Sentence Examples:
As they did so more from necessity than from choice, they were tardy in pursuing those improvements which other nations have made in this noble art, and, pining at the disappearance of the precious mineral, considered their new occupation as vile and degrading.
Although writers are able to find a sale for the most disgusting productions; although the critic is continually obliged, in reviewing current literature, to wade through the nastiest mire, it yet remains certain that public taste is not pleased with the vile.
They sat in silence, and with tireless patience watched our every motion with that vile, uncomplaining impoliteness which is so truly Indian, and which makes a white man so nervous and uncomfortable and savage that he wants to exterminate the whole tribe.
I have seen white men who at home would hold their tongues lest they offend some decent woman's ears with their vile language assume an air of superiority toward the men amongst whom they are living that is certainly not conducive to international amity.
The vile treatment to which the ancient apostles were subjected and the martyrdom of many of them, is known to all acquainted with the history of those inspired men; and scriptural evidence as to their having been informed thereof in advance is quite abundant.
Looting, destruction, one can forgive in the orgy of war which is organized destruction; one can even understand rapine and atrocities when armies, which include latent vile and criminal elements, are aroused to the kind of insane passion which war arouses in human beings.
It is impossible to give Frederick Mason's words verbatim, as he seldom opened his lips without an oath, and inter-larded his talk with coarse jests in English and fragments of ribaldry in vile French, till it would scarce be intelligible to the reader of today.
Maverick, from the first, had hated Houston with that instinctive hatred which such vile natures, groveling in their own degradation, always feel toward those moving on a higher plane, in an atmosphere untainted by the putrescence which is their natural element.
Our aim should be to create in slave states a public opinion against the vile system that stains the land, and not to excite feelings of enmity against ourselves because we exclude them from our market, and seek to brand them as outcasts from society.
With low aims and views, slight literary culture, superficial knowledge of life, a vile contempt for sentiment, a cynical estimate of human nature, equally ready to extol and to denounce for pay, these writers are the nuisance and the scandal of their craft.
When the sense of shame which ordinarily keeps these baser propensities within the bounds of decency, is once weakened by the sight of others' participation in them, our inherent sympathy with what is vile will soon break out into the most unbridled licentiousness.
Looting, destruction, one can forgive in the orgy of war which is organized destruction; one can even understand rapine and atrocities when armies, which include latent vile and criminal elements, are aroused to the kind of insane passion which war kindles in human beings.
The unhappy fascination which this vile woman exercised over his majesty increased with time; and though his ministers declared a suitable marriage would reform his ways, his courtiers concluded he had no intention of abandoning his mistress in favor of his wife.
For a broad, roomy nose endowed with a keen pituitary membrane, it would have been a curious sport to discover and investigate the provenience and the species of all the vile odors comprising that fetid stench, which was an inalienable characteristic of the establishment.
The rugged patriot could murder his wife because she had betrayed herself and her child to her country's enemies, but he knew nothing of those crimes that pervert nature, and those principles that would refine the vile abuse into a philosophy of life.
He becomes, before long, the admirer of the aristocracy and the Prime Minister of the Prince, and is ready to devote all his energies to the defense of the privileged orders, to the repression of the vile democracy, and the silencing of Radical orators.
He praises their intelligence, contentment, fortitude, good nature, generosity; but condemns their filthy habits, their inveterate habit of mockery and ridicule, their fierce cruelty towards enemies, their disposition to utter slander, their deceitfulness, gluttony, intemperance, vile language, and impudent habits of begging.
Woe to us when, bold avengers of public contempt, we dare boast of loving a vile creature, and impudently parade such love, as though intending by our arrogance to impose silence on indignant decency, or by our insolence to act as pedestal for the offended paramour!
And they, after a displeased stare at the stalwart frame which obscured the cheering glow they had hitherto monopolized, resumed a muttered conversation; of which, as well as of the vile modicum that refreshed their lips, the man took the lion's share.
Emancipation goes further, and claims that nowhere on the American continent is the white laborer free from the vile comparison and vile influences of slavery, and that it should be abolished for the sake of the Union and for the sake of all white men.
