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Profligate   /prˈɔflɪgˌeɪt/   Listen
Profligate

noun
1.
A dissolute man in fashionable society.  Synonyms: blood, rake, rakehell, rip, roue.
2.
A recklessly extravagant consumer.  Synonyms: prodigal, squanderer.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Profligate" Quotes from Famous Books



... "Confessions," in the style of Rousseau, and a Paris bookseller has contracted to give her a fortune for them. The three greatest—intellectually greatest—women of modern times have lived in France and it is remarkable that they have been three of the most shamelessly profligate in all history. The worst of these, probably—Madame de Stael—left us no records of her long-continued, disgusting, and almost incredible licentiousness, so remarkable that Chateaubriand deemed her the most abandoned person in France at a period when modesty was ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various

... was one of the most extravagant and profligate subjects that Russia had acquired by the partition of Poland. After squandering away his own patrimony, he had ruined his mother and two sisters, and subsisted now entirely by gambling and borrowing. Among his associates, in similar circumstances ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... his abilities than I do; no one could have loved him more, if he had deserved it; what his behaviour has been to the public, to his friends, and to his family is notorious. Facts are too stubborn, and to those I appeal, and not to the testimonies of ignorant and profligate people. However, if hereafter you can reconcile yourself to him and to his behaviour towards you, I will forgive him, and although I desire to lay myself under no obligation to him, I will remember only that he is the child of ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue

... Putkammer, after leading a wild and dissolute life, had expired within its walls. For years previously, many a mysterious story, fraught with dark hints of seduction and infanticide, had been whispered over the surrounding country; and when at last death arrested the Baron's profligate career, some reported that he had been strangled in requital of outrage committed,—others, that the Devil had taken home his own, as they ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various

... situation in London for Fanny, which the unsuspicious Curate accepted immediately. As soon as he had committed himself, it was confided to the audience that the waggoner was a depraved villain, in the employ of that notorious profligate, Colonel Chartress, who had commissioned a second myrmidon (of the female sex) to lure Fanny from virtue and the country, to vice and the metropolis. By the time the plot had "thickened" thus far, the scene changed, and we got to London ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins

... Carmichael, formerly a bailie of Edinburgh, was one of Sharp's favourites, and one of his numerous commissioners for suppressing conventicles in Fife. He was a licentious profligate, greedy of money, and capable of undertaking any job, however vile. This man's enormities were at last so unbearable that he became an object of general detestation, and his excessive exactions had ruined so many respectable lairds, owners, and tenants, that at last nine of these (who ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne

... health; and, to avoid any other embarrassing offers, I withdrew. I shall go to no more of their sittings." (He attended only one after this.) "I am determined to join Sieyes' party. It includes a greater diversity of opinions than that of the profligate Barras. He proclaims everywhere that he is the author of my fortune. He will never be content to play an inferior part, and I will never bend to such a man. He cherishes the mad ambition of being the support of the Republic. What would he do with ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... 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 able to bear. Further, the Parthians enjoyed at this time the advantage of having a Roman officer of good position in their service, whose ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson

... improve the minds of his children by a view of continental wonders. Our reprobation is, of the habit of living abroad, and living there for the vulgar and unmanly purpose of self-indulgence or paltry avarice. Those absentees have their reward in profligate sons, and foreignized daughters, in giving them manners ridiculous to the people of the Continent, and disgusting to their countrymen—morals adopting the grossness of continental life, and general habits rendered utterly unfit for a return to their country, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... all its glaring odiousness, that, by the laws of slavery, children, in all cases, are reduced to the condition of their mothers. This arrangement admits of the greatest license to brutal slaveholders, and their profligate sons, brothers, relations and friends, and gives to the pleasure of sin, the additional attraction of profit. A whole volume might be written on this single feature of slavery, ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... plain that a man will never learn God's will if he takes counsel from ungodly men who care nothing for God's will, and do not believe that God's will governs the world. Neither must he, as the Psalm says, 'stand in the way of sinners'—of profligate and dishonest men who break God's law. For if he follows their ways, and breaks God's law himself, it is plain that he will learn little or nothing about God's law, save in the way of bitter punishment. For let him but break God's law a little too ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley

... Ladd, Mr, Thrale's sister's son, a young profligate who subsequently married, not Miss Burney, but a woman of the town! Dr. Johnson's satirical verses on his coming of age are printed near the ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay

... 'That dull profligate and parricide,' replied Varus, 'not content with killing himself with his vices, and his father by connivance, must needs destroy his country by his fatuity. I confess, that till that order be repealed, ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware

... John, and radiate the beams thereof on every man, woman, and child under their guardianship, and then, "measuring other people's corn by their own lovely bushel," they may well hesitate to believe in the existence of a profligate breeding Pandemonium within the precincts of their immediate country. Yet, alas! there can be little doubt that it ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... inclinations, they blindly adopt whatever those with whom they chiefly converse, are pleased to call by the name of pleasure; and a man of pleasure in the vulgar acceptation of that phrase, means only, a beastly drunkard, an abandoned whoremaster, and a profligate swearer and curser. As it may be of use to you. I am not unwilling, though at the same time ashamed to own, that the vices of my youth proceeded much more from my silly resolution of being, what I heard called a man of pleasure, than from my own inclinations. ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... Congressional plan of reconstruction be carried out, it will result in republicanizing the Southern States. This would be the political extinction of their party. In fighting against that plan, they are, therefore, fighting for life, and are accordingly more than usually profligate in the character of the stimulants they address to whatever meanness, baseness, dishonesty, lawlessness, and ignorance there may be in the nation. Taxation presses hard on the people, and they have not hesitated to propose ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various

... town of Abdera, notwithstanding Democritus lived there, trying all the powers of irony and laughter to reclaim it, was the vilest and most profligate town in all Thrace. What for poisons, conspiracies, and assassinations,—libels, pasquinades, and tumults, there was no going there by ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne

... she replied quickly, in a contemptuous voice; "but now that I am the pasha's wife, my name is Sarema. I do not suppose you ever expected to find me again, you wretch, when you sold me in Varna to an old Jewish profligate, who was only half alive. You see I have got into better hands, and I have made my fortune, as you said I should do. Well? What do you expect of me; ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... error begets crimes. An Imperialist is worse than a pirate. For an Imperialist keeps a school for pirates; he teaches piracy disinterestedly and without an adequate salary. A Free Lover is worse than a profligate. For a profligate is serious and reckless even in his shortest love; while a Free Lover is cautious and irresponsible even in his longest devotion. I hate modern doubt because ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton

... once or twice, in a state of mind bordering on stupefaction. Robert Ratman, cad, sharper, blasphemer, insolent profligate, his brother! The notion was ludicrous. And yet, when he tried to laugh, the laugh died on his lips. He walked over to the portrait on the wall and looked at the wild, mocking boy's face there. For a moment, as he met its gaze, it seemed to grow older and coarser—the light died out of the ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed

... to the corner for prayer, and poured forth a confession of sin for them and for herself, such as left little that could have been added by her own profligate son, had he joined in the prayer. Either there are no degrees in guilt, or the Scotch language was equal only to the confession of children and holy women, and could provide no more awful words for the contrition of the prodigal or the hypocrite. ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... received the highest consideration, since their earnings were large. Scholars, poets, and philosophers—what few there were—pined in attics. Epictetus lived in a miserable cottage with only a straw pallet and a single lamp. Women had no education, and were disgracefully profligate; even the wife of Marcus Aurelius (the daughter of Antoninus Pius) was one of the most abandoned women of the age, notwithstanding all the influence of their teachings and example. Slavery was so great an institution that half of the population were ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord

... form of a little old Turk, poorly dressed like a marabout or santon of the desert—a sort of enthusiasts, who sometimes ventured into the camp of the Crusaders, though treated always with contumely, and often with violence. Indeed, the luxury and profligate indulgence of the Christian leaders had occasioned a motley concourse in their tents of musicians, courtesans, Jewish merchants, Copts, Turks, and all the varied refuse of the Eastern nations; so that the caftan and ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... kind of Roman "beau Brummell" in the court of Nero. He was a great voluptuary and profligate, whom Nero appointed Arbiter Elegantiae, and considered nothing comme il faut till it had received the sanction of this dictator-in-chief of the imperial pleasures. Tigellinus accused him of treason, and Petronius committed suicide by ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... pure and noble as she was fair and lovely. She was sought in marriage by many attractive suitors; but in vain, for she would not bestow her hand where she could not bestow her heart. Among the most persevering of these suitors was a profligate fortune-hunter, who, as the near relative of her late husband, had the entre ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... wise, seem to hit the taste of the vulgar."[17] And I have myself noticed that those who practise to speak acceptably and to the gratification of the masses promiscuously, for the most part become also profligate and lovers of pleasure in their lives. Naturally enough. For if in giving pleasure to others they neglect the noble, they would be hardly likely to put the lofty and sound above a life of luxury and pleasure, and to prefer moderation to delights. Yet what better advice could we give our sons than ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... paraphernalia of prostitution, after being a short time protected by one of the tribe of Levi, she is reduced to the hard necessity of wandering the streets, for that precarious subsistence which flows from the drunken rake, or profligate debauchee. Here her situation is truly pitiable! Chilled by nipping frost and midnight dew, the repentant tear trickling on her heaving bosom, she endeavours to drown reflection in draughts of destructive poison. This, ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler

... say, to my face, that beggars cannot be choosers, although I must give her credit for not using the expression in the scoundrel's presence. 'Pon my soul, Barnes, I have never been so sorely tried in all my life. Emma,—I should say, Mercedes,—denounces me to my face. She says I am a wastrel, a profligate,—(there I have her, however, for she failed to consult the dictionary before applying the word to me),—an ingrate, and a lot of other things I fail to recall in my dismay. She contends that I have no right to do what I please with my own money. Indeed, she ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon

... is a knave? If such is the case —and, alas! is it not the case?—they cannot be too frequently told that fine clothes, wealth, and titles adorn a person in proportion as he adorns them; that if worn by the magnanimous and good they are ornaments indeed, but if by the vile and profligate they are merely san benitos, and only serve to make their infamy doubly apparent; and that a person in seedy raiment and tattered hat, possessed of courage, kindness, and virtue, is entitled to more respect from those ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow

... adventurer and a condottiere, but France owes to him Fontenoy, that brilliant page of her history. All this takes us back to the eighteenth century with its brilliant, gallant, frivolous, artistic and profligate episodes. Maurice de Saxe adored the theatre, either for itself or for the sake of the women connected with it. On his campaign, he took with him a theatrical company which gave a representation the evening before a battle. In this company was a young artiste named Mlle. de Verrieres ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic

... When her dividends were become due this treachery was discovered, and Mrs Revel found herself reduced to a very narrow income, and wholly deserted by her husband, who knew that he had no chance of obtaining further means of carrying on his profligate career. His death in a duel, which we have before mentioned, took place a few months after the transaction, and Mrs Revel was attacked with that painful disease, a cancer, so deeply seated as to be incurable. ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat

... and hoped to allay the jealousies of her husband, and secure peace between him and her brother. But Antonius heartlessly refused to see this noble-minded woman, while he gave provinces to Cleopatra. At Alexandria this abandoned profligate plunged, with his paramour, into every excess of extravagant debauchery, while she who enslaved him only dreamed of empire and domination. She may have loved him, but she loved power more than she did debauchery. ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... becoming absolutely demoralized. In vain the Gracchi attempted to apply a remedy. The Roman aristocracy was intoxicated, insatiate, irresistible. The middle class was gone; there was nothing but profligate nobles and a diabolical populace. In the midst of inconceivable corruption, the Jugurthine War served only to postpone for a moment an explosion which was inevitable. The Servile rebellion in Sicily ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... secondarily for man's, precisely as man believes himself created first for his own enjoyment and second for that of woman—she will constitute herself sole umpire in the sacred domain of motherhood. Then, instead of feeling it her Christian duty to live with a drunken, profligate husband, handing down to her children his depraved appetites and passions, she will know that God's curse will be upon her and her children if she flee not from him as from ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... affected. He took her hand and would have raised it to his lips; but she did not forget herself, and gently withdrew it, exclaiming, "O Gifted!" this time with a tone of tender reproach which made him feel like a profligate. He tore himself away, and when at a safe distance flung her a kiss, which she rewarded with ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... chilled Abner in a second. He knew about clubs! Clubs were the places where the profligate children of Privilege drank improper drinks and told improper stories and kept improper hours. Abner, who was perfectly pure in word, thought and deed and always in bed betimes, shrank from a club as from ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller

... time of the Revolution, justified their conduct by all those profligate sophisms which are called Jesuitical, and which are commonly reckoned among the peculiar sins of Popery, but which, in fact, are everywhere the anodynes employed by minds rather subtle than strong, to quiet those internal twinges which they cannot but feel and which they will not obey. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... that he believes it to be true, is to be received as CONCLUSIVE, in the face of any amount of oral and documentary testimony to the contrary. "Can a man take fire into his bosom and not be burned?" Can a man aid in executing such a law without defiling his own conscience? Yet does this profligate statute, with impious arrogance, command "ALL GOOD CITIZENS" to assist in enforcing it, when required so to do by ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various

... the true, honest, patriotic heart of America? Here and there, were drops of its blood and life, but they scarcely coloured the stream of desperate adventurers which sets that way for profit and for pay. It is the game of these men, and of their profligate organs, to make the strife of politics so fierce and brutal, and so destructive of all self-respect in worthy men, that sensitive and delicate-minded persons shall be kept aloof, and they, and such as they, be left to battle out their selfish ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens

... most dissolute lives; and if a child was born among them, the laws of the society compelled its murder, or the expulsion of the mother. The men were all warriors, and stood in high estimation among the people. The Ehrioi themselves were proud of the title, and even the King O Tu belonged to this profligate institution, to which, fortunately, the Missionaries have put ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue

... stations of the enemy, with constant intelligence of our naval and military force and preparation, ... but the same traffic, intercourse, and intelligence is carried on with great subtlety and treachery by profligate citizens, who, in vessels ostensibly navigating our own waters, from port to port [coasters], find means to convey succors or intelligence to the enemy, and elude the penalty of law."[172] Officers were therefore instructed ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... mind experienced a strange reaction. The politicians of the two kingdoms, Scotland and England, reverting from the severe discipline of the "Protector," launched into every excess of luxuriousness and dissipation. A cry for the return of the profligate king swept the country from London to Edinburgh. Even the Covenanters were loud in calling for the banished monarch. They determined not to be last in bringing back the king. They would, however, renew their allegiance ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters

... regarded as a sort of companion poem to 'The Palace of Art'; the one traces the effect of callous indulgence in mere intellectual and aesthetic pleasures, the other of profligate indulgence in the grosser forms of sensual enjoyment. At first all is ecstasy and intoxication, then comes satiety, and all that satiety brings in its train, cynicism, pessimism, the drying up of the very springs of life. "The body chilled, jaded and ruined, the cup of pleasure drained to the dregs, ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson

... ordinary. Bishops' commissaries sate in town and city, taking cognizance of the moral conduct of every man and woman. Offences against life and property were tried here in England, as now, by the common law; but the Church Courts dealt with sins—sins of word or act. If a man was a profligate or a drunkard; if he lied or swore; if he did not come to communion, or held unlawful opinions; if he was idle or unthrifty; if he was unkind to his wife or his servants; if a child was disobedient to his father, or a father cruel to his child; if a tradesman ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... the state on to his own son and retired into the seraglio, where 15,000 women formed his court and provided him even with a bodyguard. Five hundred beautiful young Turki women, armed with bows and arrows, stood, we are told, on his right hand, and, on his left, five hundred Abyssinian girls. Profligate succeeded profligate, and the degeneracy of his Mahomedan rulers was the Hindu's opportunity. The power passed into the hands of Hindu officers, who were even suffered to take unto themselves mistresses from among the Mahomedan ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol

... over your wife, and of his perfidious machinations against yourself. I resolved, before coming hither, to go round by Vienna. There I heard, with dismay, that Peschiera had not only obtained the imperial sanction to demand your daughter's hand, but had boasted to his profligate circle that he should succeed; and he was actually on his road to England. I saw at once that could this design, by any fraud or artifice, be successful with Violante (for of your consent, I need not say, I did not dream), the discovery of the packet, whatever its contents, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... experience and his own, which is peculiarly interesting in relation to the mercy of God and the methods of the Gospel. To the jaundiced eye of this sour-tempered pharisaic youth, it seemed that his father gave much to him that deserved least, and little to him that deserved most: to the profligate son, the fatted calf; to the eminently dutiful child, not even a kid. Here the hard, self-satisfied formalist, like Pilate and Caiaphas, preaches the Christ whom he did not know. The envious contrast portrayed by the elder son is ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... against the priests." But, although the subjects of these works of Lessing were small, his object in writing was always great and national. He never condescended to amuse a provincial court by masquerades and comedies, nor did he degrade his genius by pandering, like Wieland, to the taste of a profligate nobility. Schiller, again, was a poet truly national and truly liberal; and although a man of aspirations rather than of actions, he has left a deeper impress on the kernel of the nation than either Wieland or Goethe. These considerations, however, must not interfere with ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... faith ambiguously, neither admitting nor condemning the council of Chalcedon. Peter Cnapheus, (that is, the Dyer,) a violent Eutychian, was made by the heretics patriarch of Antioch; and Peter Mongus, one of the most profligate of men, that of Alexandria. This latter published the Henoticon, but expressly refused to anathematize the council of Chalcedon; on which account the rigid Eutychians separated themselves from his communion, and were ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... in that city a young cavalier, about two-and-twenty years of age, whom wealth, high birth, a wayward disposition, inordinate indulgence, and profligate companions impelled to do things which disgraced his rank. This young cavalier—whose real name we shall, for good reasons, conceal under that of Rodolfo—was abroad that night with four of his companions, insolent young roisterers like himself, and happened to be coming down a hill as the old hidalgo ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... that the negroes are treacherous, cunning, dishonest, and profligate. Let me ask you, candid reader, what you would be, if you labored under the same unnatural circumstances? The daily earnings of the slave, nay, his very wife and children, are constantly wrested from him, under the ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child

