virtuous, and endows our seeming death with life! Let Thy eternal Law of Resurrection so work upon this senseless body that it may pass through Earth to Heaven, and there find finer grades of being, higher forms of development, greater opportunities of perfection. And for the ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... the apologist is completed; "for whereas our accusers have pretended that our nation are a people of late origin, I have demonstrated that they are exceedingly ancient, and whereas they have reproached our lawgiver as a vile man, God of old bare witness to his virtues, and time itself hath been proved to bear witness to the same thing."[1] In a final appreciation ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich

... other a most abandoned and profligate character for many years—if a man be viciously disposed, there is no doubt that he will turn his Sunday to bad account, that he will take advantage of it, to dissipate with other bad characters as vile as himself; and that in this way, he may trace his first yielding to temptation, possibly his first commission of crime, to an infringement of the Sabbath. But this would be an argument against any holiday at all. If his holiday had been Wednesday instead of Sunday, and ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens

... went upstairs again to Gerry, who was in as vile a temper as before. His lunch had disagreed with him: he hadn't slept: the room was not hot enough ... these were a few of the complaints he showered at me as soon as I appeared. He was in his most impish and malicious ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams

... this strife; but, through the blessing of God upon the words of Victorine, this poor girl for the first time loathed herself, and her own vile nature which made her envious of a sister's prosperity. Caliste was alarmed at this insight she had obtained of her own heart, and she was troubled so much within herself, that she rose suddenly clasping her hands; and, had not those near her ...
— The Young Lord and Other Tales - to which is added Victorine Durocher • Camilla Toulmin

... innocent eyes of hers and smiles;—why does Lady Winsleigh shrink from that frank and childlike openness of regard? Why does she, for one brief moment, hate herself?—why does she so suddenly feel herself to be vile and beneath contempt? God only knows!—but the first genuine blush that has tinged her ladyship's cheek for many a long day, suddenly spreads a hot and embarrassing tide of crimson over the polished pallor of her satiny ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... other, the flesh sides uppermost, in a salting-trough which has a gutter round its edges to drain away the brine; for, to have sweet and fine bacon, the flitches must not be sopping in brine, which gives it the sort of vile taste that barrel and sea pork have. Every one knows how different is the taste of fresh dry salt from that of salt in a dissolved state; therefore change the salt often,—once in 4 or 5 days; let it melt and sink in, but not lie too long; twice change the flitches, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... temptation He led Eve and David from the obedience of God, but He could not retain them forever under His thraldom. Power was granted to Him to spoil Job of his substance and children, and to strike his body with a plague and sickness most vile and fearful, but He could not compel his mouth to blaspheme God's majesty; and, therefore, altho we are laid open sometimes, as it were, to tribulation for a time, it is that when He has poured forth the venom of His malice against God's elect it may return to His own confusion, and that the deliverance ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various

... Dannie—you that lies there tender an' kind an' clean o' soul in your little bed? You that said the little prayer t' the tender Shepherd? You lost! God! it could not be. What's this you're tellin' me? I'm not able t' blaspheme the Lord God A'mighty in a way that's vile as that. Not you, lad—not you! Am I t' curse the God that would have it so?" cries he, in wrath. "Am I t' touch your young body here in the solemn night, am I t' look into your unspoiled eyes by day, an' feel that you fare into the dark alone, ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan

... effrontery to come to me—to me—to me of all women—and to confess his abominable passion for that pure angel, imploring me to assist him in bringing destruction upon her and you. Oh, it is execrable, it is vile, it is hellish!" She pressed her hands to her temples as she stood, and glared at the two men. The count was a strong man, easily petulant, but hard to move to real anger. Though his face was white and his right hand clutched his crutch-stick, he still kept the ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford

... who have sold their pens, and intrigued against their benefactors even. This remark is rather foreign to the article SOUL; but should one miss an opportunity of dismaying those who make themselves unworthy of the name of men of letters, who prostitute the little mind and conscience they have to a vile self-interest, to a fantastic policy, who betray their friends to flatter fools, who in secret powder the hemlock which the powerful and malicious ignoramus wants to make ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire

... corrective to my romantic memories. I would not believe that, not for one fleeting second. Perhaps, I said to myself, it was a ruse of this scoundrel. But again, I put that from me, for I did not think he would stoop to little meannesses, no matter how vile he was in great things. I assumed indifference to the matter, laying the packet down upon my couch, and saying to him, "You will convey my thanks to Mademoiselle Duvarney for these books, whose chief value lies in the honourable housing they ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

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

... happened at the mine that was too terrible even to speak about? What was the bond between these two men, which held the successful one in terror, and the other in silence? Something unspeakably vile. A hideous pact—— ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs

... are not alert and quick of wit, we shall be deceived by it, and wonder in the end, as the fool does, why heaven struck that final blow; concluding that it was but another whimsy of the Gods. The ladies prayed to their mother. They were indeed suffering vile torture. Ethereal eyes might pardon the unconscious jugglery which made their hearts cry out to her that the step they were about to take was to save her children from seeming to acquiesce in a dishonour to her memory. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... many shillings as it would change for."—"Not to preserve my life from starving, nor to redeem it from a robber, would I part with this dear piece!" answered Joseph. "What," says Mrs Tow-wouse, "I suppose it was given you by some vile trollop, some miss or other; if it had been the present of a virtuous woman, you would not have had such a value for it. My husband is a fool if he parts with the horse without being paid for him."—"No, no, I can't part with the horse, indeed, till I have the money," cried Tow-wouse. ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding

... And terrible and vile as were the sources from which the fortunes had been derived, they were no viler nor more terrible than the purposes for which they had been spent. Mrs. Vivie Patton had hinted to Montague of a "Decameron Club," whose members gathered in each others' homes and vied in the telling of obscene ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair

... boy and was scolding, in a loud angry tone, against the burrs. He did not see, he said, what in the world chestnuts were made to grow so for. They ought to grow right out in the open air, like apples, and not have such vile porcupine skins on them,—just to plague the boys. So saying he struck with all his might a fine large burr, crushed it to pieces, and then jumped up, using at the same time profane and wicked words. As soon as he turned round he saw the master standing very near him. He ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott

... quietly gazed on the Neva, and the clear red sunset. He did not feel himself tired now, notwithstanding his weakness, and the load which had lain upon his heart seemed to be gone. Liberty! Liberty! he was free from those enchantments and all their vile instigations. In later times when he recalled this period of his existence, and all that happened to him in those days, minute by minute and point by point, he recollected how each circumstance, although in the main not very unusual, constantly appeared ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne

... and the favorite of Eurymachos, wishing to make mischief, told them that Eumaios had brought the old man along but did not, himself, know who he was. Antinoos hearing this, said: "Eumaios, foolish swineherd, why didst thou bring that vile beggar here? Are there not beggars enough to eat up the wealth of thy ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer

... of his shoulders for a few pence. At this they were as much surprised as they were doubtful at first whether the porter could be his majesty. At length they ventured to express their complaints that so great a personage should debase himself by so vile an employment. His majesty having heard them, replied—"Upon my honour, gentlemen, the load which I quitted is by far heavier than the one you see me carry here: the weightiest is but a straw, when compared to that world under which I laboured. I have slept more in four nights than I have during ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... tiresome story enough, as foggy as the day, sharpened by no sudden flashes of pain or pleasure.—I know: only the outline of a dull life, that long since, with thousands of dull lives like its own, was vainly lived and lost: thousands of them,—massed, vile, slimy lives, like those of the torpid lizards in yonder stagnant water-butt.—Lost? There is a curious point for you to settle, my friend, who study psychology in a lazy, dilettante way. Stop a moment. I am going to be honest. This is what I ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various

... the Duke and Dutchess smile, The court would do the same awhile, But call us after, low and vile, And that way make their sport: Nay, would you still more pastime make, And at poor we your purses shake, Whate'er you give, we'll gladly take, For ...
— A Fairy Tale in Two Acts Taken from Shakespeare (1763) • William Shakespeare

... vile," he said. "You think that about Bonita! And all the time I've been... I could make you ashamed—I could ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey

... full quarter of a mile before he lost that startled and uneasy feeling in sardonic exasperation that he, Keith Darrant, had been taken for a frequenter of a lady of the town. The whole thing—the whole thing!—a vile and disgusting business! His very mind felt dirty and breathless; his spirit, drawn out of sheath, had slowly to slide back before he could at all focus and readjust his reasoning faculty. Certainly, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... the society increased, I found it required still greater care to separate the precious from the vile. In order to this, I determined, at least once in three months, to talk with every member myself, and to inquire at their own mouth, as well as of their leaders and neighbours, whether they grew in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. To each of those whose seriousness ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... from his Conqueror. Then, recovering his stoical bearing, which for a moment had been shaken, he submitted himself calmly to his fate,-while the Spaniards, gathering around, muttered their credos for the salvation of his soul!32 Thus by the death of a vile malefactor perished ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... refused. I declared I would break my engagement. He showed me letters from his sisters, letters from his brothers, and his dear friends—all entreating him to think again before he made me his wife; all repeating reports of me in Paris, Vienna, and London, which are so many vile lies. "If you refuse to marry me," he said, "you admit that these reports are true—you admit that you are afraid to face society in the character of my wife." What could I answer? There was no contradicting ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins

... work you ever did in your life. Everything bad has come from that.—Why couldn't you have held back, and refused me? We might still have been decent, happy creatures, if you hadn't let your vile nature get the better of you. You wouldn't marry me—no, no! You prefer to take your pleasure in other ways.—A man at any cost, Madeleine said once, and God knows, I believe ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... her. She's had a hard time. She's been horribly misunderstood. She may have been indiscreet—still she's a noble woman at heart. Her husband was a vile dog. ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes

... procured. In truth he has some reason for self-congratulation. For he is the organizer of every lawsuit, the deviser of every perjury, the architect of every lie, the seed-ground of every wickedness, the vile haunt and hideous habitation of lust and gluttony, the mark of every scandal since his earliest years: in boyhood, ere he became so hideously bald, the ready servant of the vilest vices; in youth a stage dancer limp and nerveless ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius

... Holy Writ which may as well be omitted, but the purport of it shall be explained. It commenced with a dissertation against an undue love of wealth,—the auri sacra fames, as the writer called it; and described with powerful unction the terrible straits into which, when indulged, it led the vile, wicked, ugly, hideous, loathsome, devilish human heart. Then there was an eloquent passage referring to worms and dust and grass, and a quotation respecting treasures both corruptible and incorruptible. Not at once, but with crafty ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope

... Caesar, who, however, liked their society, through feeling most free in it. The luxury of the court gilded everything, and covered all things with glitter. High and low, the descendants of great families, and the needy from the pavements of the city, great artists, and vile scrapings of talent, thronged to the palace to sate their dazzled eyes with a splendor almost surpassing human estimate, and to approach the giver of every favor, wealth, and property,—whose single glance might abase, it is true, but might also ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... practice of gentlemen, for the same reason that Lord Byron's anti-neckcloth fashion has compelled every man of sense to bind a cravat religiously about his throat. As to taking snuff from a paper, it is vile. ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman

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

... nor question nor reply At what we figure as God's judgment bar! None of this vile way by the barren words Which, more than any deed, characterise Man as made subject to a curse: ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps

... passion has abated, he restores some of the exiles and lives in a sort of equilibrium, indulging first one pleasure and then another; and if reason comes and tells him that some pleasures are good and honourable, and others bad and vile, he shakes his head and says that he can make no distinction between them. Thus he lives in the fancy of the hour; sometimes he takes to drink, and then he turns abstainer; he practises in the ...
— The Republic • Plato

... filthy in their habits...It is a tradition with the natives generally here, that they were once members of their own tribe; that for their depraved habits they were expelled from all human society, and, that through an obstinate indulgence of their vile propensities, they have degenerated into their present state and organization. They are, however, eaten by them, and when cooked with the oil and pulp of the palm-nut ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... the traditions of the poor are mostly simply the traditions of humanity, a thing which many of us have not seen for some time. For instance, workingmen have a tradition that if one is talking about a vile thing it is better to talk of it in coarse language; one is the less likely to be seduced into excusing it. But mankind had this tradition also, until the Puritans and their children, the Ibsenites, started the opposite idea, that it does not matter what you say so long as you say it with long ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton

... happy home altogether and yet, and yet—it was better than this. There was pure air there, at least, and grass up to the door, and trees rustling over-head; and the little children were brown and sturdy and played with merry shouts, not with these vile words she heard jabbered in the wretched street. Her heart grew sick within her—a habit it had, that heart of Nellie's—and a passion of wild revolt against her surroundings made her bite her lips and press her nails against her ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller

... not any one imagine, then, that because he is in Havana he will get no poor cigars, for a greater mistake can not be made, for just as vile trash can there be purchased as any where; and it appeared to me that in buying, from time to time in different fabricos, a few cigars it was rarely I found a really good one. It behooves, then, every lover of a good cigar ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... though the spicy breezes Blow soft o'er Cuba's isle; Though every prospect pleases, And only man is vile?" ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 1, Saturday, April 2, 1870 • Various

... it was called? Well, it and everything in it was not worth the life of my friend Renouf.... Nor is anything I've ever seen worth a single life sacrificed to the Red God of Discovery.... Those accursed cities full of vile and monstrous carvings—they belong to the jaguars now. Let them keep them. Let the world's jungles keep their own—if only they'd ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers

... particularly vile about the crimes of these high officials and distinguished gentlemen who have been waxing fat and luxurious on life-insurance graft. In a recent number of this magazine I drew a parallel between the confidence operator and the burglar to show that the latter despises the former ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... carried him to Sleaford Castle, where he passed another night of pain and horror. Next day, they carried him, with greater difficulty than on the day before, to the castle of Newark upon Trent; and there, on the eighteenth of October, in the forty-ninth year of his age, and the seventeenth of his vile reign, was an end of ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens

... your maidenly reputation?" I demanded. "That hateful peddler-fellow and vile old hag will make your name a byword—O, decidedly ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol

... hither and thither, up and down, swayed by every breath of popular caprice; so it move to the mere cry of "Progress!" its followers are content. To-day, in the hands of the skeptical philosopher, it assaults the heavens. Tomorrow it may: float over the mire of Mormonism, or depths still more vile. It was under the flag of progress that, in the legislative halls of France, the name of the Holy Lord God of Hosts, "who inhabiteth eternity," was legally blasphemed. It was under the flag of progress that, on the 10th of ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... fling at the chastity of Mary of Guise, the Reformer takes leave of the woman whom he so bitterly hated. Yet, "Knox was not given to the practice so common in his day, of assassinating reputations by vile insinuations." Posterity has not accepted, contemporary English historians did not accept, Knox's picture of Mary of Guise as the wanton widow, the spawn of the serpent, who desired to cut the ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang

... ugly; while in its proper connection it may add to the charm by variety. The good men of Polonius's school, who cannot see beyond their beards, who never get further than such particulars as, "that is a foolish figure,"—"that's an ill phrase, a vile phrase,"—"that's good,"—"this is too long,"—these Hamlet sends "to the barber's with their beards" and their art criticisms; they are out of place with such a poet as Shakespeare. All the experience we have gained warns ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... proportion as this kind of fascination is vile and mean, that which may be called altruistic or sympathetic attraction, or Enchantment, is noble and pure, because it acquires strength in proportion to the purity and beauty of the soul or will which inspires it. It is as real and has as much power, and can be exercised ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland

... hear from me—vile seducer!" Madame von Marwitz cried, addressing the young man over Karen's shoulder. "Do you dare dispute my right to save her from you—foul serpent! Leave us! Does she not tell you ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... It was simply a political harangue in defense of slavery. It created a profound impression throughout the free States, and became a powerful weapon in the hands of Republicans. It was against the whole current of adjudications on the subject, and they denounced it as a vile caricature of American jurisprudence. They characterized it as the distilled diabolism of two hundred years of slavery, stealthily aiming at the overthrow of our Republican institutions, while seeking to hide its nakedness under the fig-leaves of judicial fairness and dignity. They branded it ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian

... like him, David; but he was always so much the gentleman in his manners—you must admit that. Who could have dreamed it of him. Poor Mrs. Rodney is after all the one to be pitied. She is utterly prostrated. Refuses to see even her most intimate friends. It all came of those two vile wretches thinking Jack Dawson out of town when he wasn't; for he was right there following them around in their perambulations. And the outcome is that Mr. Rodney has his beauty spoiled they say forever; the shot came very near being fatal. But poor, ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin

... doctrines. One object was also to play the popish farce of trying Martin Bucer and Paulus Phagius, who had been buried about three or four years; for which purpose the churches of St. Mary and St. Michael, where they lay, were interdicted as vile and unholy places, unfit to worship God in, until they were perfumed and washed with the Pope's holy water, &c. &c. The trumpery act of citing these dead reformers to appear, not having had the least effect upon them, on January 26, sentence of condemnation was passed, part of which ran in ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... of the code to slug him with brass or steel knuckles, commonly called knucks. The man who carried this reenforcement for the natural fist in his pocket and used it in a fight was held the lowest of all contemptible and namelessly vile things. So, these Texas cowboys turned on Morgan at their comrade's accusation, deaf to any ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden

... and antics and grimaces strove to attract the attention of the people, and he told them of the wonders performed by acrobats within, of the freaks exhibited. Many of his jests are preserved. They are often in dialogue with the proprietor and are generally of vile indecency. The lowest of the strollers, he was abused by them. The Italian Pagliaccio is a species of clown, and Punchinello was never a mere buffoon. The Punch of the puppet-show is a bastard descendant of the latter, but the original ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... thought no lesse. O knave jeweller! O vile begger! be my trot, Marshan, me studdie, me beat my braine, me invent, me dreame upon such ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various

... to draw near to her, to take her to his heart, but she drew back in pride and anger. "Go," said she, "I have nothing to do with a man who violates the most sacred laws of human honor, and like a vile thief sneaks in to destroy innocence." Her voice failed her, her eyes filled with tears, but she shook them from her. "I weep," said she, "but not for grief, nor yet for love; anger it is alone which extorts tears from me, and they are bitter—far more bitter than death." And as she thus spoke, ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach

... —Diva, vilain, par la loi dont tu vives Fus-tu a Nymes, la fort cit garnie? —Ol, voir, sire, le paaige me quistrent; Ge fui trop poures, si nel poi baillier mie. Il me lessrent por mes enfanz qu'il virent. —Di moi, vilain, des estres de la vile. Et cil respont:—Ce vos sai-ge bien dire Por un denier .ii. granz pains i vismes; La denere vaut .iii. en autre vile: Moult par est bone, se puis n'est empirie. —Fox, dist Guillaume, ce ne demant-je mie, Ms des paiens chevaliers de ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker

... rather it was so; keep your money! I'll give mother Coupeau a home, do you hear? I picked up a cat the other evening, so I can at least do the same for your mother. And she shall be in want of nothing; she shall have her coffee and her drop of brandy! Good heavens! what a vile family!" ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola

... of them. She took after him. Moreover, Lord Loudwater would have induced odd reveries in any wife. He had been intolerable since the second week of their honeymoon. Wholly without power of self-restraint, the furious outbursts of his vile temper had been consistently revolting. She once more told herself that something would have to be done about it—not on the instant, however. At the moment there appeared to her to be months to do it in. She dropped her cigarette ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson

... never been printed but for the company of Chandlers and Tobacco-Men, who are your Stationers, and the onely men that vend your Labors' (pp. 4-5). 'He [a member of the Rota] said that he himself reprieved the Whole Defence of the People of England for a groat, that was sentenced to vile Mundungus, and had suffer'd inevitably (but for him), though it cost you much oyle and the Rump 300l. a year,' &c. (ibid.). This ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... scar, very well healed. Instead of detracting from the beauty of his face it added a peculiar fascination. And the American imagination, always receptive of the romantic, might readily and forgivably have pictured villas, maids in durance vile, and sword-thrusts under the moonlight. But the waiter, who had served his time in one or another of the foreign armies, knew that no foil or rapier could have made such a scar; more probably the saber. For the Italian ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath

... think I would have—well, I would not have answered for my conduct. Of course I took his part, but you fell ill, and did not know that. When he came and told me that he had been mistaken I abused him like a thief. I have abused him ever since whenever I have had a chance. It was a vile, dastardly, foolish, ridiculous—" ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford

... great vigour the way in which Guido destroyed all the home life which clung about him and himself remained dark and vile, by the burning of a nest-like hut in the Campagna, with all its vines and ivy and flowers; till nothing remains but the blackened walls of the malicious tower round which ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke

... time a new Governor was sent to Santa Fe, a man who, by his wantonness and tyranny, has since then ruined the province. There has been no act too vile, no crime too dark, ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid

... them to remain in such a sinful and wretched condition. Some of them have sent money, which has helped Mr. Pease to buy a place in the country, where he means to carry all the children he can get, away from that vile neighborhood. ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern

... Swammerdam gives a most accurate account of the method and situation in which the male impregnates the spawn of the female. How wonderful is the oeconomy of Providence with regard to the limbs of so vile a reptile! While it is aquatic it has a fish-like tail, and no legs: as soon as the legs sprout, the tail drops off as useless, and the animal betakes itself ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White

... assistance from Brussels. The royal and ecclesiastical party was, however, not so easily defeated, and an old soldier, named Bourgeois, loudly denounced Captain Ambrose, the general of the revolutionary movement, as a vile coward, and affirmed that with thirty good men-at-arms he would undertake to pound the whole rebel army to powder—" a pack of scarecrows," he said, "who were not worth as many owls ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... change even the leopard's spots, and that puts a new heart into the man who hies him away to the brook when buds are swelling? There is Keeonekh the otter. Before he turned fisherman he was probably fierce, cruel, bloodthirsty, with a vile smell about him, like all the other weasels. Now he lives at peace with all the world and is clean, gentle, playful as a kitten and faithful as a dog when you make a pet of him. And there is Ismaques the fishhawk. Before he turned ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long

... represented itself with all its incomprehensible additions, and I had such extended notions of it, that I know not how to express them. Among the rest, how vile, how gross, how absurd did every pleasant thing look!—I mean, that we had counted pleasant before—especially when I reflected that these sordid trifles were the things for which we ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe

... strange notions must not be dealt with too severely, in a country like England, where (within the last 200 years, and in no uncivilised state of society) persons have been burnt for witchcraft; and in which, even in the present day, every vile imposture and godless pretence of supernatural power is sure of finding eager listeners and astonished admirers. The Boyl-yas, or native sorcerers, are objects of mysterious dread, and are thought ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden

... correspondent," or descriptive writer. He had never entered one of those fetid slums of a great city in which, too often, murder is done, never sickened with the physical nausea of death in its most revolting aspect, when some unhappy wretch's foul body serves only to further pollute air already vile. ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy

... the "Golden Key" grew steadily worse and worse. Gunn dominated the place, and his vile personality hung over it like a shadow. Appeals to the innkeeper were in vain; his health was breaking fast, and he moodily declined to interfere. Gunn appointed servants of his own choosing-brazen maids ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs

... Clinch, in charge of one of our boats, too, Dashwood," added the senior captain, as he concluded his remarks; "who is one of the most experienced seamen in the Proserpine. He has seen much boat-service, and has always behaved himself well. A vile practice of drinking has kept the poor fellow under; but he is now determined to make an effort, and I beg you will put him forward to-day, that he may have a chance. Jack Clinch has the right sort of stuff in him, if opportunities offer to ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... his grave countenance toward the gentleman he addressed, with much earnestness, ter poy is goot. He savet your life, and my life, and ter life of iominie Grant, and ter life of ter Frenchman; and, Richard, he shall never vant a pet to sleep in vile olt Fritz Hartmann has a shingle to cover his het mit. Well, well, as you please, old gentleman, returned Mr. Jones, endeavoring to look indifferent; put him into your own stone house, if you will, Major. ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper

... battlefield with the abandonment of a Greek hero. Di-phenyl-chloro-arsine would set him sneezing. The Germans alternated these with diabolical ingenuity so as to catch us unawares. Some shells gave off voluminous smoke or a vile stench without doing much harm, but by the time our men got used to these and grew careless about their masks a few shells of some extremely poisonous ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson

... a hundred eyes in his head, and never went to sleep with more than two at a time, so that he kept watch of Io constantly. He suffered her to feed through the day, and at night tied her up with a vile rope round her neck. She would have stretched out her arms to implore freedom of Argus, but she had no arms to stretch out, and her voice was a bellow that frightened even herself. She saw her father and her sisters, ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... peoples, the personal equation brings out more than anything else the good qualities that underlie his character. Several of the missionaries seem not to have distinguished between the pagan and the man. To them the pagan was the incarnation of all that is vile, a creature whose every act was dictated by the devil. The Bisya regarded him somewhat in the same light, but went further. He looked upon him as his enemy because of the many acts of retribution, even though retribution was merited, ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... fervently, expressing in this concise form her gratitude to her Creator for what she considered to be Larry's release from a very vile durance "He's long ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... dwellings were open, and the black and white pigs wandered unhindered from the filthy street without to the misery within, fattening on the poor waste of the desperately poor, fattening in the sun that drove their wretched betters to the daily fight with starvation, fattening in the vile filth to which starvation was dully indifferent, since cleanliness meant labour ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford

... fortune; honour for his valour; and death for his ambition. Who is here so base that would be a bondman? If any, speak; for him have I offended. Who is here so rude that would 30 not be a Roman? If any, speak; for him have I offended. Who is here so vile that will not love his country? If any, speak; for him have I offended. I pause for ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty

... of Israel were passing through a terrible ordeal; they needed to be heartened and nerved for resistance and endurance. Their heroic leader, Judas Maccabeus, was urging them on to prodigies of valor in their conflict with the vile Antiochus; such a ringing manifesto as this, put forth in the progress of the conflict, might have a powerful influence in reinforcing their patriotism and confirming their faith. It might also have appeared ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden

... treacherous impeachment!" said Adrienne, with disgust: "I cannot think of such wretches without involuntarily feeling my mind shocked by dismal ideas of black, venomous, and vile reptiles, of aspects most hideous indeed. How much more do I love to dwell upon the consoling thought of honest Dupont ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... lookers-on. Still, in this latter case the evil would be greater, for in drunkenness there is contained a lower degradation, inasmuch as the baser passions are then left without all control, and are apt to become exceedingly vile in their licentious condition. The hypnotic subject has at least the mind and will of the hypnotizer to direct him. Here, however, appears the need of another caution, namely, that the hypnotizer should be known to ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens

... gates of death. A priest was summoned to administer the last consolations of religion to the dying pretender, and urged him to think on God and confess the truth. He gazed steadily into the eyes of the confessor, and said—"I shall not appear as a vile impostor in the eyes of the Great Judge of the universe. Before His tribunal I shall stand, revealed and acknowledged, the son of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette of Austria. A Bourbon, descendant of a line of kings, my portion will be ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous

... supposed, for the founder of our faith to have granted light, casually or indirectly, upon questions of curiosity. One sole revelation was made by Him, as to the nature of the intercourse and the relations in another world; but that was for the purpose of forestalling a vile, unspiritual notion, already current amongst the childish Jews, and sure to propagate itself even to our own days, unless an utter averruncatio were applied to it. This was its purpose, and not any purpose of gratification to unhallowed ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... vile insect!" said a Lion angrily to a Gnat that was buzzing around his head. But the Gnat was ...
— The AEsop for Children - With pictures by Milo Winter • AEsop

... "The wall-paper was vile," cried another voice indignantly. "Toujours wall-paper! They might have a little originality, and think of something else. I longed ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... the bearded spy's eyes were not merely amorous in their intention, for such looks she was used to, and he was a very vile man. ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford

... were soldiers, not demons. In his tent the work of Hugo Grotius on the rights of the nations in war and peace lay beside the Bible and he knew them both by heart. When he was gone, the fame of some of his greatest generals was smirched by as vile orgies as Tilly's worst days had witnessed. It is told of John Baner, one of the most brilliant of them, that he demanded ransom of the city of Prix, past which his way led. The city fathers permitted themselves an untimely jest: "Prix giebt nichts—Prix gives nothing," they said. Baner ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis

... 'The Tiger' and 'The Bear,' and no longer trembled. It was not all smooth sailing. We are not told if the lions in Daniel's den lay down perfectly still, or whether some came close to him, sniffing and snarling; but we are told that they were powerless to hurt God's child. Even in this vile place the devil could only go 'so far.' His servants seemed forced to give respect to God's ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter

... said, with an imperial gesture of scorn, "I deny nothing. If my husband can believe such a vile slander of his wife of a month, let it be. I scorn to deny what he ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming

... Besides, the number and variety of dispositions on board afforded him some study, and some instruction. There were men of all grades of society, and all degrees of moral worth,—beginning, of course, at a very moderate standard, and descending to the vilest of the vile, which last were in a large majority. There were tipplers, and gamblers, and profane swearers, in abundance; and Uncle Nathan felt, at the bottom of his philanthropic heart, a desire to lead them from their sins. Not that ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton

... invigorated by her presence, and spoke in glowing language of the resources of his art. He gave a history of the long dynasty of the Alchemists, who spent so many ages in quest of the universal solvent, by which the Golden Principle might be elicited from all things vile and base. Aylmer appeared to believe, that, by the plainest scientific logic, it was altogether within the limits of possibility to discover this long-sought medium; but, he added, a philosopher ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various

... sound of the human voice choking Through vile brutal organs—low tremulous croaking: Cries swallow'd abruptly—deep animal tones Attuned to strange passion, and full-utter'd groans; All shuddering weaken, till hush'd in a pause Of tongues in mute motion and wide-yawning jaws; And I guessed that those horrors ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... vague, but no disparaging idea of these. The first day I got there, I was kept for some time in the French Exhibition Room, and thought I should not be able to get a sight of the old masters. I just caught a peep at them through the door (vile hindrance!) like looking out of purgatory into paradise—from Poussin's noble, mellow-looking landscapes to where Rubens hung out his gaudy banner, and down the glimmering vista to the rich jewels of Titian and the Italian school. ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... the recollection of it. "Our Egyptian taskmasters," he would say, meaning the manufacturers of Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and New England, "only wish to leave us the recollection of past times, and insist upon our purchasing their vile domestic stuffs; but it won't do: no wooden nutmegs ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... our country! when ye've made her a grave, A den for the tyrant, a cell for the slave; A pestilent plague-spot, accursing and curst, As vile as the vilest, and worse than ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various

