Word: wretched
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...again, some war and reconstruction embittered young hotblood oversteps himself. In Horizons West, for instance, Robert Ryan runs verily amuck when a money-grubbing, lecherous, mortgage-foreclosing carpetbagger slaps his face. He shoots the wretch, takes over his profitable rackets, and with great native ability builds them to new oppressive high. Naturally, he gets his come-uppance, but not at Union hands. His wizened Pappy and loving step-brother help an irate citizen gun him down in the street. But note: he sent another Yankee to the Happy Bucket Shop before...
...weak, well-meaning man of the world, truckling where he has to, lording it where he can, glad to do a kindness if you'll wait till after supper, parish-wise and heaven-foolish all day long. The wicked nun is not simply wicked, but a believable wretch who got that way partly through her own vanity, partly because she was hideously tricked by her father into a life she had no call for. Manzoni's novel has sizable literary faults, e.g., the narrative is clogged, especially toward the end, with long passages of unabsorbed history...
...What proof do Mrs. Senter and the Women's Club of Denver have that a man who commits a sex crime is a "wretch [who] cannot control his impulses." This is the belief of the uneducated and the ignorant. I am sure that many psychiatrists will agree that this impulse is one of the minor ones caused by our complex, nerve-racking society...
From these deeps Cowper never rose again. A "secret negative" forbade him even to pray. He walked the cliff edges, hoping against hope that he would fall; but such easy exit was denied him. "Oh wretch!" he groaned, "to whom death and life are alike impossible!" In April of 1800 his sturdy physique mercifully collapsed at last, and the release of death came to William Cowper...
...There will be some who will talk about the inviolability of the human body," the club conceded. "But what about the victims of these criminals? If the sex urge is such that the wretch, cannot control his impulses . . . let's save him from himself and the gas chamber...