"Corrupt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... intermeddler without proper warrant in Government affairs, an unscrupulous dealer in threats and promises amongst public men, a constant menace to sworn servants of the people in their offices of trust, a tempter of the corrupt and a terror to the timid who are delegated to power a remorseless enemy to wholesome legislation, a constant friend to conspirators against the common welfare for private gain—if such a compound of dangerous and insolent qualities merged in one personality, ...
— How Members of Congress Are Bribed • Joseph Moore
... could by signs—pointing in the direction of the Andes, and then showing how we had glided down in the canoe. While they were speaking, I thought I detected a few words which sounded like Spanish; and listening more attentively, I found that the eldest of the two was speaking the lingua geral—a corrupt Portuguese, mixed with Indian words, generally used throughout the whole length of the Amazon. It was so like the language Naro and his Indians had employed when speaking to us, that I could make out, ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... exploit them. My point was that Piedmont and the North had been too greedy, had laid hands too rapidly on the South and had risked this damnable quarrel with the Church, without knowing what they were running their heads into. And in consequence they found themselves—in spite of rivers of corrupt expenditure—without men, or money, or credit to work their big new machine with; while the Church was always there, stronger than ever for the grievance they had presented her with, and turned into an enemy with whom it was no longer possible to parley. ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... The corrupt morals of the sixteenth century followed in the wake of social intercourse by travel, literature, art and styles ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... man's home. He was a sojourner here, a wanderer. His citizenship was in Heaven. He was a pilgrim passing thru a strange and weary land, and the only purpose of the pilgrimage was a preparation for the life to come. The nature of man himself was corrupt. The world around him was evil. Alone and unaided he was powerless. He was lost both for this world and the next. The storms of life were about him, the great waves were ready to engulf him. But the church, as a lifeboat, was thrust ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... troublesome. The majority in Parliament had carried the national church so far in the direction of Puritanism that its excesses had brought about a strong reactionary feeling. Parliament had already sat for more than ten years, hence called the "Long Parliament," and had become corrupt and despotic. Under these circumstances, one modification after another was made in the form of government until in 1653 Oliver Cromwell, the commander of the army and long the most influential man in Parliament, ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... concerning the mysteries of God's salvation is to be led into error, because the intellect can not fathom the things of God. We do now emphatically say, according to God's established law, that no unregenerated heart can have a comprehension or conviction of a corrupt moral nature and its purification. Why? Because transgression stands between it and purity. The awakened guilty soul knows nothing but its guilt, and for forgiveness only does it plead. After being pardoned, ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... by the Macedonians of corrupt practices, is condemned by his father, Torquatus, and takes ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... which he had made the day before; let him be no further heard, and let him be taken back whence he came, the terms of his safe-conduct being carefully observed; but let him be forbidden to preach, nor suffer to corrupt the people with his vile doctrine. "And as we have before said, it is our will that he should be proceeded against as ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... 1992 Albania ended 46 years of xenophobic Communist rule and established a multiparty democracy. The transition has proven difficult as corrupt governments have tried to deal with high unemployment, a dilapidated infrastructure, widespread gangsterism, and disruptive political opponents. International observers judged legislative elections in 2001 to be acceptable and a step toward democratic development, ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... place to the new; And God fulfils himself in many ways, Lest one good custom should corrupt the world." ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... also that he would shift his flag into a frigate, if necessary, to watch them better. It is by no means obligatory to accept these gross aspersions as significant of anything worse than the suspiciousness prevalent throughout the Navy, traceable ultimately to a corrupt administration of the Admiralty. The latter, like the government of 1756, was open to censure through political maladministration; every one feared that blame would be shifted on to him, as it had been on to Byng,—who deserved it; and not only so, but ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... of happiness, even though they may have departed a step or two from the stern maxims of worldly prudence. The bread earned by honourable toil is sweeter than the bread of idleness; and mutual love and domestic calm are treasures far preferable to the possessions rust can corrupt and ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... hospitable region would, if carried out, cause their extermination in two or three generations. Our variable climate they could not endure, as they are keenly susceptible to pulmonary and bronchial affections. Our civilization, too, would only soften and corrupt them, as their racial inheritance is one of physical hardship; while to our complex environment they could not adjust themselves without losing the very childlike qualities which constitute their chief virtues. To Christianize them would be quite impossible; but the cardinal ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... in the world for a lazy boy or girl. Nobody wants them. Boys who hate to work are the kind that loaf around poolrooms and pollute the air with vile cigarette smoke and language which bespeaks an empty mind and a corrupt heart. ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... shrewdest lieutenants and a labor leader of great influence in the unions of factory workers. Among those in "the know" it was understood that Rivers could come nearer to delivering the labor vote than any man in Remsen City. He knew whom to corrupt with bribes and whom to entrap by subtle appeals to ignorant prejudice. As a large part of his herd was intensely Catholic, Rivers was a devout Catholic. To quote his own phrase, used in a company on whose discretion he could count, "Many's ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... ever asking any reward for them. The country has been benefited by them, and I make myself happy in the knowledge of that benefit. It is, however, proper for me to add that the mere independence of America, were it to have been followed by a system of government modeled after the corrupt system of the English government, would not have interested me with the unabated ardor it did. It was to bring forward and establish a representative system of government. As the work itself will show, that was the leading principle with ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... to some larger town, where his vices may be hidden in the crowd. Many of the parents have expressed how much gratification they have felt, that by reason of the isolated situation they enjoyed as a community, they had become so completely separated from the corrupt influences of music ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... Baies, mountaines, springs, riuers, homocks, valleis, hils & townes (because that being ignorant of our language, he was not able to read those things aright, which he receiued from our countreymen) he had rather (I say) depraue & corrupt them all, then learne of the Islanders themselues, which at that time, namely in the yeere 1585, liued in the vniuersitie of Hafnia, or Copen Hagen, how euery thing ought to be read and written. And we esteeme ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... association of women which they called the Public Service League. Nothing quite like it ever existed before. It is a political but non-partisan association of women, pledged to work for the civic betterment of Denver, pledged to fight the corrupt politicians, determined that the city government shall be well administered even if the women have to take over the offices themselves. The League is, in effect, a secret society of women. It has an inflexible rule that its proceedings ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... I had occasion to remark that dignitaries, &c. frequently wore wider scarfs than other clergymen (not however that the narrower one was ever that slender strip so improperly and servilely adopted of late from the corrupt custom of Rome, which has curtailed all ecclesiastical vestments); so that when the discussion upon this subject was revived by others some years ago, it was one to which my mind had been long familiar, independently ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 179. Saturday, April 2, 1853. • Various
... Archelaus as having occurred 'quite lately' is only a fiction, probably suggested by the Gorgias, where the story of Archelaus is told, and a similar phrase occurs;—ta gar echthes kai proen gegonota tauta, k.t.l. There are several passages which are either corrupt or extremely ill-expressed. But there is a modern interest in the subject of the dialogue; and it is a good example of a short spurious work, which may be attributed to the second or ...
— Eryxias • An Imitator of Plato
... imagination is differently affected: though they are considered by the ignorant as the chief attributes of things, inasmuch as they believe that everything was created for the sake of themselves; and, according as they are affected by it, style it good or bad, healthy or rotten and corrupt. For instance, if the motion which objects we see communicate to our nerves be conducive to health, the objects causing it are styled beautiful; if a contrary motion be ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... squeeze here and a pull there—the Christianity of the first three or four centuries might be made to fit, or seem to fit, pretty well into the Anglican scheme. So the miracles, from Justin say to Jerome, might be recognised; while, in later times, the Church having become "corrupt"—that is to say, having pursued one and the same line of development further than was pleasing to Anglicans—its alleged miracles must needs be shams ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... not rebellion? Some rose for the plunder of their masters— some from ambition—some from revenge—many to escape from a condition they had not patience to endure. All this was corrupt; and the corruption, though bred out of slavery, as the fever from the marshes, grieved my soul as if I had not known the cause. But now, knowing the cause, and others (knowing it also) having decreed that slavery is at an end, and given the sanction ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... pries into its secret recesses, discovering it in its lurking holes, and drags it forth to public detestation. If a tyrannically disposed prince, supported by an unprincipled, profligate minister, backed by a notoriously corrupt Parliament, were to cast about for means to secure such a triple tyranny, I know of no means he could devise so effectual for that purpose as the bill now upon ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... behind the mist, "this is the text I leave with you: 'Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal.' That text I read in the ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... Caribbean islands to be colonized by Europeans due chiefly to the fierce resistance of the native Caribs. France ceded possession to Great Britain in 1763, which made the island a colony in 1805. In 1980, two years after independence, Dominica's fortunes improved when a corrupt and tyrannical administration was replaced by that of Mary Eugenia CHARLES, the first female prime minister in the Caribbean, who remained in office for 15 years. Some 3,000 Carib Indians still living on Dominica are the only pre-Columbian population remaining ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... he smiled, "laying up riches where moth and rust do corrupt." He walked to the door and stood, hands in pockets, looking out over the plains. Then he turned ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... in the execution of my duty! Certainly not. Now I'll tell you what I'll do, to teach you to corrupt the King's officer. I'll put you under arrest until the execution's over. You just stand there; and don't let me see you as much as move from that spot until you're let. (With a swift wink at her he points to the corner of the square behind the gallows on his right, and turns ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... of the two sexes: Men shall turn effeminate, and women manly; wives shall domineer, and husbands obey; ladies shall ride a horseback, dress'd like cavaliers; princes and nobles appear in night-rails and petticoats; men shall squeak upon theatres with female voices, and women corrupt virgins; lords shall knot and cut paper; and even the northern people.........:" A Greek phrase (which for modesty's sake I forbear to translate) which denotes a ...
— The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers • Jonathan Swift
... Christ. That they should belong to Christ—as the bride to the bridegroom—was his jealous anxiety. But others had come in betwixt them and him—nay, betwixt them and Christ, as he believed—and sought to seduce and corrupt their minds by divers doctrines. "I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the ...