... tranquil prosperity, and would have produced great revenues to the crown, without cruelty to the natives; but, like his brother the admiral, his good intentions and judicious arrangements were constantly thwarted by the vile passions and perverse conduct of others. While he was absent from Isabella, new mischiefs had been fomented there, which were soon to throw the whole ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... the venal Fair, Who courts yet hates his vile embrace, Our lively strains shall muttering hear, While Envy pales each ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward

... lie: rage hath this errour bred; Love is not dead; Love is not dead, but sleepeth In her unmatched mind, Where she his counsell keepeth, Till due desert she find. Therefore from so vile fancie To call such wit a franzie, Who Love can temper thus, Good Lord, ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand

... study Tacitus, and such other Politicians as say much in few Words: And if he obstinately persists in the same Childish fondness for his Style, I shall be obliged to shew in how small a Compass the whole Substance of what he says, may be contained. All this vile Drudgery will I submit to for his sake, &c. But so little likelihood there is of his mending his Style by reading Tacitus, that he defies him and charges him with the Corruption of the Roman Tongue, by saying that in Two or Three Words, about which such a Genius as ...
— Reflections on Dr. Swift's Letter to Harley (1712) and The British Academy (1712) • John Oldmixon

... great work which we, as apostles of Jesus, have to do, to convince the world how vile it is; how surely their wickedness, unrepented of, will work their misery and their ruin, and so lead them away from it, and up the safe and pleasant heights of Christian virtue. We find Rome sunk in sensuality and sin; ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware

... Passajon. Such performances at your time of life! Oh! Mon Dieu! I know all about it. I know that I should honor myself much more if I left this vile place. But, what then? why, I must abandon all that I have at stake here. No, it is not possible. It is urgently necessary that I remain, that I keep a close watch, that I am always on hand to have the advantage ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... revenge? In any case it is foolishness. Bound up as the sexual impulse is with the entire psychic emotional being, there would be left behind without it only the wilderness of a cold abstraction. The Christian belief in souls and bodies separate, and souls imprisoned in vile clay, has wrought terrible havoc to women. I believe the two—soul and body—are one and indivisible. Women have yet this lesson to learn: the capacity for sense-experience is the sap of life. The power ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley

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

... with a dread of the climate, of Rome, of all these strange surroundings, and I made up my mind to go home as quickly as possible. The illness that was upon me was, without my knowing it, the cause of my fear. The next day I was carried downstairs by two vile-smelling labourers and taken by Vilhelm Rosenstand the painter, who was one of the few who had made friends with me and shown me kindness, to the Prussian hospital on the ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes

... the end of the voyage drew near, the hearty captain grew heartier, the bosom-friends drew closer; the shy passengers opened up; the congenial passengers began to grieve over the thought of parting; charades were acted; concerts were given: the mean-spirited passenger became a little less vile; the fore-cabin passenger from Edinburgh observed to her friend that the "goin's on a'boord were wonderfu';" to which the fore-cabin passenger from London replied that "they certainly was;" flying-fish and porpoises, and sharks and albatrosses, and tropical heat, ceased to furnish ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne

... as Mr. Reed took one out of his case. "It certainly won't be your fault if the child hasn't every bad tendency under the sun. I've done my best. And you know smoking is a vile habit." ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas

... "careless desolation," described by Rosalind so minutely, can still be detected in modern youth of both sexes. I did not pursue the question, but alluded to autumn gaieties. She spoke of them without enthusiasm. Miss Somebody's wedding was very dull, and Mrs. Somebody Else's dance manned with vile and vacuous dancers. At the Opera the greatest of German sopranos sang false. All human institutions had taken a crooked turn, and her cat could not be persuaded to pay the commonest attention to its kittens. Then ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke

... fierce desire to kick this vile newcomer—this Mosenthal, 'the foreigner,' or 'ootner'—the son of a rich Jewish Manchester tradesman—out of the house, but the fellow was his guest, and he checked himself. Above all, he dreaded public bankruptcy; ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease

... speaking of the part that Canada was playing in the war, said, "Nothing in the history of the world has ever been known quite like it. My countrymen are fighting within fifty miles of Paris, to push back and chastise a vile and leprous race, which has violated the chastity of beautiful France, but the Australians at the Dardanelles and the Canadians at Ypres, fought with supreme and absolute devotion for what to many must have seemed simple abstractions, ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... other way. I am sorry for Eunice and my Myrrhene vase; but Eunice is free, and the vase will go with me. Ahenobarbus will not get it, in any event! I am sorry also for Vinicius. But, though I was bored less of late than before, I am ready. In the world things are beautiful; but people are so vile for the greater part that life is not worth a regret. He who knew how to live should know how to die. Though I belong to the Augustians, I was freer than they supposed." Here he shrugged his shoulders. "They may think that my knees are trembling at this moment, and that terror ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... enormous eater's food— A sympathetic feeling. Not of love! And be there ale, or wine, or potent draught Superior to them both, to that I fly, And glory in the certainty that mine Is the ethereal soul of food, while his Is but the rank corporeal—the vile husks Best suited to his crude voracity. And far as the bright spirit may transcend Its mortal ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 495, June 25, 1831 • Various