... less interested in getting just conditions than in baseball games from which all elements of honest, manly sport have been taken away; brutal slugging matches between professional pugilists; horseraces conducted by gamblers for gamblers; the sickening, details of the latest scandal among the profligate, ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo

... part of 1000 that is here contained can be fully displayed) I will only add one remark more of the prementioned Wars, in lieu of a Corollary or Conclusion, and aver upon my Conscience, that notwithstanding all the above-named Injustice, profligate Enormities and other Crimes which I omit, (tho sufficiently known to me) the Indians did not, nor was it in their power to give any greater occasion for the Commission of them, than Pious Religioso's Living in a well regulated ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas

... laurel. The tulip and the chestnut gave no sense of struggle against a stingy nature. The soft, full outlines of the landscape carried no hidden horror of glaciers in its bosom. The brooding heat of the profligate vegetation; the cool charm of the running water; the terrific splendor of the June thunder-gust in the deep and solitary woods, were all sensual, animal, elemental. No European spring had shown him the same intermixture ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... long and profligate career in which I have turned the heads of some hundreds of ladies, I have become familiar with all the methods of seduction; but my guiding principle has been never to direct my attack against novices or those whose prejudices ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... persons intrusted from the temptations of unlawful emolument, and, what in all cases is the greatest security, given a lawful gratification to the natural passions of men. Matrimony is to be used, as a true remedy against a vicious course of profligate manners; fair and lawful emoluments, and the just profits of office, are opposed to the unlawful means which might be made use of to supply them. For, in truth, I am ready to agree, that for any man to expect a series of sacrifices without a return in blessings, to expect labor without a prospect ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... who, with all her personal charms, but without her glimpses of a better human nature, have sacrificed the dignity of womanhood to a profligate ambition, this one upbraided herself in her last moments on her wasted life; and then, when all her ambition and vanity had turned to ashes, she understood what it was to have been the toy of men and the ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... letters of good advice, a little didactic to modern taste, but throbbing with affection. "Dear as you are to me," says this tender mother, "I would much rather you should have found your grave in the ocean you have crossed than see you an immoral, profligate, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... a foretaste of heavenly rest." But it found them still "where storms arise and ocean rolls." The governor sent men to demand the digging of a grave, which the mob would not allow. Meanwhile, the profligate Mar Gabriel craftily suggested that a promise from the priest not to preach any more, might end the trouble. "Never," was the prompt reply. "Let my dead remain unburied, but I will not go back from the service of the Lord." This so enraged the patriarch, that, for the sake of ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary

... to existing laws for the suppression of the African slave trade, and recommend all such alterations as may give to them greater force and efficacy. That the American flag is grossly abused by the abandoned and profligate of other nations is but too probable. Congress has not long since had this subject under its consideration, and its importance well justifies renewed and ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... nature; a pursuit that was common enough at the close of the seventeenth and in the commencement of the eighteenth centuries, and which has not even yet entirely disappeared from Europe. He threw the pass with unconcealed aversion towards the profligate, who, recovering his document, assumed unasked his station by the side of the three who had been selected to decide on the fitness of those who were ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... A profligate so tempted as the Duc de Richelieu was from his earliest years, one can understand, however much we may condemn; but for the man who conducted his love affairs with such heartlessness and dishonour no language has words of execration ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall

... moon two-thirds full immersed the grounds in a bath of blue and silver, and far off below the cliff wall the Mediterranean was phosphorescent. In the room where the croupiers spun the wheels, the color scheme was profligate. ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck

... denied, save occasionally, these profligate liberties. Occasionally, however, they range into the quarter assigned to the women. The males, accustomed in London to indiscriminate license, discover the greatest regret at the restraint of their passions in the grossest oaths, and in the grossest ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... and equitably between the few who are most nearly of your own blood, and the many who in kinship are only a little farther removed. If you regard only those reared under your own roof, your cherished estate will soon be scattered, perhaps wasted by profligate heirs in riotous living, to their own ruin, and you and your fortune will quickly be forgotten. Give a share—pay a tithe to your more distant and more numerous kindred—to the general public, and you will be gratefully remembered, ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard

... him by his name,) Courage! the day at length is ours; 725 And we once more, as conquerors, Have both the field and honour won: The foe is profligate, and run. I mean all such as can; for some This hand hath sent to their long home; 730 And some lie sprawling on the ground, With many a gash and bloody wound. CAESAR himself could never say He got two victories in a day, As I have done, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... means the Armies of Brutus, and Cassius, defeated by Augustus, almost in the same place, at the Battle of Philippi. He concludes also that by Hylaeus is meant Mark Antony, who assumed the name of Bacchus, and ruined himself by his profligate passion for Cleopatra. Another Commentator observes, that as the Giants, and Lapithae, are said to have made the Palace of Saturn shake, so also did Brutus, and Cassius, and afterwards Mark Antony, make all Italy tremble, and that ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward

... even an abstract of the thought of the English Reformation would lead too far, however fascinating the subject might be. It must suffice to say briefly that theology had little or nothing to do with it. Wycliffe denounced the friars as lazy, profligate impostors, who wrung money from the poor which they afterwards squandered in ways offensive to God, and he would have stultified himself had he admitted, in the same breath, that these reprobates, when united, formed a divinely illuminated corporation, each member of which could and ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams

... that femme de chambre of the Queen-mother, a one-eyed creature, who is said to have first taught the King the art of intriguing. She was perfectly acquainted with all its mysteries, and had led a very profligate life; she lived several years ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans

... in the seventeenth century, was celebrated for an excrescence which grew upon her head, and finally parted into two horns; the great Algernon Sidney; Pope; Ramsay's portrait of the celebrated Earl of Chesterfield, who, according to Dr. Johnson, "taught the morality of a profligate, and the manners of a dancing master," and a landscape by Wilson. At the northern door of this gallery are, a painting of Stonehenge, and one of the cromlech at ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold

... majesty and dignity, a commanding power in the eye and expression of a pure, high-minded, resolute woman, which will abash even the boldest and most unscrupulous men. That is their shield and buckler, their defence against the attacks of the profligate. It is like the steadfast gaze of a dauntless man, which is said to have the power of awing even the fiercest of the beasts of the forest; but let her beware how for an instant she withdraws it, how she allows the softer feelings of ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... has been proved to your Lordships, that there is law in these countries, that there is no delegation of power which exempts a governor from the law, then I say at any rate a British governor is to answer for his conduct, and cannot be justified by wicked examples and profligate practices. ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... pursues. But the honor of his exalted station appears, both in his own eyes and in those of other people, polluted and defiled by the baseness of the means through which he rose to it. Tho by the profusion of every liberal expense; tho by excessive indulgence in every profligate pleasure—the wretched but usual resource of ruined characters; tho by the hurry of public business, or by the prouder and more dazzling tumult of war, he may endeavor to efface, both from his own memory and from that of other people, the remembrance ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various

... laws of hospitality? Why, above all things, deliberately insult the man to whom you and I both owe so much? Oh, I cannot understand it. Some demon, equally cowardly and malignant, must have poisoned your own naturally generous mind. Some villain, equally profligate and hypocritical, has, for some dark purpose, given this unworthy ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... conceivable kind of business, to pay for armies of lackeys and employees and private servants of officers and trustees, and for debauches and banquets which vie with any given by the kings and queens of the most extravagant and profligate nations on earth; in addition, enough more to accumulate huge and unnecessary funds—which are juggled with for the enrichment of individuals. Such wicked exactions and shameful extravagances constitute an imposition ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... profligate age what can you look for but profligates? Is it just, is it reasonable, or is it even honest to take a man or a family from such an environment, for judgement by the canons of a later epoch? Yet is it not the method that has been most frequently adopted in dealing with ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini

... in passing the examination. But the moment I entered Halle, the university town, all my resolutions came to nothing.—Being now more than ever my own master, and without any control as long as I did not fight a duel, molest the people in the streets, &c., I renewed my profligate life afresh, though now a student of divinity. When my money was spent, I pawned my watch and a part of my linen and clothes, or borrowed in other ways. Yet in the midst of it all I had a desire to renounce this wretched life, for I had no ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, First Part • George Mueller

... departed in peace, not trusting in her wisdom or virtue, like the philosophers of Greece and Rome; not even like Addison, calling on the profligate to see a good man die; but like Howard, afraid that her good works might have a wrong place in the estimate of her hope, her chief glory was that of "a ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham

... consistent in its outlines, and is fragmentary withal, the narrative of the child Samuel being the central theme, around which are grouped the tribulations of Elkanah and Hannah, the service of Eli the priest, the revels of his profligate sons, and the martial deeds of ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton

... The young Manichean and profligate in the fourth century, and the young monk in his convent in the fifteenth, passed through a similar experience;—different in form, identical in substance—with that of Paul the persecutor. And so Paul's ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... in my vexation totally forgot to redemand my manuscript. I recollected it however while within sight of the door, and turned back. I knocked, asked for his lordship, and was told he was not at home! This profligate impudence exceeded belief, and my choler became ungovernable. 'His lordship,' exclaimed I to the footman, 'is a disgrace to the bench on which he sits!' The footman thrust the door in my face, and epithets then burst from me, that were a disgrace ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... intelligible to each other, as unhappily we are not, by the universal knowledge and use of that mediaeval Latin, which might distress the Ciceronian ears of a pedant of the Renaissance, but was a good, useful, and adaptable language. It was a turbulent, disorderly, brutal, profligate, and drunken world, for the students were as hard drinkers as the citizens, but it was animated, it was made alive by a true passion for knowledge, by an unwearied and never satisfied ...
— Progress and History • Various

... have been expected. Clarendon's power was gone, and he was an exile. A board of trade, projected in 1668, never assumed the administration of colonial affairs, and had not vitality enough to last more than three or four years. Profligate libertines gained the confidence of the king's mistresses, and secured places in the royal cabinet. While Charles II. was dallying with women and robbing the theatres of actresses; while the licentious Buckingham, who had succeeded in displacing Clarendon, wasted ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick

... Third revived the hopes of the Jacobite party; and to that centre of attraction the ruined and the restless, the aspiring and the profligate, alike turned their regards. Never was so great a variety of character, and so great a diversity of motives displayed in any cause, as in the various attempts which were made to secure the restoration of the Stuarts. On some natures ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson

... sophistry is only worthy of the Common Pleas, where I know you picked it up. To be sure, if both of us were the most abandoned of beasts, we surely should have some excuse for our wickedness in the profligate company ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various

... a young profligate squandering his fortune in bagnios, or at the gaming-table, I cannot help looking on him as hastening his own death, and in a ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou

... ought to have been elected. How often is the hand of God seen in frustrating our fondest designs! Speaking of this disappointment he afterwards wrote: "Had I remained and become a member of the university at that time, as I should have done in case of success, the profligate acquaintances I had there would have introduced me to scenes of debauchery, in which I must in all probability, from my extreme youth, ...
— Life of Henry Martyn, Missionary to India and Persia, 1781 to 1812 • Sarah J. Rhea

... a whole lot,' I argues onct when a profligate he's staked, an' who reports himse'f as jumpin' sideways for grub previous, goes careerin' over to the dance hall with them alms he's wrung, an' proceeds on a debauch. 'You oughter not allow them ornery folks to do you. If you'd cultivate the habit of lettin' every gent go a-foot till he can ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis

... cares. Tenderest, gentlest of dispositions, where ever burned a love whose flame was pure as thine? Where ever was truth that could vie with the truth of Matilda? Hereafter when the worthless and the profligate exclaim upon the artifices of thy sex, when the lover disappointed, wrung with anguish, imprecates curses on the kind, name but Matilda, and every murmur shall be hushed; name but Matilda, and the universal voice of nature shall confess that ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin

... and successor, Shaban, was an utter profligate, cruel, faithless, avaricious, immoral, and pleasure-loving. Gladiators played an important part at his court, and he often took part in their contests. Horse-racing, cock-fights, and such like amusements occupied him much more than state affairs, and the whole court followed his example. As ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... the administration. The Earl of Sandwich became secretary of state and took the northern department, and Lord Hillsborough succeeded Lord Shelburne as president of the board of trade. Sandwich had official experience, and was neither idle nor incapable, though unprincipled and extremely profligate; Hillsborough was deficient in tact and judgment. Shelburne had been one of Bute's followers, and arranged his bargains with Fox, who accused him of having deceived him. He was employed in the late negotiations ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt

... referable in no small degree to the absence of great motives,—the limited spheres and hopeless routine involved in arbitrary government, unsustained by any elevated sentiment. Such a rule makes literature servile, enterprise mercenary, and manners profligate: all history proves this. It is not, therefore, rational to infer, from the apparent want of ability in the nation to take care of its own affairs, that a military despotism is justifiable; when the truth is equally demonstrated, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... chosen as an heiress; but there had been some slip between that cup of fortune and his lip; and she, proud and beautiful, for such she had been—had neither relieved nor softened the poverty of her profligate ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... suspicious, he sought to shackle public opinion—the fearful hydra to all ambitious aspirants—to know all secrets of the time and states, and render one half of the great nations he held in his grasp spies upon the other! The most profligate principles of Machiavel sink into obscurity when contrasted with the Imperial Espionage of Napoleon. When no longer moving squadrons in the tented field—whole armies, like so many pieces of chess in the hands of a dexterous player—he sat upon his throne, ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley

... an only child; her father was a man of wretched character. A profligate, a gambler—ruined alike in fortune, hope, and reputation, he was yet her only guardian and protector. The village in which we both resided was near London; there Mr. D—— had a small cottage, where ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various

... prejudices, and reasoned from the same errors; but experience, sad and painful experience, has taught me better. What the conduct of former armies was, I know not, but what the conduct of the present is, I well know. It is low, cruel, indolent and profligate; and had the people of America no other cause for separation than what the army has occasioned, that alone ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... Byron, in reverse of the usual relations, was always clamouring, brought matters to a crisis. The pair decamped to the continent; and in 1779, after the marquis had obtained a divorce, they were regularly married. Byron seems to have been not only profligate but heartless, and he made life wretched to the woman he was even more than most husbands bound to cherish. She died in 1784, having given birth to two daughters. One died in infancy; the other was Augusta, the half sister ...
— Byron • John Nichol

... collections. The village itself is a neglected, poverty- stricken place— the governor (Captain of Trabalhadores, or Indian workmen) being an old, apathetic, half-breed, who had spent all his life here. The priest was a most profligate character; I seldom saw him sober; he was a white, however, and a man of good ability. I may as well mention here, that a moral and zealous priest is a great rarity in this province— the only ministers of religion in the whole country who appeared sincere in their calling being the Bishop ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates

... frontless woman, who knew how to make the most of her opportunities in life. That Hooke got a large sum of money for writing her Apology[515]. That he wondered Hooke should have been weak enough to insert so profligate a maxim, as that to tell another's secret to one's friend is no breach of confidence[516]; though perhaps Hooke, who was a virtuous man[517], as his History shews, and did not wish her well, though he wrote her Apology, might see its ill tendency, and yet insert it at her desire. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... such widows do I know, whom brutal, profligate, and savage husbands have brought to the brink of the grave,—as good, as bright, as innocent as, and far more forgiving than, Lady Byron. There they sit in their obscure, rarely-visited dwellings; for sympathy instructed by suffering knows well that the deepest and most hopeless ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... and cruel wrecker that ever put up false lights to lure mariners to their destruction will do his best to preserve a ship from going to pieces on the rocks, if he is taken on board of her and made pilot; and so the most profligate Chancellor of the Exchequer most wish that trade may flourish, that the revenue may come in well, and that he may be able to take taxes off instead of putting them on. The most profligate First Lord of the Admiralty must wish to receive ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... moved painfully indeed, but still they moved. Meanwhile Parliament was the stronghold of selfish interests; the Church was the jackal of the gentry; George III, who lost the American colonies and maintained negro slavery, was on the throne, until he went mad and was succeeded by his profligate son. ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow

... and self-respect made Pope obedient to these orders, except when there was an occasion of serving Savage. On his second visit to Bristol (when he returned from Glamorganshire,) Savage had been thrown into the jail of the city. One person only interested himself for this hopeless profligate, and was causing an inquiry to be made about his debts at the time Savage died. So much Dr. Johnson admits; but he forgets to mention the name of this long suffering friend. It was Pope. Meantime, let us not be supposed to believe the lying legend ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... Consul in Gaul, was prevailed on at a banquet by a courtezan to behead one of those who were in chains, condemned on a capital charge. He escaped in the censorship of his brother Titus, who had immediately preceded me; but so profligate and abandoned an act of lust could by no means be allowed to pass by me and Flaccus, since with private infamy it combined the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various