— Religion and Theology: A Sermon for the Times • John Tulloch
... which no one has as yet extracted, or I think ever will extract, any good meaning: Argal, {267} it is corrupt. Now it appears to me that the critic who proposed to read shows, came very near the truth, and would have hit it completely if he had retained Alcides', for it is the genitive with robe ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 203, September 17, 1853 • Various
... foot-notes, I think it would be an improvement. All the world is against me, but it makes me very unhappy to see the Latin names all in Italics, and all mingled with English names in Roman type; but I must bear this burden, for all men of Science seem to think it would corrupt the Latin to dress it up in the same type as poor old English. Well, I am very proud of MY book; but there is one bore, that I do not much like asking people whether they have seen it, and how they like it, for I feel so much identified with it, that such questions ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... a handicap rather than a help, and the great burden of a difficult and momentous mission was thus laid upon an old man of seventy. But no other American could have taken his place. His reputation in France was already made, through his books and inventions and discoveries. To the corrupt and licentious court he was the personification of the age of simplicity, which it was the fashion to admire; to the learned, he was a sage; to the common man he was the apotheosis of all the virtues; to the rabble he was little less than a god. Great ladies sought his smiles; nobles ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... characters of these groups of traders, trappers, bateau-men, and adventurous warriors. It was inevitable that they should borrow many traits from their savage friends and neighbors. Hospitable, but bigoted to their old customs, ignorant, indolent, and given to drunkenness, they spoke a corrupt jargon of the French tongue; the common people were even beginning to give up reckoning time by months and years, and dated events, as the Indians did, with reference to the phenomena of nature, such as the time of the floods, the maturing ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... popery, I think it may properly be called its offspring. Pretentions to regal supremacy in church affairs were never made till a late period, although this interference of papal authority in matters entirely spiritual, does not annul any ecclesiastical power, or prove its doctrines to be corrupt, or its ordinations illegal. It may be justly ranked among the ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... article in the "Voix du Peuple," he had inquired if it were the intention of the authorities to beguile the public much longer with the story of that bomb and that Anarchist whom the police did not arrest. And this time, while undertaking to publish the names of the thirty-two corrupt senators and deputies in a very early issue, he had boldly named Minister Barroux as one who had pocketed a sum of 200,000 francs. Mege would therefore certainly revive his interpellation, which might become dangerous, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... consequences of the vices. He should be too much of a philosopher and artist to remember that he is a respectable citizen. But this is what Dickens never forgets, and he renounces all beauties requiring so corrupt a soil. M. Taine's conclusion upon the whole nevertheless is, that though those triumphs of art which become the property of all the earth have not been his, much has yet been achieved by him. Out of his unequalled observation, his satire, and his ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... suppose that it would also describe in some manner the power symbolized by the two-horned beast—Protestantism—as well as duplicate the description of the ten-horned beast—Catholicism. That the papacy is symbolized in chapter 17 by the corrupt whore sitting on the ten-horned beast, is too plain to need any particular demonstration. The other division of the apostasy is included under the term "harlots," the daughters of the "mother" church. In our interpretation of chapter 14 we showed that the angel clearly ...
— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith
... a corrupt age is the lack of respect children have for parents. This is largely owing to the neglect of teachers. I am heartily thankful I was taught to say 'Yes Ma'am, and 'No, ma'am,' 'Yes, Sir, and No, Sir.' Now it is—'Yah! ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... in consequence of his opposition to the Slave Trade. He was the son of a publican, and rose from an office boy to be an attorney in large practice, and eventually a banker. He was ruined by the stopping of his bank, which, after being for many years under the taxing harrows of the old corrupt bankrupt system, paid twenty shillings in the pound. William Roscoe was a voluminous writer of political pamphlets and poetry, which are now quite forgotten; his literary reputation deservedly rests upon his ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... affections of the people. Simonetta had been borne like a dead goddess through the streets of the city to burial; Lorenzo was already busy with those carnival songs which, as some thought, were written to corrupt the people: the Renaissance had come. "Gladius Domini super terram cite et velociter," thought Savonarola, unable to understand that life from which he had fled into the cloister. It was the first voice that had been raised against the resurrection of ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... this whole world of infinity which laps you round, and which God has made so various, will recall to you the infinite sameness of your soul's life. But at least I shall be there, my Renee, and in me you will find a heart which no social pettiness shall ever corrupt, a heart ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... commenced teaching, was a Bible belonging to Francisco's mother. Out of this book he learned to read; and, as his education advanced, other books were procured. It may appear strange that the very traffic in which his reputed father was engaged did not corrupt the boy's mind; but, accustomed to it from his infancy, he had considered these negroes as another species—an idea fully warranted by the cruelty of the Europeans ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... they have only been deprived during quite recent years. His Grace took occasion to complain of the frequency of such bills, and, being a true patriot, charged the French Government with the despatch of agents to this country especially to corrupt our manners. "He considered it a consequence of the gross immoralities imported of late years into this country from France, the Directory of which country, finding that they were not able to subdue us by their arms, appeared as if they were ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... a Particular Medicament of Proletary-Curation, with which is corrected the venom of Humors; viz. such as boyles up against Nature, in this Man, Acid; in that Man, the Bitter is predominant; in one, what is Saline, in another, what is sharp, grow potent. But, if these Corrupt humors be not without all delay presently expelled out of the Body, by the ordinary Emunctories of Nature either by the Belly, or by Urine of the Bladder, or by the Sweat through the Pores, or by ...
