Vulgar words in Brann the Iconoclast — Volume 01 (Page 1)

This book at a glance

ass x 10
bastard x 3
buffoon x 1
damn x 3
half-wit x 3
            
jackass x 3
merde x 2
pimp x 1
scrap x 1
            

Page 1

~   ~   ~   Sentence 133   ~   ~   ~

It is not in accord with our criminal code to damn a woman on the unsupported deposition of a young dude whom she has had arrested for attempted ravishment.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 479   ~   ~   ~

We may deplore this spirit of contention, but to deny its existence were to write one's self down an irremediable ass.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,061   ~   ~   ~

Didn't you hear them say 'damn' and 'Hell's fire' and 'Devil'?

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,109   ~   ~   ~

Nero fiddled while Rome burned; but Jones indulges in the levity of the buffoon while consigning millions of human beings to Hell.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,476   ~   ~   ~

Had Carlyle been born a long-eared ass, he might have been fully approved-- if not altogether appreciated--by Gosse, Froude and other "critic flies."

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,948   ~   ~   ~

It sees evil in everything because its point of view is that of the pimp.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,966   ~   ~   ~

Cambronne answered, 'Merde.'

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,977   ~   ~   ~

I presume that the Philadelphia school board is about on an intellectual and moral parity with the trustees of Baylor--haven't the remotest idea whether merde means maggots or moonshine.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 1,995   ~   ~   ~

We hear the venerated Queen of Prussia repeating from it in her cruel exile, "Wer nie sein Brod mit Thranen ass, Wer nicht die Kummervollen Nachte Auf Seinem Bette weinend sass, Der Kennt euch nicht, ihr himmlischen Machte."

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,177   ~   ~   ~

Such an "ad." would forever damn even the Nashville Banner, or show in the feculent columns of the Kansas City Star like a splotch of soot on the marble face of Raphael's Madonna.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,321   ~   ~   ~

She is the bastard spawn of Heat and Moisture-- was engendered 'mid the unclean ooze of miasmic swamps, in the womb of noisome fens.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,468   ~   ~   ~

How can we mention Abraham, Isaac and Jacob without a curse, or think of a God whose teachings they followed, without horror--unless indeed we take issue with the public and vote Mr. Talmage an ass of the longest-eared variety.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,687   ~   ~   ~

Queen Elizabeth is to this good day the pride of orthodox England--she had more brains than all its other monarchs combined; yet by solemn act of parliament it was decreed that the first bastard born to the "Virgin Queen" should ascend the throne of Britain.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 2,717   ~   ~   ~

When Antony deserted his Roman wife for Egypt's sensuous queen, he quickly became an enervated ass and his name thenceforth was Ichabod.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,013   ~   ~   ~

I am not decrying football--I incline to the view that an occasional rough-and-tumble scrapping match in which there is imminent danger of black eyes, and even of broken bones, is good for a boy I simply point out that as an intellectual game it not only ranks far below chess, billiards and baseball, but does not rise to a parity with pugilism.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,403   ~   ~   ~

Trilby, the child of a bummy preacher and a bastard bar- maid, was born and bred in the slum of the wickedest city in the world.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,412   ~   ~   ~

It was even more ridiculous than the social performance of that other half-wit, Little Billee, in Carrel's atelier.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,416   ~   ~   ~

I do not blame Du Maurier for drawing her as he found--or imagined--her, nor can I blame popular preachers, "able editors" and half-wit women for worshiping the freckled and faulty grisette as a goddess; for does not Carlyle truly tell us that "what we see, and can not see over, is good as Infinity?"

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,489   ~   ~   ~

BALAAM'S ASS.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,498   ~   ~   ~

Finding even the elders unable to decide what should be done with Balaam's Ass--whether it should be turned loose upon the land like another evangelist, or consigned to the flames as a hopeless heretic--I determined to give it the benefit of the doubt.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,523   ~   ~   ~

Although the latter was endowed with the gift of gab it appears to have spoken but once and then at the especial bidding of an angel, which fact leads us to suspect that the voluble jackasses now extant have deteriorated at both ends since the days of their distinguished ancestor--have parted with all their brain as well as with half their legs.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,525   ~   ~   ~

If he ever hired half-starved courtesans a la Parkhurst--to dance the can-can, then hastened into court to file complaint against the very bawds he had filled with booze and dandled naked on his knee; if he called the ladies of his congregation "old sows" after the manner of Sam Jones; if he got himself tried on a charge of heresy or became entangled with some half-wit sister whose religious fervor led her to mistake Levite for the Lord, no record of the shameful circumstance has been preserved.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,562   ~   ~   ~

That may have convinced the ambassadors and bulled the price of curses; for then, as now, it was no uncommon thing for the utterance of an ass to be mistaken for that of an oracle.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,574   ~   ~   ~

The practice of fencing in a nation with a few wild-eyed prophets, or sending a single soldier forth with a hair-trigger hoodoo and the jawbone of a defunct jackass to drive great armies into the earth, gradually fell into disuse--curses and blessings became a drug in the market.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,591   ~   ~   ~

It was accomplished and, as might have been expected, the result was a curious composition; a religious olla-podrida in which the profound wisdom of Zoroaster and the childish superstition of western barbarians, grand morality and monumental absurdity elbow each other like specters in a delirium--in which is heard both "the still small voice" of Omnipotent God and the megalophanous bray of Balaam's Ass.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,605   ~   ~   ~

If we inquire why this is so we are cautioned not to commit blasphemy--some worthy brother of Balaam's Ass bids us beware the Angel of the Lord.

~   ~   ~   Sentence 3,651   ~   ~   ~

Now when a priest or preacher lets slip a curse at those who presume to question the supernal wisdom of his creed, the angels are supposed to flap their wings until Heaven is filled with flying feathers, while every blatant jackass who takes his spiritual fodder at that particular rick unbraids his ears and brays approvingly.

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