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Profligacy   /prˈɔflɪgˌæsi/   Listen
Profligacy

noun
1.
The trait of spending extravagantly.  Synonyms: extravagance, prodigality.
2.
Dissolute indulgence in sensual pleasure.  Synonyms: dissipation, dissolution, licentiousness, looseness.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Profligacy" Quotes from Famous Books



... covenant.—These principles were not likely to conciliate the favour of government; and as we wade onward in the history of the times, the scenes become yet darker. At length, one would imagine the parties had agreed to divide the kingdom of vice betwixt them; the hunters assuming to themselves open profligacy and legalized oppression; and the hunted, the opposite attributes of hypocrisy, fanaticism, disloyalty, and midnight assassination. The troopers and cavaliers became enthusiasts in the pursuit of the covenanters If Messrs Kid, King, Cameron, Peden, &c. boasted of prophetic powers, ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott

... name of Vernon. I would rather go barren to my grave. Ah! that is why Sir John Manners is a villain? That is why a decisive step should be taken? That is why you come to my father's house a-fortune-hunting? After you have squandered your patrimony and have spent a dissolute youth in profligacy, after the women of the class you have known will have no more of you but choose younger men, you who are old enough to be my father come here and seek your fortune, as your father sought his, by marriage. I ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major

... respectability, just as he made a sacrifice of the South Sea bubblers. What else was the stinking rakehell seeking but to put himself right again in the eyes of a town that was nauseated with him and his excesses? The self-seeking toad that makes virtue his profession—the virtue of others—and profligacy his recreation!" He smote fist into palm. "There's a ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini

... other hand, let it be clearly understood that any indulgence whatever in these evil courses is attended with bad effects, especially because they create impure desires and thoughts, which will prepare the girl to be a willing victim to the arts of profligacy. There is no more solemn duty resting on those who have the charge of young females than to protect them against ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys

... degraded mass of poverty and misery was fermenting. Slaves, the chance sweepings of every conquered country, shoals of Africans, Sardinians, Asiatics, Illyrians, and others, made up the bulk of the population of the Italian peninsula. The foulest profligacy of manners was general in all ranks. In universal weariness of revolution and civil war, and in consciousness of being too debased for self-government, the nation had submitted itself to the absolute authority of Augustus. Adulation ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.

... upon a career of extravagance. He spent thousands of dollars daily, he literally cast money to the winds. His notoriety spread to the furthermost limits of the country; the daily papers, the weeklies, the monthlies printed exaggerated accounts of his profligacy. ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... a man of a rank only below that of royalty, who in his own day had made a considerable noise. History says little or nothing of him; but search the correspondence of his contemporaries, and you find reference to his wild daring, his bold profligacy, his restless spirit, his taste for the occult sciences. While still in the meridian of life he died and was buried, so say the chronicles, in a foreign land. He died in time to escape the grasp of the law, for he was accused ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various

... in the organization of this disastrous war (from the horrors of which, North Germany deems itself only reprieved, not secured,) may have some share in the general aversion with which they are regarded: yet I am deeply persuaded that the far greater part is owing to their own profligacy, to their treachery and hardheartedness to each other, and the domestic misery or corrupt principles which so many of them have carried into the families of their protectors. My heart dilated with honest pride, as I recalled to mind the stern yet amiable characters of the English patriots, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... When he heard his errand, he blushed deeply, and frankly admitted the truth of the girl's statement. His benevolent visitor took the opportunity to "bear a testimony" against the selfishness and sin of profligacy. He did it in such a kind and fatherly manner, that the young man's heart was touched. He excused himself, by saying that he would not have tampered with the girl, if he had known her to be virtuous. "I have done ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child

... polluted with vices that are common to men, and which had given themselves up entirely to unclean desires, and had become so blinded by them as to have habituated themselves to all manner of debauchery and profligacy, or to have laid detestable schemes for the ruin of their country, took a road wide of that which led to the assembly of the Gods; but they who had preserved themselves upright and chaste, and free from the ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... presenting attractive qualities in combination with vices which in real life harden the heart and coarsen the taste. We do not find in his pages those moral monsters in which the finest sensibilities, the richest gifts, the noblest sentiments are linked to heartless profligacy, or not less heartless misanthropy. He never palters with right; he enters into no truce with wrong; he admits of no compromise on such points. How admirable in its moral aspect is the character of Leatherstocking! he is ignorant, and of very moderate intellectual range or grasp; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various

... slightest hope of obtaining any measure of good from a foreign parliament; but we came against our better judgment, that it might not be said we had not gone all lengths to endeavour to deter the Government from a scheme so redolent of political corruption, social profligacy and religious infidelity. ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny

... ferocity, and drunkeness in all its stages, were there, in their strongest aspect; and women: some with the last lingering tinge of their early freshness almost fading as you looked: others with every mark and stamp of their sex utterly beaten out, and presenting but one loathsome blank of profligacy and crime; some mere girls, others but young women, and none past the prime of life; formed the darkest and saddest portion of this ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... days of the nineteenth century a woman by the name of Lady Morgan, who was the author of several novels and books of travel. Although her record in intelligence and morals is good, John Croker, who regularly reviewed her books, accuses her works of licentiousness, profligacy, irreverence, blasphemy, libertinism, disloyalty and atheism. There are twenty-six pages of this in one review only, and any paragraph would be worth the quoting for its ferocity. After this attack it was Macaulay who said he hated Croker ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks

... duty is continually altering. A very humane man in another age may have done things which would now be regarded as atrociously barbarous. A very virtuous man may have done things which would now indicate extreme profligacy. We seldom indeed make sufficient allowance for the degree in which the judgments and dispositions of even the best man are coloured by the moral tone of the time or society in which they live. And what is true of individuals is equally true of nations. In ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... of the laws by the government, did not contribute so much to induce the Poles to insurrection, as the fierce and brutal behaviour of the Russian generalissimo, and of the Russian civil and military officers high and low, whose profligacy had long made them the objects of deep contempt. The annals of Warsaw indeed present, during the Russian administration, one of the most revolting pictures which history exhibits. And the idea, that it owes its darkest shades principally to the ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson

... on his want of principle, and pointed out the ruin which must follow such profligacy. This Godfrey took in very bad part, and tauntingly accused his cousin of being a spy. He told him that it sounded well from a dependent on his father's bounty to preach up abstinence to him. These circumstances threw Anthony into a deep melancholy. He did not like ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie

... of this plot Beric found his position more and more irksome in spite of the favour Nero showed him. Do what he would he could not close his ears to what was public talk in Rome. The fabulous extravagances of Nero, the public and unbounded profligacy of himself and his court, the open defiance of decency, the stupendous waste of public money on the new and most sumptuous palace into which he had now removed, were matters that scandalized even the population of Rome. Senators, patricians, ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty

... Earl Hakon was dead the people did not shrink from speaking their minds concerning him, and giving free vent to their hatred of his low cunning and his faithlessness, his cruelty and his profligacy. Even his zeal for blood offering and his strong belief in the pagan gods were now regarded with wide disfavour, for it could not be forgotten that he had sacrificed his own son to propitiate the god of war, and this ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton

... They are filled with horror and compassion at the sight of poor men spending their blood in the quarrels of princes, and brutifying their sublime capabilities in the drudgery of unremitting labour. For all sorts of vice and profligacy in the lower orders of society, they have the same virtuous horror, and the same tender compassion. While the existence of these offences overpowers them with grief and confusion, they never permit themselves to feel the smallest indignation or dislike towards the ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... this is nothing to his seditious conduct in public life. He attends every vestry meeting that is held; always opposes the constituted authorities of the parish, denounces the profligacy of the churchwardens, contests legal points against the vestry-clerk, will make the tax-gatherer call for his money till he won't call any longer, and then he sends it: finds fault with the sermon every Sunday, says that the organist ought to be ashamed ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... stages and classes, and of society in all its forms, but as the only means of preserving our Constitution from its natural enemies, the spirit of sophistry, the spirit of party, the spirit of intrigue, the profligacy of corruption, and the pestilence of foreign influence, which is the angel of destruction to elective governments; if a love of equal laws, of justice, and humanity in the interior administration; if an inclination to improve agriculture, commerce, and manufacturers for necessity, convenience, ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various

... climb as they passed out of the western edge of the sandy flats, a steep spur of the Cordillera, a region silent and saturnine and unthinkably hot. Three times, though they guarded against profligacy with their water, they unstoppered their canteens and rested in the shade on the way up. At last they came to the crest of the barrier of the blistering hills, having been on foot for a full five hours. And now, for ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory

... is, and because he is, with the awful but malign, treacherous, and now impotent sovereignty of hell. To deaden his sensibility, destroy his conscience, and harden him in evil the Fiend leads him into a mad revel of boundless profligacy and bestial riot—denoted by the beautiful and terrible scene upon the Brocken—and poor Margaret is abandoned to her shame, her wandering, her despair, her frenzy, her crime, and her punishment. This desertion, though, is procured by a stratagem of the ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter

... should be seen or suspected by others! This fear led to new circumspection. I now affected levities of demeanor and remark; studiously absented myself from home of an evening, leaving my wife with Edgerton, or any other friend who happened to be present; and, though I began no practices of profligacy, such as are common to young scapegraces in all times, I yet, to some ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms

... in evidence again, his profligacy and his piety hand in hand. Ascending the stairs, I reached the door just in time to see the landlord, manipulator of the musical machine, forcing Geordie to the door, one hand gripping his throat, the other buffeting the helpless wretch in the face. ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles

... possessed by the notion that genius exempts them not only from labour, but from vulgar rules of prudence, they soon disgrace themselves by their conduct, are deserted by their patrons, and sink into despair or plunge into profligacy. ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth

... mechanical. He became more than ever subject to moods and caprices, and rapidly lost favor with the public, till at last he was regarded only as the husband of the popular actress,—then, merely tolerated for her sake. He fell, or rather flung himself, into a life of reckless dissipation and profligacy, and sunk so low that he scrupled not to accept from his wife, and squander on base pleasures, money won by the genius for which he hated her. Many were the nights when Zelma returned from the playhouse to her cheerless lodgings, exhausted, dispirited, and alone, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various