They are not the only people who are usurers, gladiators, and followers of mean and scandalous occupations, nor are they anywhere a majority of such, but considering their general numbers, they contribute perhaps more than their proportion to the aggregate of the vile.
Expectoration was her pet abomination, and she was inclined to think that this "most vile and universal habit of chewing tobacco" was the cause of a remarkable peculiarity in the male physiognomy of Americans, the almost uniform thinness and compression of their lips.
A kerosene lamp, to be sure, is not often a beautiful or poetical object, but with the right kind of care the vile odor may be suppressed, and though this involves an additional burden for the housekeeper, light is too essential for the work to be grudged.
Cried I, 'the name of the Prince de Maulear, which has been pure and honored for so many centuries, made vile and disgraced by a miserable debt of sixty thousand francs, a sum once scarcely to be considered as a fraction of the revenues of my family!'
Even more vile, as being practiced by a civilized European nation, was the Italian practice of castrating boys to prevent the natural development of the voice, in order to train them as adult soprano singers, such as might formerly be heard in the Sistine chapel.
Surely, if motives only are in question, I have no reason to reproach the government which has effected this useful reduction; much less still will I seek to diminish its merit by miserable criticisms upon matters of detail, the vile pasturage of the daily press.
Our fathers received him into their narrow cabin, and, for many days, in the absence of his wife and daughter, by day, and night, amid the noxious filth of a vile disease, freely bestowed upon him their services, as most assiduous and exceedingly solicitous attendants.
The vile practices, the monstrous impudence, the cruel rapacity and enormous gains of the obscene tribe of quacks, together with the mischief they do, and the ruin they work, would require much more space to adequately ventilate than we can devote to it here.
The assurances of the vile crew which surrounded him soon made that fear wear off, and when he plucked up the courage to return to his palace, he might himself have been amazed at the effusion of infamous loyalty and venal acclamation with which he was received.
His treachery to the Royal cause, therefore, only purchased him the liberty of compounding for his estate at a less fine than was extorted from persons of untarnished fidelity; and he was laid by as an instrument equally mean and vile, incapable of further use.
It gradually hardens the moral faculties, renders obtuse the perception of right and wrong in human actions, weighs everything in the balances of worldly policy, and ends most generally, in the practical adoption of the vile maxim, "that the end sanctifies the means."
Thanks to a circumstance you are doubtless acquainted with, I am obliged to assume the grave airs of a mentor touching an incident which, since you have so happily escaped the vile snare laid for you by Countess Sarah, scarcely merits being treated with so much importance.
Not to pass the first is to be vile, and the highest degrees qualify for all the offices of state; but Chinese education means, after reading and writing, and moral precepts of Confucius, little beside a knowledge of Chinese ancient history and literature.
Adieu, my dear sir; never reckon the degree of my regard by the regularity of my correspondence, for besides the vile diseases of laziness and procrastination, which have always beset me, I have had of late both pain and languor sufficient to justify my silence.
It was not because they derived vermin from so uninviting a source that they thought contemptuously of them, but, on the contrary, because they thought thus, because the nature of vermin appeared to them so vile, they imagined an origin corresponding to this nature, a vile origin.
He stood about six feet, his figure was extremely well proportioned, and in addition to these merits his carriage had the easy elegance which the flow of the billow and the heave of the deck infuse into all human figures not radically vile and deformed.
In smells, the vilest of the vile, including the acrid variety that cuts the nostrils like a razor, Constantinople stands forever and alone on a plinth of infamy, and no language that can be dragged into the arena of expression can be utilized to describe them.
This malignant vice is not above the village gossip and the vile tongue of common slander, but it has been especially the method of gamblers in the most sacred social interests, and of demagogues trying to control the election of officers and legislators for our government.
At the slightest provocation, they would fly into a rage, calling every vile and profane name in the vocabulary of a trooper, sometimes actually mixing in nasty brawls that would leave marks upon their faces and bodies; added hurts to their already over-abused persons.
No one, indeed, can look for a grace so extraordinary, but every one who has charge of others, especially of the young, should take every means suggested by wisdom and experience to preserve them from contact with persons already infected with this vile pestilence.