— The Golden Calf, Which the World Adores, and Desires • John Frederick Helvetius
... thou suffer not any ungodly, profane, or heretical books, or discourse in thy house. 'Evil communications corrupt good manners' (1 Cor 15:33). I mean such profane or heretical books, &c., as either tend to provoke to looseness of life, or such as do oppose the fundamentals of the gospel. I know that Christians must be allowed their liberty as to things indifferent; but ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... remember that I thought Namu a paragon, and was proud of the man as one of the first ripe fruits of the mission. And now I was informed that he had fallen in a sort of dependence upon Case. The beginning of it was not corrupt; it began, doubtless, in fear and respect, produced by trickery and pretence; but I was shocked to find that another element had been lately added, that Namu helped himself in the store, and was believed to be deep in Case’s debt. Whatever the trader said, ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cries of despair with which the attending slaves of the caverns greet the distant clamour of every approaching fire-chariot. Admittedly the intention of the device is benevolently conceived, and it is strenuously asserted that many persons of corrupt habits and ill-balanced lives, upon waking unexpectedly while passing through these Beneath Parts, have abandoned the remainder of their journey, and, escaping hastily to the outer air, have from that time onwards led a pure and consistent existence; but, on the other foot, ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... reproach; when divorces were granted on the most frivolous pretexts; when men became monks from despair of finding women of virtue for wives; and when everything indicated a rapid approach of some grand catastrophe which should mingle, in indiscriminate ruin, the masters and the slaves of a corrupt and prostrate world? ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... to so stigmatize him. He first betrayed his benefactor, James, to ally himself with the Prince of Orange; and then, on the pretext of remorse, broke faith with William; acted the part of a spy in his court and camp; offered to corrupt his troops and lead them over to James; and still all was forgotten in the real service which he rendered to his country, and his ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... though as his one real fault, that he can take nothing seriously in heaven or earth, Bernard de Vaudricourt, like all M. Feuillet's favourite young men, so often erring or corrupt, is a man of scrupulous "honour." He has already shown disinterestedness in wishing his rich uncle to marry again. His friends at Varaville think so well-mannered a young man more of a Christian than he really is; and, at all events, he will never ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... great, misguided soul, endowed with every gift of excellence, yet lost in spite of all its gifts. Unbridled passions and bad companionship corrupt his heart, urge him on from crime to crime, until at last he stands at the head of a band of murderers, heaps horror upon horror, and plunges from precipice to precipice in the lowest depths of despair. Great and majestic ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... in cares and in fears, Turn all our tranquill'ty to sighs and to tears? Let 's eat, drink, and play till the worms do corrupt us, 'Tis certain, Post mortem Nulla voluptas. For health, wealth and beauty, wit, learning and sense, Must all come to ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... virtually prisoners as if they were locked up behind jail bars until they have lost all semblance of womanhood; where small boys are taught to solicit for the women of disorderly houses; where there is an organized society of young men whose sole business in life is to corrupt young girls and turn them over to bawdy houses; where men walking with their wives along the street are openly insulted; where children that have adult diseases are the chief patrons of the hospitals and dispensaries; where it is the rule, rather than the exception, that ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... void left by religious faith. Wealth has been pouring into England, and luxury with wealth. Our public journals proclaim, as you may perhaps have seen, that the society of our capital is unusually corrupt. The comic as well as the serious signs of the reaction appear everywhere. A tone of affected cynicism pervades a portion of our high intellect; and a pretended passion for prize-fighting shows that men of culture are weary of civilization, and wish to go back to barbarism for a while. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... accumulating momentum of Christian men throughout the world. For, gentlemen, this is an age in which the principles of men who utter public opinion dominate the world. It makes no difference what is done for the time being. After the struggle is over the jury will sit, and nobody can corrupt that jury. ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... of France liked, and nothing the King of France did not like, for a pension of one hundred thousand pounds a year, which was afterwards doubled. Besides this, the King of France, by means of his corrupt ambassador—who wrote accounts of his proceedings in England, which are not always to be believed, I think—bought our English members of Parliament, as he wanted them. So, in point of fact, during a considerable portion ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... been embittered by the trials that politics, corrupt legislation have brought right onto her. She didn't want nothin' to do with 'em, but they come onto her onexpected and onbeknown, and she feels that she must do everything she can to alter matters. She wants to help make the laws that have such a overpowerin' influence over her. She believes they ...
