Vulgar words in A Tale of a Tub (Page 1)
This book at a glance
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~ ~ ~ Sentence 101 ~ ~ ~
If I should venture, in a windy day, to affirm to your Highness that there is a large cloud near the horizon in the form of a bear, another in the zenith with the head of an ass, a third to the westward with claws like a dragon; and your Highness should in a few minutes think fit to examine the truth, it is certain they would be all chanced in figure and position, new ones would arise, and all we could agree upon would be, that clouds there were, but that I was grossly mistaken in the zoography and topography of them.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 452 ~ ~ ~
But now all this he cunningly shades under the following allegory: That the Nauplians in Argia learned the art of pruning their vines by observing that when an ass had browsed upon one of them, it thrived the better and bore fairer fruit.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 456 ~ ~ ~
For so Herodotus tells us expressly in another place how a vast army of Scythians was put to flight in a panic terror by the braying of an ass.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 472 ~ ~ ~
For it has been observed, both among ancients and moderns, that a true critic has one quality in common with a whore and an alderman, never to change his title or his nature; that a grey critic has been certainly a green one, the perfections and acquirements of his age being only the improved talents of his youth, like hemp, which some naturalists inform us is bad for suffocations, though taken but in the seed.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 513 ~ ~ ~
A third invention was the erecting of a whispering-office for the public good and ease of all such as are hypochondriacal or troubled with the cholic, as likewise of all eavesdroppers, physicians, midwives, small politicians, friends fallen out, repeating poets, lovers happy or in despair, bawds, privy-counsellors, pages, parasites and buffoons, in short, of all such as are in danger of bursting with too much wind.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 514 ~ ~ ~
An ass's head was placed so conveniently, that the party affected might easily with his mouth accost either of the animal's ears, which he was to apply close for a certain space, and by a fugitive faculty peculiar to the ears of that animal, receive immediate benefit, either by eructation, or expiration, or evomition.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 521 ~ ~ ~
For Peter would put in a certain quantity of his powder pimperlim-pimp, after which it never failed of success.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 600 ~ ~ ~
In copying the will, they had met another precept against whoring, divorce, and separate maintenance; upon which, their next work was to discard their concubines and send for their wives {99c} .
~ ~ ~ Sentence 919 ~ ~ ~
He walks duly in one pace, entreats your penny with due gravity and ceremony, talks much of hard times, and taxes, and the whore of Babylon, bars up the wooden of his cell constantly at eight o'clock, dreams of fire, and shoplifters, and court-customers, and privileged places.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 955 ~ ~ ~
I therefore fly for justice and relief into the hands of that great rectifier of saddles and lover of mankind, Dr. Bentley, begging he will take this enormous grievance into his most modern consideration; and if it should so happen that the furniture of an ass in the shape of a second part must for my sins be clapped, by mistake, upon my back, that he will immediately please, in the presence of the world, to lighten me of the burthen, and take it home to his own house till the true beast thinks fit to call for it.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 1,000 ~ ~ ~
He bore a strange kind of appetite to snap-dragon and to the livid snuffs of a burning candle {146a} , which he would catch and swallow with an agility wonderful to conceive; and by this procedure maintained a perpetual flame in his belly, which issuing in a glowing steam from both his eyes, as well as his nostrils and his mouth, made his head appear in a dark night like the skull of an ass wherein a roguish boy hath conveyed a farthing-candle, to the terror of his Majesty's liege subjects.