United States or Grenada ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Although the clergy had for more than a century the sole control of the religious education of the people, the people had not become religious. They had become very ignorant and very fanatical. The upper classes were anything but religious; they were given up for the most part to frivolity and libertinage. The examples of their kings had been freely followed.
She was inclined, in her austere, grumbling kindliness, to forgive a great deal to the studying youths, whom she had served for nigh unto forty years. She forgave drunkenness, card playing, scandals, loud singing, debts; but, alas! she was a virgin, and there was only one thing her continent soul could not abide libertinage.
Let me add, however, that if these women were a little riotous during the Easter holidays, they are dilletantes only. In this city no female professors of immorality and open libertinage, disgraceful at once, and pernicious to society, are permitted to range the streets in quest of prey; to the horror of all thinking people, and the ruin of all heedless ones.
Poets must sing, and in order that they sing, they must adore; so men actually begin to seek out, and adore and make themselves happy and wretched about women from whom they can hope only social distinctions; and this purely æsthetic passion goes on by the side nay, rather on the top, of their humdrum, conjugal life or loosest libertinage.
'That which tempts me out on these journeys, continues this foreign philosopher, speaking in his usual ambiguous terms of his rambling excursive habits and eccentricities of proceedings, glancing also, perhaps, at his outlandish tastes 'that which tempts me out on these journeys, is unsuitableness to the present manners of OUR STATE. I could easily console myself with this corruption in reference to the public interest, but not to my own: I am in particular too much oppressed: for, in my neighbourhood we are of late by the long libertinage of our civil wars grown old in so riotous a form of state, that in earnest 'tis a wonder how it can subsist.
The fact is that in the refined epoch, so-called, in which we live, every description of non-legitimized union in love becomes a libertinage, and the woman who abandons herself to it becomes a profane idol. Whether she be a duchess, or a foolish maid, you may write verses over her fall, but you cannot forget it. The worm is in the fruit.
All the world knows what Rousseau said: "There must always be a period of libertinage in life either in one state or another. It is an evil leaven which sooner or later ferments." Now what mother of a family is there who would expose her daughter to the risk of this fermentation when it has not yet taken place?
In them we behold the true model of the French soldier; and it is this kindness, mingled with the austerity of a warrior, this attachment of the chief to the soldier, which the latter is so capable of appreciating, and an impregnable honor, which serve to distinguish our soldiers from all others, and not, as foreigners think, presumption, braggadocio, and libertinage, which latter are ever the characteristics of the parasites of glory alone.
The attempt to prepare man for his duties in social life with morals and religion left out, is not only a failure, but a crime. Yes, it is not only a failure, but a crime of such magnitude, that society has already begun to suffer its consequences in a demoralization and general libertinage of the most shameful kind.
The vices of Louis' court were at least veiled by a certain regal dignity, and the Grand Monarque was always keenly sensitive, and at times nobly responsive, to any attack upon the honour of France; but under the regent, libertinage and indifference to national honour were flagrant and shameless. The Abbé Dubois, a minister worthy of his prince, was, says St.
Word Of The Day