... the best of kings expire upon a scaffold, the victim not less of other men's crimes than of his own weakness; he saw that vice was hailed, as if it were virtue, wickedness uplifted, as if it were morality atheism, proclaimed aloud, as if it were religion; that the 'Goddess of Reason' (or rather a vile strumpet) was recognized as the only Deity, and honored with hecatombs of human victims; the people decimated and oppressed by cruel tyrants, in the name of the people; whilst beneath the shade of the tree of liberty was instituted universal slavery; and that the most Christian, as well as the ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell

... The owner had not missed it, and Tim congratulated himself on the circumstance. Charles tried to be joyous, and though he did not feel so, he acted it so well that no one suspected him of harboring so vile ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic

... satires most often, of which the local meaning is unintelligible to those unacquainted with the incident inspiring the improvisation,—of which the words are too often coarse or obscene,—whose burdens will be caught up and re-echoed through all the burghs of the island. Vile as may be the motive, the satire, the malice, these chants are preserved for generations by the singular beauty of the airs; and the victim of a Carnival song need never hope that his failing or his wrong will ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn

... the son, whom he would have the jury believe was as admirable as the mother was vile. He had certainly brought together a wonderful array of witnesses to, character. From Larinum every grown-up man that had the strength to make the journey had come to Rome to support their fellow-townsman. The town was left to the care of women and children. ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church

... becomes me excellently,' said Richard. 'You have lied for a vile purpose; you have disgraced your name. You seek to drive me by slander whither I may not go in honour. You lie like a broker. You are ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett

... thus secured for eight years, the coolies at the expiration of the period to receive a mere nominal sum, out of which they have mostly been cheated by some means or other. The whole business of coolie importation is vile beyond measure, and must have included in its aggregate over three hundred thousand Chinese. There are still believed to be some sixty thousand left upon the island, most of whom remain because they have no means of returning to their native land. Half of these ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... mouth that, even in prayer, talked nothing but commands; that is about all she had en fait d'ornements, as the modesties say. It may be added that she walked as if the Reine Sainte Foy plantation extended over the whole earth, and the soil of it were too vile for her tread. Of course she did not buy her toilets in New Orleans. Everything was ordered from Paris, and came as regularly through the custom-house as the modes and robes to the milliners. She ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King

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

... perceive that there can be but one solution. Jahveh makes a long and crushing reply to Job, gradually merges into fine descriptive but irrelevant poetry, and then suddenly calls for a rejoinder. The hero, humbled to the dust, exclaims[48] that he is vile and conscious of his impotence, and will lay his hand upon his mouth and open his lips no more. Here the matter should end, for Job has confessed himself vanquished. But no, Jahveh, instead of being touched by this meek avowal and self-humiliation, must ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon

... permeated with archaic thought which disorganized the emerging society until it seemingly had no cohesion. To the French emigrant on the Rhine that society appeared like a vile phantom which had but to be exorcised to vanish. And the exorcism to which he had recourse was threats of vengeance, threats which before had terrified, because they had behind them a force which made them good. Torture had been an integral ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams

... a word that applies to the mean and mercenary, to the vile and unfaithful," she said, with womanly and virtuous indignation; "but not to ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... responsible for the vile mongrel architecture which followed the Renaissance, and which disfigures the modern capitals of Europe, any more than for the perversion of painting in the hands of Titian. But the indiscriminate adoption of pillars for humble houses, shops with Roman arches, spires and towers erected on Grecian ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord

... preventing him: "No! If he has been vile enough to listen at a register, let him suffer. Come, sit down here, and I'll tell you just when I began to care for you. It was long before the cow. Do you remember that first morning after you arrived"—She drags him close ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... who on the 9th, at night, surprised Charenton. I met him on the first report of it, when he said, "Would you think there are people so wicked as to say that I had a hand in the capture of Charenton?" I said in answer, "Would you think there are people vile enough to report that the Prince de Conti is come hither by concert with the Prince ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz

... be free; for there is no slave but the evil-doer, for he always does evil against his will. Liberty is not to be found in any form of government, she is in the heart of the free man, he bears her with him everywhere. The vile man bears his slavery in himself; the one would be a slave in Geneva, the other free ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

... that is your quality," said Edward, "we cannot strive with you in loftiness of language; but I pray you in fair courtesy, while you honour my father's house with your presence, to spare us such vile comparisons." ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... him it would have been different. I should have hoped that in a union sanctified by love you would have raised him to your own pure heights. But that out of considerations of worldly advancement you should lovelessly consent to mate with him... Oh, it was vile and hopeless. And so I fought him—a rat fighting a lion—fought him relentlessly until I saw that love had come to take in your heart the place of ambition. Then ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini

... black vaults; I heard the short, fierce pants and deadly groans. Oh, worst infliction of Hell's armory it is to see another suffer! Why was it allowed, Anselmo? Did it come in the long train of a broken law? was it one of the dark places of Providence? or was it indeed the vile compost to mature some beautiful germ? Ah, then, is it possible that Heaven looks on us ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various



Words linked to "Vile" :   unwholesome, evil



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