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Dissipation   /dˌɪsɪpˈeɪʃən/   Listen
Dissipation

noun
1.
Breaking up and scattering by dispersion.
2.
Dissolute indulgence in sensual pleasure.  Synonyms: dissolution, licentiousness, looseness, profligacy.
3.
Useless or profitless activity; using or expending or consuming thoughtlessly or carelessly.  Synonyms: waste, wastefulness.  "Mindless dissipation of natural resources"



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"Dissipation" Quotes from Famous Books



... had no idea that he would do so I had a sympathy for him even in his dissipation. I had known him in his youth and had not the moral courage to refuse. I gave him the one hundred dollars in gold and took his note. His hand was so tremulous that he could scarcely write his name to the note legibly. I think it probable ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... and, what was worse, falling into the hands of certain sharpers, not Italian, but English, he was fleeced of considerable sums of money. The abbe, who, it seems, was an excellent individual of the old French school, remonstrated with his pupil on his dissipation and extravagance; but, finding his remonstrances vain, very properly informed the guardians of the manner of life of his charge. They were not slow in commanding Francis Ardry home; and, as he was entirely in their power, he was forced to comply. He had been about three months in London when ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... enthusiasm in the cause of literature. The abilities of Mr. Godfrey were universally acknowledged. And so long as the novelty remained, he was caressed, honoured, and distinguished. In a short time however, he was completely forgotten by the patron, in the hurry of dissipation, and the pursuits of an unbounded ambition. His eldest care was universally confessed stupid and impracticable. And in the younger he found nothing but the prating forwardness of a boy who had been flattered, without sentiment, and without ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin

... Normandy. His appointment to be Presiding Judge would have been the stepping-stone to a peer's seat; whence this strange lack of ambition? Why had he given up his great book on Law? What was the meaning of the dissipation which for nearly six years had made him a stranger to his home, his family, his study, to all he ought to hold dear? The Countess' confessor, who based his hopes of a bishopric quite as much on the families he governed as on the services he rendered to ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac

... dangerous; the human form appeared so much more feeble and soft, delving unclothed in the fathomless, rocky earth. Many a man was marked here and there with long deep scars. It was noticeable how character, habits, dissipation, which show so plainly in the face, left but little sign on the rest of the body, which remained for the most part smooth ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck

... hotel!" as if to say, "We will to-day, in compliment to the new-born Christian zeal of our Sovereigns, finish our evening as piously as we have begun it." But no sooner were they out of sight of the palace than they hurried to the scenes of dissipation, all endeavouring, in the debauchery and excesses so natural to them, to forget their unnatural ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... for counsel" in his own home, and must set apart one day in the week for cases of conscience, ranging from the most fine-drawn self-tormentings up to the most unnatural secret crimes. He must often go to lectures in neighboring towns, a kind of religious dissipation which increased so fast that the Legislature at last interfered to restrict it. He must have five or six separate seasons for private prayer daily, devoting each day in the week to special meditations and intercessions,—as Monday ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... with the license of his life, plunged into all kinds of dissipation, specially into gambling, at this time a universal vice in Italy, as indeed it was throughout Europe. Alternate fits of study and gaming, both of which he pursued with equal zeal, and the exhaustion of the life he led, ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris

... brick-floor'd parlour which the butcher lets; Where, through his single light, he may regard The various business of a common yard, Bounded by backs of buildings form'd of clay, By stable, sties, and coops, et caetera. The needy-vain, themselves awhile to shun, For dissipation to these dog-holes run; Where each (assuming petty pomp) appears, And quite forgets the shopboard and the shears. For them are cheap amusements: they may slip Beyond the town and take a private dip; When they may urge that, ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe

... And she, you see, was not quite sure where she stood in society, you see, and wouldn't for the world have her pride lessened; so she discarded poor Tom. And the girl has been got out of the way, and Tom has become penniless, and such a wreck of dissipation that no respectable house will admit him. It's a stiff old family, that Swiggs family! His mother keeps him threading in and out of jail, just to be rid of him. She is a curious mother; but when I think how he looks and acts, how can I wonder she keeps him in jail? I had to put him there ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... cried, and his pale face, already showing the signs of dissipation, took on a scornful expression. "Be careful, my friend, or Gertrude ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... audience, be it so; Seneca, Burrhus, and his other counsellors will obey. But the time will come when the worn-out boy will be pleased some morning with the almost forgotten majesty of state. The time comes one day. Worn out by the dissipation of the week, fretted by some blunder of his flatterers, he sends for his wiser counsellers, and bids them lead him to the audience-chamber, where he will attend to these cases which need an Emperor's decision. It is at that moment that we ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale

... but the passion for watching chances—the habitual suspensive poise of the mind in actual or imaginary play—nullifies the susceptibility of other excitation. In its final, imperious stage, it seems the unjoyous dissipation of demons, seeking diversion on the burning ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... tired, then, by your dissipation of last night?" said Mrs. Kavanagh to her at the station, as the slender, fair-haired, grave lady looked admiringly at the girl's fresh color and bright gray-blue eyes. "It makes one envy you to see you looking so strong ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various

... by party; that much business of a trifling nature and personal concernment, withdraws their attention from matters of great national moment at this critical period; when it is also known that idleness and dissipation take place of close attention and application, no man who wishes well to the liberties of this country, and desires to see its rights established, can avoid crying out—where are our men of abilities? Why do they not come forth to save their country? Let this voice, my dear sir, call upon you, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall

... almost universal in this country, and, though friendly and sociable in its way, is the fruitful source of much dissipation. It is almost impossible, in travelling, to steer clear of this evil habit. Strangers are almost invariably drawn into it in the ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... the lessor of the plaintiff (i. e. Tittlebat Titmouse) will be able to prove that Dreddlington (the common ancestor) was seised of the estate at Yatton in the year 1740; that he had two sons, Harry and Charles, the former of whom, after a life of dissipation, appears to have died without issue; and that from the latter (Charles) are descended Stephen, the ancestor of the lessor of the plaintiff, and Geoffrey, the ancestor of the defendant. Assuming, therefore, that the descent of the lessor of ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren

... virtues; and I think it may, with more truth be said of women, than of men, that the more knowledge, the more virtue; the more understanding, the less courage. Why then is the plume elevated to the head? and what must the present mode of female education and manners end in, but in more ignorance, dissipation, debauchery and luxury? and, at length, in national ruin. Thus it was at ROME, the mistress of the world; they became fond of the most vicious men, and such as meant to enslave them, who corrupted their hearts, by humouring and gratifying their follies, and encouraging, ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse

... these circumstances, drunkenness became fearfully prevalent; the freed convicts gave themselves up to unrestrained riot, and, when intoxicated, committed the most brutal atrocities; the soldiers also sank into the wildest dissipation; and many of the officers themselves led lives of open and shameless debauchery. This was the community Governor King had to rule. He made an effort to effect some change, but failed; and we can hardly wonder at the feeling of intense disgust ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland

... bottom of their art, and acquiring its perfection. Content with their bodily powers, and with the applause their performances actually do receive from the public, they look no further, and remain in ignorance of the rest of their duty. Against this dissipation then, which keeps them always superficial, they cannot be too much, for their own ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini

... neighbouring mansion was brilliantly illuminated at night. On asking the reason, he was told that Caecina Tuscus[102] was giving a large dinner-party, at which Junius Blaesus was the chief guest. He further received an exaggerated account of their extravagance and dissipation. Some of his informants even made specific charges against Tuscus and others, but especially accused Blaesus for spending his days in revelry while his emperor lay ill. There are people who keep a sharp eye on every sign of an emperor's displeasure. They soon made sure that Vitellius was ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus

... reconcile the two characters in the least. It seemed as if the estate were possessed by a devil,—a foul and melancholy fiend,—who resented the attempted possession of others by subjecting them to himself. One had turned from quiet and sober habits to reckless dissipation; another had turned from the usual gayety of life to recluse habits, and both, apparently, by the same influence; at least, so it appeared to Redclyffe, as he insulated their story from all other circumstances, and looked at them by one light. He even thought that he felt a similar influence ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... this country are, at the best, not a cheerful race. Though they sometimes join in festivities, it is but seldom; and the wildness of their dissipation is too often in proportion to its infrequency. There is none of the serene contentment—none of that smiling enjoyment—which, according to travellers like Howitt, distinguishes the tillers of the ground in other lands. Sedateness is a national characteristic, but the gravity of the ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... in these and similar pursuits and occupations, Messalina went on in her career of dissipation and indulgence from bad to worse, growing more and more bold and open every day. She lived in a constant round of entertainments and of gayety—sometimes receiving companies of guests at her own palace, ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott

... charge of the work in her class on retiring. We proceeded to other wards, some containing forgers, coiners, and thieves; and almost all these vices were engrafted on the most deplorable root of sinful dissipation. Many of the women are married; their families are in some instances permitted to be with them, if very young; their husbands, the partners of their crimes, are often found to be on the men's side of the prison, or on their way ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman

... In the mean while, as substantial and useful results, I will have my rare bit of sport, and he will know more about the wicked world against which he is to preach. By and by he will marry a pious Western giantess, whose worst dissipation is a Sunday-school picnic, and will often petrify her soul with horror and wonder by describing that awful ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... every fibre of her being—he was good—he was great! How could she ever have dreamt of setting up her will against his wisdom, her ignorance against his knowledge, her fancies against his perfect taste? Had she really once loved London and late hours and dissipation? She who now was only happy in the country, she who jumped out of bed every morning—oh, so early!—with Albert, to take a walk, before breakfast, with Albert alone! How wonderful it was to be taught by him! To be told by him which trees were which; and to learn all about the bees! And ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey

... cat, needlessly tall, powerful, independent and masculine. Once, long ago, he had been a roly-poly pepper-and-salt kitten; he had a home in those days, and a name, "Gipsy," which he abundantly justified. He was precocious in dissipation. Long before his adolescence, his lack of domesticity was ominous, and he had formed bad companionships. Meanwhile, he grew so rangy, and developed such length and power of leg and such traits of character, that the father of the little girl who owned him was ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington

... hair had retreated from the temples, and this fact had changed his appearance, had lessened his good looks, and at the same time had given to his face an odd suggestion of added intellectuality which was at war with the plain stamp of dissipation imprinted upon it. Even in repose his face was ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... often followed by a shot or a stroke with the ready poniard; but for this both parties are equally prepared, and resolute to abide the issue: and for the stranger, all he has to do is to keep out of low places of gambling and dissipation, and, if in a large hotel, to keep his door locked; a precaution which would be as much called for at Cheltenham or Spa, were the congregated numbers equally great; although, in the latter places, I admit, the thieves might be ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power

... to justify them, either in their causes or in their consequences, than this long struggle between England and France. It was a calamity to both lands. For England it meant the dissipation abroad of the energies which would have been better employed at home. For France it resulted in widespread destruction of property, untold suffering, famines, and terrible loss of life. From this time dates that traditional hostility ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... way of Spain, in the fall of '76, looking much improved. But the malaria and dissipation of Blackwell's Island afterward impaired his health, and having done time there, and having been arrested afterward and placed in Ludlow Street Jail, he died here April 12, 1878, leaving behind him a ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various

... circle, and if you do not hear from me by a quarter to three, you may conclude I have been unfortunate in my supplications." Whether he was or was not unfortunate history does not record. A week or two later the old round of dissipation had apparently set in. "I am now tied down neck and heels by engagements every night this week, or most joyfully would have trod the old pleasing road from Bond to Gerrard Street. I am quite well, but exhausted ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill

... he twirled his mustache, that was continually quivering with smiles. Chelkash was pleased with his success, with himself, and with this youth, who had been so frightened of him and had been turned into his slave. He had a vision of unstinted dissipation to-morrow, while now he enjoyed the sense of his strength, which had enslaved this young, fresh lad. He watched how he was toiling, and felt sorry for him, ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky

... the department was lax. Insurance was easy. Statistics were not in demand. History was dead. Old Kauffman, the efficient and perpetual clerk, had requested an infrequent half-holiday, incited to the unusual dissipation by the joy of having successfully twisted the tail of a Connecticut insurance company that was trying to do business contrary to the edicts of ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry

... thinking of the handsome face which a little while before was beside her; thinking, with keen agony, of footprints there which she had never dreamed of seeing; they were very slight, yet unmistakable—the fell signet of dissipation. Above all, she read it in the eyes, which once looked so fearlessly into hers. She knew he did not imagine for an instant that she suspected it; and of all the bitter cups which eighteen years had proffered, this was by far the blackest. It was ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans

... very regularly and attentively at the studio, but now Marshall's society was an attraction I could not resist. For the sake of his talent, which I religiously believed in, I regretted he was so idle; but his dissipation was winning, and his delight was thorough, and his gay, dashing manner made me feel happy, and his experience opened to me new avenues for enjoyment and knowledge of life. On my arrival in Paris I had visited, in the company of my taciturn valet, the Mabille and the ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... them, I am well aware, to governors and governesses who were prudent, attentive, and capable; but all the governors and preceptors in the world will never replace a mother,—above all, in a place of dissipation, tumult, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... her because you are not going to drive me to it,"—this with a half-stifled yawn behind a faultless white hand that was just beginning to show the blue veining of bad hours and dissipation. Then: "Go back to your hotel and go to bed, Bertie. You'll wake up in a better frame of mind a few hours later, perhaps. ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde

... get 'em delivered. She's got something to show fur her dust. But what you got to show? Not a blamed thing but a lot of stubs in a check-book, and a little fat. Now I ain't makin' any kick. I got no right to; but I do hate to see you leadin' this life of idleness and dissipation when you might be makin' something of yourself. Your pa was quite a man. He left his mark out there in that Western country. Now you're here settled in the East among big people, with a barrel of money and fine chances to do something, and you're jest layin' ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson

... recounting their experience of the road. Many of the men were very lame and stiff, after their hundred-mile tramp. Numbers of Indians had come in to trade, and the ceaseless "tom-tom" from the wigwam on the opposite bank told how they were gambling away their earnings. They kept up this dissipation until daylight, when they went away in canoes. The way-house being full when we arrived, the Hudson Bay Company's officer very kindly vacated his quarters for us, and paid us every attention in his power, even robbing his tiny garden of half ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon

... for them to drink it. All which it takes to support the paupers, and prosecute the crimes which ardent spirit occasions, is, to those who pay the money, utterly lost. All the diminution of profitable labor which it occasions, through improvidence, idleness, dissipation, intemperance, sickness, insanity, and premature deaths, is to the community so much utterly lost. And these items, as has often been shown, amount in the United States to more than $100,000,000 a year. To this enormous and wicked waste of property, those who traffic in the article ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society

... addresses to Miss Cradock not very long after his arrival in London. This is a fact to be borne in mind. So early an attachment to a good and beautiful girl, living no farther off than Salisbury, where his own father probably resided, is scarcely consistent with the reckless dissipation which has been laid to his charge, although, on his own showing, he was by no means faultless. But it is a part of natures like his to exaggerate their errors in the moment of repentance; and it may well be that Henry Fielding, too, was ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson

... was satisfied that her little girl had not been spoilt for home by her taste of dissipation, though she did not hear the further confidence to Dolores in the ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge

... possible; and whether it were so or not, he did not doubt that what Mendez had once asserted he would adhere to. On receiving his dismissal, he had gone to some distance from the scene of his crime; but having, whilst the money lasted, acquired habits of idleness and dissipation that could not be maintained without a further supply, these necessities had provoked ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... afterwards the party separated at Sacramento, Frank only remaining two days in that town. The wild scenes of dissipation and recklessness disgusted him; he looked with loathing upon the saloons where gambling went on from morning till night, broken only by an occasional fierce quarrel, followed in most cases by the sharp crack of a revolver, or by desperate encounters with bowie knives. ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty

... ended only by the death of the former. The other two brothers lived in harmony for some time, because the Persian war in the East occupied Constantius, while Constans was satisfied with a life of indolence and dissipation. Constans was murdered in 350, and his brother was sole Emperor. He died ten years later, and was succeeded by his ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell

... ——, your —— friend. I believe, in general, they have been favourably received, and surely the age of their author will preclude severe criticism. The adventures of my life from sixteen to nineteen, and the dissipation into which I have been thrown in London, have given a voluptuous tint to my ideas; but the occasions which called forth my muse could hardly admit any other colouring. This volume is vastly correct and miraculously chaste. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore

... easy matter for these pursuers, two of them young and active, to run down this fugitive Blackbeard, encumbered as he was by middle age and dissipation. They put after him boldly, with little fear of his pistols. In this dense cover he would have to fire at them haphazard and he was unlikely to tarry and wait for them. They saw him in glimpses as he fled from one grassy patch to another, ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine

... put his affairs in order, readily settled his account with M. de Nucingen, who found a worthy German to succeed him, and then determined on a carouse worthy of the palmiest days of the Roman Empire. He plunged into dissipation as recklessly as Belshazzar of old went to that last feast in Babylon. Like Belshazzar, he saw clearly through his revels a gleaming hand that traced his doom in letters of flame, not on the narrow walls of the banqueting chamber, but over the vast spaces of heaven that the rainbow spans. His feast ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... from the usual course of my profession; because I am desirous of employing in a rational and useful pursuit that leisure, of which the same men would have required no account, if it had been wasted on trifles, or even abused in dissipation. ...
— A Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations • James Mackintosh

... in one week? I do call that dissipation. Why, Thursday would be taken up with the journey, and Friday with resting, and Sunday is Sunday all the world over; and they must have written on Tuesday. Well! I hope Cynthia won't find Hollingford dull, that's all, when she ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... Poor madam; she won't like it. She'll be disappointed! But it's but for one evening!—but for one evening! She may come to-morrow, mayn't she? Or will the dissipation of such an evening as she describes, ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... or drink Punic punch; or a "cabinet de lecture," or club, where the Times or the Globe gave the latest telegram from Italy; as how Hannibal obtained a glorious victory over the Roman troops at Thrasymene, or that the commissariat was bad; then, perhaps, old grumblers decried the dissipation at Cannae, and the expense of the war; and ancient merchants on 'Change complained of the rising importance of the Roman navy, whose ships had just captured the large Phoenician brigantine Argo, ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham

... prove that the globe is an oblate spheroid flattened at the poles, and this form we know, by strict mathematical demonstrations, is precisely the one which a fluid body revolving round its axis, and become solid at its surface by the slow dissipation of its heat or other causes, would assume. I suppose, therefore, that the globe, in the first state in which the imagination can venture to consider it, was a fluid mass with an immense atmosphere revolving in space round the sun, and that by its cooling a portion of its atmosphere ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy

... Marcus Ivanovitch!" sighed the inspector, looking at the window, "I told you you would come to a bad end! I told the dear man, but he wouldn't listen! Dissipation doesn't bring any good!" ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various

... from my father considerable property, the greater part of which I squandered in my youth in dissipation; but I perceived my error, and reflected that riches were perishable, and quickly consumed by such ill managers as myself. I farther considered, that by my irregular way of living I wretchedly misspent my ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 1 • Anon.