These unfortunate beings see no incongruity between the pious phrases that they pour out at one moment and their vile and obscene language in the next; neither do they show repentance for past misconduct when they are convicted of crimes, however abominable these may be.
For if that in which each thing finds its good is plainly more precious than that whose good it is, by your own estimation ye put yourselves below the vilest of things, when ye deem these vile things to be your good: nor does this fall out undeservedly.
He was soon familiar in and about the mansion and the surrounding grounds and was given many privileges, and the dignitary seemed to like him because he did not meddle with his vile conduct, and the ladies who frequented this place also seemed to admire him.
Some are working for their own vile ends behind their rows of books, and these are the worst of all, because they esteem literature merely as merchandise, and not at its real value; and this new fashionable infliction becomes another engine for the arts of avarice.
Instead of vile insinuations and falsehoods being spread among the people, in regard to their rulers, in order to prepare their minds for the reception of that form of government which the Federal Convention may propose, sentiments the very reverse ought to be propagated.
I railed at early education, and resolved that acquired knowledge hurts a man's natural faculties; for if I had not received the first rudiments of education, I should not have been bothered with the vile couplet, and should have been able to do something on my own account.
Frank, open, and above the meanness of deception himself, and consequently never searching for duplicity and treachery in those around him, he more than once suffered from the vile ingratitude of men who have been cherished by his bounty and upheld by his influence.
To supplant the present race of journalistic prostitutes, who are making many of our newspapers as foul in morals, as low in tone, and as vile in utterance as even the worst of the French press, might well be the ambition of leading thinkers in any of our universities.
The little wizened man fairly shrieked the name and, leaping to his feet, bounded about the room like an animated rubber ball, while from his lips poured a steady stream of vile epithets, mingled with every curse and gem of profanity known to two languages.
The sweat brake out on me when I beheld him, and mine eyes stand full of tears for memory of Odysseus, for he too, methinks, is clad in such vile raiment as this, and is wandering among men, if haply he yet lives and sees the sunlight.
I could see them, as he evoked their memory, since the beginning of the world, surging round us in that Eastern night, girls, beautiful girls, with vile souls, who, like the lower animals, who know nothing of the age of the male, are docile to senile desires.
Two, three, or perhaps half a dozen years they would maintain their integrity, and then corruption would seethe, the vile would snatch the reins of government, the good would be oppressed, and contention and war, with all their horrors, would again reign supreme.
This comforting assurance, however, is not shared in by the women, whom, excepting those who are the wives of men of the better class, are brought over by a vile class of traders, and sold as chattels, or slaves, having no relation to the six companies.
Nothing could more plainly show the corrupting influences of slavery, upon all within its reach, than this spectacle of a noble, religious institution, prostituted to the vile work of defending oppression, and, in the zeal of its advocacy, blasphemously degrading the Savior into a self-made slave!
The country is most curious, great slabs of stone lying about in a promiscuous fashion as if it had once rained them, and the path was certainly the most vile of the whole trip, which is putting it as strongly as possible. I have since learned differently.
Whether he felt his end approaching, or whether he was sick of vile pleasures which he had recklessly pursued from the age of fifteen, he now, though only thirty years of age, retired for a time to a convent, and was looked on as a penitent and devotee.
The most splendid dreams of the most exalted visionaries would be more than fulfilled: everything true and lovely and of good report would be ratified and confirmed: everything false and vile would be changed and purified, and nothing to hurt or destroy or defile would remain.
If there is reason of complaint on this head, it ought to be looked into by those at the helm; for nothing can be more vile than for underlings to abuse the benevolence of the public, or their superiors, by sinking, abridging, or delaying public or private benefits.
If men's titles were to be tried before a true court of conscience, where false swearing, and a thousand vile artifices, (that are well known, and can hardly be avoided in human courts of justice) would avail nothing; how many would be ejected with infamy and disgrace?
The poor sinner beholds himself vile and wretched, is in a manner constrained to detest himself; and finding his state so horrible, casts himself in his desperation into the arms of his Savior, and plunges into the healing fountain, and comes forth "white as wool."
They would have seen him eventually entering saloons in the slum quarters; have seen him set upon, beaten, kicked and thrown into the streets, a poor worthless cuss, too vile, even now, for any of his former cronies to recognize, had they chanced across him.
Hugo proceeds to set forth the scheme, rather than the substance, of the arts and sciences, pausing occasionally to admonish the reader to hold no science vile, since knowledge always is good; and he points out that all knowledge hangs together in a common coherency.
Vile and detestable as have been the monsters of antiquity, the world still contains their parallels; and if they languish in obscurity, if they have not attained a celebrity equally atrocious, it is because they possess not equal facilities for the display of their real character and propensities.
I am convinced that you were not to blame, but those two gentlemen whom you have just named, they acted like vile blackguards, like true bar-room loafers; it doesn't surprise me on their part, and in a moment I will tell you my intentions with regard to them.
Whether she would not be a very vile matron, and justly thought either mad or foolish, that should give away the necessaries of life from her naked and famished children, in exchange for pearls to stick in her hair, and sweetmeats to please her own palate?
From certain querulous complaints later, it is plain that Whitman was too ignorant to gauge the atrocious results to himself and his reputation of his daring; but the same ignorance that allowed him to use scores of vile neologisms, in this one instance stood him in good stead.
Feudal disdain of all that lay beneath chivalric service, however, has done its work, and we all now speak, not merely as if these terms implied that which was mean and despicable in outward condition, but that which also was morally depraved and vile.
Sad however must have been the case of this country, when such vile tricks could take, or succeed, even with the most enlightened part of its population; and sadder still must be our case, if we are not yet proof against equally vile and palpable impositions.
Some impaled, some buried alive, some burned in houses with the help of kerosene, pregnant women ripped up, children seized by the hair to have the head lopped off as if it were a worthless bud, hundreds of women turned over to the vile soldiery with sequence of terrible slaughter.
The boy looked uncomfortable, and furtively dropped an unpleasant smelling quid which he had picked up as a weapon of offense, and very offensive it was; but another lad appropriated it instantly and sniffed at it, smiling widely afterwards as if approving hugely of the vile odor.
I am about to perform the rounds of the encampment, to place trusty men on the watch, in case the ruffians, who have this day attempted so vile an outrage on my daughter, should be excited by revenge at her liberation to attack us under cover of the night.
Another type of the young country man unworthy of the company and companionship of the young woman is the one who is known by the men of the community as being habituated to the use of vile and indecent language, or to the practice of drinking intoxicants.
In storms of public misfortunes, or in crises of personal adversity, the tomb is often the only refuge for noble hearts; it, at any rate, is impregnable and quiet: there one can brave accusers and the instruments of despotism, who are as vile as the accusers themselves!
I was not long, therefore, in recognizing the fellow again when, during my stroll about town, he suddenly bobbed up noiselessly out of the night and, after bawling a mouthful of vile language after me, slipped away again with the information that he would fix me yet.
Miss Harrington, his daughter, who played upon the harpsichord, and by the very little I could sometimes hear, I believe very well, complained that she had never touched so vile an instrument, and that she was quite disturbed at being obliged to play upon it.
Since we came with a warlike attitude, and it was the first time that an armed Spanish force set foot on the mainland, was it right for us to endure insults, abuse, contempt, and open affronts from a so vile race as they are, and before all these pagans?
Where the woodlands were lovelier, the gorge deepest, and the colors of the young hornbeam most tender, they had clapped down two vile hostelries of wood and glass, and a village that lived by selling turned wood and glass inlay things to the tourist.
I choose you, because, in the first place, I am so vile a thing that no punishment is severe enough for me; and, in the second, Fate has acquitted herself so brilliantly in regard to my humble self that I feel a certain satisfaction in giving her all she wants.
Let this cold brutality, this savage butchery of their honest noble-hearted compatriots live in the memory of Italians, and give their consciences no peace while they leave their magnificent city a prey to the foreigner and to the vile priests, who use it as a den of infamy.
Annoyed by such an incomprehensible reception, she replied in the same fashion; but crushed finally by the strength of numbers of her enemies, and seeing that several of the men were joining in the attack on her, contributing loud guffaws and vile names, she retired defeated.
I have always thought it ought to be the reverse, because misfortune, whatever it may be, ought to inspire some sort of respect; but the vile fellow who condemns himself voluntarily and as a trade to the position of a slave seems to me contemptible in the highest degree.
Virtue is a comparative estate, when all is said; and before we can find that Roderigo was vile, that he deserves unqualified condemnation for his conduct, we must ascertain that he was more or less exceptional in his license, that he was less scrupulous than his fellows.
The sugar trade was at its zenith, and although the Spanish administration was vile, the governors rapacious, and the taxation preposterous, colossal fortunes were made by the Cuban planters, and the name of the island was synonymous with the idea of wealth and riotous living.
He had never entered one of those fetid slums of a great city in which, too often, murder is done, never sickened with the physical nausea of death in its most revolting aspect, when some unhappy wretch's foul body serves only to further pollute air already vile.
He who is suspected of being rich is exposed to numberless vexations on the part of the vile satellites of tyranny, who soon find out some apparent pretext for confiscating a part or the whole of his property, or depriving him of life, should he dare to offer resistance.
Catholicism is a vile deceiver and a rank hypocrite, therefore we must diligently watch her serpentine movements, for she will appear where you least expect her, as she wraps about her the American flag and other symbols of patriotism and goes about as a lamb in wolf's clothing.
More than one vile scapegrace had been forced to reform, in spite of his privileges; and in certain places where the peasants, driven to desperation, had rid themselves of their overlord, the law had not dreamt of interfering, nor had the relatives dared to demand redress.
Let a hoarse, beery voice, chant slang words to a melody of Mozart, and the next time you hear the melody, it is as fresh and beautiful as if it had never been turned "to such vile purpose;" but it is not so with the beautiful creations of impassioned fancy.
It is to be hoped that these prompt measures will put a stop to similar disturbances in our public worship, and also prove a warning to other priests not to turn infidels against the doctrines of the New Testament, and then use such vile measures against the truth.
The kings lived each with several wives and concubines, murdering each other and committing every crime; while the queens caused those who opposed their power to be assassinated, poisoned even their own sons, and sowed dissensions on all sides, leading as vile lives as their husbands.
Many of these addresses are flavored with half contemptuous, half vicious and altogether impudent and vile sneers at men, and assertions of masculine inferiority, which could not have been readily displayed but by those familiar with households whose men habitually receive at home but scant respect.
If the riches and power of the world were to be always in the hands of the virtuous part of mankind, it would seem, according to our human conceptions, that they would produce more good than in those of the vile and grovelling mortals, who often possess them.
The chief events recorded in the annals of the Western Barbarians for many ages, and even to this time, have been only bloody wars, massacres, and vile intrigues, springing out of these conflicts: horrible crimes, again and again repeated, and under circumstances too dreadful for belief.
I am also, as it chances, the officer in command of this palace, which we took this morning by assault and by arrangement with most of your Greek soldiers, having learned from your confidential lady, Martina, of the vile deed you were about to work on the General Olaf.
That the converse case may happen, that that reviled and despised thing, a husband, may also have reason to desire relief from a wife whose angelic qualities and vast superiority to his own vile male self he fails to appreciate, never seems to enter into the calculation at all.
It is so easy for humanity to get used to wretched homes and vile environments, so easy to get accustomed to dirt, thick air, and insanitary conditions, that one does not wonder that poor people who have lived for years under such conditions prefer those conditions to any other.
Rousseau, though a deist in theory, rejected the deist conclusion, that whatever is, is right; and consequently the problem of how it can be that men, who are naturally so good, are in fact so vile, remained a difficulty, only slurred over by his fluent metaphysics about freewill.
A virtuous Frenchman would, therefore, much rather be considered a vile reprobate than be laughed at, and it is quite certain that a ban of being ludicrous always falls on any playwright who has been (theatrically speaking) 'damned'; and he never shakes it off in all his lifetime.
The butter is most important, as the best variety that can be got up country is extremely nasty; the worst is unutterably vile, though it is quite possible to acquire almost a liking for the peculiarities of the better kind after starvation has stared you in the face.
That can run readily over a tedious list of famous personages, and calumniate such as will not, with them, celebrate their memories with extravagant and superfluous praises, whilst they make it laudable to act the contrary: and none so ready a way to become vile, as not to be vicious?