— Samantha on the Woman Question • Marietta Holley
... held him to be a prophet of extraordinary character; and if his popularity had tended to corrupt the honest simplicity of his heart he would not have borne this testimony to Jesus. But he goes still further in his disavowal of all claim to preferment by confessing and not denying that he is not the Christ. He says: "He must increase, but I must decrease." Jesus was the sun ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... thieves, would have taken their manners, so is your servant hopeful that he might receive instruction in the society of upright men; for he is still a boy, and it is written, that every child is born in the faith of Islam, and his parents corrupt him. The son of Noah, associated with the wicked, lost his power of prophecy; the dog of the Seven Sleepers, following the good, became ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... terror and pity for you. Your expressions are too delicate to give the nicest ear offence, except at him. You paint no scenes but such as make his wickedness odious: and that gentleman, much more lady, must have a very corrupt heart, who could from such circumstances of distress, make any reflections, but what should be to your honour, and in abhorrence of such actions. I am so convinced of this, that by this rule I would ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... It was well known that on reading the will, in which he was nominated co-heir [144] with the excellent wife and most dutiful daughter of Agricola, he expressed great satisfaction, as if it had been a voluntary testimony of honor and esteem: so blind and corrupt had his mind been rendered by continual adulation, that he was ignorant none but a bad prince could be nominated heir to a ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... of any kind for more than a few minutes at a time. Bed was a place of torture; but if he got up, he cried for it again, at least for a change of suffering. At the end of three months he died. His stomach, duodenum, and liver were all in the same corrupt state as his brother's, and more than that, the surface of his body was burnt away. This, said the doctors; was no dubious sign of poisoning; although, they added, it sometimes happened that a 'cacochyme' produced the ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... the surface flow from the mountains through subterranean passages. The salt-waters, therefore, remain at the bottom while the others rise to the surface, and the former are not sufficiently strong to entirely corrupt the latter. The waters of the middle strata are formed by a mixture of the two others, and ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... this rendering be the true one, Cain not only does not acknowledge his sin, but excuses it and, in addition, insults God for laying upon him a punishment greater than he deserves. In this way the rabbins almost everywhere corrupt the sense of the Scriptures. Consequently I begin to hate them, and I admonish all who read them, to do so with careful discrimination. Although they did possess the knowledge of some things by tradition from the fathers, they corrupted them in various ways; ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... Byzantium was that it still inherited the huge weight of the name of Rome. Rome had come east and reared against them this Roman city, and though and priest or soldier who came out of it might be speaking as a Greek, he was ruling as a Roman. Its critics in these days of criticism may regard it as a corrupt civilisation. But its enemies in the day of battle only regarded it as civilisation. Saladin, the greatest of the Saracens, did not call Greek bishops degenerate dreamers or dingy outcasts, he called them, with a sounder historical instinct, "The ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... however, that delighted the Eye, tho' at the Expense of all the other Senses; the Moisture of the Soil preserves a continual Verdure, and makes every Plant an Evergreen, but at the same time the foul Damps ascend without ceasing, corrupt the Air, and render it unfit for Respiration. Not even a Turkey-Buzzard will venture to fly over it, no more than the Italian Vultures will over the filthy Lake Avernus, or the Birds of the Holy Land over the Salt Sea, where Sodom and ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... doubt that the topic of Free Love engages the attention of the corrupt Londoner. There are plenty of such persons who are only too glad to get the sanction of writers for the maintenance and practice of their evil thoughts, but the purest and best lives in all parts of the ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... whole character. Not only has the corruption of the best been sometimes thought to be the worst, but it may be remarked that this very excess of evil has been the stimulus to good (compare Plato, Laws, where he says that in the most corrupt cities individuals are to be found beyond all praise). (2) It may be observed that evils which admit of degrees can seldom be rightly estimated, because under the same name actions of the most different ...
— Symposium • Plato
... she guilty or not? She said not, but who could tell what was truth which came from those lips, or if that corrupt heart was in ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... incessantly: and now, after a lapse of nearly four hundred years, again evinced to the world, that Ireland was still unconquered, and regarded England as a tyrant and usurper. And yet the opposition of those chiefs and rulers to the hirelings and paid assassins of this infamous woman and her corrupt associates, was of a character the most chivalrous. Unaccustomed to cowardly deeds of blood, these proud warriors preferred to meet the enemy face to face, and decide the issues of the hour in fair, ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... of the night began," continued the gentleman, turning several leaves of his note-book, "with this message: 'Evil communications corrupt good manners.'" ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... him to sell out, for, as a rule, he had no bond or stock issues. But the railroad corporation was a stock corporation; whoever secured control of a majority of the stock became the legal administrator of its policies and property. By adroit manipulation, intimidation, superior knavery, and the corrupt domination of law, it was always easy for those who understood the science of rigging the stock market, and that of strategic undermining, to wrest the control away from weak, or (treating the word in a commercial sense) incompetent, holders. This has been ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... not yet arrived, but Lady Julia Postlethwaite was seated on a sofa by Mrs. Merillia, and was conversing with her about the Court, the dreadful amount of money a certain duke—her third cousin—had recently had to pay in Death Duties, the corrupt condition of society, and the absurd pretensions of the lower middle classes. Lady Julia was sensitive and a very grande dame. She wore her hair powdered, and had a slight cough and exquisite manners. Once a lady ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... romancing about unheard-of things. It is in Egypt, as it is in Armenia and was in the Balkans: the Turk is the enemy of good government and freedom for the people. A check to British policy and rule meant to them a possible return of the old corrupt days when they did as they liked, treating fellaheen and negroes as slaves. Had Great Britain in this instance yielded a jot of her just rights to the intriguing and bellicose spirit of French officialism Egypt would have been made an impossible place ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... don't you, that this job of making a commonwealth of worth in Ireland is a long and difficult one. That's why we've got to be very patient. Everything's against us. We have a contemptible press, a cowardly crowd of corrupt politicians, a greedy people, an ignorant and bigoted priesthood (that includes the Protestant clergy) and a complete lack of social consciousness and plan of life. But then, what's life for, if it isn't to cope with difficulties ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... were right in telling me that I idealise the people, and that they are as corrupt as the great world, and, moreover, without the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... negative answer to all these questions: no one needs it, it brings good to no one: all these discriminations not only do not increase the sum of joy on this earth, but engender a multitude of wholly unnecessary, aimless sufferings; some they oppress, and others they badly corrupt. And yet I, a Russian intellectual, a happy representative of the sovereign race, although fully conscious and convinced that the "Jewish question" is no question at all,—I felt powerless and doomed to the most sterile tribulation ...