... vicious[1]; sinful; sinning &c.v.; wicked, iniquitous, immoral, unrighteous, wrong, criminal; naughty, incorrect; unduteous[obs3], undutiful. unprincipled, lawless, disorderly, contra bonos mores[Lat], indecorous, unseemly, improper; dissolute, profligate, scampish; unworthy; worthless; desertless[obs3]; disgraceful, recreant; reprehensible, blameworthy, uncommendable; discreditable, disreputable; Sadistic. base, sinister, scurvy, foul, gross, vile, black, grave, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... does feel it. A spirit is silently and gradually working its way beneath the surface of society, which must, erelong, break forth either for good or for evil. Between a profligate and servile nobility, and a degraded and enslaved populace, a middle class has lately sprung up; the men of letters, the artists, the professors in the sciences, who have obtained property, or distinction at ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson

... pain of separation, there was the horrid dread of falling into the hands of Master Andrew. He was known to us all as being a most cruel wretch,—a common drunkard, who had, by his reckless mismanagement and profligate dissipation, already wasted a large portion of his father's property. We all felt that we might as well be sold at once to the Georgia traders, as to pass into his hands; for we knew that that would be our inevitable condition,—a ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass

... the Bishop's banner, and he was left with his own handful of adherents. At this moment De la Marck charged at the head of his banditti with the expected success. The Bishop was brought before the profligate Knight, who first cut him over the face, then murdered him with his own hand, and caused his body to be exposed naked in the great square of Liege before Saint ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... Divine Providence, were we to attribute our preservation wholly to our best endeavours: his interference in our favour was so very conspicuously manifested in various instances, in the course of that night, as I believe not to leave a shadow of doubt, even in the minds of the most profligate on board, of ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter

... striking his brow with his clenched hand. 'What devil tempted me to my undoing?... My wife trusted to this profligate!... Horror! It ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... young swell takes of me, I might be a block of wood! I'll make him listen to me. (Aloud.) Ahem! My Lord, I've just been telling my niece here the latest scandal in high-life. I daresay your Lordship has heard of that titled but brainless young profligate, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 18, 1893 • Various

... Gracchus until the first consulship of Marius, Rome was governed by a venal and profligate oligarchy, formed from a coalition of the most powerful families. Shame was unknown to this body; the offices of state were openly sold to the highest bidder, redress of grievances was to be obtained only by paying a heavier sum ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith

... A retinue of profligate Normans completed the court, whom an English authority describes as "great quaffers, lourdens, proud, belly swains, fed with extortion and bribery." The Irish were looked upon by these worthies as a savage race, ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... to England. Her boy-husband had died after a reign of two years. She was nineteen years old, had wonderful beauty, rare intelligence, and power to charm like a siren. Her short life had been spent in the most corrupt and profligate of Courts, under the combined influence of Catharine de Medici, the worst woman in Europe,— and her two uncles of the House of Guise, who were little better. Political intrigues, plottings and crimes were in ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele

... consistency to the type he works out the gradual evolution of a wild Irish boy, hot-headed in love and fighting, full of daring impetuosity and ignorant vanity, into the ruffianly soldier, the intrepid professional gambler, and finally into the selfish profligate, who marries a great heiress and sets up as a county magnate. Instead of the mere unadulterated villainy and meanness which were impersonated in his previous stories, we have here the complex strength and weakness of real human nature; we have ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... riot. This is the sum of all my miseries, If he, even he, a sober, hopeful lad, May be seduc'd into debaucheries. —But where shall I inquire for him? I warrant They have decoy'd him into some vile brothel. That profligate persuaded him, I'm sure. —But here comes Syrus; he can tell me all. And yet this slave is of the gang; and if He once perceives that I'm inquiring for him, He'll never tell me any thing; a rogue! I'll not ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer

... our age to underrate parental dignity. In the easy-going world, preference is given to profligate celibacy over honorable wedlock; marriage itself is degraded to the level of a purely natural contract, its bond has lost its character of indissolubility and its obligations are shirked to meet the demands of fashion and convenience. When parents, unworthy ones, do ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton

... he who hopes for favour to his children, or to other surviving connections, is to be listened to with some caution; for the existence of one virtue does not necessarily prove that of another, and he who loves his children and friends may yet be profligate and unprincipled; or, deceiving himself, may think that while his ends are laudable, he ought not to hesitate concerning the means. Besides these more obvious temptations to prevarication, there is another which, though it may lie somewhat deeper, yet experience teaches us to be ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox

... address in which they said among other things: "Of course, the church must stand in unflinching, uncompromising denunciation of all violations of laws, against all murderous child labor, all foul sweat shops, all unsafe mines, all deadly tenements, all excessive hours for those who toil, all profligate luxuries, all standards of wage and life below the living standard, all unfairness and harshness of conditions, all brutal exactions, whether of the employer or union, all overlordships, whether of capital or labor, all godless profiteering, whether in food, clothing, profits or wages, ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch

... means, whoever was offended at the growing greatness of another, discharged his spleen, not in anything cruel or inhuman, but only in voting a ten years' banishment. But when it once began to fall upon mean and profligate persons, it was for ever after entirely laid aside; Hyperbolus being the last that ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous

... house, doubtless to some paramour; carrying off with her all the jewels and money on which she could lay her hands. It is possible madame may have heard or seen something of her; she was accompanied in her flight by a base, profligate woman from Paris, whom I, unhappy man, had myself engaged for my wife's waiting-maid, little dreaming what corruption I was ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell

... of illicit sex relations on stage were revived, and the subject absolutely barred, the only result would be that Antony and Cleopatra, Othello (because of the Bianca episode), Troilus and Cressida, Henry IV, Measure for Measure, Timon of Athens, La Dame aux Camellias, The Profligate, The Second Mrs Tanqueray, The Notorious Mrs Ebbsmith, The Gay Lord Quex, Mrs Dane's Defence, and Iris would be swept from the stage, and placed under the same ban as Tolstoy's Dominion of Darkness and Mrs Warren's ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... converting the young man to better habits. It seems as if the hand of an avenging Providence had conducted this unfortunate mother to take a step so fatal to her son. She told the viceroy that she had in vain attempted to check him, that his days and nights were spent with profligate companions in gambling-houses and in cock-pits, and that she feared some mischief would come some day from his fighting and swearing and drinking; that but a few days since he had come home late, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... OF, a witty profligate of the court of Charles II.; wrote poems, many of them licentious, among them, however, some exquisite songs; killed himself with his debauchery; died penitent; he was the author of the epitaph, accounted the best epigram in the English language, "Here lies our sovereign Lord the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... of profligate lives escape these diseases. They are alarmingly prevalent among the 'fast' youths of our cities. And some forms of them are incurable by any effort of skill. Even the approach of such men should be ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys

... trappings of mystery, pleasure, and parade. This is the more probable, and the secret, serious purpose of the institution appears the more plainly, if it be true, that after a certain period of life, the obligation of the votary was changed; at first, bound to be profligate; afterwards, expected to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... well-known man in that day, William Fullarton, the Provost of Kirkcudbright. It is interesting to know that Marion M'Naught was closely connected with Lady Kenmure, another of Rutherford's chief correspondents. Lord Kenmure was her mother's brother. Kenmure had lived a profligate and popularity-hunting life till he was laid down on his death-bed, when he underwent one of the most remarkable conversions anywhere to be read of—a conversion that, as it would appear, his niece Marion M'Naught ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte

... power, And deep in guilt, most ominously shine, (The meteors of the state!) give vice her head, To license lewd let loose the public rein; Quench every spark of conscience in the land, And triumph in the profligate's applause: Or who to the first bidder sell their souls, Their country sell, sell all their fathers bought With funds exhausted and exhausted veins, To demons, by his holiness ordain'd To propagate the gospel—penn'd ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young

... crushed it with its teeth." (26) Reading "arce", not "arte". The word "signifer" seems to favour the reading I have preferred; and Dean Merivale and Hosius adopted it. (27) For the character and career of Curio, see Merivale's "History of the Roman Empire", chapter xvi. He was of profligate character, but a friend and pupil of Cicero; at first a rabid partisan of the oligarchy, he had, about the period of his tribuneship (B.C. 50-49), become a supporter of Caesar. How far Gaulish gold ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan

... most happy effects on multitudes of men. It has enlightened the most ignorant; softened the most hardened; reclaimed the most profligate; converted the most estranged; purified the most polluted; exalted the most degraded; and plucked the most endangered from hell to heaven. What was it that transformed the persecuting and blaspheming Saul into a kind and devoted man? It ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... this union, in the first year of the century, is born the second Charlemagne, who is to unite Spain and the Netherlands, together with so many vast and distant realms, under a single sceptre. Six years afterwards (Sept. 25, 1506), Philip dies at Burgos. A handsome profligate, devoted to his pleasures, and leaving the cares of state to his ministers, Philip, "croit-conseil," is the bridge over which the house of Habsburg passes to almost universal monarchy, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... betrayed into an act disgraceful to a man of honor. But when all these filial dreams were blasted by the conviction that he owed his being to the husband of Lady Tinemouth, that his mother was the victim of a profligate, that he had sprung from a man who was not merely a villain, but the most wanton, the most despicable of villains, he saw himself bereft of hope and overwhelmed with ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... and ennobling human destiny in the future, and he should therefore 'speak them in words hard as rocks,' regardless of the contumely heaped upon him by little minds for having thus spoken them. What if the ridicule, the denunciations of the unthinking, the sensual, the profligate, the unreflecting fools of the world be poured upon him? What of that? To-day, may be one of darkness and storm. The cloud and the storm will pass away, and the brightness and glory of the sunlight will be all over the earth to-morrow. Let him 'speak his opinions then ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond

... between two men of quality, and both men of wit too; and the effect was, that the Lord brought the reality of the Devil into the question, and the debate brought the profligate to be a penitent; so in short, the Devil was made a ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe

... that a contempt of things serious and sacred will exalt her understanding, or raise her character even in the opinion of the most avowed male infidels. For one may venture to affirm, that with all their profligate ideas, both of women and of religion, neither Bolingbroke, Wharton, Buckingham, nor even Lord Chesterfield himself, would have esteemed a woman the ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More

... if you look into his five or six first years of trade, you find all his accounts well kept, the journal duly posted, the cash monthly balanced; but the poor man found after that, that things went wrong, that he went backwards, and that all went down-hill, and he hated to look into his books. As a profligate never looks into his conscience, because he can see nothing there but what terrifies and affrights him, makes him uneasy and melancholy, so a sinking tradesman cares not to look into his books, because the prospect there is dark and melancholy. 'What signify the accounts to ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe

... for the success of her petitions), and then return to beg again. There is wonderfully little of any moral strength connected with this devotion; but still it is better than nothing, and more than is often found among the men of the upper classes in Rome. I believe the Clergy to be generally profligate, and the state of domestic morals as bad as it has ever ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... peculiarly formed for the enjoyments of social life. "But this gentleman, madam, who is her gallant this evening,—is his character unexceptionable? Will a lady of delicacy associate with an immoral, not to say profligate, man?" "The rank and fortune of Major Sanford," said Mrs. Richman, "procure him respect; his specious manners render him acceptable in public company; but I must own that he is not the person with whom I wish my cousin to be connected ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster

... other. Their principles may be more relaxed on some points than ours, but I doubt much whether a Frenchman would not be as much disgusted in England as an Englishman could possibly be in France; we call them a profligate race and condemn them in toto—something ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley

... The profligate must be lured from his emotional excesses and debaucheries, not by moralizings, but by showing him just how these things fritter his energies and retard ...
— Psychology and Achievement • Warren Hilton

... your children selfish, lovers of themselves?—See that you have not set them the example by your own covetousness or laziness. Are they boastful?—See that your pride has not taught them. Incontinent and profligate?—See that your own fierceness has not taught them. If they see you unable to master your own temper, they will not care to try to master their appetites. Are they disobedient and unthankful?—See, well, then that ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley



Words linked to "Profligate" :   waster, wastrel, debauchee, wasteful, roue, consumer, scattergood, spender, immoral, rounder, spend-all



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