... to guide, the youths were soon in sore straits. Their love of art, their study of the poets, their attempt to revive the history of Greece and Rome were all scorned and mocked at as so much wanton dissipation. The boys drew closer together; the fate of their house hung ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland

... husband said he wished to be his friend's steward; truly he has the air of a steward. What a noble gait the count has, what youthful ease, what real distinction! And yet I'm sure that my husband despises him, because he has ruined himself by dissipation. He affected—I saw it—an air of protection. Poor youth! But everything about the count betrays an innate or acquired superiority; even his name, Hector—how it sounds!" And she repeated "Hector" several times, as if it pleased her, adding, ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau

... emotion of parental feeling; he was dancing attendance on a notorious Phryne or Lais of the day (classical names were still in vogue at that date); the Peace of Tilsit had only just been concluded and all the world was hurrying after pleasure, in a giddy whirl of dissipation, and his head had been turned by the black eyes of a bold beauty. He had very little money, but he was lucky at cards, made many acquaintances, took part in all entertainments, in a word, he was in ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev

... his ideas and Blake's were very different about life. Blake's idea of happiness was, the concentrating of every thing into a focus for his own enjoyment; whereas he, Frank, had only had recourse to dissipation and extravagance, because he had nothing to make home pleasant to him. If he once had Fanny Wyndham installed as Lady Ballindine, at Kelly's Court, he was sure he could do his duty as a country gentleman, and live on ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope

... into society, or, as she phrases it, "initiated into the circles of dissipation and folly." In her account of the life she led in those circles she does ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney

... predominated over the consciences of men. The shame of public censure was extinguished in general depravity. An eminent historian, who lived at that time, informs us, that venality universally prevailed amongst the Romans; and a writer who flourished soon after, observes, that luxury and dissipation had encumbered almost all so much with debt, that they beheld with a degree of complacency the prospect of civil ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... goodlie disguising plaied at Graies In, which was compiled for the most part by maister John Roo, sergeant at the law manie yeares past, and long before the cardinall had any authoritie. The effect of the plaie was that lord gouernance was ruled by dissipation and negligence, by whose misgouernance and evill order ladie publike weale was put from gouernance; which caused rumor populi, inwarde grudge and disdaine of wanton souereignetie to rise, with a great multitude, to expell negligence and dissipation, ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton

... drinking, horse-racing, and boxing. These are the peculiarities of English education. The following circumstances are common to education in that, and the other countries of Europe. He acquires a fondness for European luxury,and dissipation, and a contempt for the simplicity of his own country; he is fascinated with the privileges of the European aristocrats, and sees, with abhorrence, the lovely equality which the poor enjoy with the ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... aggrandizement. The two chief pretenders to the first place were bitterly hostile; and while the one was detained in Italy by insurrection against his authority, the other was plunged in luxury and dissipation, enjoying the first delights of a lawless passion, at the Egyptian capital. The nations of the East were, moreover, alienated by the recent exactions of the profligate Triumvir, who, to reward his parasites and favorites, had laid upon them a burden that they were scarcely ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson

... during his college course and his years at the law school, he had yielded to this impulse and broken away—now toward extravagance and dissipation, and then, when the reaction came, toward a romantic devotion to work among the poor. He had felt his father's disapproval for both of these forms of imprudence; but is was never expressed in a harsh or violent way, always with a certain tolerant patience, ...
— The Mansion • Henry Van Dyke

... was, in short, one of those respectable links that connect the coxcombs of the present day with those of the last age, and could compare, in his own experience, the follies of both. In latter days, he had sense enough to extricate himself from his course of dissipation, though with impaired health and ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... do children for the home where they are even little indulged, in the boarding-school where they are only tolerated. This has been in the town, where I have felt the want of companionship, because the dissipation of fatigue, or expecting soon to move again, has prevented my employing myself for myself; and yet there was nothing well worth looking at without. When in the country I have enjoyed myself highly, and my health has improved ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... other defects; however, under these conditions, there would be a considerable loss of energy through conduction of heat by the gases. In the vacuum lamp nearly all the electrical energy is converted into radiant energy, which is emitted by the filament and any dissipation of heat is an energy loss. A high vacuum was one of the chief aims up to this time, but a radical departure ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh

... more than an average amount of literary and scientific taste; whereas among the naval and military officers and various Government officials very few have any such taste, but find their only amusements in card-playing and dissipation. Some of the most intelligent and best informed Dutchmen I have met with are trading ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant

... John very busy in his shirt-sleeves, I saw no one about. I was glad to reach my room unobserved. I knew that my feeling was unreasonable, but entering that sedate house, under the blaze of the morning sun, I was ashamed of my tawdry dress. A sense of dissipation and revelry seemed to hang about me—and of an ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford

... Kirkoswald, to learn mensuration and surveying from the schoolmaster there, who was famous as a teacher of these things. Griswold, on the Carrick coast, was a village full of smugglers and adventurers, in whose society Burns was introduced to scenes of what he calls "swaggering riot and roaring dissipation." It may readily be believed that with his strong love of sociality and excitement he was an apt pupil in that school. Still the mensuration went on till one day, when in the kail-yard behind the teachers house, Burns met a young lass, who set his heart on fire, and ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp

... believe the stage-play to be still almost wholly injurious, through its falsehood, its folly, its wantonness, and its aimlessness. It may be safely assumed that most of the novel-reading which people fancy an intellectual pastime is the emptiest dissipation, hardly more related to thought or the wholesome exercise of the mental faculties than opium-eating; in either case the brain is drugged, and left weaker and crazier for the debauch. If this may be called the negative result of the fiction habit, the positive injury that ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... illicit amour, the good aunt who soon dies of chagrin at this unworthy attachment, the young brood who are the offspring of the ill-sorted match, his brother, an openhearted sailor, who is hindered by the artifices of Kathrin from gaining access to the house, and lastly, the "fair nymph Dissipation," with whom Syr Martyn seeks refuge from his unpleasant recollections, and who conspires with "the lazy fiend, Self-Imposition," to conduct him to the "dreary cave of Discontent," where the poet leaves him, and "the reverend ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... expression, it might still help to express the fact that the moral degeneracy of Spain in her new career of wantonness was at least shared by the women. At the court, the king, who was in many ways what might be termed a mystic voluptuary, spent his time in alternate fits of dissipation and devotion, wasted his time in gallantry, and neglected his royal duties; and the all-powerful Lerma was the centre of a world of graft, where the highest offices in the land were bartered for gold, and every noble had an itching palm. In this ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger

... N. {opp. 72} dispersion; disjunction &c 44; divergence &c 291; aspersion; scattering &c v.; dissemination, diffusion, dissipation, distribution; apportionment &c 786; spread, respersion^, circumfusion^, interspersion, spargefaction^; affusion^. waifs and estrays^, flotsam and jetsam, disjecta membra [Lat.], [Horace]; waveson^. V. disperse, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... and dodge out of sight. Meantime two influences had been working well for Marget. That Satan, who was quite indifferent to her, had stopped going to her house after a visit or two had hurt her pride, and she had set herself the task of banishing him from her heart. Reports of Wilhelm Meidling's dissipation brought to her from time to time by old Ursula had touched her with remorse, jealousy of Satan being the cause of it; and so now, these two matters working upon her together, she was getting a good profit out of the combination—her interest in Satan was steadily cooling, her ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... marching troops are made, Pen-spurning clerks and lads contemning trade; Waiters and servants by confinement teased, And youths of wealth by dissipation eased; With feeling nymphs who, such resource at hand, Scorn to obey the ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... must be mentioned. Though not averse to the society and manners of the world, she is in her own way a religious woman; and the form in which this tendency shows itself in her is by a strict observance of the Sabbatarian rule. Dissipation and low dresses during the week are, under her control, atoned for by three services, an evening sermon read by herself, and a perfect abstinence from any cheering employment on Sunday. Unfortunately for those under her roof to whom the dissipation and low dresses are not extended, her servants ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... heinous crimes or practices with which our country is disgraced.[7] Yes, and afterwards we find him rioting at the Wine Table, the whole livelong night. Is it to be wondered that there are such vast numbers of our population who are the votaries of Vice and Dissipation? No, certainly not, and I do not believe there ever will be less of this wickedness while a man practising these abominable vices (in what is called a gentlemanly manner) is suffered to sit at the ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... misunderstandings in interpretation. Everything depends upon what one means by "sexuality" or "sexual impulse" or "sexual tendency." Unless a mutual understanding is arrived at on this subject of sexuality, little advance toward the dissipation of conflicting views of Freudians and anti-Freudians can ever be had. And permit me to mention in this place that it is the Freudians themselves and not their opponents who are most to blame. Until the Freudian school decidedly and once for all gives up its false and distorted viewpoint of ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... we are told, was often guilty of procuring it by accepting bribes, and spent it in luxury and dissipation. Coriolanus declined to receive it, even when pressed upon him by his commanders as an honor; and one great reason for the odium he incurred with the populace in the discussions about their debts was, that he trampled upon the poor, not for money's sake, ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch

... great guns up at Albano, and the society consisted chiefly of donkeys. But the ladies enjoyed themselves nevertheless, and felt better and better every day; for early hours, much exercise, and no aesthetic tea, soon set them up after the dissipation ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott

... paper before her, preparing her future work for the press, copying a bit here and a bit there, inventing historical details, dovetailing her chronicle, her head would sometimes seem to be going round as she remembered the unpaid baker, and her son's horses, and his unmeaning dissipation, and all her doubts about the marriage. As regarded herself, Mr Broune would have made her secure,—but that now was all over. Poor woman! This at any rate may be said for her,—that had she accepted the man her regrets would have been ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... hour. I am told He had another execution in his house yesterday—in short his Dissipation and extravagance exceed anything I have ...
— The School For Scandal • Richard Brinsley Sheridan

... formidable-looking adversary. In the moonlight certain signs of puffiness, of dissipation, did not show, save for rolls of fat about shoulders and paunch. He was powerfully built, his chest matted with black hair, his forearms rough with it. Taller than Mormon, he had all the advantage of reach. He ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn

... foolishness. She contemplated an alliance with Spain, a state quite outside the orbit of Sweden's influence, the firstfruits of which were to have been an invasion of Portugal. She utterly neglected affairs in order to plunge into a whirl of dissipation with her foreign favourites. The situation became impossible, and it was with an intense feeling of relief that the Swedes saw her depart, in masculine attire, under the name of Count Dohna. At Innsbruck she openly joined the Catholic Church, and was rechristened Alexandra. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... youth, Mr. Vere of Ellieslaw had been remarkable for a career of dissipation, which, in advanced life, he had exchanged for the no less destructive career of dark and turbulent ambition. In both cases, he had gratified the predominant passion without respect to the diminution of his private fortune, although, where such inducements were ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott

... "For where does beauty and high wit But in your constellation meet?"—Hudibras, p. 134. "Thence to the land where flows Ganges and Indus."—Paradise Lost, B. ix, l. 81. "On these foundations seems to rest the midnight riot and dissipation of modern assemblies."—Brown's Estimate, ii, 46. "But what has disease, deformity, and filth, upon which the thoughts can be allured to dwell?"—Johnson's Life of Swift, p. 492. "How is the gender and number of the relative ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... cynical justification, all were gone. It was really the man himself now, normally scared and repentant; the frightened, overfed pensioner on his wife's bounty; not the human beast maddened by fear and dissipation, half stunned, half panic-stricken, driven by sheer terror into a role which even he shrank from—had shrunk from all these years. For, leech and parasite that he was, Mortimer, however much the dirty acquisition of money might tempt him in theory, had not yet brought ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers

... as they would go to London or to Paris, to seek the dissipation of a great city; and if they dared confess they were bored at Rome, I believe the greater part would confess it; but it is equally true that here may be found a charm that never tires. Will you pardon me, my lord, a wish that this charm were known ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael

... called. It was almost the first time I had been able to get a view of his face. And oh! how changed it was. Not merely that it looked pale and worn, with bloodshot eyes and hectic cheeks, but there was a scared despairing look there which fairly shocked me. Dissipation, and shame, and want, had all set their mark there. Alas! how soon may the likeness of God be degraded and defaced! He continued to walk to and fro as Jim sat down and began to read, but I could see he ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed

... why don't you buy some real estate?" he continued, jocularly. "Every man should have some dissipation—something to make him ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead

... support the excitement more often, you may depend upon it I should be more often here. It requires all the sense of duty engendered by a long habit of ill-health and careful regimen, to keep me from excess in this, which is, I may say, my last dissipation. I have tried them all, sir," he went on, laying his hand on Geraldine's arm, "all, without exception, and I declare to you, upon my honour, there is not one of them that has not been grossly and untruthfully ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... fears as to his future destiny at court. He begged her not to oppose herself to me; to be silent with respect to me, and to keep herself somewhat in the shade if she would not make some advances towards me. His daughter- in-law, whose arrogance equalled her dissipation and dissolute manners, replied, that she was too much above a woman of my sort to fear or care for me; that my reign at the chateau would be but brief, whilst hers would only terminate with her life: ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon

... to travel, my mother took me to Europe, and for five years we lived in Paris, Naples, or wandered to and fro. Then she came home, and I plunged into the heart of Asia. After two years I returned to Paris, and gave myself up to every species of dissipation. I drank, gambled, and my midnight carousals would sicken your soul were I to paint all their hideousness. You have read in the Scriptures of persons possessed of devils? A savage, mocking, tearing devil held me in bondage. I sold myself to my Mephistopheles on condition ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... giving me a lesson, and I was very much interested in her original system of book-keeping. What a wonderful old dear she is, so energetic and full of interest in her fellow-creatures! I must go to see her again, and have a game of cribbage, which appears to be her pet dissipation. I'm fond of old people, but I daresay they get a little trying if you have no variety. If I relieve guard sometimes, it will set you free to have ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... stability of our society rests upon production and conservation. For individuals or for governments to waste and squander their resources is to deny these rights and disregard these obligations. The result of economic dissipation to a nation ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various

... myself up to a melancholy which was fed by solitude and inaction. Love burned on in silence and tortured me, more and more. I lost all taste for reading and literature; I let myself become completely depressed; and I feared that I should either become a lunatic or rush into dissipation, when events occurred that had great influence on my life and give a strong and healthy ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin

... like about me, Mark, but you shan't abuse Lady Lufton. And if horns and hoofs mean wickedness and dissipation, I believe it's not far wrong. But get off your big coat and make yourself comfortable." And that was all the scolding that Mark Robarts got from his wife on the occasion of his ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... gift of Eliza's grandfather to her mother, Ann Charless. Edward Charless had unfortunately displeased his father; for, although he was a genial, honorable, and kind-hearted man, he had, in early life, contracted habits of dissipation, which clung to him through life, and which were very displeasing to his father. He had been married a number of years, too, but had no children. The information of Mr. Kerr, respecting the will of my husband's father, was anything but pleasing to him—for ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless

... of this truth first—the breach of common laws of morality, the indulgence, for instance, in dissipation. A man gets a certain coarse delight out of it, but what does he get besides? A weakened body, a tyrannous craving, ruined prospects, oftenest poverty and shame, the loss of self-respect and love; of moral ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... Marie-Francoise Perier in 1760. Their fortune resembled many others of that period: it was more nominal than actual, more showy than solid. Not that the husband and wife had any cause for self-reproach, or that their estates had suffered from dissipation; unstained by the corrupt manners of the period, their union had been a model of sincere affection, of domestic virtue and mutual confidence. Marie-Francoise was quite beautiful enough to have made a sensation ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... Cabinet into fourteen departments and held the Minister at the head of each department responsible. He converted the Army and Navy (who were eating up the hard-earned wages of the working men and women of our land in idleness and dissipation), into a great industrial army and assigned them to work under the different departments as they were required, weeding out the worthless and reducing to the ranks all officers that conducted themselves in a manner unbecoming a gentleman and by election of officers giving every ...
— Eurasia • Christopher Evans

... what the depreciation drew; but as, while they pay the former, they do not suffer the latter, and as, when they suffered the latter, they did not pay the former, the thing will be nearly equal, with this moral advantage, that taxation occasions frugality and thought, and depreciation produced dissipation ...
— A Letter Addressed to the Abbe Raynal, on the Affairs of North America, in Which the Mistakes in the Abbe's Account of the Revolution of America Are Corrected and Cleared Up • Thomas Paine

... are two kinds of old age or senility. Old age, properly speaking, results from a distinct modification of the nervous tissues and a hardening of the arteries—the former caused by unnatural conditions, nervous strain and dissipation, and the latter from over-feeding and drinking. The trouble with the ordinary man is that he absorbs great quantities of nitrogenous foods instead of making his diet one of nuts, fruit, milk, etc. In comparatively young men of the present age there is often ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory

... understood—especially by the Blade's friends—spends his time in a whirl of dissipation. That is the symbolism of the emphatic obliquity of the costume. First, he drinks. The Blade at Harrow, according to a reliable authority, drinks cherry brandy and even champagne; other Blades consume whisky-and-soda; the less costly kind of Blade does it on beer. And here ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells

... Indeed, it was a fine sight to see this pale, handsome, elegantly dressed young fellow lounging along between a blue-checkered pinafored girl on one side and a barefooted boy on the other. The ranchmen turned and looked after him curiously. One, a rustic prodigal, reduced by dissipation to the swine-husks of ranching, saw fit to accost ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... the screen at any angle; in close-ups and foregrounds as well as full shots. In actual life there were little things covered by make-up in his work, such as the cold gray tint of his eyes and the lines of dissipation ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve

... up the task, adding more exactness to his formulations. Newington[14] published his important paper in 1874. A nascent stage of stupor, he thinks, is a common reaction to great exhaustion, "such as hard mental work, prolonged or acute illness, dissipation, etc." Such conditions, like the grave psychotic forms, he regarded as due to physical exhaustion of the brain cells, but, since he thought psychic stress could produce this exhaustion, this "organic" view did not bias his general formulations. ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch



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