— The Shield • Various
... us about ourselves and the dangers which lie ahead, but it also shows us the origins and weakness of our political theories. It is obvious that should ask ourselves the question of where, in the political evolution we are now? Are we still ruled by the corrupt oligarchs or have we reached the stage where the people has become used to be fed on the property of others? If so dissolution and anarchy is just ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... superficially educated, and that the people are putting their superficial knowledge into laws, and that we are going to have a nice time with all these wild theories and crudities on the statute-book. And then educated people say that politics is so corrupt and absurd that they cannot have anything to ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... after speculatin' quite a spell, suh, as to what a niggah ought to do in a case ob dat kind, suh, I walks right into de polls and votes de straight Republican ticket, suh, 'cause I figgered, suh, dat dis here Republican man, he war de least corrupt ob de two." ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... of the offender, rather than the seizure of his goods—though both will serve the same purpose—because they who assert the purest right, and consequently are most dangerous to a corrupt State, commonly have not spent much time in accumulating property. To such the State renders comparatively small service, and a slight tax is wont to appear exorbitant, particularly if they are obliged to earn it by special labor with their hands. If there were one ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... have overheard what has passed between you and your sister. Angelo had never the purpose to corrupt her; what he said, has only been to make trial of her virtue. She, having the truth of honor in her, has given him that gracious denial which he is most ill glad to receive. There is no hope that he will pardon you; therefore pass your hours in prayer, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... foreign influence. We then come back to the Assyrian conquest which had followed the Ethiopian rule. Libyan kings had held the country before the Ethiopian conquest. The XXIst and XXth Dynasties preceded the Libyans, and here, in a disgraceful period of corrupt government, a series of so-called native kings are met with. Foreigners, however, swarmed in the country at the time, foreign troops were constantly used, and the Pharaohs themselves were of semi-foreign origin. One now comes back to ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves. By their fruits ye shall know them. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but the corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire. ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... The commander of a besieged town, he insisted, is always at liberty to propose a parley, which the enemy can accept or not as he chooses. At any rate, it was not for the archduke, who had hired a traitor to corrupt the garrison, to make a complaint of treachery. Twelve hundred men were employed for the next eight days in strengthening the works, Sir Francis being always with them at night, when the water was low, encouraging them by his ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... in the world, as the very breath of life amidst stagnation. When the Christian Church first sprung into being it did come into that corrupt, pestilential march of ancient heathenism with healing on its wings, and like fresh air from the pure hills into some fever-stricken district. Wherever there has been a new outburst, in the experience of individuals and of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... contains both the romance and the Life, and I find in the romance serious divergences from the text given by Jubinal; they are of a kind which, in my judgment, stamp it beyond all doubt as a later and corrupt edition, but I have largely compared the texts, although not ...