... to rank the two first Georges; both were detestable as men, and scarcely tolerable as monarchs. The foreign deeds of George I. were stained with the supposed murder of Count Konigsmark: the English career of George II. was one of the coarsest profligacy. Their ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... wealthy man. Until he was twenty-one he was brought up in an atmosphere of such luxury as we in England can hardly imagine. Americans are fond of going 'one better' than the rest of the world. In some cases the extravagance of their moneyed classes amounts to profligacy. Hallett's father was a notorious example for many years, then—just as Edward came of age, there was a colossal smash; he lost everything, practically fretted himself to death, left the lad to fight ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... lost his father, whose example however, had he been spared, would have done little for the improvement of his character. Brought up under the influence of the disreputable Cornelius Lentulus Sura, whom his mother had married, Antony spent his youth in profligacy and extravagance. For a time he co-operated with the reprobate Clodius in his political plans, chiefly, it is supposed, through hostility to Cicero, who had caused Lentulus, his stepfather, to be put to death as one of the Catiline conspirators; but he soon withdrew from the connection, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various

... novelist, who had been justly condemned to twenty years' imprisonment with hard labor for his civil misdemeanors, was, on the other hand, liberated for publishing something in the duke's favor. Bitter conducted himself with the most open profligacy, sold all the demesnes, appropriated the sum destined for the redemption of the public debt, and at the same time levied the heavy imposts with unrelenting severity. The federative assembly passed judgment against the duke ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks

... inferior to him both in talent and in virtue: men who, in return for their obsequious servility, must be humoured and satisfied. Whenever such a usurpation occurs, all the maxims upon which the welfare and freedom of a community normally rest are annihilated, and the reign of profligacy and of tyranny inevitably supervenes: a regime born in party passion must live for ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott

... to the Methodists or the clergy. In the nation at large appeared a new moral enthusiasm which, rigid and pedantic as it often seemed, was still healthy in its social tone, and whose power showed itself in a gradual disappearance of the profligacy which had disgraced the upper classes, and the foulness which had infested literature ever since the Restoration. A yet nobler result of the religious revival was the steady attempt, which has never ceased from that day to this, to remedy the guilt, ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green

... quoted in vindication of every species of transgression; and had the Gentiles but followed the example of their own heavenly hierarchy, they might have felt themselves warranted in pursuing a course either of the most diabolical oppression, or of the most abominable profligacy. [9:2] ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... in the Koran is a civil as well as a moral code. Notwithstanding his countenance of sensuality by his own practice, as well as by his legalizing of polygamy, and his notion of paradise, Mohammed elevated the condition of woman among the Arabs. Before there was unbridled profligacy: now there was a regulated polygamy. Severe prohibitions are uttered against thieving, usury, fraud, false witness; and alms-giving is emphatically enjoined. Strong drink ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... of A Sicilian Story, etc., Bryan Waller Procter (Barry Cornwall), 1787-1874 (Edinburgh Review, January, 1820, vol. 33, pp. 144-155), compares Diego de Montilla, a poem in ottava rima, with Don Juan, favourably and unfavourably: "There is no profligacy and no horror ... no mocking of virtue and honour, and no strong mixtures of buffoonery and grandeur." But it may fairly match with Byron and his Italian models "as to the better qualities of elegance, delicacy, and tenderness." See, too, Blackwood's Edinburgh ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... hand in hand may very well have originated in a notion that thereby their marriage would be blessed with offspring; and the like motive would explain the custom which obliges couples married within the year to dance to the light of torches.[848] And the scenes of profligacy which appear to have marked the midsummer celebration among the Esthonians,[849] as they once marked the celebration of May Day among ourselves, may have sprung, not from the mere license of holiday-makers, but from a crude notion that such orgies were justified, ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... doctrine of the divine decrees; which, with other Arminian dogmas of creature-merit, had been almost universally propagated and stamped with the pretended infallible authority of Rome. By the translation and circulation of the Holy Scriptures among the people, the idolatries, impositions and profligacy of the priesthood were extensively discovered. And after years of deference to ecclesiastical authority, conditional proposals of submission to the Pope upon conviction of error in his theses, or conscientious belief, Luther in time arrived at the ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele

... fulness of that grace to this Samaritan woman, in her ignorance, in her profligacy, in her flippancy. He offers it to you. His offer awoke an echo in her heart, will it kindle any response in yours? Oh! when He says to you, 'The water that I shall give will be in you a fountain springing into ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... this distinct advantage over the printers—they are not brought in contact with the manifold temptations to intemperance and profligacy which environ the votaries of the art preservative of arts. Horace Smith has said that "were there no readers there certainly would be no writers; clearly, therefore, the existence of writers depends upon the existence of readers: and, of course, since the cause ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field

... School, that "in the district embraced by their Society, the consequences of ignorance were evident to the most superficial observer. Parents and children, appeared alike regardless of morality and virtue; the former indulging in profligacy, and the ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland

... this capital has, since the Revolution, decreased near two hundred thousand souls, is not to be lamented. This focus of corruption and profligacy is still too populous, though the inhabitants do not amount to six hundred thousand; for I am well persuaded that more crimes and excesses of every description are committed here in one year than are perpetrated in the same period of time in all other European capitals put together. From not ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... The flippancy and profligacy of Philip the Handsome, the extortion and insolence of his Flemish courtiers, had not been forgotten in Spain, nor had Philip the Second forgiven his grandfather for having been a foreigner. And now his mad old ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... in a low tone with the priest. From him he learned more of the evil name of this man whom they followed. His house at Shalford was a den of profligacy and vice. No woman could cross that threshold and depart unstained. In some strange fashion, inexplicable and yet common, the man, with all his evil soul and his twisted body, had yet some strange fascination for women, some ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle

... no interest in rejoining her. Instead of that, he connected himself with a number of wicked associates, both male and female, whom he had known before he went to the Holy Land, and lived a life of open profligacy with them, leaving Berengaria to pine in neglect, alone and forsaken. She was almost heart-broken to be thus abandoned, and several of the principal ecclesiastics of the kingdom remonstrated very strongly with Richard for this ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... LEPERS.—We cannot but denounce, in the strongest terms, the profligacy of many married men. Not content with the moderation permitted in the divine appointed relationship of marriage, they become adulterers, in order to gratify their accursed lust. The man in them is trodden down ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols

... unarmed. He was never wholly ennobled by passion, for it never touched him deeply enough; and, on the other hand, he was not hardened by the habitual attitude of passion, for he was never really insincere. Sometimes it seemed as if nothing stood between him and utter profligacy but a little indolence, a little kindness, and ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... condition of the people falls short of this high standard, blame is attached to the missionary, instead of credit for that which he has effected. They forget, or will not remember, that human sacrifices, and the power of an idolatrous priesthood—a system of profligacy unparalleled in any other part of the world—infanticide a consequence of that system—bloody wars, where the conquerors spared neither women nor children—that all these have been abolished; and that dishonesty, intemperance, and licentiousness have been greatly reduced by the introduction of ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... so very young and innocent that I shouldn't learn what has happened?" asked Miss Spraggs, who, in her heart of hearts, enjoyed revelations of masculine profligacy. ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte

... completely as separate uniforms might have done. If the Puritan was affectedly plain in his dress, and ridiculously precise in his manners, the Cavalier often carried his love of ornament into tawdry finery, and his contempt of hypocrisy into licentious profligacy. Gay gallant fellows, young and old, thronged together towards the ancient Castle, with general and joyous manifestation of those spirits, which, as they had been buoyant enough to support their owners during the worst of times, as they termed Oliver's usurpation, were ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... number which have fallen within my own knowledge, they must be of more frequent occurrence than is usually supposed. Among such romances, those cases, perhaps, form an unusual proportion in which young, innocent, and high-minded persons have made a sudden discovery of some great profligacy or deep unworthiness in the person to whom they had surrendered their entire affections. That shock, more than any other, is capable of blighting, in one hour, the whole after existence, and sometimes of at once overthrowing the balance of life or of reason. ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... for the best people in aristocracy to set their faces against this wanton and destructive spirit. It is time a halt was called to luxury and profligacy; time that the door was shut in the face of invading vulgarity. Creation has not agonized in bloody sweat through countless ages of suffering and achievement that those who possess the highest opportunities for doing ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie

... whose way was clear and easy in the struggles of his day, when reform and free trade in corn were obviously desirable and necessary—writes with contemptuous severity of the profligacy of politicians from the Restoration to the accession of the House of Hanover. "One who in such an age is determined to attain civil greatness must renounce all thought of consistency. Instead of affecting immutability in the midst of mutation, he must always be on the watch ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson

... and that he hoped to see the day when his dream would be found a true prophecy, and the commonwealth purged of all such rogues and vagabonds. But it could not be expected that the vulgar would be honest and conscientious, while the great were distinguished by profligacy and corruption. The squire was disposed to make a practical reply to this insinuation, when Mr. Ferret prudently withdrew himself from the scene of altercation. The good woman of the house persuaded ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... this coterie of dark spirits, Quebec became the scene of a profligacy unparalleled in her history. The Palace, instead of being a hall of justice, was the abode of debauchery and gambling; and the mad revellers, whom a cynical fate had placed at the head of affairs, allowed the ship of state to drift upon the rocks. Even the fine palace within ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan

... victory of one who seemed the peculiar favorite of the God of war. Napoleon was a scholar, stimulating intellect to its mightiest achievements. The scholars of Paris, gratefully united to weave a chaplet for the brow of their honored associate and patron. Napoleon was, for those days of profligacy and unbridled lust, a model of purity of morals, and of irreproachable integrity. The proffered bribe of millions could not tempt him. The dancing daughters of Herodias, with all their blandishments, could not lure him from his life of Herculean toil and ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott

... run a course of despicable, commonplace profligacy. Accept that as the first reason why ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... rest of the officers to look with fear and astonishment upon one, in whom the gifts of extraordinary talents seemed to have been lavished, only to become blended with cunning, artfulness and licentious profligacy, whose disposition was mean and avaricious, and whose temper, though not violent, was cruel, ...
— Blackbeard - Or, The Pirate of Roanoke. • B. Barker

... non-producing but all-consuming "upper classes" of society. These know how easy it is to raise social prejudice against a man by setting afloat the idea that he desires to "abolish marriage and the home". It is the most convenient poniard and the one most certain to wound. Therefore those whose profligacy is notorious, who welcome into their society the Blandfords, Aylesburys, and St. Leonards, rave against a man as a "destroyer of marriage" whose life is pure, and whose theories on this, as it happens, are "orthodox", merely because his honest Atheism shames ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant

... from the events and little from the character of the actors. Every month summons us to the spectacle of some new perfidy in the leaders of parties and the most conspicuous public servants; and the profligacy which we charge upon the statesmen of the seventeenth century has revolved in full measure ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... the Roman arms in the East; but his supposed death by lightning, by delivering the sceptre into the hands of his sons Carinus and Numerian (December 25, 283), once more placed the Roman world at the mercy of profligacy and licentiousness. A year later, the election of the Emperor Diocletian (September 17, 284) founded a new era in the history and fortunes of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... parent country to govern them. With the arrival of the new governor the domestic relations of the buccaneers underwent a material change, for the former brought many women with him—fit persons, from the past profligacy of their lives, to consort with the inhabitants of Tortuga. But the buccaneers were not fastidious in the selection of wives, and history gives us no right to suppose that there was a single forlorn damsel left ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... is? 'Tis an unhappy family—a curse haunts it. Young in years, old in vice, the wretched nobleman who lies in the vault, by the coffin of that old aunt, scarcely better than himself, whose guineas supplied his early profligacy—alas! he ruined his ill-fated, beautiful cousin, and she died heart-broken, and her little child, both there—in that melancholy and ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... tradition of the Eatanswill Gazette, the Ballarat Star referred to the Ballarat Times as "our veracious contemporary and doughty opponent," and alluded to the "unblushing profligacy of its editorial columns." The proprietor of the United States Hotel and the solicitor for Lola Montez also sailed into the controversy and challenged Mr. Seekamp to "eat his words." That individual, however, not caring about such a diet, refused ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... Pascal during this period. Miton was undoubtedly an intimate ally of De Méré, and amidst all his dissoluteness, made pretensions to scientific knowledge and attainments as a writer. Desbarreaux was a companion of both, but of a still lower grade—a man of open profligacy, and a despiser of the rites of the Church. Along with Miton and other boon companions, he is spoken of as betaking himself to St Cloud for carnival during the Holy Week. {66} The truth would seem to be that all these ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch

... mother made life a burden to me, that was my reason for leaving home as I did. Humphrey has sunk nearly every dollar of their property by his profligacy, and now, he and his mother are determined to have my fortune. Aunt exhausted all her stock of melodramatic and sentimental language and her tears in trying to get me to fulfill what she called my father's 'dying wish,' by marrying that debauchee and libertine; then she tried ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour

... fails in this function; as witness in India godless civilians; as witness on every palm-shaded coral beach in the South Seas, profligate beach-combers, drunken sailors, unscrupulous traders; as witness the dying out of races by diseases imported with profligacy and gin from this land. 'A dew from the Lord!'; say rather a malaria from the devil! 'By you,' said the Prophet, 'is the name of God blasphemed among the Gentiles.' By Englishmen the missionary's efforts are, in a hundred cases, neutralised, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... against the equally great one of promoting the unnecessary accumulation of public revenue. No political maxim is better established than that which tells us that an improvident expenditure of money is the parent of profligacy, and that no people can hope to perpetuate their liberties who long acquiesce in a policy which taxes them for objects not necessary to the legitimate and real wants of their Government. Flattering as is the condition of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson

... influence of the unprincipled woman who then governed him with the arts of a siren. His nature was noble, and his moral impressions, even, were not bad; but his simple and confiding nature was not equal to contending with one as practised in profligacy as the woman into whose arms he was thrown, at a most evil ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... since you ask me, sir, I should be merciful because of your misfortunes. And yet, Sir Crispin, your profligacy and the evil you have wrought in life must weigh heavily against you." Had this immaculate bigot, this churlish milksop been as candid with himself as he was with Crispin, he must have recognized that it was mainly Crispin's offences towards himself that his mind now dwelt on indeeper rancour than ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini

... insinuating; but daring and headlong in the pursuit of his pleasures; violent and implacable in his resentments. He rejoiced to find that Inez had been proof against his seductions, and had been inspired with aversion by his splendid profligacy; but he trembled to think of the dangers she had run, and he felt solicitude about the dangers that ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving

... want of principle, want of ballast; obliquity, backsliding, infamy, demoralization, pravity[obs3], depravity, pollution; hardness of heart; brutality &c. (malevolence) 907; corruption &c. (debasement) 659; knavery &c. (improbity) 940[obs3]; profligacy; flagrancy, atrocity; cannibalism; lesbianism, Sadism. infirmity; weakness &c. adj.; weakness of the flesh, frailty, imperfection; error; weak side; foible; failing, failure; crying sin, besetting sin; defect, deficiency; cloven foot. lowest dregs of vice, sink of ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... is all there is in common between them. All celibates are not chaste; celibacy is not necessarily chastity, by a large majority. Unless something other than selfishness suggests this choice of life, the word is apt to be a misnomer for profligacy. And one who takes the vow of celibacy does not break it by sinning against the Sixth Commandment; he is true to it until he weds. The religious vow is something ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton

... gay a cast to be pathetic. The chapter from which it is taken would have furnished a much better one—the meeting between the Vicar and his poor Olivia. We can bear the suffering of a Cordelia, because all in that is great though villany be successful; but there is a littleness in mere profligacy that infects even the victim. We could have wished that Mr Mulready had taken the "Meeting" for his illustration. How exquisitely beautiful is the text! The first impulse of affection is to forget, or instantly palliate the fault. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various

... even thought to trifle with the feelings of Snake le Vasquez, then to scorn him for his presumption. Although the beautiful New York society girl had remained unsullied in the midst of a city's profligacy, she still liked "to play with fire," as she laughingly said, and at the quiet words of Benson—Two-Gun Benson his comrades of the border called him—she had drawn herself to her full height, facing him in all her blond young beauty, and pouted adorably as she replied, ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson

... long since disowned all regard to decency and have become the daring advocates of every species of atrocity; his indissoluble connection with those, who, by their lives, have become the finished examples of profligacy and corruption; who have sworn enmity, severe and eternal, to the altar of our religion and the prosperity of our government, must infallibly exclude him from the confidence of reputable men. What sentiments can be entertained for him, but those of hatred and contempt, when he is seen the constant ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... trouble. And the rest, I think, is just a question of will-power and mental hygiene. No, I have no patience with people who grow old; unless, of course, they really are very old in years. I think it argues either stupidity or a kind of profligacy—mental, nervous, and emotional, I mean—and in either case it is very unfair to those about them, for there is ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson

... Men is, we learn, the leading contributor to a newspaper of large circulation, and, under his signature of 'Locksley Hall,' rouses the sons of toil to a sense of the dignity and rights of labour, and exposes the profligacy and corruption of the rich to the extent of a column and a quarter every week. A shrewd, hard-headed man of business, with a perfect knowledge of what he had to do, and with a humorous twinkle of the eye, My Grand went steadily through his work, and gave the Thoughtful Men his epitome of the week's ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... seat of an extraordinary outburst of profligacy, fanaticism, and folly. The Anabaptists took possession of the town, drove out all its wealthy citizens, elected two of themselves—a clothier named Knipperdolling and one Krechting—as burgomasters, and ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris

... son of one of the old noble houses, was consecrated pope as Benedict IX, A.D. 1033, according to some authorities, at the age of ten or twelve years. He became noted for his profligacy and was driven from his throne, the Romans electing, as Pope Sylvester III, John, Bishop of Sabina, who is said to have paid a high price for the dignity. Benedict, however, regained the papal seat shortly afterward, and drove ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... remarkable. Joy and Love, as well as jealousy and anger, flash in the eye and mould the features to their expression. Grief excites the lachrymal, and rage the salivary glands. Shame reddens the ears, drops the eyelids, and flushes the face; but profligacy destroys these expressions. The blush which suffuses the forehead of the bashful maiden betrays her love, and maternal love, stirred by the appeals of an idolized infant, excites the mammary gland ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... chateau. There you will see me under happier circumstances. The life of a country seigneur is but a poor preparation for existence in this court, where, although there is no longer the open licentiousness that prevailed in the king's younger days, there is yet, I believe, an equal amount of profligacy, though it has been sternly discountenanced since Madame Maintenon obtained an absolute, and I may say a well-used, ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty

... acquaintance.—How can people know what he is that wears that dress? The writer can alone tell the contents of the letter." In consequence of that reverence in which the dervish character is held, they did not think of his profligacy and admitted him into their society. The outward character of the holy is a patched cloak; this much is sufficient, that it has a threadbare hood. Be industrious in thy calling, and wear whatever dress thou choosest. Put a diadem on thy head, and bear a standard on thy ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... free and great once more; and young Italian hearts are lighting up with the thoughts of her old fleets and her old victories, her merchants and her statesmen, whom John Bellini drew. Venice sinned, and fell; and sorely has she paid for her sins, through two hundred years of shame, and profligacy, and slavery. And she has broken the oppressor's yoke. God send her a new life! May she learn by her ancient sins! May she ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley

... wear the best, and last the longest. Superfine virtues, which are above the standard of common men, may only be sources of temptation and danger. Burke has truly said that "the human system which rests for its basis on the heroic virtues is sure to have a superstructure of weakness or of profligacy." ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles

... of the most unheard-of nature,—really too infamous to permit us to treat them with disdain. Both Genevans and English established at Geneva affirmed that we were leading a life of the most unblushing profligacy. They said that we had made a compact together for outraging all held most sacred in human society. Pardon me, madam, if I spare you the details. I will only say that incest, atheism, and many other things equally ridiculous or horrible, were imputed to us. The English newspapers were ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... was agog with speculation respecting the coming ball. The battle of Monmouth was accorded a second place. The disdain of the middle class, who had been embittered against such demonstrations by the profligacy displayed during the days of the British occupation, soon began to make itself felt. That it was the first official or formal function of the new republic mattered little. A precedent was about to be established. ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett

... England would never see again, the old farmer parenthetically remarked, with a shake of the head. Master Hugh Calveley, he went on to say, was a strict Puritan, austere in his life, and morose in manner; an open railer against the licence of the times, and the profligacy of the court minions,—in consequence of which he had more than once got himself into trouble. He abhorred all such sports as were now going forward; and had successfully interfered with the parish priest, Sir Onesimus, who was somewhat of a precisian himself, to prevent the setting up the May-pole ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth

... You begin with a description of the state of the Roman Empire when the early Caesars were on the throne, and when it was undisputed mistress of the world. You pass down the line of the Emperors with their strange alternations of greatness and profligacy, descending occasionally to criminal lunacy. When the Empire went rotten it began at the top, and it took centuries to corrupt the man behind the spear. Neither did a religion of peace affect him much, ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle

... in a tone of bitter irony; 'have you not had enough yet? Have you not squandered every penny I had from my father in your profligacy and evil companions? What more ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume

... her love for me ceased only with her life. Her faults, though not to be defended, may be palliated and deplored, because they were the defects of education. Her infant days were passed in scenes of domestic strife, profligacy, and penury; her maturer years, under the guidance of a weak mother, were employed in polishing, not strengthening, the edifice of her understanding, and the external ornaments only served to accelerate the fall of the fabric, and to ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat

... time it was reported about the town that our little circle was a hotbed of nihilism, profligacy, and godlessness, and the rumour gained more and more strength. And yet we did nothing but indulge in the most harmless, agreeable, typically Russian, light-hearted liberal chatter. "The higher liberalism" and the "higher ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... with which the Oliverian usurpation afflicted the state, while in the department of morals, piety was brought into such contempt by the extravagance of fanatics, and the detected cheats of hypocrites, that atheism and profaneness grew popular, as being more open and candid in their avowed profligacy. The oppressive, or as his admirers call it, the vigorous government of Cromwell humbled the proud spirit of Englishmen, who had often revolted at the excessive stretches of prerogative under their legitimate kings; and this new habit of submission, added to a deep repentance for their ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... child grows up, unprovided for by you in its early life; and profligacy mark his pathway, and demon guilt throw its chains around him in the prison cell; and he trace back the beginning of his ruin to your unfaithfulness, oh, with what pungency would the reflection send the pang of remorse to ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips

... good Catholics, by the peril of their own salvation, from obeying any of her commands. As her own subjects were almost all Protestants, she was in no danger of any insurrection on their part; but this decree, in that age of superstition and of profligacy, invited each neighboring power to seize upon her territory. The only safety of the queen consisted in the mutual jealousies of the rival kingdoms of France and Spain, neither of them being willing that the other should receive such an accession ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... time in the hands of men well qualified, on the whole, for the trusts committed to their charge, and in a good degree faithful in the performance of their duties; and thus the ordinary affairs of government, and the general routine of domestic and social life, went on, notwithstanding the profligacy of the kings, in a course of very tolerable peace, prosperity, and happiness. During every one of the three hundred years over which the history of the Ptolemies extends, the whole length and breadth of the land of Egypt exhibited, with comparatively few ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott

... subjected to the enervating influence of the terem—he was not cast in that dull mould which turned out so many idiots in the royal family. He "roamed at large, and wandered in the streets with his comrades." The streets of Moscow at that period were, according to M. Zabieline, the worst school of profligacy and debauchery that can be imagined; but they were, on the whole, less bad for Peter than the palace. He met there something besides mere jesters: he encountered new elements which had as yet no place in the terem, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... propriety, an honest indignation of depravity, and a generous desire to reform the degenerated manners of his fellow-creatures. This has been the cause of Aristophanes censuring the pedantry and superstition of Socrates; Horace, Persius, Martial, and Juvenal, the luxury and profligacy of the Romans; Boileau and Moliere the levity and refinement of the French; Cervantes the romantic pride and madness of the Spanish; and Dorset, Gldharn, Swift, Addison, Churchill, Stevens, and Foote, the variety of vice, folly, and luxury, which we have imported from our extensive commerce ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens

... Fairford, pitying the poor man's state of mind, and believing he saw something in him that, but for early error and subsequent profligacy, might have been excellent and noble, helped on the conversation by asking, in a tone of commiseration, how he had been able to endure such a load ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... policy of Spain impoverished and degraded the Spaniards at home, through the injustice, greed and profligacy of those abroad, that the huge structure, once so great an imposition upon mankind, a rotten fabric so gilt that the inherent weakness was disguised, has finally fallen into universal and ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... woman, the helpmate of man, who adorns, dignifies, and blesses our lives, that woman in this country is cheap; that vast numbers whose names ought to be synonyms for purity and virtue are plunged into profligacy and infamy. But do you not know that you sent 40,000 men to perish on the bleak heights of the Crimea, and that the revolt in India, caused, in part at least, by the grievous iniquity of the seizure of Oude, may tax ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones

... proceeding upon my errand, into the character of the heirs who had inherited the property of Elwood Henderson and Christopher Bigelow, and found that in each case there was one among the rest who was well known for his profligacy and reckless expenditure. It was a significant discovery, and increased, if possible, my interest in running down this nefarious trafficker in the lives ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green

... and the sound of impoverished tattle. O misery of semi-provincial fashionable life, where wealth is at its wit's end to avoid being tired of an existence which has all the labor of keeping up appearances, without the piquant profligacy which saves it at least from being utterly vapid! How many fashionable women at the end of a long season would be ready to welcome heaven itself as a relief from the desperate monotony of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... republican, and at one time even a Leveller. He was a commissioner of the High Court of Justice and a regicide. At the Restoration he was imprisoned for life and died at Chepstow Castle, 1681, aged seventy-eight. He was notorious for profligacy and shamelessness, and kept a very seraglio of mistresses. [[The date "1681" is in ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn

... Catholic, told me of an atrocity in the laws of his country, of which until then I was ignorant. It seems that any younger brother, next heir, might claim the estate by turning Protestant, or drive the incumbent to the same act. I was rejoiced to hear that there was hardly an instance of such profligacy known.[26] To what baseness will not the struggle ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper

... to regard the Reign of Charles II. as one of the most inglorious periods of English History; but this was far from being the case. It is true that the extravagance and profligacy of the Court were carried to a point unknown before or since, forming,—by the indignation they excited among the people at large,—the main cause of the overthrow of the House of Stuart. But, on the other hand, the nation made extraordinary advances in commerce and ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty

... kingdoms. The following extracts from the letters which he received from Cooke and Lees are typical. On 4th October Lees writes: "I am afraid Lord Cornwallis is not devil enough to deal with the devils he has to contend with in this country.... The profligacy of the murderous malignant disposition of Paddy soars too high for his humane and merciful principles at this crisis." Cooke was less flowery but equally emphatic: "If," he wrote on 22nd October, ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... devotion. The streets, formerly so full of life and animation, are now deserted; games of all kinds, even the most innocent, are sternly prohibited; singing is a punishable offence; and the consummate profligacy of attempting to dance would certainly find no mercy. On Sundays, no cooking is permitted, nor must even a fire be kindled: nothing, in short, must be done; the whole day is devoted to prayer, with how much real piety may be ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue

... that dares set foot in this house, after what has come to pass? Is it not enough to have robbed me of my boy with thy arts and thy profligacy, but thou must come here to crow over me—me—his mother? Dost thou know where he is, thou bad hussy, with thy great blue eyes and yellow hair, to lead men on to ruin? Out upon thee with thy angel's face, thou whited sepulchre! ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell

... ordinary measure of brotherly love. Valentine had supplied the place of both parents to his brother George,—the place of the mother, who lay buried in Allanbay churchyard; the place of the father, who had sunk into a living death of drunkenness and profligacy. ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... death of Evil-Merodach, and during the reign of his two successors, Daniel had retired to private life, and was but little spoken of at public places. This king, following in the footsteps of his predecessors, led a life of dissipation and profligacy. ...
— The Young Captives - A Story of Judah and Babylon • Erasmus W. Jones

... satirist, who alone knew how to use ridicule without abusing it, who, without inflicting a wound, effected a great social reform, and who reconciled wit with virtue, after a long and disastrous separation, during which wit had been lead astray by profligacy, ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... schoolmaster, has mainly placed his reliance; habit, which makes everything easy, and cast the difficulties upon the deviation from a wonted course." Thus, make sobriety a habit and intemperance will be hateful; make prudence a habit, and reckless profligacy will become revolting to every principle of conduct which regulates the life of the individual. Hence the necessity for the greatest care and watchfulness against the inroad of any evil habit; for the character is always weakest at that point at which it has once given ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon

... Church—in some measure washed out this original taint by standing forward as champions of what they considered (falsely or truly) national interests. The Russells, the Cavendishes, the Sidneys, even in times of universal profligacy, have held aloft the standard of their order; and no one can forget the many peers in Charles I.'s time, such as Falkland, or the Spencers (Sunderland), or the Comptons (Northampton), who felt and owned their paramount duty to lie in public self-dedication, and died therefore, and oftentimes ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... London, says Latimer, was never so full of ill; charity was waxen cold in it. "Oh, London, London," cries this earnest old man, "repent! repent! for I think God more displeased with London, than he ever was with the city of Nebo."[9] Such was the profligacy of its youth, that he marvels the earth gaped not to swallow it up. There were many that denied the immortality of the soul, and the existence of a heaven or a hell.[10] Manly sports and pastimes had been exchanged for ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 528, Saturday, January 7, 1832 • Various

... wish, however, to trace the course of my miserable profligacy here—a profligacy which set at defiance the laws, while it eluded the vigilance of the institution. Three years of folly, passed without profit, had but given me rooted habits of vice, and added, in a somewhat unusual degree, to my bodily stature, when, after a week of soulless dissipation, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... instance, is only 13.8 years; whilst for the rural labourers of England at the same age it is 40.59 years. (18. E. Ray Lankester, 'Comparative Longevity,' 1870, p. 115. The table of the intemperate is from Neison's 'Vital Statistics.' In regard to profligacy, see Dr. Farr, 'Influence of Marriage on Mortality,' 'Nat. Assoc. for the Promotion of Social Science,' 1858.) Profligate women bear few children, and profligate men rarely marry; both suffer from disease. In the breeding ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... to them to surpass the most excessive corvee which a just ruler had a right to impose upon his subjects, and the reputation of Kheops and Khephren suffered much in consequence. They were accused of sacrilege, of cruelty, and profligacy. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... their public duty; the claim and the obligation reciprocally supporting each other; that the idleness of the rich, with its attendant physical debility, moral laxity, passional intemperance and mental dissipation, and the ignorance, wretchedness, and enforced profligacy of the poor, which are everywhere the curse and reproach of the sex, are the necessary results of their exclusion from those diversified employments which would otherwise furnish them with useful occupation, and reward them with its profits, honors, and blessings, that ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... tone of the fair lass whom he had left behind him; and that all the more intensely, because, beside his mother, he had no one else to think of, and was as pure as the day he was born, having been trained as many a brave young man was then, to look upon profligacy not as a proof of manhood, but as what the old Germans, and those Gortyneans who crowned the offender with wool, knew it to be, a cowardly and ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... then he began to tell me about Bartholomew-fair and the brave sights he had seen; and must needs show me where had stood the booth of one Fielding—since infamously notorious as the writer of some trashy novels, the dulness whereof is only surpassed by their profligacy: and then he talks of Fawkes the conjurer, who made a great fortune, and of some humble person called 'Tiddy Doll,' a dealer in gingerbread and such foolish wares. But he could tell me nothing of those early preachings of our revered ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... profligate man, joined Caesar, and was raised by him to the consulship; joined Caesar's murderers after his death; was declared from his profligacy a public enemy; driven to bay by a force sent against him, ordered one of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... arranged with the Count. Mrs. Blithers now advised waiting a while before giving a definite answer to his somewhat eager proposal, especially as he was reputed to have sufficient means of his own to defend the chateau against any immediate peril of profligacy. She counselled Mr. Blithers to notify him that he deemed it wise to take the matter under advisement for a couple of weeks at least, but not to commit ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon



Words linked to "Profligacy" :   shortsightedness, improvidence, intemperateness, self-indulgence, intemperance



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