Pernicious

Moan, moan; Moan, Cybele, moan; for thy pernicious babes Have chang’d a god into an aching palsy.

That, the proof would go back five years, and would show the prisoner already engaged in these pernicious missions, within a few weeks before the date of the very first action fought between the British troops and the Americans.

1843, comments on this passage as follows: “That great patron and Coryphaeus of this tribe, Niccolò Machiavel, laid down this for a master rule in his political scheme: ‘That the show of religion was helpful to the politician, but the reality of it hurtful and pernicious.’ ” ↩︎ Ferdinand of Aragon.

O sacred hunger of pernicious gold!

This is headed “A Word of Caution.” It begins by mentioning the “pernicious doctrines of Paine,” the first being “that there is no God” (sic,) then proceeds to adduce evidences of divine existence taken from Paine’s works.

He frowned as one does when presented with an especially pernicious problem, then brightened.

“They are pernicious, positively pernicious, and yet I can’t give them up!

to be useless, that is to say, pernicious!

(O something pernicious and dread!

Spit on the city of compressed souls and slender breasts, of pointed eyes and sticky fingers— —On the city of the obtrusive, the brazen-faced, the pen-demagogues and tongue-demagogues, the overheated ambitious:— Where everything maimed, ill-famed, lustful, untrustful, over-mellow, sickly-yellow and seditious, festereth pernicious:— —Spit on the great city and turn back!— Here, however, did Zarathustra interrupt the foaming fool, and shut his mouth.— Stop this at once!

You men, you beasts, That quench the fire of your pernicious rage With purple fountains issuing from your veins, On pain of torture, from those bloody hands Throw your mistemper’d weapons to the ground And hear the sentence of your moved prince.

In his youth he visited St. Augustine in Africa, who in one of his books describes him thus:— “There came to me a young monk, in the catholic peace our brother, in age our son, in honor our fellow-presbyter, Orosius, alert in intellect, ready of speech, eager in study, desiring to be a useful vessel in the house of the Lord for the refutation of false and pernicious doctrines, which have slain the souls of the Spaniards much more unhappily than the sword of the barbarians their bodies.” On leaving St. Augustine, he went to Palestine to complete his studies under St. Jerome at Bethlehem, and while there arraigned Pelagius for heresy before the Bishop of Jerusalem.

In fact someone had sent his mother a long anonymous letter to warn her that he was “ruining himself with a married woman,” and the good lady at once conjuring up the eternal bugbear of families, the vague pernicious creature, the siren, the monster, who dwells fantastically in depths of love, wrote to Lawyer Dubocage, his employer, who behaved perfectly in the affair.

Were it I thought death menaced would ensue This my attempt, I would sustain alone The worst, and not persuade thee, rather die Deserted, than oblige thee with a fact Pernicious to thy peace, chiefly assured Remarkably so late of thy so true, So faithful love unequalled; but I feel Far otherwise the event—not death, but life Augmented, opened eyes, new hopes, new joys, Taste so divine, that what of sweet before Hath touched my sense flat seems to this and harsh.

“Sinner that I am!” said Sancho, “then why does your worship put off making it and teaching it to me?” “Peace, friend,” answered Don Quixote; “greater secrets I mean to teach thee and greater favours to bestow upon thee; and for the present let us see to the dressing, for my ear pains me more than I could wish.” Sancho took out some lint and ointment from the alforjas; but when Don Quixote came to see his helmet shattered, he was like to lose his senses, and clapping his hand upon his sword and raising his eyes to heaven, he said, “I swear by the Creator of all things and the four Gospels in their fullest extent, to do as the great Marquis of Mantua did when he swore to avenge the death of his nephew Baldwin (and that was not to eat bread from a tablecloth, nor embrace his wife, and other points which, though I cannot now call them to mind, I here grant as expressed) until I take complete vengeance upon him who has committed such an offence against me.” Hearing this, Sancho said to him, “Your worship should bear in mind, Señor Don Quixote, that if the knight has done what was commanded him in going to present himself before my lady Dulcinea del Toboso, he will have done all that he was bound to do, and does not deserve further punishment unless he commits some new offence.” “Thou hast said well and hit the point,” answered Don Quixote; “and so I recall the oath in so far as relates to taking fresh vengeance on him, but I make and confirm it anew to lead the life I have said until such time as I take by force from some knight another helmet such as this and as good; and think not, Sancho, that I am raising smoke with straw in doing so, for I have one to imitate in the matter, since the very same thing to a hair happened in the case of Mambrino’s helmet, which cost Sacripante so dear.”135 “Señor,” replied Sancho, “let your worship send all such oaths to the devil, for they are very pernicious to salvation and prejudicial to the conscience; just tell me now, if for several days to come we fall in with no man armed with a helmet, what are we to do?

Just about all he could find in its favor was that it paid well and liberated children from the pernicious influence of their parents.

"Far hence be Bacchus' gifts; (the chief rejoin'd;) Inflaming wine, pernicious to mankind, Unnerves the limbs, and dulls the noble mind. Let chiefs abstain, and spare the sacred juice To sprinkle to the gods, its better use. [pg 117] By me that holy office were profaned; Ill fits it me, with human gore distain'd, To the pure skies these horrid hands to raise, Or offer heaven's great Sire polluted praise. You, with your matrons, go! a spotless train, And burn rich odours in Minerva's fane. The largest mantle your full wardrobes hold, Most prized for art, and labour'd o'er with gold, Before the goddess' honour'd knees be spread, And twelve young heifers to her altar led. So may the power, atoned by fervent prayer, Our wives, our infants, and our city spare; And far avert Tydides' wasteful ire, Who mows whole troops, and makes all Troy retire. Be this, O mother, your religious care: I go to rouse soft Paris to the war; If yet not lost to all the sense of shame, The recreant warrior hear the voice of fame. Oh, would kind earth the hateful wretch embrace, That pest of Troy, that ruin of our race!174 Deep to the dark abyss might he descend, Troy yet should flourish, and my sorrows end."

It occasions a general and most pernicious subversion of the fortunes of private people; enriching in most cases the idle and profuse debtor at the expense of the industrious and frugal creditor, and transporting a great part of the national capital from the hands which were likely to increase and improve it, to those which are likely to dissipate and destroy it.