— Brendan's Fabulous Voyage • John Patrick Crichton Stuart Bute
... the pride of life, spiritual and subtle, but the common and vulgar pride in the power of this world: and his throwing the Redcrosse Knight into a dungeon, is a type of the captivity of true religion under the temporal power of corrupt churches, more especially of the Church of Rome; and of its gradually wasting away in unknown places, while carnal pride has the preeminence over all things. That Spenser means, especially, the pride of the Papacy, is shown by the 16th stanza of the book; for ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... or military officer in the province. The colony assemblies, though, like the house of commons in England, they are not always a very equal representation of the people, yet they approach more nearly to that character; and as the executive power either has not the means to corrupt them, or, on account of the support which it receives from the mother country, is not under the necessity of doing so, they are, perhaps, in general more influenced by the inclinations of their constituents. The councils, which, ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... succeeded in attaining great influence over the wretches who governed. The most disgusting ignominies of the empire, such as the apotheosis of the emperors and their deification during life, came from the East, and particularly from Egypt, which was at that period one of the most corrupt countries on the face ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... to tickle him mightily, for he laughed blithely, and so did I; which, no doubt, caused the new nurse to be regarded as a light-minded sinner by the Chaplain, who roamed vaguely about, informing the men that they were all worms, corrupt of heart, with perishable bodies, and souls only to be saved by a diligent perusal of certain tracts, and other equally cheering bits of spiritual consolation, when spirituous ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... the same time a letter of fatherly advice. It is true, he ought to work and win an honorable position for himself; but think of the dangers and temptation that beset him, alone and friendless, in this corrupt city.' There, my dear lady, your letter ended; but the name and address were given, and it was easy enough to understand it. You remember, perhaps, a little incident that occurred after your return. On perceiving that you had forgotten your letter, you turned ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... breach much more difficult to mend; and as to the effect it produced on Mrs. Glegg's opinion of Mr. Tulliver, she begged to be understood from that time forth that she had nothing whatever to say about him; his state of mind, apparently, was too corrupt for her to contemplate it for a moment. It was not until the evening before Tom went to school, at the beginning of August, that Mrs. Glegg paid a visit to her sister Tulliver, sitting in her gig all the while, and ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... belief that the labours of Peisistratus were of a purely editorial character; and there seems no more reason why corrupt and imperfect editions of Homer may not have been abroad in his day, than that the poems of Valerius Flaccus and Tibullus should have given so much trouble to Poggio, Scaliger, and others. But, after all, the main fault in all the Homeric theories is, that they ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... best grounds, that the theatre may be made, by proper established regulations, a school of virtue and manners, we do not wish to conceal our persuasion that there is nothing more potent to debase and corrupt the minds of a people than a licentious stage. But it may be averred with equal truth, that the abuses of every other institution are fraught with no less mischief to the public. At this very moment the abuse of the pulpit is ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... the last analysis it would be necessary for himself and co-workers to reach the results aimed at through politics. Masterful and arrogant wealth, created largely by Government protection of its profits, not content with its domination and influence within a single party, had sought to corrupt them both, and to that end had insinuated itself into the primaries, in order that no candidates might be nominated whose views were not in ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... most fatal influences; that he grew up into manhood with no guide; that there was everything in the classical course of the schools to develop an unhealthy growth of passion, and no moral influence of any kind to restrain it; that the manners of his day were corrupt; that what were now considered vices in society were then spoken of as matters of course among young noblemen; that drinking, gaming, and licentiousness everywhere abounded and that, up to a certain time, he was no worse than multitudes of other young men of his day,—only ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... for building up on some sham principle a party of rum and faro-banks, low demagogue-ism, ignorance, reaction, and vulgarity. Then from his present toad-like swelling and whispering, we shall hear the full-expanded fiend roar out into a real life. It is the old story of history—the corrupt and venal arraigning itself against truth and terming the latter ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... Sometimes I have fought for rebels and patriots, sometimes for kings, sometimes for pretenders. I was out with Garibaldi, because I believed he would give a republic to Italy; but I fought against the republic of Mexico, because its people were rotten and corrupt, and I believed that the emperor would rule them honestly and well. I have always chosen my own side, the one which seemed to me promised the most good; and yet, after thirty years, I am where you see me to-night. I ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... sell your vote—you only accepted a little trifle, a small token of esteem, for your brother-in-law. Oh, let us come out and be frank with each other: I know you, Mr. Trollop. I have met you on business three or four times; true, I never offered to corrupt your principles—never hinted such a thing; but always when I had finished sounding you, I manipulated you through an agent. Let us be frank. Wear this comely disguise of virtue before the public—it will count there; but here it is ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the professional prostitutes of India. There are a host of these women (twelve thousand in South India alone) who, without their own consent, and in the sacred name of religion, have been handed over to this life of shame, to corrupt and debase the youth of the land. Their life is a loud cry against their mother-faith, which systematically devotes them to destruction of soul and body. Some educated men of the land denounce this as an evil which should be stopped. But the leaders of ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... animals killed is in no way injured by the poison, nor does it appear to corrupt sooner than that killed by the ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... [par. 130.] Clarendon, Archbishop Williams:—appeared to be a man of a very corrupt nature, whose passions could have transported him into the most unjustifiable actions.