Free TranslationFree Translation
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'



Dissolute   Listen
adjective
Dissolute  adj.  
1.
With nerves unstrung; weak. (Obs.)
2.
Loosed from restraint; recklessly abandoned to sensual pleasures; esp., loose in morals and conduct; profligate; wanton; lewd; debauched. "A wild and dissolute soldier."
3.
Specifically: Engaging in excessive drinking, or promiscuous sexual activity.
Synonyms: Uncurbed; unbridled; disorderly; unrestrained; reckless; wild; wanton; vicious; lax; licentious; lewd; rakish; debauched; profligate.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Dissolute" Quotes from Famous Books



... should go away to do for himself for a while. For a time good reports came from him, and the old shepherd would go out when he had leisure and would work on the sheepfold which he was building. By and by, however, sad news came from Luke. In the great dissolute city he had given himself to evil courses. Shame fell on him and he was driven to seek a hiding-place beyond the seas. The sad tidings broke the old father's heart. He went about as before, caring for his sheep. To the hollow dell, ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller

... to the loss of his offices and he retreated to Calais. An apology which he sent to the Lords was ordered to be burnt by the common hangman. For six years, till his death in Rouen, he lived in exile, but he was honoured by burial in Westminster Abbey. His private character in a dissolute age was unimpeachable. Anne Hyde, daughter of the earl, became Queen of England, as wife of James II., and was mother of two queens, Anne and Mary. The "History of the Rebellion" is a noble and monumental work, invaluable as written ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee

... represent for all time the mad lovers whose lives end in bitterness. I say again that only reasonable and calm love brings happy marriages. It is as true as any other law of nature that "he never loved who loved not at first sight;" but the frantic, dissolute man of genius who wrote that line did not care to go further and speak of matters which wise men of the world cannot disregard. The first blinding shock of the supreme passion comes in the course of nature; but wise people live through the unspeakable tumult of the soul, and use ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman

... the apartments were thrown into consternation at finding that one of their number was a man. He had a smooth and youthful-looking face, and was very perfectly disguised in the dress of a female. He proved to be a certain Clodius, a very base and dissolute young man, though of great wealth and high connections. He had been admitted by a female slave of Pompeia's, whom he had succeeded in bribing. It was suspected that it was with Pompeia's concurrence. At any rate, Caesar immediately divorced his wife. The ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott

... laid down for him to his prejudice. Thus a pigeon would starve near a dish of the best flesh-meat, and a cat on a heap of fruit or corn, though both might very well support life with the food which they thus disdain, did they but bethink themselves to make a trial of it: it is in this manner dissolute men run into excesses, which bring on fevers and death itself; because the mind depraves the senses, and when nature ceases to speak, the will still ...
— A Discourse Upon The Origin And The Foundation Of - The Inequality Among Mankind • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... not say the Pavilion, which is too cosmopolitan, dreary French comics are heard there—for preference let us say the Royal. I shall not easily forget my first evening there, when I saw for the time a living house—the dissolute paragraphists, the elegant mashers (mark the imaginativeness of the slang), the stolid, good-humoured costers, the cheerful lights o' love, the extraordinary comics. What delightful unison of enjoyment, what unanimity of soul, what communality ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... rivers. Bending under the weight of labor unfitted for her age or sex, the unhappy creature becomes the object of every form of bad usage. Without sufficient experience or force of will, compelled to spend days and nights among dissolute men, she falls an unwilling victim.... The laborer is so poor, miserable and debased that he cannot save his daughter from exposure to positions in which she must voluntarily or involuntarily be drawn into a course of immorality. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various

... greatcoats. The first of them came to the deep arch, in whose recess is a lamplit shrine; I stood aside to see them go past. The soldiers were wrenching the man along by the arms, each holding him on one side; I recall yet the prisoner's lean, miserable face, with the suggestion it had of dissolute and desperate youth; and as they came abreast of the faintly gleaming ikon in the gate they let him go for a moment. His dazed eyes wandered up to the shrine; he was already bareheaded, and with a shaking, ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various

... ever threatened Elizabeth as this. But again she could "trust to fortune." Mary had staked all on her union with Darnley, and yet only a few months had passed since her wedding-day when men saw that she "hated the King." The boy turned out a dissolute, insolent husband; and Mary's scornful refusal of his claim of the "crown matrimonial," which would have given him an equal share of the royal power with herself, widened the breach between them. Darnley attributed this refusal to Rizzio's counsels; and his father, Lord Lennox, joined ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green

... rescued young females from impending ruin. Many members of the society itself, look to it as the guardian of their orphanage. Among other cases related to us, was that of a lovely girl of fifteen, who was bartered away to a planter by her mother, a dissolute woman. The planter was to give her a quantity of cloth to the value of L80 currency, and two young slaves; he was also to give the grandmother, for her interest in the girl, one gallon of rum! The night was appointed, and a gig ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... mania seems to have seized upon many of the monarchs of Europe, and innumerable public edifices were erected. It seems to me to have been the period in all history when society was the least natural, and perhaps the most dissolute; and I have always fancied that the bloated artificial forms of the architecture partake of the social disorganisation of the time. Who can respect a simpering ninny, grinning in a Roman dress and a full-bottomed wig, who is made to pass off for a hero? or a fat woman in a hoop, ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray

... English Parliaments, from whom money was so often demanded for our fat Improper Darlingtons, lean Improper Kendals and other royal occasions, would naturally have to make a marriage-revenue for this fine Grandson of ours;—Grandson Fred, who is now a young lout of, eighteen; leading an extremely dissolute life, they say, at Hanover; and by no means the most beautiful of mortals, either he or the foolish little Father of him, to our old sad heart. They can wait, they can wait! said ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... to prove one. A learned lady is to the taste of few. It is however matter of surprise, that several literary men should have felt such a want of taste in respect to "their soul's far dearer part," as Hector calls his Andromache. The wives of many men of letters have been dissolute, ill-humoured, slatternly, and have run into all the frivolities of the age. The wife of the learned Budaeus ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... clumsiness. He was audacious, but he was not foolhardy, and he would never be abashed. True, she had seen dismay on his face at the moment of his declaration, but that moment was unique, and his dismay had ineffably flattered her. Now, on the half-landing, she was drenched in bliss. And she felt dissolute; she felt even base. But she did not care. She thought, as it were, startled: "This is love. This must be what love is. I must have been in love without knowing it. And as for a girl always knowing when a man's in love with her, and ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett

... astonished even himself at times. He saw that the people about him, like himself, lacked support and reason, only they did not understand this, or purposely would not understand it, so as not to hinder themselves from living blindly, and from giving themselves completely, without a thought, to their dissolute life. He found nothing firm in them, nothing steadfast; when sober, they seemed to him miserable and stupid; when intoxicated, they were repulsive to him, and still more stupid. None of them inspired him with respect, ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky

... on the east coast, Messana, a band of foreign soldiers had established themselves and held the city, independent alike of Syracusans and Carthaginians. These new rulers of Messana were Campanian mercenaries. The dissolute habits that had become prevalent among the Sabellians settled in and around Capua,(1) had made Campania in the fourth and fifth centuries—what Aetolia, Crete, and Laconia were afterwards—the universal recruiting field for princes and cities in search of mercenaries. The semi-culture ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... But as Carl grew to young manhood he proved to be utterly unworthy of all this affection. He treated his good uncle shamefully, stole money from him, though he had been always generously supplied with it, and became a disgrace to the family. There is no doubt that his nephew's dissolute habits saddened the master's life, estranged him from his friends and hastened ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower

... greater tenderness on his behalf than for all the other profligates of his day, who seem to have been neither better nor worse than himself. I rather suspect that he had a human heart which never quite died out of him, and the warmth of which is still faintly perceptible amid the dissolute ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various

... been dashed away in foam and blood from the English shore. Properly understood, Godwin's whole life was one protracted agony for the salvation of his country. He had to contend with every species of deleterious influence,—ferocious, drunken, dissolute, and imbecile kings, the reckless intrigues of monasticism at the instigation of Rome, and the unprincipled and infamous ambition of the Norman Bastard, who crept into England during this great man's exile, and fled in all haste at his return. What he had to contend ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various

... clear from the letters that Harvey was not without uneasiness lest his friend, from his gay and pleasure-loving nature, and the temptations round him, should be carried away into the vices of an age, which, though very brilliant and high-tempered, was also a very dissolute one. He couches his counsels mainly in Latin; but they point to real danger; and he adds in English,—"Credit me, I will never lin [ cease] baiting at you, till I have rid you quite of this yonkerly and womanly humour." But in the second pair of letters of April, 1580, a lady appears. ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church

... She emptied the pocket of her skirt, retaining only the revolver, and substituted the articles she had removed with the tin box that contained the dark compound Gypsy Nan, and she herself, as Gypsy Nan, had used to rob her face of youthfulness, and give it the grimy, dissolute and haggard aspect which was so simple and yet ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard

... at Vienna, an accomplished violinist, born in 1798; became a member of the Schuppanzigh Quartets in 1824, and afterwards director of the Concerts Spirituels in that capital; a Viennese of somewhat dissolute habits, by whom even the grave master himself ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace

... meetings of the magicians—Tu riseris coticia; which he derives from Cotys, or Cotto, Goddess of Vice, who presided in the assemblies which were held at night, and where the Bacchantes gave themselves up to all sorts of dissolute pleasures; but this is very ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... and crying out, 'I know you, gentlemen, I know you!' were wont to reply, 'We beseech thee to hear us, good Lort'—'Good Lort deliver us!' (Lort was his Christian name.) As he was very free in his speculations upon all kinds of subjects, although by no means either dissolute or intemperate in his conduct, and as I was no less independent, our conversation and correspondence used to alarm our friend ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore

... and that one got a limited divorce, and this mother kept the children on condition that the father could sometimes come and look at them, and these went into poorhouses, and those went into an insane asylum, and those went into dissolute public life, and all went to destruction. The mightiest war ever made against the marriage institution was that free-love campaign, sometimes under one name ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage

... 1847, there was a curious shuffling of the cards in the small states of Lucca and Parma, resulting in much irritation, which, in an atmosphere so charged with revolutionary electricity, was not without importance. The dissolute Bourbon prince who reigned in Lucca, Charles Ludovico, had but one desire, which was to increase his civil list. He hit upon an English jockey named Ward, who came to Italy in the service of a German count, and this person ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... apophthegms, and took a slight occasion to chase Archilochus out of their city, perhaps for composing in a higher strain than their own soldierly ballads and roundels could reach to. Or if it were for his broad verses, they were not therein so cautious but they were as dissolute in their promiscuous conversing; whence Euripides affirms in Andromache, that their women were all unchaste. Thus much may give us light after what sort of books were prohibited among ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton

... familiar and master in lore against which the Vatican has, from age to age, launched its mimic thunder? Dost thou call to mind the fortunes of thy ancestor?—how he succeeded in youth to little but a name; how, after a career wild and dissolute as thine, he disappeared from Milan, a pauper, and a self-exile; how, after years spent, none knew in what climes or in what pursuits, he again revisited the city where his progenitors had reigned; how with him came ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... made her; sold, married against her taste, in accordance with the Patria potestas of the Romans, at the same time that she fell under the marital despotism which desired her seclusion, she found herself tempted to take the only reprisals which were within her power. Then she became a dissolute creature, as soon as men ceased to be intently occupied in intestine war, for the same reason that she was a virtuous woman in the midst of civil disturbances. Every educated man can fill in this outline, for we seek from movements like these the lessons ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac

... been known to object to the inequality of knowledge, and I should not be surprised if some one should yet rebel against the inequality of virtue. Aristotle was banished, Socrates drank the hemlock, Epaminondas was called to account, for having proved superior in intelligence and virtue to some dissolute and foolish demagogues. Such follies will be re-enacted, so long as the inequality of fortunes justifies a populace, blinded and oppressed by the wealthy, in fearing the elevation of ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... Him the more; or if thou beest in grief to glad thee with. Sometimes, it falls out that in GOD'S doom, one is better whom men deem evil than some that men deem good. Many are worthy without and unclean within. Some worldly and dissolute, and GOD'S private friends within. And some, in man's sight bear themselves like angels; and in GOD'S sight, they stink as sinful wretches. And some seem sinful to men's doom, and are full dear to GOD Almighty, for their inward bearing is heavenly in GOD'S bright sight. Therefore, ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole

... no law but what himself kept. Sylla and Lysander did not so; the one living extremely dissolute himself, enforced frugality by the laws; the other permitted those licenses to others which himself abstained from. But the prince's prudence is his chief art and safety. In his counsels and deliberations he foresees the future times: in ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson

... second Duke of Buckingham, was born 30th January, 1627. Lord Orford observes, "When this extraordinary man, with the figure and genius of Alcibiades, could equally charm the presbyterian Fairfax and the dissolute Charles; when he alike ridiculed that witty king and his solemn chancellor: when he plotted the ruin of his country with a cabal of bad ministers, or, equally unprincipled, supported its cause with bad patriots,—one laments ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... were questioned. He liked to recite his old triumphs. He especially plumed himself on his sagacity in dealing with one case which came before him. A complaint was made of a book well known at that time, the memoirs of a dissolute woman, which was full of indecency, but in which there could not be found a single, separate indecent sentence or word. The Major was at a loss for some time what to do in indicting it. If he set forth the whole book, it would give it an immortality on the records of the court which ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... assimilated to them by discipline and costume. They were industriously stigmatized as jailers; for which there was the more ground, as their duties did in reality associate them pretty often with the jailer; and in other respects they were a dissolute and ferocious body of men, gathered not out of the citizens, but many foreign deserters, or wretched runagates from the jail, or from the justice of the provost- marshal in some distant camp. Not a man, probably, but was liable to be reclaimed, in ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... 1685 and the scene at his deathbed encouraged in England suspicions of Catholic policy and in France hope that this policy was near its climax of success. Though indolent and dissolute, Charles yet possessed striking mental capacity and insight. He knew well that to preserve his throne he must remain outwardly a Protestant and must also respect the liberties of the English nation. He cherished, however, the Roman Catholic faith and the despotic ideals of his Bourbon mother. On ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong

... scene, reader, may seem very commonplace to you, but what tongue can tell, or pen describe, what it was to Tottie Bones? That pretty little human flower had been born in the heart of London—in one of the dirtiest and most unsavoury parts of that heart. Being the child of a dissolute man and a hard-working woman, who could not afford to go out excursioning, she had never seen a green field in her life. She had never seen the Thames, or the Parks. There are many such unfortunates in the vast city. Of flowers—with the exception of cauliflowers—she knew nothing, save from ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne

... orderly, but poor, workman is naturally intolerant of the licentious luxury of the rich. And what is severe judgment in the minds of the just men of either class, becomes fierce enmity in the unjust—but among the unjust only. None but the dissolute among the poor look upon the rich as their natural enemies, or desire to pillage their houses and divide their property. None but the dissolute among the rich speak in opprobrious terms of the vices and ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... this name which is so dear to me, but whoever can distinguish black from white, or the Orthian mode of music from others, knows the virtues of Arignotus, whom his brother, Ariphrades,[137] in no way resembles. He gloats in vice, is not merely a dissolute man and utterly debauched—but he has actually invented a new form of vice; for he pollutes his tongue with abominable pleasures in brothels licking up that nauseous moisture and befouling his beard as he tickles ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... and three tricks to come by it [money] at his need, of which the most honorable and most ordinary was in manner of thieving, secret purloining, and filching, for he was a wicked, lewd rogue, a cozener, drinker, roysterer, rover, and a very dissolute and debauched fellow, if there were any in Paris; otherwise, and in all matters else, the best and most virtuous man in the world; and he was still contriving some plot, and devising mischief against the ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson

... If the dissolute or imbecile advocates of "free love" had their way, we should sink to the level of these wild tribes of India; but there is no danger of our losing again the large "tracts of mind, and thought, and feeling" we have acquired since our ancestors, who came from India, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... Stalky, who hadn't turned a hair, took half his supplies to save him the bother o' luggin' 'em back to the plains, and all the ammunition he could get at, and, consilio et auxilio Rutton Singhi, tramped back to his fort with all his Sikhs and his precious prisoners, and a lot of dissolute hangers-on that he and the prisoner had seduced into service. He had sixty men of sorts—and his brazen cheek. Mac nearly wept with joy when he went. You see there weren't any explicit orders to Stalky to come in before the passes were blocked: Mac is a great man for orders, and ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling

... paralleled since the year of Tiberius and Commodus—that the Bradley-Martin "function" should have been copied from the extravaganzas of a harlot! What glorious exemplars for New York's Four Hundred!—a dissolute king, and a woman thus apostrophized by Thomas Carlyle: "Thou unclean thing, what a course was thine: from that first truckle-bed, where thy mother bore thee to an unnamed father; forward, through lowest subterranean depths, and over highest sunlit heights of harlotdom ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... ranges, seamed by mighty rivers, inhabited by the most savage beasts and the most bestial savages known to man. Lying squarely athwart the Line, the sun beats down upon it like the blast from an open furnace-door. The story is told in Borneo of a dissolute planter who died from sunstroke. The day after the funeral a spirit message reached the widow of the dear departed. "Please send down my blankets" it said. But it is the terrible humidity which makes the climate ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell

... sunlight. "In that case, I might offer him some sensible advice," she said. "The Weatherbys, I remember, always showed a very proper respect for gentle people. I distinctly recall how well Jacob behaved when on one occasion Micajah Blair—a dreadful, dissolute character, though of a very old family and an intimate friend of your father's—took decidedly too much egg-nog one Christmas when he was visiting us, and insisted upon biting Jacob's cheek because it looked so like a winesap. Jacob had come to ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... the missionaries have the face to come here with their religion, when the dissolute white man is in every port manifesting a lust and greed and brutality which Chinese are accustomed to associate with the citizenship and religion attributed to Christianity. No wonder it is hard for them to make converts among ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper

... dilapidated pairs of boots and shoes, also some fly-specked sporting prints, and, upon a row of nails, a collection of shabby discoloured garments, ancient "hartogs," manifesting even in decay a certain jaunty, dissolute air, at once ludicrous and pathetic. Outside, in front, the 'Bishop' had laid out a garden wherein nothing might be found save weeds and empty beer bottles, dead men denied decent interment. Behind the cabin was the dust-heap, an interesting and historical mound, an ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell

... of dissolute lives and irreligious spirits, on hearing of the miracles at Santa Maria Nuova, begin to jeer and laugh on the subject, and, moved only by curiosity, go to the church, approach the bier with mock demonstrations of respect. But no sooner have they knelt before it, ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton

... 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, I invited a small party of the most dissolute students to a secret carousal in my chambers. We met at a late hour of the night; for our debaucheries were to be faithfully protracted until morning. The wine flowed freely, and there were not wanting other and perhaps more dangerous seductions; so that the gray dawn had already faintly appeared ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill

... winner of the game, it foretells that you will be much courted and admired by certain dissolute characters, bringing you selfish pleasures, but ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller

... to buckle under to the social conditions of England in those days, and who were consequently not exactly pestered with offers of employment. And a man who could see the difference between doffing his ragged cap to a dissolute squire or parson, and saluting his better on parade, could also see the selfishness of leaving an honest girl to languish for him. Brown could not get a living in England. So he told his girl to get a better man, swung his canvas bag across his ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy

... shoemakers, tailors, blacksmiths; there are cab-drivers, young women living alone, and female pedlers, laundresses, old-clothes dealers, money- lenders, day-laborers, and people without any definite employment; and also beggars and dissolute women. ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi

... "was a sinner." This is all, in fact, that we know of her; but this is enough. The term "sinner," in this instance, as in many others, does not refer to the general apostasy in Adam; it is distinctive of race and habit. She was probably of heathen extraction, as she was certainly of a dissolute life. The poetry of sin and shame calls her the Magdalen, and there may be a convenience in permitting this name to stand. The depth of her depravity Christ clearly intimates in his allusion to the debtor who owed five hundred ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... had. And though the kind of "divinity" which had trained his soul was of a grim sort, his own purity and gentleness of spirit softened it while accepting it. He adds,—"Yet I was still very wild & dissolute: & as years came on, my lusts grew stronger, but yet under some restraint of my natural reason, whereby I had that command of myself that I could turn into any form. I would, as occasion required, write letters, &c. of mere vanity; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various

... had brought up the Duke of Burgundy, in order to inspire the education of his descendant. What was nearest the crowned vice upon the throne was perhaps the most pure of any thing in France. If the age had not been as dissolute as the king, it would have directed his love in that direction. He had reached that point of corruption in which purity appears ridiculous, and ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... the Order whose wives and families might dwell here with them. This would have many advantages. Among others, the presence of so many ladies of rank would have the excellent effect of discountenancing and repressing extravagances and dissolute habits, which are but too common, and are a shame to the Order. Knights possessing commanderies throughout Europe would be no worse stewards for being married men, and scandals, such as contributed largely to the downfall of ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty

... and national dignity. The new tendency which manifested itself so vividly in our country was reflected by their impetuous and susceptible natures with all its noble yearnings, its virtues and excesses exaggerated. The frivolous pastimes, the senseless or dissolute amusements that were so fashionable in those days were abandoned for serious reading, gathering of information and investigation of current events. They had already opinions of their own, which not rarely they could utter with striking audacity."—I could only envy these lines of gold; ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai

... Shapkin was in conversation with the priest and hastened away to weep. . . . He stole up to the grave secretly, furtively, looking round him every minute. The little white slab looked at him pensively, mournfully, and innocently as though a little girl lay under it instead of a dissolute, ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... very dissolute and wicked woman, having been accustomed to give herself up to criminal indulgences and pleasures of every kind, in company with favorites whom she selected from time to time among the courtiers around her. For a ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott

... ago; with tears doubtless from the poor rose-pink Mother, far away in Baireuth and childless otherwise; and also in a sense to the sorrow of Courland, which was hereby left vacant, a prey to enterprising neighbors. And on those terms it was that Saxons Moritz (our dissolute friend, who will be MARECHAL DE SAXE one day) made his clutch at Courland, backed by moneys of the French actress; rumor of which still floats vaguely about. Moritz might have succeeded, could he ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... tale of her misfortunes. Her father, though of high rank, had in the end dissipated his fortune, and even destroyed his reputation and influence through a course of dissolute indulgence. His health was impaired beyond hope of cure; and it became his earnest wish, before he died, to preserve his daughter from the poverty which would be the portion of her orphan state. ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... Zola's most intimate friend—a companion of his boyhood and youth—was Paul Cezanne, a painter who developed talent as an impressionist; and the lives of Cezanne and Manet, as well as that of a certain rather dissolute engraver, who sat for the latter's famous picture Le Bon Bock, suggested to M. Zola the novel which he has called L'Oeuvre. Claude Lantier, the chief character in the book, is, of course, neither ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... will not cause either industry or vice to flourish? And whether a country, where it flowed in without labour, must not be wretched and dissolute like an ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley

... throughout the whole earth in order to promote the conversion and amelioration of men; and everywhere brought about the establishment of Churches which are ruled by other laws than those that regulate the Churches of the superstitious, the dissolute and the unbelieving. For of such people the civil population ([Greek: politeuomena en tais ekklesiais ton poleon plethe]) of the towns almost everywhere consists." [Greek: Hai de tou Theou Christo matheteuthesai ekklesiai, sunezetazomenai tais on ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack

... connection he stated that he had known of and been interested in the work of the Salvation Army for many years, that several men of his acquaintance had been converted through their activities and been reformed from dissolute, worthless characters to kind husbands and fathers and good business men; and that he believed in the Salvation ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill

... his master." This privilege was open to enormous abuse, but happily the ukase of liberty has removed it. The design of the system was no doubt to enable proprietors to rid themselves of serfs who were idle, dissolute, or quarrelsome, but had not committed any act the law ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... parent, steeled in the furnace heat. Send me the best of your breeding, lend me your chosen ones; Them will I take to my bosom, them will I call my sons; Them will I gild with my treasure, them will I glut with my meat; But the others — the misfits, the failures — I trample under my feet. Dissolute, damned and despairful, crippled and palsied and slain, Ye would send me the spawn of your gutters — Go! take ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service

... work 445 With confident and cheerful thoughts; and now Sometimes when he could find a leisure hour He to that valley took his way, and there Wrought at the Sheep-fold. Meantime Luke began To slacken in his duty; and, at length, 450 He in the dissolute city gave himself To evil courses: ignominy and shame Fell on him, so that he was driven at last To seek a hiding-place ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth

... a man can be born with," cried Bakkus with startling vindictiveness. "It turns him into an idle, sentimental, hypocritical and dissolute hound. If I hadn't been cursed young with a voice like a Cherub, I should possibly be on the same affable terms with the Almighty as my brother, the Archdeacon, or profitably paralysing the intellects of the young like my ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke

... inadequate. History, however, has indemnified Milton for the neglect and poverty he endured. He has shot up into stature while those of his contemporaries who bulked largest in the eyes of the world have dwindled and shrunk into insignificance in comparison with him. The witty, dissolute king, Charles II., is now seen to be a wretched pigmy: Milton, who died in blindness and political disgrace, is the real king of that era, overtopping all the rulers, cabals, and intriguers. So, too, in Scotland, Burns is the giant of his period. During Burns's life, the Earl ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... otherwise of the dissolute character of the poet and of all the women to whom he addressed his verses, make it only too obvious that there is here no question of purity, of respect, of adoration, of any of the qualities which distinguish supersensual love ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... am sorry to know. He is a dissolute fellow, who has broken the hearts of two wives, and thrown his children for maintenance on their maternal relations. 'Tis the same who carried your last check to ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown

... begged her not to oppose herself to me; to be silent with respect to me, and to keep herself somewhat in the shade if she would not make some advances towards me. His daughter- in-law, whose arrogance equalled her dissipation and dissolute manners, replied, that she was too much above a woman of my sort to fear or care for me; that my reign at the chateau would be but brief, whilst hers would only terminate with her life: that she would never consent ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon

... was now emperor. It will be remembered that by marrying Mary, the eldest daughter of Louis, King of Hungary and Poland, he received Hungary as the dower of his bride. By intrigue he also succeeded in deposing his effeminate and dissolute brother, Wenceslaus, from the throne of Bohemia, and succeeded, by a new election, in placing the crown upon his own brow. Thus Sigismond wielded a three-fold scepter. He was Emperor of Germany, and King of Hungary ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott

... deeds in Peace. The conquerd also, and enslav'd by Warr Shall with thir freedom lost all vertu loose And feare of God, from whom thir pietie feign'd In sharp contest of Battel found no aide Against invaders; therefore coold in zeale Thenceforth shall practice how to live secure, Worldlie or dissolute, on what thir Lords Shall leave them to enjoy; for th' Earth shall bear 800 More then anough, that temperance may be tri'd: So all shall turn degenerate, all deprav'd, Justice and Temperance, Truth and Faith forgot; ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... and withdrew; But I grieve to relate, When he next met my view Injin Dick was his mate, And the two around town was a-lying In a frightfully dissolute state. ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte

... indispensable. "The King's subsequent death (such are the words of the modern historian) prevented the final explosion of this unfilial conduct, which, as thus stated, deserves the denomination of an unnatural rebellion; and shows that the dissolute companion of Falstaff was not the gay and thoughtless youth which his dramatic representation exhibits to us, but that, amid his vicious gaieties, he could cherish feelings which too much resemble the unprincipled ambition ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler

... say nah, Sir," the Scotch station-master made answer, with a grin, while he pulled off his cap of office and put on a dissolute Glengary. "They are a veery fine young kail, that always ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore

... succession of rather singular incidents, I discovered that a dissolute, drunken man about town was my father—which I regarded at the time as the greatest mishap that could possibly befall me. But I took him to my boarding-house, where good—I might even say blessed—Mrs. Greenough took care of him, giving to his body the nursing he needed, and to his spiritual ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic

... approved by all who are themselves staunch supporters of that mode of faith which they conscientiously adopt. In private society James had the power of attaching his dependents; and perhaps from a deeper source than that which gave attraction to the conversation of his good-natured, dissolute brother. His melancholy and touching reply to Sir Charles Littleton, who expressed to him his shame that his son was with the Prince of Orange:—"Alas! Sir Charles! why ashamed? Are not my daughters with him?" was an instance of that readiness and delicacy which are qualities peculiarly appropriate ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson

... governments there is a regular progression of slavery downwards, from the top to the bottom, the mischief of which is seldom felt with any great force and bitterness but by the next immediate degree; so in the most dissolute and anarchical states there is as regular an ascent of what is called rank or condition, which is always laying hold of the head of him who is advanced but one step higher on the ladder, who might, if he did not too ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding

... poisoned by the tainted atmosphere of Atheism which is slowly and insidiously spreading itself through all ranks, particularly among the upper classes, who, while becoming every day more lax in their morals and more dissolute of behavior, consider themselves far too wise and 'highly cultured' to believe in anything. It is a most unwholesome atmosphere, charged with the morbidities and microbes of national disease and downfall; it is difficult to breathe it without becoming fever-smitten; ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... side, there was peace and brightness; but wherever he met with man he found something to sadden him. Did they rest in a monastery, there was often irregularity, seldom devotion, always crass ignorance. The manse was often a scene of such dissolute life that Malcolm shunned to bring his sister into the sight of it; the peel tower was the dwelling of savagery; the farm homestead either rude and lawless or in constant terror; the black spaces on many a brae side showed where dwellings had been burned; ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge

... until Nero was twenty-two, when Poppaea Sabina, the fairest woman of her time, appeared upon the stage. Among the dissolute women of imperial Rome, she was pre-eminent. Introduced to the intimacy of Nero, she aspired to still higher elevation, and this was favored by the detestation with which Agrippina was generally viewed, and the continued decline of her influence, since she had ruled by fear rather than love. ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... some of them are, since everything that comes into common use must have a name that is frequently spoken. Thus baik, sackereen, and mahjereen are truly new English word-sounds; and it may be, if we succumb to anarchical communism, that margarine and saccharine will be lauded by its dissolute mumpers as enthusiastically as men have hitherto praised and are still praising butter and honey. 'Bike' certainly would have already won a decent place in poetry had it been christened more gracefully and not nicknamed ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges

... women would speak evil of our love. No one would believe, nor is it natural that they should do so, the truth of the matter. Who would believe that I have thus, all to no purpose, evaded and escaped from your uncle still a maid? I should be regarded simply as wanton and dissolute, and you would be thought mad. It is well to remember and observe the injunction of St. Paul: if any one is unwilling to live chaste, St. Paul counsels him to act so that he shall receive no criticism, or blame, or reproach. [238] It is well to stop evil mouths, and therefore, ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes

... appears holy. But you want the Church to judge neither of the inward, because that belongs to God alone, nor of the outward, because God dwells only upon the inward; and thus, taking away from her all choice of men, you retain in the Church the most dissolute, and those who dishonour her so greatly, that the synagogues of the Jews and sects of philosophers would have banished them as unworthy, and have ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal

... name—gave early indications of those talents which afterwards gained for him so wide a notoriety. He received the rudiments of his education at the monastery of Caltagirone in Sicily, but was expelled from it for misconduct and disowned by his relations. He now signalized himself by his dissolute life and the ingenuity with which he contrived to perpetrate forgeries and other crimes without exposing himself to the risk of detection. Having at last got into trouble with the authorities he fled from Sicily, and visited in succession Greece, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... to London full of expectations, and with little or no money, and unless he get immediate employment he is already half undone; and boys bred up in London without any means of a livelihood, and as it often happens of dissolute parents, are in a still worse condition; and servants long out of place are not much better off. In short, a world of little cases is continually arising, which busy or affluent life knows not of, to open the first door ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... parents were eager to see her married, being themselves old, and not liking to leave a comparatively young widow alone in the world with so many children to look after. Their choice fell first upon a very undesirable person called Santagnolo, a young man of dissolute habits, ruined constitution, bad character, and no estate. She refused, with spirit, to sign the marriage contract; and a few months later wrote again to inform her guardian that a suitable match had been found ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... Me close up smash him Cognac." At the thought came his inevitable laughter, and as he leant against the fence post, surrounded by the shattered marrow, he sat hopelessly gurgling, and choking, and shaking, and hugging his bottle, the very picture of a dissolute old Bacchanalian. (Cheon would have excelled as a rapid change artist). And as Cheon gurgled, and spluttered, and shook, the homestead rocked with yells of delight, while Brown of the Bulls rolled and ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... read," said the lady, a little indignant, "in some memoirs the other day, that our court was a corrupt and dissolute court. It was a court of pleasure, if you like; but of pleasure that animated and refined, and put the world in good humour, which, after all, is good government. The most corrupt and dissolute courts on the continent of Europe that I have known," said the ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli

... Kami's former retainers would be scheming against his life, secretly sent spies to Kioto, and caused a faithful account to be kept of all that Kuranosuke did. The latter, however, determined thoroughly to delude the enemy into a false security, went on leading a dissolute life with harlots and winebibbers. One day, as he was returning home drunk from some low haunt, he fell down in the street and went to sleep, and all the passers-by laughed him to scorn. It happened that a Satsuma man saw this, and said: ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford

... mention, and still more of its abbess. Carmen de Forcadell was long celebrated, both at Madrid and in her native Andalusia, for her beauty and intrigues. Her husband was assassinated by one of her lovers, as some said, and within three years of his death, repenting, it was believed, of her dissolute life, she took the veil. Once, I know, Baltasar was her reputed lover; but whatever may now be his influence over her, I cannot think she would allow my daughter to be ill treated whilst within her walls. No, Herrera, the danger is, lest the villain may remove my Rita, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various

... as the AEgyptians us'd by Bees, &c.] The AEgyptians represented their kings, (many of whose names were Ptolemy) under the hieroglyphick of a bee, dispensing honey to the good and virtuous, and having a sting for the wicked and dissolute. ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... guard you from all mean things; From the dwarfing of wealth, and from poverty's stings. And from silly mothers of fuss and show, And from dissolute fathers whose aims are low, I would take you, and shield you, and set you free, Dear little ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... should send abroad men who are bound to succeed, men who never forget that from their behaviour the Mother Country will be appraised. Argentina will embrace and reward them, but she will spurn and despise the dissolute and drunken. ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various

... country of a poor, down trodden people, driven them from their quiet homes, plundered them of their property, ravished their daughters, drenched their fields with the blood of the innocent, and whitened the highways with the bones of his own dissolute but deluded followers, and spread desolation over the land, had to leave it a vanquished miscreant. And upon the principle, that if you give power to the idle and reckless they will make heroes to suit their kind and circumstances, he will then be received ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"

... of giving to Humility the influence of Power. There is not a feature in the character, there is hardly an action in the life of this exemplary personage, that does not mark him as a true servant of CHRIST. And may we not presume the blessed Author of our faith, in supplying us in these dissolute times with a recent example of such astonishing and unlimited beneficence, is graciously pleased to afford us a new motive to prize and to cherish that animating faith, which could form, in an age like the present, a character ...
— The Eulogies of Howard • William Hayley

... drinking-shop. During the evening a great number of Gauchos came in to drink spirits and smoke cigars: their appearance is very striking; they are generally tall and handsome, but with a proud and dissolute expression of countenance. They frequently wear their moustaches, and long black hair curling down their backs. With their brightly coloured garments, great spurs clanking about their heels, and knives stuck as daggers (and often so used) at their waists, they look a very different ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... present you with his best horse, waving away your thanks. If you displease him, his long knife will just as readily find its way to your heart, for he kills his enemies with as little compunction as he kills the ostrich. "The Gaucho, with his proud and dissolute air, is the most unique of all South American characters. He is courageous and cruel, active and tireless. Never more at ease than when on the wildest horse; on the ground, out of his element. His politeness is excessive, his nature ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray

... engaged in arduous toil in one of the cavities hollowed out in the very heart of the rock. It was the chamber in which the dissolute Mortimer and the faithless Isabella had been captured by the youthful monarch, Edward III., two centuries and a half earlier, but no traces of its former grandeur—if it ever possessed any—now remained. It was changed into the abode of an alchemyst, and as Edmund Wynne ever and ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday

... year a draft of one hundred and fifty men, recruits raised principally from the refuse of the streets of London and Dublin, was embarked for the regiment by orders from the inspector-general at Chatham. These men were of the most depraved character, and of such dissolute habits, that one-half of them were unfit for service; fifteen died in the passage, and seventy-five were sent to the hospital from the transport as soon as they disembarked. The infusion of such immoral ingredients must necessarily have a deleterious effect. ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean

... The notorious Confederate prison at Richmond, Va. Liddle Pills - Little bills, Legislative enactments. Lieblich,(Ger.) - Charming. Liedeken,(Flem.) - Song. Lieder, Lieds,(Ger.) - Songs. Liederkranz,(Ger.) - Glee-union. Liederlich,(Ger.) - Loose, reckless, dissolute. Lighthood,(Ger. Lichtheit) - Light. Like spiders down their webs - Breitmann's soldiers are supposed to have been expert turners or gymnasts.) Loafer,(Amer.) - A term which, considered as the German pronunciation of lover, is a ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland

... which is more fancied than real, as you and I know very well, will cost the dear girl but a few tears, and she is happy again. Take the case of your own daughter, the young lady downstairs, who is your breathing image'—Mrs Varden coughed and simpered—'there is a young man (I am sorry to say, a dissolute fellow, of very indifferent character) of whom I have heard ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... and Uruk. All the writers speak of Kaikhatu's character in the same way. Hayton calls him "a man without law or faith, of no valour or experience in arms, but altogether given up to lechery and vice, living like a brute beast, glutting all his disordered appetites; for his dissolute life hated by his own people, and lightly regarded by foreigners." (Ram. II. ch. xxiv.) The continuator of Abulfaraj, and Abulfeda in his Annals, speak in like terms. (Assem. III. Pt. 2nd, 119-120; Reiske, Ann. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... sacrament, probably many chose to interpret the declaration to mean that it was no bond.[11] The elementary bread of the eucharist was expressed by base and indecent nicknames.[12] The alehouses were filled with profane disputants upon the mysteries of our faith, and the dissolute scoffers made songs upon them:[13] "Green Sleeves," "Maggy Lauder," and "John Anderson my Jo," with numbers more, were all of this class of compositions; and psalms (in this instance, perhaps, without any intentional levity) were set ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 528, Saturday, January 7, 1832 • Various

... certain families in New York, added to a good address, polished manners, and an unblushing assurance, had given him access to society at certain points, and of this facility he had taken every advantage. Too idle and dissolute for useful effort in society, he looked with a cold, calculating baseness to marriage as the means whereby he was to gain the position at which he aspired. Possessing no attractive virtues—no personal ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur

... further promotions in the course of time; for he was not devoid of talent in his profession, and had devoted much serious study and research to its higher spheres, although the benumbing effects of the dissolute and monotonous life in the little garrison had also had upon him decidedly deleterious effects. He had acquired drinking habits, and his domestic peace had, as he was aware, for some time suffered therefrom; but he felt sure that amid new and more inspiring surroundings he could pull himself ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg

... services. Parker then joined the provincial strolling companies, and was engaged for one season with Digges, then manager of the Edinburgh Theatre. At Edinburgh he married an actress named Heydon, from whom, however, he was soon obliged to part on account of her dissolute life. Returning again to London, he set up as wandering lecturer on elocution, and in this character travelled with varying success through England. In November 1776 he set out on a visit to France, and lived at Paris for upwards of six months on funds supplied ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer

... difficulty in predicting it, and in saying at this point in his story, that Milton might have known better than, with his puritanical connections, to have taken to wife a daughter of a cavalier house, to have brought her from a roystering home, frequented by the dissolute officers of the Oxford garrison, to the spare diet and philosophical retirement of a recluse student, and to have looked for sympathy and response for his speculations from an uneducated and frivolous girl. Love has blinded, and will continue to blind, the ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison

... gluttony. His chilled being, as if inwardly rigid, became enervated at the kisses and feasts. Feeling disgusted beforehand, they failed to arouse his imagination or to excite his senses and stomach. He suffered a little more by forcing himself into a dissolute mode of life, and that was all. Then, when he returned home, when he saw Madame Raquin and Therese again, his weariness brought on frightful fits of terror. And he vowed he would leave the house no more, that he would put up with his suffering, ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola

... of vain and frivolous troubadours from her southern home, in all kinds of foreign and fantastic costumes, invaded the court at Paris and shocked the austere piety of the king. He perceived the corrupting influence on the simple manners of the Franks of their licentious songs, lascivious music and dissolute lives, but was powerless to dismiss them. The tyrannous temper of his new consort became the torment of his life. He was forced even to conceal his acts of charity. One day, on returning from prayers, Robert perceived that his lance by ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey

... simplicity and feeling of his early works, produced under the influence of religious sentiment, and the still clinging stiffness of traditional restraints, to the freedom and coldness of his later works, painted under the influence of success at a dissolute court, of flattery, of jealousy, and of indifference to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... sort. The orthodox explanation, I believe, is something of this kind. With every sin there is the moral guilt and the temporal penalty. The pardon cannot touch the guilt; but when the guilt is remitted, there is still the penalty. I may ruin my health by a dissolute life; I may repent of my dissoluteness and be forgiven; but the bad health will remain. For bad health, substitute penance in this world and purgatory in the next; and in this sphere the indulgence ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... what a set of ghastly revellers they were that sat round that table!—My gudesire kend mony that had long before gane to their place, for often had he piped to the most part in the hall of Redgauntlet. There was the fierce Middleton, and the dissolute Rothes, and the crafty Lauderdale; and Dalyell, with his bald head and a beard to his girdle; and Earlshall, with Cameron's blude on his hand; and wild Bonshaw, that tied blessed Mr Cargill's limbs till the blude sprang; and Dunbarton Douglas, the twice-turned traitor baith to country and king. ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various

... connection with them at once lose to the same extent the faith of their fathers, and become atheistic or indifferent. I'm speaking the truth! This is a fact which will be realised. That's why all of you and all of us now are either beastly atheists or careless, dissolute imbeciles, and nothing more. And you too, Stepan Trofimovitch, I don't make an exception of you at all! In fact, it is on your account I am speaking, ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... from the Austrian frontier; he maintained always the same character for daring and skill, and was, in the secret republic of the regiment—which always exists as well as the regular military hierarchy—the acknowledged leader. He was an admirable soldier, as I have said; but haughty, dissolute, and a drunkard. A man of this mark, unless he takes care to coax and flatter his officers (which I always did), is sure to fall out with them. Le Blondin's captain was his sworn enemy, and his punishments were ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Justice in their complaint shall consider they have just cause to annull the contract and permit them to obtain another employee. All Indians must be required to obtain service and not be permitted to wander about the country in idleness in a dissolute manner. If found doing so they will be liable to arrest and punishment by labor on the public works at the direction of the Magistrate. All officers, Civil or Military under my command are required to execute the terms of this order and take notice of every violation thereof.—Given ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various

... knowledge to sensation. What prolific sources of disease are not those mineral and vegetable poisons, that have been introduced for its extirpation! How many thousands have become murderers and robbers, bigots and domestic tyrants, dissolute and abandoned adventurers, from the use of fermented liquors, who, had they slaked their thirst only with pure water, would have lived but to diffuse the happiness of their own unperverted feelings! How many groundless opinions and ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott



Words linked to "Dissolute" :   profligate, debauched, dissipated, libertine, dissoluteness



Copyright © 2024 e-Free Translation.com