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Libertine   Listen
adjective
Libertine  adj.  
1.
Free from restraint; uncontrolled. (Obs.) "You are too much libertine."
2.
Dissolute; licentious; profligate; loose in morals; as, libertine principles or manners.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Libertine" Quotes from Famous Books



... hierarchy. His mighty belly heaved and his cheeks swelled with the spiritual inflations of church power. He fixed his open eyes upon me and surveyed me from top to toe. I too made my remarks. 'He is a true son of the church,' said I.—The libertine sarcasm was instantly repelled, and my train of ideas was purified from such irreverend heresy—'He is an orthodox divine! A pillar of truth! A Christian Bishop!' Thought is swift, and man assents and recants before ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... money to live on himself. What time could be saved from these wranglings, which lasted almost till the poor woman's death, was devoted ardently to his literary work. The history grew apace, and other books besides. In the seditions of the Libertine party against the austerities of the new regime the old man took the side of law and order and good morals (in his book on L'ancienne et nouvelle Police de Geneve) with an ardor that was the more surprising as one remembered his antecedents. In the midst ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various

... and a typical great lady of her time); one of the foremost of Elizabeth's privateering courtiers; one of the chief victims of her caprice and parsimony; a magnificent noble, but a great spendthrift, something of a libertine, never unkindly but hardly ever wise. This remarkable deathbed letter (the giving of which depended on the kindness of Dr. G. C. Williamson of Hampstead, author of the Life and Voyages of G. Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland, Cambridge University ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury

... rest of Europe was rent. An army of three hundred thousand men was enlisted, Siberia was discovered, the printing press introduced, and civilization commenced. But the czar was, nevertheless, a brutal tyrant and an abandoned libertine, who massacred his son, executed his nobles, and ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord

... cathedral, nor the music to Wilde's Salome that of Brahms' German Requiem, yet whatever of beauty there may be in the shapes will divert the attention from the meanness or vileness of the non-aesthetic suggestion. We do not remember the mercenary and libertine allegory embodied in Correggio's Danae, or else we reinterpret that sorry piece of mythology in terms of cosmic occurrences, of the Earth's wealth increased by the fecundating sky. Similarly it is a common ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee

... it of ethical content, and makes it into what an indignant Brahman writer recently called "a huge sham." To the ordinary Hindu, all of life's values are measured in the coin of external rites. Let one be an atheist if he please, or even a libertine or a murderer, and his status in Hinduism is not impaired. But let him eat beef, even unwittingly, or let him ignorantly drink water which has been touched by a man of lower caste than himself, and his doom is irrevocably sealed! Through this whole system the Hindu conscience is ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones

... most apt for such "killing" is precisely he who appraises most shrewdly the thing he kills. As the cool practised libertine is oftenest attracted by the immature girl, so the ardent inexperienced man of any age will be drawn to the older woman; and the psychology of this matter of everyday experience is closely akin to the paradox in artistic creation of ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne

... "the guilt is thine! She was pure—she was pure as the fawn unborn. O why did I hark to the cry of scorn, Or the words of the lying libertine? Wakawa, Wakawa, the guilt is thine! The springs will return with the voice of birds, But the voice of my daughter will come no more. She wakened the woods with her musical words, And the sky-lark, ashamed of his voice, forbore. She called back the years that had passed, and long I ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... without further explanation, "I am a man of the world, and I know the utmost capabilities of human wickedness. I don't believe you are a real libertine. But I know Grey Town. Many a dog has been hanged here because of his bad name. ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin

... crimes, and scoundrelism with a certain plaintive, if relentless, grace. The inconstant lover is invariably pursued by the furies of remorse; the brutal has always some mitigating influence in his career; the libertine retains through many vicissitudes a seraphic love for ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... to think of me!' 'Libertine froth!' 'So pernicious and so despicable a plotter!' 'A man whose friendship is no credit to any body!' 'Hardened wretch!' 'The devil's counterpart!' 'A wicked, wicked man!'—But did she, could she, dared ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson

... intelligence to knock at the gates of his passion! The war had left havoc. The physical, the sensual, the violent, the simian—these instincts, engendering the Day of the Beast, had come to dominate the people he had fought for. Why not go out and deliberately kill a man, a libertine, a slacker? He would still be acting on the same principle that imbued him ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey

... turns knave or libertine, and gives way to fear, jealousy, and fits of the spleen; when his mind complains of his fortune, and he quits the station in which Providence has placed him, he acts perfectly counter to humanity, deserts his own nature, and, as it were, ...
— Dickory Cronke - The Dumb Philosopher, or, Great Britain's Wonder • Daniel Defoe

... me, so that now you find I am somewhat of a novelty. It is not your wife you are seeking now, but a woman with whom you have formerly had a rupture, and with whom you now desire to make up. To speak the truth you are simply playing the game of a libertine. ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant

... Cenni; and then, too, she has a million florins from her grandfather, and this money would come in well to help me carry out my plans. But my aunt does not consent to give the girl to me. She says I am a libertine, a frivol viveur, etc., and she won't take the responsibility of trusting me with the ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai

... been eminently handsome in his youth, tall, slender, with yellow hair falling in ringlets down his shoulders. He is likewise said to have been a great libertine. The following story is told ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... when our woman's rights movement commenced, by the laws of the State of New York, and all the states, the father had the sole custody and control of the children. No matter if he were a brutal, drunken libertine, he had the legal right, without the mother's consent, to apprentice her sons to rumsellers, or her daughters to brothel keepers. He could even will away an unborn child, to some other person than the mother. And in many of the states the ...
— An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony • Anonymous

... may do hurt either to the original writer or to the communicator. You'll observe I am bound by promise to this care. If through my means any mischief should arise, between this humane and that inhuman libertine, I should think myself ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson

... retirement, and the Euxine Pontus, he passed the remainder of his life, a melancholy period of seven years. Notwithstanding the lascivious writings of Ovid, it does not appear that he was in his conduct a libertine. He was three times married: his first wife, who was of mean extraction, and (185) whom he had married when he was very young, he divorced; the second he dismissed on account of her immodest behaviour; and the third appears to have survived him. He had a number of ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... single man. This man was Gregory Novikh, known throughout the world under the name of Rasputin. A Siberian peasant by birth, immoral, filthy in person, untrained in mind, he had early received the nickname of Rasputin, which means "ne'er-do-well," on account of his habits. A drunkard, and a libertine always, he posed as a sort of saint and miracle worker, let his hair grow long, and tramped about the ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... man, cool, insolently polite, and plentifully endowed with the judgmatical daring that is the necessary equipment of a society libertine—counseled patience, toleration, even silent recognition of Anstruther's ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy

... written only a few weeks before his death, warning her against the example of Mrs. Behn, he says, with remorseful sincerity: "I confess I am the last man in the world who ought in justice to arraign her, who have been myself too much a libertine in most of my poems, which I should be well contented I had time either to purge or to see them fairly burned." Congreve was less patient, and even Dryden, in the last epilogue he ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... notice. The French all speak highly of her, and it is impossible, on seeing Malmaison and hearing of her virtues, not to join in their opinion. To be sure, as a Frenchman told me in running through a list of virtues, "Elle avait ete un peu libertine, mais ce n'est rien cela," and, indeed, I could almost have added, "C'est bien vrai," for every allowance should be made; consider the situation in which she was placed, her education, her temptations; many a saint might have ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley

... year, in "the pretty box" at Chalfont, the soft wind through the open window lifting the thin hair of the glorious old Poet! Back-slidden England, plague-smitten, and accursed with her faithless Church and libertine King, knows little of poor "Master Milton," and takes small note of his Puritanic verse-making. Alone, with his humble friend, he sits there, conning over that poem which, he fondly hoped, the world, which had grown all dark and strange to the author, "would not willingly let die." The suggestion ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... if he took the ethical point of view. The gods, he would find, who should surely at least attain to the human standard, not only are capable of every phase of passion, anger, fear, jealousy and, above all, love, but indulge them all with a verve and an abandonment that might make the boldest libertine pause. Zeus himself, for example, expends upon the mere catalogue of his amours a good twelve lines of hexameter verse. No wonder that Hera is jealous, and that her lord is driven to put her down in terms better suited to the lips ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... of her character is conveyed from the very first, when Lucio, the libertine jester, whose coarse audacious wit checks at every feather, thus expresses ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... all the attempts made with us. I speak with all humility, but as having learnt Homer from Homer himself, and not from any translation, prose or verse. I am perfectly aware of Chapman's outrageous liberties, of his occasional unfaithfulness (for a libertine need not necessarily be unfaithful in translation), and of the condescension to his own fancies and the fancies of his age, which obscures not more perhaps than some condescensions which nearness and contemporary ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... Melito, "Mems.," vol. 1., ch. xv. Lucien settled in the Papal States, where he, the quondam Jacobin and proven libertine, later on received from the Pope the title of Prince ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... daughters are all that remain to the high-bred Sir Clement and his desponding lady, on whom the Beauvoir descendant, a bitterest enemy, takes care to remind them the hovering curse must burst. This Rowland Beauvoir is the villain of the story, whose sole aim it is, after the fulfilment of his own libertine wishes, to see the curse accomplished: and Charlotte's love for a certain young Saville, whom Beauvoir hates as his handsome rival in court patronage, as well as her pointed refusal of himself, gives new and present life to his ancestral grudge. The lovers are espoused, and to make Sir Clement's ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... philosophy. It's a great frankness on his part to call himself an atheist. His ungodliness is without malice, and will disappear with the exuberance of his sensuality. In his soul God has no other enemies than horses, cards and women. In the mind of a real libertine, like M. Bayle for example, truth has to meet more formidable and malicious adversaries. But, my dear boy, I give you a character sketch instead of the plain narrative you ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France

... "Of all men he's the last I'd ever have thought of." With the words a vision of Kemper rose before him, robust, virile, sensual, with his dominant egoism and his pleasant affectations, half hero and half libertine. ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

... please you by his praise of her! You were the first to mention her name. You owned to an old admiration of her. You were hot and cold, and red and white, all at once when I spoke to you of her. What could I think—what DID I think—but that you were a young libertine in everything but experience, and had fallen into hands that had experience enough, and could manage you (having the fancy) for your own good? Oh! oh! oh! They were afraid of my finding out the truth,' exclaimed Miss Mowcher, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... higher control, hostile tendencies accommodating themselves to reign alternate, sharing the individual in distinct halves, till he becomes like unto that hero of Gautier's witch story, who was a pious priest one-half of the twenty-four hours and a wicked libertine the other: all power of selection, of reaction gone in this passive endurance of conflicting tendencies; all identity gone, save a mere feeble outsider looking on at the alternations of intentions and lapses, ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee

... M. de Bussy on the 28th of October, 1685, "You have, no doubt, seen the edict by which the king revokes that of Nantes; nothing can be more beautiful than its contents, and never did or will any king do anything more memorable." The noble libertine and freethinker replied to her, "I admire the steps taken by the king to reunite the Huguenots. The war made upon them in former times and the St. Bartholomew gave vigor to this sect; his Majesty has sapped ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... none; that I was not obliged to be married, but that I was obliged to be true to my conscience. That when I married I expected to lay the foundation of a new home, and that I would never trust my future happiness in the hands of a libertine, or lay its foundations over the reeling brain of a drunkard, and I determined that I would never marry a man for whose vices I must blush, and whose crimes I must condone; that while I might bend to grief I would not bow to shame; that if I brought him character and virtue, he should ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

... himself and the reindeer in their ride along the vertiginous blade of the Gjende. In the second act, satire and fantasy become absolutely unbridled; the poet's genius sings and dances under him, like a strong ship in a storm, but the vessel is rudderless and the pilot an emphatic libertine. The wild impertinence of fancy, in this act, from the moment when Peer and the Girl in the Green Gown ride off upon the porker, down to the fight with the Boeig, gigantic gelatinous symbol of self deception, ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse

... I am not your dear lady. You are not the first man who has concluded that because I am devoted to music and can reach F flat with the greatest facility—Patti never got above E flat—I am marked out as the prey of every libertine. You think I am like the thousands of weak women whom you ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw

... a leader of thought. He laboured at it all his life, and his mental qualifications enabled him to keep pace with the public desires in all their branches. The age was frivolous, and he excelled in fugitive pieces; it was libertine, and he had obscene verses at command; the esprits forts had a leaning to incredulity, and he put himself at the head of the movement, and made use of it to turn into ridicule all that men had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various

... one-sided. Judge caricatured Cleveland in hideous cartoons. The New York Tribune described him as a small man "everywhere except on the hay-scales." Beginning in Buffalo rumors spread all over the country that Cleveland was an habitual drunkard and libertine. As is the way of such gossip, its magnitude grew until the Governor appeared in the guise of a monster of immorality. The editor of the Independent went himself to Buffalo and ran the rumors to their sources. He came ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley

... it is a question of connecting yourself with their blood, it is what your father was that affects them. I really believe," she finished half angrily, half humorously, "that Aunt Mitty—not Aunt Matoaca—would honestly rather I'd marry a well-born drunkard or libertine than you, whom she calls 'quite an extraordinary-looking ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow

... breaking the seal, to the fiery element. But, though sufficiently familiarized with guilt, he was not as yet acquainted with it in its basest shapes—he had not yet acted with meanness, or at least with what the world terms such. He had been a duellist, the manners of the age authorized it—a libertine, the world excused it to his youth and condition—a bold and successful gambler, for that quality he was admired and envied; and a thousand other inaccuracies, to which these practices and habits lead, were easily slurred over in a man of quality, with ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... sullen 'habit of his soul:' Heavy and phlegmatic he trod the stage, Too proud for tenderness, too dull for rage. When Hector's lovely widow shines in tears, Or Rowe's[75] gay rake dependent virtue jeers, With the same cast of features he is seen To chide the libertine, and court the queen. 970 From the tame scene, which without passion flows, With just desert his reputation rose; Nor less he pleased, when, on some surly plan, He was, at once, the actor and the man. In Brute[76] he shone unequall'd: all agree Garrick's not half so great a Brute as ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... no—'pon honor—little Bob Stubbs is no LIBERTINE; and the story is very simple. You see that my father has a small place, merely a few hundred acres, at Sloffemsquiggle. Isn't it a funny name? Hang it, there's the naval gentleman staring again,"—(I looked terribly fierce as I returned this officer's ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray

... possible for such a man as Mr. Philip Slotman to be shocked, then Slotman was deeply shocked at this moment. He had come to regard Joan as something infinitely superior to himself. Self-indulgent, a libertine, he had pursued her with his attentions, pestered her with his admiration and his offensive compliments. Then it had slowly dawned on the brain of Mr. Philip Slotman that this girl was something better, higher, purer than most women he had known. ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper

... cloth prohibits me from supplying the adjective, Charles. I leave it with satisfaction in your hands) with their gabble have robbed me of my last shred of character. I assure you I am regarded as a libertine in the place—a professional breaker of hearts, a Don Juan bragging of my conquests! Each of those Fifteen has her own tale to tell of her own wrongs and of my deceit. They hold indignation meetings in Mrs Carter's house. I shouldn't care the value of one of their hairpins, but one does not ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann

... see, then, how far you are right—how far suitability is a question of rank. A gentleman may be, and frequently is, a drunkard, a gambler, a libertine, or all ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw

... because the torments are of an intelligible kind, and require no highly-strung sensibility to give them keenness. The heroine is first bullied and then deserted by her family, cut off from the friends who have a desire to help her, and handed over to the power of an unscrupulous libertine. When she dies of a broken heart, the most callous and prosaic of readers must feel that it is the only release possible for her. And in the gradual development of his plot, the slow accumulation of horrors upon the head of a virtuous victim, Richardson shows the power which ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... consequences and to say, "Evil, be thou my good," what is there in the system of secular ethics that should oblige me to forego my favorite indulgences, or that can impress me with the conviction that I ought to do so? True I may suffer, and suffer much, as the drunkard and the libertine do, in the way of natural consequence, and it may be prudent to be temperate in the indulgence of my sensual appetites; there may even be a sense of inward degradation, and a politic regard to the opinions of my fellow-men, which will ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan

... libertine as he was, he had so far felt no inclination whatever to make love to the English girl. Nor was the effect merely the result of Madame Cervin's vigilance. Personally, for all her extraordinary beauty, his new model ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... much better for going a courting, providing they court purely. Nothing tears the life out of man more than lust, vulgar thoughts and immoral conduct. The libertine or harlot has changed love, God's purest gift to man, into lust. They cannot acquire love in its purity again, the sacred flame has vanished forever. Love is pure, and cannot be found in the heart ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... thought it most decorous to separate them for some time, and, while she remained at home with her friends, the bridegroom travelled for three or four years on the continent. The lady proved the greatest beauty of her time, but along with this had the most libertine and unprincipled dispositions. ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin

... her candour seemed as inevitable as Amabel's had been: each must tell the other everything; a common bond of suffering was between them and a common bond of love, though love so differing. "I knew, of course, that he was often unfaithful to me; he is a libertine; but I was the centre; he always came back to me.—I saw the end approaching about five years ago. I fought—oh how warily—so that he shouldn't dream I was afraid;—it is fatal for a woman to let a man know she is afraid,—the brutes, the cruel brutes,"—said Lady Elliston;—"how we love ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... beauty of person and dignity of character seemed so well to entitle her to both. The marriage was privately celebrated at Grafton; the secret was carefully kept for some time; no one suspected that so libertine a prince could sacrifice so much to a romantic passion; and there were, in particular, strong reasons which at that time rendered this step, to the highest ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson

... emphasis, "you, you poor devils, you see a great dignitary of the Church, a great prince among priests, living in shameless luxury, in violation of every law, human and divine, with the children of his mistresses set up in palaces, himself living on the fat of the land. What law does he not break, this libertine, this usurer? What makes the corn dear, so that you cannot get it for your starving children?—what but this plunderer, this robber, seizing the funds that extremity has dragged from the poor in order to buy up the grain of the States? A pretty speculation! No wonder that you murmur and complain; ...
— Sunrise • William Black

... gentleman's relations with a lower order. At least, some gentlemen do not feel any apprehension of incurring the odium of the circle in which they move by cheating of this kind. In the same manner the roue, or libertine of rank, may often be guilty of all manner of falsehoods and crimes to the females of the class below him, without any fear of incurring the odium of either males or females of his own circle; on the contrary, the more crimes ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... General, wheeling round upon his new antagonist, "Mr. Pendragon! And do you suppose, Mr. Pendragon, that because I have had the misfortune to marry your sister, I shall suffer myself to be dogged and thwarted by a discredited and bankrupt libertine like you? My acquaintance with Lady Vandeleur, sir, has taken away all my appetite for the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... part, I think that few men understand the real nature of a girl's love. Arising so vividly as it does from the imagination, nothing that the mind of the libertine would impute to it ever (or at least in most rare in stances) sullies its weakness or debases its folly. I do not say the love is better for being thus solely the creature of imagination: I say only, so it is in ninety-nine out of a hundred ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... is remarkably loose. He seems to spell without any particular principle in the matter, seldom rendering the same word a second time by the same combination of letters. He was at one period of his life a libertine of the loosest order, so far as morals were {25} concerned, but of the shrewdest kind as regarded personal gain and advancement. He would have loved any Lady Bellaston who presented herself, and who could have rewarded him for his kindness. ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... master's mind is not at home. There is a certain waste and carelessness in the air of every thing, and the whole appears but a covered indigence, a magnificent poverty. That neatness and chearfulness, which attends the table of him who lives within compass, is wanting, and exchanged for a libertine way of service in ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various

... adventurers who swarmed at the court of St. James. By dint of these and kindred qualities he had become an intimate companion of the Prince of Wales. The man had a wide observation of life; indeed, he was an interested and whimsical observer rather than an actor, and a scoffer always. A libertine from the head to the heel of him, yet gossip marked him as the future husband of the beautiful young heiress Antoinette Westerleigh. For the rest, he carried an itching sword and the smoothest tongue that ever graced a villain. I had been proud ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine

... is the stomach such a libertine and outlaw in England, and so highly respectable in the United States? No Englishman of good breeding, save he be far gone in liquor, ever mentions his stomach in the presence of women, clergymen, or the Royal Family. To avoid the necessity—for Englishmen, too, are subject to the colic—he employs ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken

... the angles of resemblance are many between the groundwork of the "Tempest" and the earliest of Manx records. Mannanan-beg-Mac-y-Lear, the magician who surrounded the island with mists when enemies came near in ships; Maughold, the robber and libertine, bound hand and foot, and driven ashore in a wicker boat; and then Bridget, the virgin saint. Moreover, the stories of Little Man-nanan, of St. Patrick, and of St. Maughold were printed in Manx in the sixteenth century. Truly that is not enough, for, after all, we have ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine

... olden time, whose pointed gables told a tale of years; and whose internal walls and principal floors, both below and above stairs, were formed of "raddle and daub." It had formerly belonged to a family of the name of Abbot; but the "last of the race" was an extravagant libertine, and after spending a handsome patrimonial estate, ended his days as a beggar. Abbot House was evidently an ancient structure; but unfortunately, as tradition stated, a stone, bearing the date of its erection, had been carelessly ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 30. Saturday, May 25, 1850 • Various

... harm—merely that every one thinks thoughts and feels impulses that would be startling if expressed in speech. Don't we all know how terrifying a thing speech is, and thought? a chartered libertine." ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... told. And he is afflicted with a double embarrassment here, as he has never left Sally without her "miss" in speaking to Fenwick, while, on the other hand, he holds a definite licence from her mother—is, as it were, a chartered libertine. But that's a small matter, after all. The real trouble is having to look Sally in the face ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... and a villain. He is the accomplice of Robert Macaire, a libertine of unblushing impudence, who sins without compunction.—Daumier, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... filled by various passions. There was love—that is, such love as a libertine feels; jealousy; anger at the coarse handling he had experienced; wounded self-love, for with his gold-lace and fine plumes he believed himself a conqueror at first sight; and upon the top of ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid

... de Pierre"—the Feast of the Statue—well known to the modern stage under the name of "Don Juan," was the next vehicle of Moliere's satire. The story, borrowed from the Spanish, is well known. In giving the sentiments of the libertine Spaniard, the author of "Tartuffe" could not suppress his resentment against the party, by whose interest with the king that piece had been excluded from the stage, or at least its representation suspended. "The profession of a hypocrite," says Don Juan, "has marvellous advantages. The ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... friendship, was the well-known Chevalier de Méré, whom we know best as a tutor of Madame de Maintenon, and whose graceful but flippant letters still survive as a picture of the time. He was a gambler and libertine, yet with some tincture of science and professed interest in its progress. In his correspondence there is a letter to Pascal, in which he makes free in a somewhat ridiculous manner with the young geometrician already so distinguished. Other ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch

... affairs, You would say it hath been all in all his study; List his discourse of war, and you shall hear A fearful battle rend'red you in music; Turn him to any cause of policy, The Gordian knot of it he will unloose, Familiar as his garter; that, when he speaks, The air, a charter'd libertine, is still, And the mute wonder lurketh in men's ears, To steal his sweet and honey'd sentences; So that the art and practic' part of life Must be the mistress to this theoric: Which is a wonder how his Grace should glean it, Since his addiction ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]

... than if she had heard a libertine whispering shameful proposals in her ear. "Silence! I forbid you to add another word." To speak of another—what sacrilege! Poor girl. She was one of those whose life is bound up in one love alone, and if ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... a sonorous alto, without appearing to notice Gabou,—but smiling upon Fafa as she passes, with her great eyes turned full upon his face.... All the libertine blood of the man flames under that look;—he feels as if momentarily wrapped in a blaze of ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn

... others; but these good desires are often only of short duration, they die where they were born, and almost as soon, and the soul returns to its former state; the sleeper slumbers on; the drunkard drinks harder; the swearer blasphemes more fiercely; the libertine indulges in greater excesses; and all these hordes of ungodly men push on again down the broad and easy incline to the pit of Hell. Do people know that the end of a sinful life is Hell? Do people believe? Why, then, do they press their way ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell

... abjure him; as the lover of Miss Temple, under any circumstances, Mr. Temple would reject him. In what light would he appear to Henrietta were he to dare to reveal the truth? Would she not look upon him as the unresisting libertine of the hour, engaging in levity her heart as he had already trifled with another's? For that absorbing and overwhelming passion, pure, primitive, and profound, to which she now responded with an enthusiasm as fresh, ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli

... houses at Hong Kong did not wish the libertine to be disturbed in his depredations. The Chinese merchants were able to see this fact if those officials were not ready to admit it even to themselves. They knew how to throw a stone that would secure their own glass houses. Hence they said in their ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell

... you are now to regard him as quite the reverse—a hot-blooded, reckless libertine: this is the sort of man to throw somersaults into knives, (12) or to leap ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon

... hushed before the terrible significance of what they beheld. In the abstract, a life-and-death struggle meant little enough to them. Witnessing it, however, violently stirred their deepest emotions. They hated the camp boss, the libertine, drunkard, bully, Arden Laval, who only held his position by reason of his fighting powers. They would be infinitely pleased to witness his end. All the more sure was their delight that it should come at the hands of this pleasant-voiced ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum

... mean," replied the cardinal; "but I wish to please you, and see nothing out of the way in giving you what you demand with respect to so infamous a creature—the more so as you tell me this d'Artagnan is a libertine, a ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... were standing by me, and across the deck came the acridly nasal tones of the dance-hall girls. I saw the libertine eyes of Bullhammer rove incontinently from one unlovely demirep to another, till at last they rested on the slender girl standing by the side of her white-haired grandfather. Appreciatively he ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... in France, and almost in the fervour of the Revolution, she had imbibed some of its libertine opinions; among others, that marriage was a civil contract, and if entered into at all, might be broken at the pleasure of either party. This idea was strengthened and confirmed in her by the instances she had seen of matrimonial discord, ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat

... puzzles of the same kind. That an English-speaking Protestant married couple in easy circumstances and of fair education, and belonging to a religious circle, should not only be aware that their pastor was a libertine and should be keeping it a secret for him, but should make his adulteries the subject of conversation with him in the family circle, is hardly capable of explanation by reference to any known and acknowledged tendency of our society. But perhaps the most striking thing in Moulton's role ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin

... of womanhood, Eliza had given her affections to one who sought her love under the guise of a "gentleman of fortune." He proved to be what such characters usually are—a libertine, whose only motive in seeking to win her confidence and young affections was to gratify his hellish passions in the ruin of virtue and a good name. Under the most solemn assurances of deep, abiding, unalterable love for her, and the most solemn promises of marriage at an early ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison

... stonemason; chiefly in the gravestone, tomb, and monument way, and wholly of their colour from head to foot. No man is better known in Cloisterham. He is the chartered libertine of the place. Fame trumpets him a wonderful workman—which, for aught that anybody knows, he may be (as he never works); and a wonderful sot—which everybody knows he is. With the Cathedral crypt he is better acquainted than any living authority; it may even be than ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens

... understand his injustice to the latter when he tells us himself that he had never loved with passion. His death was of a piece with his life. Having been a public frequenter of brothels and the associate of the loosest company, he died like the libertine. He was taken off ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... Scarcely was Charles the Libertine seated on the throne of England, when the Frenchmen, in 1660, settled on the southern shore of Newfoundland, at a place which they called La Plaisance (now ...
— Newfoundland and the Jingoes - An Appeal to England's Honor • John Fretwell

... consummated his fell design. After cautioning her to be more careful in future I parted from the damsel (who to the last protested her gratitude) and walked homeward to my lodgings, on the way reflecting how frail a thing is woman when matched against man the libertine." ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... a Lady with that pale and wan Complexion, which we sometimes see in young People, who are fallen into Sorrow and private Anxiety of Mind, which antedate Age and Sickness. It is not three Years ago since she was gay, airy, and a little towards Libertine in her Carriage; but, methought, I easily forgave her that little Insolence, which she so severely pays for in her present Condition. Favilla, of whom I am speaking, is married to a sullen Fool with Wealth: Her Beauty and Merit are lost upon the Dolt, who ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... [Greek: eis],—(a sufficient proof to me that they understand [Greek: EN] to represent [Greek: en], not [Greek: hen]): and are followed by Tischendorf, Tregelles, and the Revisers. As for the chartered libertine B (and its servile henchman L), for the first [Greek: en] (but not for the second and third) it substitutes the preposition [Greek: EIS]: while, in ver. 20, it retains the first [Greek: en], but omits the other two. ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon

... you, who are a connoisseur, allow him that title?" "No, my dear; in my opinion he falls far below it, since he is deficient in one of the great essentials of the character; and that is virtue." "I am surprised," said I; "but how has he incurred so severe a censure?" "By being a professed libertine; by having but too successfully, practised the arts of seduction; by triumphing in the destruction of innocence and the peace of families." "O, why was I not informed of this before? But perhaps these are old affairs—the effects of juvenile folly—crimes of ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster

... of these wretched imitations of Lord Byron carried to a pitch of the sublime? His indecencies, too, both against sexual nature, and against human nature in general, sit very awkwardly upon him. He only affects the libertine: he is, really, a very amiable, friendly, and agreeable man, I hear. But is not this monstrous? In Lord Byron all this has an analogy with the general system of his character, and the wit and poetry which surround hide with ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various

... named Masetto. Donna Anna now recognises Don Giovanni as her father's assassin, and communicates her discovery to her lover, Don Ottavio; Elvira joins them, and the three vow vengeance against the libertine. Don Giovanni gives a ball in honour of Zerlina's marriage, and in the course of the festivities seizes an opportunity of trying to seduce her. He is only stopped by the interference of Anna, Elvira, and Ottavio, who have made their way into his palace in masks and dominoes. In the next act ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild

... without spot or stain; yes, he could have witnessed and borne all this, and the blessed memory of her virtues would have consoled him in his bereavement and his sorrow. But to reflect that she was trampled down into guilt and infamy by the foot of the licentious libertine, was an event that cried for blood; and blood he had, for he murdered the seducer, and that with an insatiable rapacity of revenge that was terrible. He literally battered the head of his victim out of all shape, and left him a dead and worthless mass of inanimate matter. The ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... to ask the Khedive's intervention—Ismail dared not go against Selamlik in this. Whatever was done must be done between Selamlik Pasha, the tigerish libertine, and Richard Donovan, the little man who, at the tail end of Ismail's reign, was helping him hold things together against the black day of reckoning, "prepared for the devil and all his angels," as Dicky had said to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... Eve is endowed with a greater degree of curiosity than man. It occured to me to place myself in a contiguous apartment, where I could observe if this libertine priest was accustomed to take similar liberties with the nuns. I did so, and was fully convinced that only the old left ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy

... Mr. Tubbs and Belinda and the yellow cat after their arrival as fugitives at the pleasant village of Holmes-Eaton, or do more than hint at the trials of this poor knight-errant, mistaken for a burglar and a libertine, till the hour when (the book being sufficiently full) he is rewarded with the hand of beauty and the prospect of what I will venture to call a Buckroseate future. They were no more than his due for remaining a consistent gentleman amid the temptations of farce. One word ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various

... man fancies himself showing off his freedom by throwing off the restraints of morality or law, and by 'doing as he likes,' but he is really showing his servitude. Self-will looks like liberty, but it is serfdom. The libertine is a slave. That slavery under sin takes two forms. The man who sins is a slave to the power of sin. Will and conscience are meant to guide and impel us, and we never sin without first coercing or silencing them and subjecting them ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... world, from which you are come, you have been two-fold, in internals having been quite a different man from what you were in externals; in externals you have been a civil, moral, and rational man; whereas in internals, you have been neither civil, moral, nor rational, because a libertine and an adulterer: and such men, when they are allowed to ascend into heaven, and are there kept in their externals, can see the heavenly things contained therein; but when their internals are opened, instead of heavenly things they see infernal. Know, however, that with every one in this ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg

... weary me to death with her sermons and crying fits. Moll's worth two of her for that, matter—she scolds, but at least she never would look like a stuck fawn when I came home a little queer. For the matter of that, she don't mind a spree herself at times." And, emptying his glass, the libertine laughed at the remembrance of some ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood

... win. French though her training had been of late years, yet her childhood had been spent in the stormy north, amid an English-speaking people. She had seen much that disgusted and saddened her here amongst the French of Canada. She despised the aged libertine who still sat upon the French throne with all the scorn and disgust of an ardent nature full of ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green

... great body of public men, not only ministers, but noble men and worthy persons of every degree, could personally address the Queen, and that almost in the form of an accusation couched in the most vehement terms, because of a libertine raid made by a few young gallants in the night, on a house supposed to be inhabited by a woman of damaged character, is inconceivable to us—a certain parochial character, a pettiness as of a village, thus comes into the great national struggle. ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... heart of me, My blood sings in the breeze; The mountains are a part of me, I'm fellow to the trees. My golden youth I'm squandering, Sun-libertine am I, A-wandering, a-wandering, ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... surpass the adaptedness of such preaching as that to the need of the moment for which it was prepared? And how did the libertine French monarch contrive to escape the force of truth like the following, with which ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson

... of immodesty. At a first glance it is not easy to see why these shoes—terminating in a lion's claw, an eagle's beak, the prow of a ship, or other metal appendage—should be so scandalous. The excommunication inflicted on this kind of foot-gear preceded the impudent invention of some libertine, who wore poulaines in the shape of the phallus, a custom adopted also by women. This kind of poulaine was denounced as mandite de Dicu (Ducange's Glossary, at the word Poulainia) and prohibited by royal ordinances (see letter of Charles V., 17 October, 1367, regarding the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... fine writings, was a terrible drinker, if we may give any credit to Father Garasse. What follows is taken out of his Doctrine Curieuse, p. 748. "I shall," says he, "recount to our new atheists, the miserable end of a man of their belief and humour, as to eating and drinking. The libertine having passed his debauched youth in Paris and Bourdeaux, more diligent in finding out tavern bushes than the laurel of Parnassus; and being towards the latter end of his life, recalled into Scotland, to instruct the young prince, James VI. continuing his intemperance, he grew ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus

... that certain motives of those who are 'there sitting where we dare not soar', are reprehensible. Let us assume that Homer was a drunkard, that Virgil was a flatterer, that Horace was a coward, that Tasso was a madman, that Lord Bacon was a peculator, that Raphael was a libertine, that Spenser was a poet laureate. It is inconsistent with this division of our subject to cite living poets, but posterity has done ample justice to the great names now referred to. Their errors have been weighed and found to have been dust in the balance; ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... learn that the man who insists on premarital sexual necessity has two roads open to him—one that of the libertine and seducer, the most contemptible of creatures; the other that of the whore-follower, whom nature perpetually menaces with vile and pestilential plagues, making him a misery to himself and menace to all clean persons who associate ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various

... exception. His whole military life had been half sparta, half Capua. And he was too good a soldier and too good a libertine to have ever mixed either habit with the other. But now for the first time he found himself mixed; at peace and yet on duty; for he took this latter view of his wild goose chase, luckily. So all these months ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... Low Countries with the English colours in his hand. He was very handsome and a very brave man, beloved and lamented by all who knew him. The third died a bachelor; I knew him not. The fourth is Sir Simon Fanshawe, a gallant gentleman, but more a libertine than any of his family; he married a very fine and good woman, and of a great estate; she was daughter and coheir to Sir William Walter, and widow to Knitton Ferrers, son to Sir John ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe

... What a poor creeping, mean wretch is a libertine, when one looks down upon him, and up to such a glorious creature ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson

... let itself criticise even great triumphators, even men whom it loved and respected. It was known that on a time they shouted during the entrance to Rome of Julius Caesar: "Citizens, hide your wives; the old libertine is coming!" But Nero's monstrous vanity could not endure the least blame or criticism; meanwhile in the throng, amid shouts of applause were heard cries of "Ahenobarbus, Ahenobarbus! Where hast thou put thy flaming beard? Dost thou fear that Rome might catch fire from it?" And those ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... northern woman until the day she marries, and wakes to torment her like a biblical devil if she does not. There is no miser like a reformed spendthrift, and no ascetic will go to such extremes of self-mortification as a converted libertine; in the same way, there are no such portentously virginal old maids as those who might have been the most womanly wives; the opposite is certainly true also, for the variety 'Hemiparthenos,' studied after nature by Marcel Prevost, generally ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford

... Commandant of Artillery, a brave officer, but a bad man; Varin, a proud, arrogant libertine, Commissary of Montreal, who outdid Bigot in rapine and Cadet in coarseness; De Breard, Comptroller of the Marine, a worthy associate of Penisault, whose pinched features and cunning leer were in keeping with his important office of chief ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... "Your libertine friends named you well; you would bewitch God the Father.—A few days more must pass, and then you will both ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... that she would not, even to enjoy all that past happiness, be again reduced to the being she was at that period. Thus does the lover consider the extinction of his passion with the same horror as the libertine looks upon annihilation; the one would rather live hereafter, though in all the tortures described as constituting his future state, than cease to exist; so, there are no tortures which a lover would not suffer, rather ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald

... to reclaim her libertine husband, and to call him to a sense of his situation when he was on his death-bed. Louis XIV. sent the Marquis de Dangeau to convert him, and to talk to him on a subject little thought of by De Grammont—the world to come. After the Marquis had been talking for some time, De Grammont turned ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... queen's daughter! My poor mother, who filled my head with splendid visions, died of grief at seeing me married to an office clerk with twelve hundred francs a year, at nine-and-thirty an aged and hardened libertine, as corrupt as the hulks, looking on me, as others looked on you, as a means of fortune!—Well, in that wretched man, I have found the best of husbands. He prefers the squalid sluts he picks up at the street corners, and leaves me free. Though he keeps all his salary to himself, he ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... to Bothwell had not yet given occasion for scandal, though his character as an adventurous libertine was as notable as his reputation for military hardihood; but as the summer advanced, his insolence increased with his influence at court and the general aversion of his rivals. He was richly endowed by Mary from the greater and lesser spoils of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various

... as hostler often furnished the major with a carriage, in which to make some of his private expeditions, and this was another and final disgrace which the cowman perceived and commented upon. To assist an old libertine like the major in concealing his night journeys was the nethermost deep of "self-discipline," but when the pretty young wife of his employer became the object of the major's attention Kelley was thrown ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland

... the scandalous occurrence which led to her disgrace came to light. He was a man of from twenty-five to twenty-six years of age, who idled his life away: his courage was undoubted, and being as credulous as an old libertine, he was ready to draw his sword at any moment to defend the lady whose cause he had espoused, should any insolent slanderer dare to hint there was a smirch on her virtue. Being deaf to all reports, he seemed one of those men expressly framed by heaven to be the consolation ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... loftiness, totally removed from pride; a moral superiority, which impressed all. With this was united an innate purity, that seemed her birthright; a purity that could not for an instant be doubted. If the libertine gazed on her features, it awoke in him recollections that had long slumbered; of the time when his heart beat but for one. If, in her immediate sphere, any littleness of feeling was brought to her notice, it was met with an intuitive doubt, ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman

... then, turning to the royal stranger, vigorously pressed home his argument. "King Agrippa," he exclaimed, "believest thou the prophets? I know that thou believest." [140:3] The King, thus challenged, was a libertine; and at this very time was believed to be living in incestuous intercourse with his sister Bernice; and yet he seems to have been staggered by Paul's solemn and pointed interrogatory. "Almost," said he, "thou persuadest me to be a Christian." [140:4] It has been thought by some that ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... one thing—his inconstancy." Like his father, he possessed two virtues: but they were not the same. Henry was not a lover of cruelty for its own sake—which John was: and he was not personally a libertine. Of his father's virtues, bravery and honesty, there was not a trace in him. He covered his sins with an embroidered cloak of exquisite piety. The bad qualities of both parents were inherited by him. To his mother's covetous acquisitiveness and ingrained falsehood, he joined his ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt

... that this libertine Duchesse was mad; and certainly he would be a bold champion who would try to prove her sanity. But, apart from any question of a disordered brain, there was a taint in her blood sufficient to account for almost any lapse from conventional standards of pure ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall

... effect as a fact but no explanation of it. From the time of Alexander the Great that which is common, popular, realistic prevailed in politics and literature. The heroic and ideal-poetic declined and was made an object of satire in the mimus. "The trivial, prosaic, and libertine taste of the Macedonian princes of Egypt and Syria at last reigned alone in enslaved Greece." Then, under different forms and names, nothing remained but mimes, realistic representation of common life.[2030] The Olympian gods and Homeric heroes were burlesqued for fun. The mimus ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... with many dreadful thoughts. Nevertheless, he arrived at last in the dark, cheerless little private office that looked out upon a yard, and found Camusot seated gravely there; this was not Coralie's infatuated adorer, not the easy-natured, indolent, incredulous libertine whom he had known hitherto as Camusot, but a heavy father of a family, a merchant grown old in shrewd expedients of business and respectable virtues, wearing a magistrate's mask of judicial prudery; this Camusot was the cool, business-like head of the firm surrounded by clerks, green ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... ungracious pastors do, Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven, Whiles, like a puffed and reckless libertine, Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads, And recks not his ...
— Shakespeare's Insomnia, And the Causes Thereof • Franklin H. Head

... reputation[2]. It is always symptomatic of a total decay of morals, where female reputation neither confers dignity, nor excites pride, in its possessor; but is consistent with her mingling in the society of the libertine and ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden

... and, when they were, an example ought to be made of the offender as a warning to his class. Ever since Cora had gained a hearing in the police-court at Hammersmith, Alan was set down as a heartless libertine, who had grown tired of his wife, or, at any rate, as one who wanted to wash his hands of her, and throw the burden of maintaining her upon the rates. Thus it became quite a popular pastime to hound down ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... the immoral bravery of the rampant soldiery, and especially of their libertine commander, they had not been long among us till it was discerned that they were as much under the common fears and superstitions as the most credulous of our simple country folk, in so much that what with our family devotions and the tales of witches and warlocks ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt

... Nay, every libertine will think he has a right to insult her with his licentious passion; and should the unhappy creature shrink from the insolent overture, he will sneeringly taunt her with pretence ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson

... appearing to notice him; but they halted before Gillian, regarding her with insolent admiration. Evidently she was the object that had brought them forth. The poor damsel was terribly confused by their ardent glances and libertine scrutiny, and blushed to her very temples. As to Dick Taverner, he trembled with rage and jealousy, and began to repent having brought his treasure into ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth

... privileges accorded to the nuns consisted merely in their being allowed to receive visits in the presence of a lay-sister, and to perform in concerts on the feast-days of the order; but some few convents had a name for far greater license, and it was a common thing for the noble libertine returned from Italy to boast of his intrigue ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... laws of the drama, and a great victory they will have, who shall discover to the world this wonderful secret, that I have not observed the unities of place and time; but are they better kept in the farce of the "Libertine destroyed?"[15] It was our common business here to draw the parallel of the times, and not to make an exact tragedy. For this once we were resolved to err with honest Shakespeare; neither can "Catiline" or "Sejanus," ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... not the torch of equal rights!" exclaimed the platform patterer as Saint-Prosper drew near. "Awake, sons of the free soil! Now is the time to make a stand! Forswear all allegiance to the new patroon; this Southern libertine and despot from ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... Then a libertine lover of Lady Matilda's, finding her no longer under her father's protection, resolved to abduct her, and by raising an alarm of fire, caused all the inhabitants of the farmhouse to open the doors, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... days she still had hopes of civilising you,' answered Maulevrier. 'Since then she has abandoned all endeavour in that direction, and has given you over to your own devices—and me. Since then you have become a chartered libertine. ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... the pretensions to virtue and consideration of the vulgar little hussy whom Richardson selected for his heroine were certainly not less preposterous than the titles to life and actuality of the wooden libertine whom Richardson put forth as his hero. He was artist enough to know that the book was ignoble as literature and absolutely false as fact; he was moralist enough to see that its teachings were the reverse of elevating and improving; and he uttered his ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley

... the tall chimneys to the south-east, I saw Miss Dillon's romantic favorite, alternately cooing and fighting with a large mouser of the neighborhood, that I had seen for several afternoons previous, walking leisurely along the garden wall, as if absorbed in deep meditation, and forming some libertine resolve. In fine, they each seemed saturate with the spirit of the Gnome king, Umbriel, in the ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various

... name which may have a fashionable sound, and a claim upon the prevailing taste of the times, and which may remind one of the battles of some ambitious general, or of the adventures of some love-sick swain, or of the tragic deeds of some fashionable libertine! ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips

... would have been indeed strangely out of character if the spirit had lunched, or breakfasted upon tea and toast. Such a consummation would have sounded as ridiculous as if the statue of the commander in Don Juan had not only accepted of the invitation of the libertine to supper, but had also committed a beefsteak to his flinty jaws and stomach of adamant. A little more conversation ensued of a less serious nature, and tending to show that even the passage from life to death leaves the female anxiety about person and dress somewhat alive. The ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various

... creatures of his own. The inevitable result of this was to create two classes of prelates—one of lay, the other of ecclesial investiture. Its ultimate effect was to render the Church completely depend upon the State, and to change and corrupt its very source with the varying vices of libertine despots. It was found (and how could it be otherwise?) that the proteges of the emperor studied only how to please him; and that, in serving the State and the prince, they became indifferent to the Church. Selected to serve a particular ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles

... of Baudelaire aggravated the course of the disease. No longer is it the grand barbaric face of Gautier; now it is the clean shaven face of the mock priest, the slow, cold eyes and the sharp, cunning sneer of the cynical libertine who will be tempted that he may better know the worthlessness of temptation. "Les Fleurs du Mal!" beautiful flowers, beautiful in sublime decay. What great record is yours, and were Hell a reality how many souls would we find wreathed with your poisonous blossoms. The ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... the reputation of a libertine, and conducted himself as such while in Holland, finally escaping to New Netherland in 1651 with a girl whom he had deceived, though he had a wife in the province. Yet Stuyvesant retained him in his favor, promoted him in 1652 to be schout-fiscaal ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor

... the islands looked as we passed between them, with a fair wind and studding sails set alow and aloft. Their tropical charms seemed more glowing, the water bluer, the palm trees statelier, the vegetation more libertine than ever. On the south the land rises gradually from the shore to a range of lofty mountains. Immediately behind Honolulu - the capital - a valley with a road winding up it leads to the north side of the island. This valley is, or was then, richly cultivated, principally ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... venerable, snowy-haired man, sitting on the lounge at the house of Madame Flamingo, and on whom George Mullholland swore to have revenge. The judge of a criminal court, the admonisher of the erring, the sentencer of felons, the habitue of the house of Madame Flamingo-no libertine in disguise could be more scrupulous of his standing in society, or so sensitive of the opinion held of him by the virtuous fair, than was this daylight guardian ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... I live exempted (while I live Guiltless of pampered appetite obscene) From pangs arthritic that infest the toe Of libertine excess. The Sofa suits The gouty limb, 'tis true; but gouty limb, Though on a Sofa, may I never feel: For I have loved the rural walk through lanes Of grassy swarth, close cropped by nibbling sheep, ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper

... limbs. You need not try to comb out or shove back the matted locks. Wrap him in a sheet. Put him in a box. Two men will carry it down to the wagon at the door. With chalk, write on the top of the box the name of the exhausted libertine. ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage

... and mercurial temperament, he had, with a kind of passionate curiosity, adopted the role of a Platonic lover, and the libertine in his character had been subdued by the love of the eccentric. He had converted this love into a kind of adoration. He placed Elise upon the altar, and worshipped her as a saint to whom he had turned from the turmoil and wild lust of life, ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach

... for Laurent in the mocking and libertine sense that one gives to this word in love. It was by an act of her will, after nights of sorrowful meditation, that she said to him—"I wish what thou wishest, because we have come to that point where the fault to be ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... tone, "Sir, in matters that concern the commonwealth, I will be governed by no man."[213] Another gentleman mentioned something of the same kind spoken by the late Duke of B——m,[214] to the late Earl of O——y:[215] "My lord," says the duke, after his libertine way, "you will certainly be damned." "How, my lord!" says the earl with some warmth. "Nay," said the duke, "there's no help for it, for it is positively said, 'Cursed is he of whom all men speak well.'"[216] This is taking a man by surprise, and ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken

... to be bastinadoed. It is the justice of the conscienceless, bespectacled cadis under the palm-tree, Maw-worms of the Koran and Law, who dream languidly of promotion and sell their decrees, as Esau did his birthright, for a dish of lentils or sweetened kouskous. Drunken and libertine cadis are they, formerly servants to some General Yusuf or the like, who get intoxicated on champagne, along with laundresses from Port Mahon, and fatten on roast mutton, whilst before their tents the whole tribe ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet

... information that it is free, in the sense of being out of reach of the law of causation, is about as valuable as the assertion that it is neither grey, nor blue, nor square. For practical purposes, it must be admitted that the inward possession of such a noumenal libertine does not amount to much for people whose actual existence is made up of nothing but definitely regulated phenomena. When the good and evil angels fought for the dead body of Moses, its presence must have been of about the same value to either of the contending parties, as that of Kant's ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley

... and he even thought of ending them abruptly and leaving Venice. His acquaintance with Ortensia would always be a beautiful recollection in his life, he thought, and one in which there could be no element of remorse or bitterness. He was not a libertine. Few great artists have ever been that; for in every great painter, or sculptor, or musician there is a poet, and true poetry is the refutation of vulgar materialism. In all the nobler arts the second-rate men have invariably been the sensualists; ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford

... Mason is obliged by his Tenure, to obey the moral law; and if he rightly understands the Art, he will never be a stupid Atheist nor an irreligious Libertine. But though in ancient times Masons were charged in every country to be of the religion of that country or nation, whatever it was, yet it is now thought more expedient only to oblige them to that religion in which ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton

... "of what crimes men are guilty in their reckless selfishness! Here is the fair promise of an innocent girl's life blighted, and an old man's grey hairs brought down with sorrow to the grave, in order to gratify the passing fancy of a heartless libertine." He paused, and then continued, "I suppose one can do nothing in the matter, having no stronger grounds than mere ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... he is seen the constant associate of a man whose name has become synonymous with vice, a dissolute and fearless assassin of private character, of domestic comfort, and of social happiness; when he is known to be the bosom friend and supporter of the profligate and abandoned libertine, who, from the vulgar debauches of night, hastens again to the invasion of private property. Who, through the robbery of the public revenue, and the violation of private seals, hurries down the precipice of deep ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... Tootle, Jim, my boy, tootle; the great Muchross is shouting derision at the poor perspiring coster. "Pull up, you devil, pull up," he cries, and shouts to the ragged urchins and scatters halfpence that they may tumble once more in the dirt. See the great Muchross, the clean-shaven face of the libertine priest, the small sardonic eyes. Hurrah for the great Muchross! Long may he live, the singer of "What cheer, Ria?" the type and epitome of the life whose outward signs are drags, ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore

... occasions?—No; thank God there is no occasion, I pay every man his own;—I have no fornication to answer to my conscience;—no faithless vows or promises to make up;—I have debauched no man's wife or child; thank God, I am not as other men, adulterers, unjust, or even as this libertine, who stands before me. ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... kingdom of truth and a king of truth were objects of fairyland or castles in the air. "What is truth?" he asked; but, as he asked, he turned on his heel, and did not wait for an answer. He asked only as a libertine might ask, What is virtue? or ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker

... of age, but appeared much older. His prematurely bald forehead, and wrinkled brow, betokened a life of severe struggles and privations, or a life of excesses and pleasures. Still those clear and pure eyes were not those of a libertine, and the straight nose solidly joined to the face was that of a searcher. Whatever the cause, the man ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... public ball is always a resort of vile women who picture to innocent girls the ease and luxury of a harlot's life, and offer them all manner of temptations to abandon the paths of virtue. The public ball is the resort of the libertine and the adulterer, and whose object is to work the ruin of every innocent girl that may fall into ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... broad crease over his cravat. That brow was the brow of the public Charles Fox, the thinker, the philanthropist, the man who rallied and led the Liberal party during the twenty most hazardous years of its existence. That jaw was the jaw of the private Charles Fox, the gambler, the libertine, the drunkard. Yet to his sins he never added the crowning one of hypocrisy. His vices were as open as his virtues. In some quaint freak of Nature, two spirits seemed to have been joined in one body, and the same frame ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... in the next place, the libertine—he that pretendeth to be against forms and duties, as things that gender to bondage, neglecting the order of God. This man pretends to pray always, but, under that pretence, prays not at all; he pretends to keep every day a Sabbath, but this pretence serves him only to cast off all ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... once an infidel and libertine, a servant of slaves in Africa, was, by the rich mercy of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, preserved, restored, pardoned, and appointed to preach the faith he had ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... here inform the reader that M'Carstrow no longer acted the part of a husband towards Franconia. His conduct as a debauchee had driven her to seek shelter under the roof of Rosebrook's cottage, while he, a degraded libertine, having wasted his living among cast-out gamblers, mingled only with their despicable society. Stripped of all arts and disguises, and presented in its best form, the result of Franconia's marriage with Colonel ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... of the coin of the realm, in the shape of broken crockery, which was generally used in financial transactions on the stage, because when the virtuous maid rejected with scorn the advances of the lordly libertine, and threw his pernicious bribe upon the ground, the clatter of the broken crockery suggested fabulous wealth. But after the play Miss Cushman, in the course of some kindly advice, said to me: "Instead of giving me that purse, don't you think it would have been much more natural if you had taken ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles

... peasants ground down with taxes. In the midst of this rottenness, the Calvinistic churches, patient and stern, were fast gathering to themselves the better life of the nation. Among and around them tossed the surges of clerical hate. Luxurious priests and libertine monks saw their disorders rebuked by the grave virtues of the Protestant zealots. Their broad lands, their rich endowments, their vessels of silver and of gold, their dominion over souls,—in itself a revenue,—were all imperiled by the growing ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... ideas of morality were not conventional; his affection and enthusiasm for people burnt fiercely and waned, yet when he sinned, he sinned through a genuine passion. But Byron, according to Leigh Hunt, was a cold-blooded libertine, and had no conception of what love meant, except as a merely animal desire, which he ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson



Words linked to "Libertine" :   degenerate, profligate, ravisher, immoral, bad person, rounder, roue, debaucher, swinger, violator, blood, dissolute, riotous, womanizer, rake, philanderer



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