—Swift. This ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... man and the girl looked at each other and smiled. Their experience had not tended to make them credulous. Had he lived, Hermann Banf would have been, for Wharton, the star witness against a ring of corrupt police officials. In consequence his murder was more than the taking off of a shady and disreputable citizen. It was a blow struck at the high office of the district attorney, at the grand jury, ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... with his valiant troops, surrounded by the sick and the dying, provisions growing scarcer every day, and those that remained corrupt and unfit to eat, yet resolved to do his duty, and hold out to the last. No assistance arrived from Spain. A Mexican fleet was stationed off the Island of Sacrificios and other points, to attack any ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... so corrupt that you cannot conceive of an honest friendship, even between near relations. You fill me with repulsion—I measured the depth of your degeneracy at Pisa. That is why I left you. I wanted to breathe in an uninfected atmosphere. My ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... rescue and finished my sentence for me in a way which got me out of my difficulty. Very likely she felt that she ought not to corrupt me. ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... Fish-eating, by its corrupt Humours, renders the Body liable to a great many Diseases, that it can't subserve the Spirit as ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... California court had denied the petition for habeas corpus without taking oral evidence and without requiring the State to answer, the Supreme Court upheld this action on the ground that there was no adequate showing of a corrupt bargain between the prosecution and the codefendant and that the appraisal of conflicting evidence was for the Court below. Even if latter's refusal to believe the codefendant's depositions were erroneous, such ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... I want you to get rid of the dreadful people you associate with. Don't shrug your shoulders like that. Don't be so indifferent. You have a wonderful influence. Let it be for good, not for evil. They say that you corrupt everyone with whom you become intimate, and that it is quite sufficient for you to enter a house, for shame of some kind to follow after. I don't know whether it is so or not. How should I know? But it is said of you. I am told things that it seems impossible to doubt. Lord Gloucester ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... advantage of his favors, or by the standing of his connections; nor is it influenced by the perverseness of an enemy. It abhors evil, and censures it or flees from it, whether in father or mother, brother or sister, or in any other. Corrupt nature loves itself and does not abhor its own evil; rather, it covers and adorns it. Anger is styled zeal; avarice is called ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... need never move at the movies. Thus in the real village inn are the real village politics, while in the other are only the remote and unreal metropolitan politics. And those central city politics are not only cosmopolitan politics but corrupt politics. They corrupt everything that they reach, and this is the real point about many ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... these men affect to leave, it is obviously a matter of the most trivial importance whether we regard the whole Bible as absolute fiction or not. Whether an obscure Galilean teacher, who taught a moral system which may have been as good (we can never know from such corrupt documents that it was as good) as that of Confucius, or Zoroaster, ever lived or not; and whether we are to add another name to those who have enunciated the elementary truths of ethics, is really of very little moment. Upon their principles we can clearly know nothing about ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... Cecil would not give the names of the authors of unsigned articles and took full responsibility as Editor. Carson's opening speech for the Prosecution divided the six alleged libels under two main heads: One set, said Carson, charged Godfrey Isaacs with being a corrupt man who induced his corrupt brother to use his influence with the corrupt Samuel to get a corrupt contract entered into. The opening attack under this head has already been quoted. Later attacks did not diminish in violence: "the swindle ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... good man in sign of chastisement put on him a scarlet coat, instead of his shirt, and found him in so vigorous a life, and so stable, that he marvelled, and felt that he was never corrupt in fleshly lusts. Then Sir Bors put on his armour, and took his ...
— Stories of King Arthur and His Knights - Retold from Malory's "Morte dArthur" • U. Waldo Cutler
... writing, style would be a misfortune. One must know how to speak jesuitically; and, in order to advance, one must be clever in getting one's ideas to walk on crutches. Those who engage in the trade confess themselves corrupt; like diplomatists, they have as a pension the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres, ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... cities of the kingdom. Chabot, a lawyer of Nismes, went further, and, when the clamor of the people had secured the hearing at first denied him, did not hesitate to say that the burdens of the province should be placed upon the shoulders of the priests and monks—whom he stigmatized as ignorant and corrupt—because of the evils they had inflicted upon the people. He even wanted a petition to this effect, signed by thirty syndicates favorable to the reformed religion, to be inserted in the cahier of Languedoc. Memoires d'Achille ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... were corrupted by him," went on More. "I know he thinks that, but I had the honour of confuting him the other day with regard to the flagon and gloves. Now, there is a subject for Martial, Mr. Torridon. A corrupt statesman who has retired on his ill-gotten gains disproves an accusation of bribery. Let us call him Atticus 'Attice ... Attice' ...—We might say that he put on the gloves lest his forgers should be soiled while he drank from the flagon, ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... their evil-doing is to encourage vicious habits detrimental to the well-being of humanity. The more just the judge, the more severe should he be towards such calculating sinners, lest, infected by example, mankind should become even more corrupt than it is. Bishop Pendle was a kindly man, who wished to think the best of his fellow-creatures, and usually did so; but he could not blind himself to the base and plotting nature of Cargrim; and, for the ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... and destroy these errors with the truth of being, - 404:6 by exhibiting to the wrong-doer the suffering which his submission to such habits brings, and by con- vincing him that there is no real pleasure in false appe- 404:9 tites. A corrupt mind is manifested in a corrupt body. Lust, malice, and all sorts of evil are diseased beliefs, and you can destroy them only by destroying the wicked 404:12 motives which produce them. If the evil is over in the repentant mortal mind, while its effects still remain on the individual, ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... "This line [the third] is so corrupt in the folio 1623, as to afford no sense. The words and their arrangement are the same in the second and third folio, while the fourth only alters would to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 54, November 9, 1850 • Various
... has too long rested satisfied in the circumscribed limits which corrupt customs and a perverted application of the Scriptures have marked out for her, and that it is time she should move in the enlarged sphere which her great Creator ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... "good old times"—Judge Heath—notorious because of his partiality for hanging, is reported to have said: "If you imprison at home, the criminal is soon thrown back upon you hardened in guilt. If you transport you corrupt infant societies, and sow the seeds of atrocious crimes over the habitable globe. There is no regenerating a felon in this life. And, for his own sake, as well as for the sake of society, I ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman |
