"Degrade" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the landing-place a balustraded bridge of ample breadth and large bravura manner spans the main canal. Like everything at Chioggia, it is dirty and has fallen from its first estate. Yet neither time nor injury can obliterate style or wholly degrade marble. Hard by the bridge there are two rival inns. At one of these we ordered a seadinner—crabs, cuttlefishes, soles, and turbots—which we ate at a table in the open air. Nothing divided us from the street except a row of Japanese privet-bushes ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... care to inculcate all the articles, of belief at the earliest age in such a way as to result in a kind of partial paralysis of the brain; this then shows itself throughout their whole life in a silly bigotry, making even extremely intelligent and capable people among them degrade themselves so that they become quite an enigma to us. If we consider how essential to such a masterpiece is inoculation of belief in the tender age of childhood, the system of missions appears no ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... remember that long talk we had last winter, after the annual meeting of the Feathered Friends' League, and how we agreed that those sporadic doles could do no real good—must even degrade the birds who received them—and that we had no right to meddle in what ought to be done by collective action of ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... very thing I complain of. You do degrade yourself. Your economy, my life, is downright parsimony: your vigilance is suspicion; your management is meanness; and you fidget your servants till you make them fretful, and then prudently discharge them because they will live with you no longer. Hey! ods life, I must sooth her: for if company ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... not at all side with the 'fathers' as the unsympathetic progressive critics of that time insisted, he did not wish to in the least extol them above the 'children' in order to degrade the latter. Just so he had no intention of showing up in the character of the representative of the 'children' some kind of model of a 'thinking realist' to whom the young generation should have bowed and imitated, as the progressive critics who received the work sympathetically ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... We must degrade the noblesse and attribute it to an odious origin, establish a germ of equality which can never exist but which will flatter the people; [we must] immolate the most obstinate, burn and destroy their property in order to intimidate the rest, so that if we cannot entirely destroy this prejudice ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... about to be fed, his intermittent growls and small roars, so to speak, have something very awful and impressive, which nothing like the bellowing of a bull can at all equal. To say that the roar of the ostrich is equal to that of the lion is no argument at all; it does not degrade the latter, it merely exalts the former. And further, in regard to aspect, the illustrations in Dr Livingstone's own most interesting work go far to prove that the ...
— Hunting the Lions • R.M. Ballantyne
... magnified and circulated to an incalculable extent; or the infirmities of excellent characters animadverted upon, for no other purpose than to fill up the waste moments of a ceremonious visit. Women should assume their proper rank, by aspiring to the dignity of rational intercourse; and not degrade themselves, and disquiet society, by engaging in petty warfare against ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... good deal more. He is quite an ogre, and lives in a miserable hovel. How Katherine can degrade herself by grovelling there with him for the sake of what she can get passes ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... since nothing could have been more simple, and yet in keeping with true greatness, than the major's reception at the hotel, and this for the very reason that he had outdistanced the rabble. My declining years and gray hairs forbid me envying any man his laurels, but I will not degrade a noble profession by making myself the vassal of every great man who sets foot on these shores. I say, then, that when the cattle and the major reached the door of this spacious pile of white marble, wherein cheap luxury awaits the million, it was near sundown, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... sort of jubilee. Untied from set purposes and definite aims, the persons come forth with their hearts already tuned, and so have but to let off their redundant music. Envy, jealousy, avarice, revenge, all the passions that afflict and degrade society, they have left in the city behind them. And they have brought the intelligence and refinement of the Court without its vanities and vexations; so that the graces of art and the simplicities of nature meet together in joyous, loving sisterhood. A serene and mellow atmosphere of ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... can discern the Magnanimity of the Lyon the Generosity of the Horse the Fearfulness of the Deer and the CUNNING OF THE FOX—I had almost overlookd the Fidelity of the Dog. But I forbear to indulge my rambling Pen in this Way lest I should be thought chargeable with a Design to degrade the Dignity of our nature by comparing Men with Beasts. Let me just observe that I have mentiond only the more excellent Properties that are to [be] found among Quadrupeds. Had I suggested an Idea of the Vanity of the Ape the Tameness of the Ox or the stupid Servility ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... under eternal quarantine; no friend to greet; no home to harbor him, the voyage of his life becomes a joyless peril; and in the midst of all ambition can achieve, or avarice amass, or rapacity plunder, he tosses on the surge, a buoyant pestilence. But let me not degrade into selfishness of individual safety or individual exposure this individual principle; it testifies a higher, a ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... wretched too. But what does it all matter? Her pride is to be wounded, her self-love humiliated, and every other consideration must yield to that. She is ready to commit perjury, to swear to love and honour a man who is no more to her than that peasant walking along the road. She is ready to degrade herself and risk her soul by a mercenary marriage sooner than bear that wound ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... is to degrade mankind from that mental and moral dignity that is always recognized as belonging to them, and to place them on an essential level with the brute creation—even with the lowest forms of vegetable and animal existence. According to that theory, man differs ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... consequence of that league we three governed the empire. But, after the death of Crassus, my glorious achievements in subduing the Gauls raised such a jealousy in him that he could no longer endure me as a partner in his power, nor could I submit to degrade myself into ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... the plague. Of those books, if I had read them, it could nor be expected that I should be able to give a critical account. I have been told that there is something in them of vexation and discontent, discovered by a perpetual attempt to degrade physic from its sublimity, and to represent it as attainable without much previous or concomitant learning. By the transient glances which I have thrown upon them I have observed an affected contempt of the ancients, and a supercilious derision of transmitted knowledge. Of this indecent arrogance ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... "An honest fear is sometimes expressed 'that women would degrade politics, and politics would degrade women,'" and the writers answer: "As the influence of woman has been uniformly elevating in new civilizations, in missionary work in heathen lands, in schools, colleges, literature, and general society, it is fair to suppose that politics would ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... speech in the East. Nowhere are there such habitual liars, and nowhere are there so many oaths. Every traveller there knows that, and sees how true is Christ's filiation of the custom of swearing from the custom of falsehood. But these poisonous weeds of speech not only tended to degrade plain veracity in the popular mind, but were themselves parents of immoral evasions, for it was the teaching of some Rabbis, at all events, that an oath 'by heaven' or 'by earth' or 'by Jerusalem' or 'by my head' did not bind. That further relaxation ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... never so utterly degrade myself. I could neither lower my standard, nor sacrifice my ideal," said Leo, with a touch of scorn in ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... us each stick to our several stations, and not degrade ourselves by learning the evil and discontented habits of human beings, each one of whom ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... there may be perhaps, who will dispute his claim to the title of an Epic Poet; and will endeavour to degrade him even to the rank of a ballad-monger. But I, as his Commentator, will contend for the dignity of my Author; and will plainly demonstrate his Poem to be an Epic Poem, agreeable to the example of all Poets, and the consent of all ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... my frankness. I cannot comprehend how a woman could solicit love, and say: Love me, admire me.... For a king I could not thus degrade myself. Tenderness is involuntary; one may seek to win it, one may gladly accept it when offered; but to solicit it, is even ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... give aid to Cuba. The war that Spain is waging shocks every civilized man. Spain has always been the same. In Holland, in Peru, in Mexico, she was infinitely cruel, and she is the same to-day. She loves to torture, to imprison, to degrade, to kill. Her idea of perfect happiness is to shed blood. Spain is a legacy of the Dark Ages. She belongs to the den, the cave period. She has no business to exist. She is a blot, a stain on the map of the world. Of course there are some good Spaniards, but ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... it cannot be in the destructive spirit displayed by some who, in the prophet's language, amid darkness on the earth, "fret themselves, and curse their King and their God, and look upward." Poverty cannot degrade, nor ignorance bedwarf, nor persecution crush, nor dungeon enthral the free, glad spirit of a child of God, erect in its regenerate strength, and rich in its eternal hopes and heritage. And this hopeful and elastic temperament colors and perfumes every treatise that Bunyan sent ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... princess," answered Arnold, "feels the peas under ever so many mattresses. She would not fall in love with a false lord, or degrade herself by marrying her scullion. But if she is a true princess, she sees what is lordly in her subject. If she loves him, already he is above her in station,—she looks up to him as her ideal. Whatever we love is above self. We pay unconscious homage ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... to offend you,) than perhaps you will approve in yourself when I am far removed from Italy. For have you not a noble mind? And are you not a son of the Marquis della Porretta? Permit me to observe, that passion will make a man exalt himself, and degrade another; and the just medium will be then forgot. I am afraid I have been thought more lightly of, than I ought to be, either in justice, or for the honour of a person who is dear to every one present. My country was once mentioned with disdain: think not my vanity ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... as we can read? Their own strict judges, not a word they spare That wants, or force, or light, or weight, or care, Howe'er unwillingly it quits its place, Nay though at Court, perhaps, it may find grace: Such they'll degrade; and sometimes, in its stead, In downright charity revive the dead; Mark where a bold expressive phrase appears, Bright through the rubbish of some hundred years; Command old words that long have slept, to wake, Words that wise ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... be embittered by misfortune. Some great and noble sorrow may have the effect of drawing hearts together, but to struggle against destitution, to be crushed by care about shillings and sixpences—that must always degrade. ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... loftier lessons of Stoicism, nay, even the better utterances of a mere ordinary Pagan morality, could henceforth only fall from his lips with something of a hollow ring. He might interfere, as we know he did, to render as innocuous as possible the pernicious vanity which made Nero so ready to degrade his imperial rank by public appearances on the orchestra or in the race-course, but he could hardly address again such noble teachings as that of the treatise on Clemency to one whom, on grounds of political expediency, he had not dissuaded from the treacherous murder ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... among women from intoxicating drinks! These degrade women and she degrades men. "Rise up ye women who are at ease in Zion!" The drinking places in the cities, especially in New York, by every device get women in their dens that ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... nightmare over these Southern States—a fungus growth of military tyranny superinduced by the fostering of Loyal Leagues, the abrogation of our civil laws, the habitual violation of our national Constitution, and a persistent prostitution of all government, all resources and all powers, to degrade the white man by the establishment ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... some time upon the plea of a previously arranged excursion of pleasure; and when, after his return, driven at length to a show of explanation, he parades in print an evasion of charges, so paltry that its sophistry would degrade the merest pettifoger in Mr. Biddle's Court of ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... subordinate executory trust which I understand is to be placed in him; nor is he fit to be called chief in a nation which he has outraged and oppressed. A worse choice for such an office in a new commonwealth than that of a deposed tyrant could not possibly be made. But to degrade and insult a man as the worst of criminals, and afterwards to trust him in your highest concerns as a faithful, honest, and zealous servant, is not consistent with reasoning, nor prudent in policy, nor safe in practice. Those who could make such ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... need for its ruin. As I have told you before, in talking like that you degrade yourself ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... keyhole, outside which she waited and listened. It was long before he would reply, and when he did it was to say sternly at her from within: 'I am ashamed of you! It will ruin me! A miserable boor! a churl! a clown! It will degrade me in the eyes of all ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... and went to God, riseth from supper and began to wash the disciples' feet." It was because He knew His high dignity and His high destiny that He could stoop to the lowest place and that place could not degrade Him. ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... unhappy lot to be frequently in your company ever since, and, speaking from a long and distasteful experience of you and your ways, I am quite satisfied that, if you did meet with some slight contretemps, you made no whole-hearted effort to rejoin us in time to degrade your intellect by discussing the sort of topics which appeal to that genus of hopeless wasters ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... bringing the precepts of art within the pale of our accepted literature, Sir Joshua Reynolds has given to art a better position. Would that there were no counteracting circumstances which still keep it from reaching its proper rank! Some there are, which materially degrade it, amongst which is the attempt to force patronage; the whole system of Art Unions, and of Schools of Design, the "in forma pauperis" petitioning and advertising, and the rearing innumerable artists, ill-educated ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... hard murder care For degradation? and that made me muse, Being bounden by my coronation oath To do men justice. Look to it, your own selves! Say that a cleric murder'd an archbishop, What could ye do? Degrade, imprison him— Not death for death. JOHN OF OXFORD. But I, my liege, could ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... curiosities of our civilization that we are content to go for our liberal education to literatures which morally are at opposite poles from ourselves; literatures in which the most exalted tone is often an apotheosis of the sensuous, which degrade divinity, not only to the human level, but to the lowest level of humanity. "It is surely good that our youth during the formative period should have displayed to them, in a literary dress as brilliant as that of Greek literature, a people dominated by an utter passion for righteousness, ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... the Messiah; or the call of the Church. It was no less an object than this—the saving of a whole world—that brought Christ from heaven and raised up the Church on earth. If you look or labour for anything short of this, you degrade your Master and dishonour yourselves. You have got too large a machinery at work for anything less than this. You will cripple the energies and damp the ardour of our Captain's embattled hosts, if you are ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... yet atone For what our reason says we can, But never let remorse's groan Degrade us from our state ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... personal, significance. There has been moreover a tendency on the part of some to associate themselves with a political party, and to claim for the Church the office of judge and arbitrator in industrial strife. But surely it is one thing to degrade the Church to the level of a secular society, and another, by witness and by effort, to make the law of Christ dominant over all the relationships of life. Men are impatiently asking, 'Has the Church no message to the new ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... Dumouriez really intended to treat for peace. Pitt afterwards assured the House of Commons that Maret had not made the smallest communication to Ministers.[189] Evidently they looked on him as an unofficial emissary, to which level Chauvelin had persistently endeavoured to degrade him. ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... constitution, she has a right to it. It is none of my business which way the slavery clause is decided. I care not whether it is voted down or voted up. Do you suppose, after the pledges of my honor that I would go for that principle and leave the people to vote as they choose, that I would now degrade myself by voting one way if the slavery clause be voted down, and another way if it be voted up? I care not how that vote may stand.... Ignore Lecompton; ignore Topeka; treat both those party movements as irregular and void; pass a fair bill—the one that we framed ourselves ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... incorporated in The Dunciad. And its incorporation is by no means equivalent to the pollution of epic. That, Harte hints, is the achievement of scribblers like Blackmore (p. 12). It is they who inadvertently write mock-epics, parodies which degrade their great models; Pope, nominally writing mock-epic, actually ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... constitutional fathers to consider the slave-trade as the backbone of slavery. An economic system based on slave labor will find, sooner or later, that the demand for the cheapest slave labor cannot long be withstood. Once degrade the laborer so that he cannot assert his own rights, and there is but one limit below which his price cannot be reduced. That limit is not his physical well-being, for it may be, and in the Gulf States it was, cheaper to ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... regarded as a man who has consented so to degrade himself as to become for the time being a heartless automaton, ruthlessly working for gain, a being like one of those terrible ogres of the popular mythology who feed on human flesh. But he is not a mere automaton or ogre. There is a better side to his nature, as we often ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... aristocratic offices appear to have been elected. There were also recognised in the Spartan constitution two distinct classes—the Equals and the Inferiors. Though these were hereditary divisions, merit might promote a member of the last—demerit degrade a member of the first. The Inferiors, though not boasting the nobility of the Equals, often possessed men equally honoured and powerful: as among the commoners of England are sometimes found persons of higher birth and more important station than among the peers—(a ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to entertain doubts about Columbus, and the sovereigns decided to send out Don Francisco del Bobadilla to investigate his conduct. This officer appears to have been needy, passionate, and ambitious. He acted as if he had been sent out to degrade the admiral, not to inquire into his conduct. He threw Columbus into irons, and seized his arms, gold, jewels, books, and most secret manuscripts. Columbus conducted himself with characteristic magnanimity, and bore all indignities in silence. Bobadilla collected testimony ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... the wisdom of Solomon lies in that word. If an ambassador arrive, receive him courteously. And as to your brother, kill him if you can and like, but do not degrade him. He is a great knave, but he is a Valois; besides, he can do that well enough ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... raised above the Slave by the certainty that in the ordinary course of events they would be relieved from bondage and entitled to exercise powers of their own; but that the inferiority of the Slave was not such as to place him outside the pale of the Family, or such as to degrade him to the footing of inanimate property, is clearly proved, I think, by the many traces which remain of his ancient capacity for inheritance in the last resort. It would, of course, be unsafe in the highest ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... reckoned by hundreds. Babies torn from the breast were tossed from pike to pike along the Jacobin ranks. One champion of liberty had his pockets well stuffed with ears. Another swaggered about with the finger of a little child in his hat. A few months had sufficed to degrade France below the level of ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... nefarious business was conducted mainly through one channel; for, spite of man's inclination to vice and crime, there are but few men, thank God, so low in the scale of humanity as to be willing to degrade themselves by doing the dirty work of four-legged bloodhounds. Yet such men, actuated by the love of gold and their own base and brutal natures, were found ready for the work. These fellows consorted with constables, police-officers, aldermen, and even with learned members ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... scandalous!" he exclaimed, shaking his fist. "To express publicly the opinion that a nobleman could so far degrade himself as to become a secret assassin! I will know who my insolent calumniators are, and I will then see if justice has power at Antwerp to protect an innocent stranger against the defamation of ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... without the means of getting work.—To fancy a thing is cheap because a low price is asked for it.—To say that a man is charitable because he subscribes to an hospital.—To keep a dog or a cat on short allowance, and complain of its being a thief.—To degrade human nature in the hope of improving it.—To praise the beauty of a woman's hair before you know whether it did not once belong to somebody else.—To expect that your tradespeople will give you long credit if they generally see you in shabby clothes.—To ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... intelligent; this excites a peculiar jealousy and hatred in the white population, of which it is impossible to enumerate all the hardships. Even in the laws, slaves are always mentioned before free people of color; so desirous are they to degrade the latter class below the level of the former. To complete the wrong, this unhappy class are despised in consequence of the very evils we ourselves have induced—for as slavery inevitably makes its victims servile and vicious, ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... not in those practices, the known consequences of which were servitude. The involuntary; on the other hand, will comprehend those, who were forced, without any such condition or choice, into a situation, which as it tended to degrade a part of the human species, and to class it with the brutal, must have been, of all human situations, the most wretched and insupportable. These are they, whom we shall consider solely in the present work. We shall therefore take our leave of the ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... human words can tell their desolation and distress when, at the feet of their confessors, they find themselves between the horrible necessity of speaking of things on which they would prefer to suffer the most cruel death rather than to open their lips, or to be for ever damned if they do not degrade themselves for ever in their own eyes by speaking on matters which a respectable woman will never reveal to her own mother, much less ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... then turned to go away with the ambassadors, as a stranger might not be present at the deliberations of the Senate. His old friends pressed him to stay and give his opinion as a senator, who had twice been consul; but he refused to degrade that dignity by claiming it, slave as he was. But, at the command of his Carthaginian masters, he remained, though ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... appearance of a new actor: 'a mouse that takes up its lodgings in a cat's ear'(2) has a mansion of peace to him: he dreads every hint of an objection, and least of all, can forgive praise mingled with censure: to doubt is to insult; to discriminate is to degrade: he dare hardly look into a criticism unless some one has tasted it for him, to see that there is no offence in it: if he does not draw crowded houses every night, he can neither eat nor sleep; or if all these terrible inflections are removed, and ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... Direct Legislation shifts lawmaking from a definite group (the state legislature), to a large and indefinite group of persons (the voters as a class), upon whom responsibility cannot be fixed. By robbing the legislature of power and responsibility, the Initiative and Referendum are said to degrade rather than to improve that body: the best class of men is not attracted to a legislature which has been shorn of dignity and influence, and if the people rely upon the Initiative and Referendum, the voters deem it less necessary ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... claims by means which appealed with overpowering force to the dominant motive of orientals—fear. But their action was based on another consideration. Relying on Mr. Gladstone's well-known love of peace, they sought to degrade the British Government in the eyes of the Asiatic peoples. In some measure they succeeded. The prestige of Britain thenceforth paled before that of the Czar; and the ease and decisiveness of the Russian conquests, contrasting with the fitful advances ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... wanted to send him down stairs in his shirt on winter nights. He wanted to have Gabriel get up in the cold mornings and bring him his breakfast in bed. He wanted to chain Gabriel to the car of his triumphal progress through school-life. He wanted to debase and degrade ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... but without refinement or point. He calls people names, and tries to transfix a character with an epithet, which does not stick, because it has no other foundation than his own petulance and spite; or he endeavours to degrade by alluding to some circumstance of external situation. He says of Mr. Wordsworth's poetry, that "it is his aversion." That may be: but whose fault is it? This is the satire of a lord, who is accustomed to have all his whims or dislikes taken for gospel, and who cannot be at the pains to do more ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... fact that He is the pure, absolute, being (Jehovah His name, comp. remarks on Mal. iii. 6); and it is just because He is this, that His counsels, which He declared without any condition attached to them, must be [Pg 447] unchangeable. To believe that He has for ever rejected Israel, is to degrade Him, to make Him an idol, a creature.—In ver. 36, the immutability of God's counsel of grace is put on a level with the immutability of God's order of nature; but this is done with a view to the weakness of the people, who receive, for a pledge of their ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... that (1) there must be some one authority in a household and that this should be the man; (2) woman will neglect the home if she is left free to enter politics or a profession; (3) politics will degrade her; (4) when independent and self-asserting she will lose her influence over man; and (5) most women do not want to vote ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... the Queen, "who for 33 years has dulled our senses, sold offices and titles," etc., etc. "Since she will not give up her wickedness and is hiding and plotting with low fellows, we hereby depose her and degrade her to the lowest rank." The King declared he would have both his hands cut off before he would sign this infamous paper, which did not prevent its ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... her grief, and I tried to comfort her; all might yet be well. Again she confessed all, her deceit, her heartlessness; but she laid it to the drink. True, she was in this a self-deceiver, but how terrible must be the power for evil in a stimulant which can so utterly degrade the soul, cloud the intellect, and benumb the conscience! Well, she poured forth a torrent of vows, promises, and resolutions for the future. I bade her turn them into prayers, but she did not understand me. However, there was peace for awhile: our Mary came ...
— Nearly Lost but Dearly Won • Theodore P. Wilson
... is the bar to everything. I have sold the best years of my life, and for what? To see my sister degrade herself by that marriage.' ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to be intent on some sort of chymical operation. I was entertained by observing how he contrived to send Mr. Peyton on an errand, without seeming to degrade him. 'Mr. Peyton,—Mr. Peyton, will you be so good as to take a walk to Temple-Bar? You will there see a chymist's shop; at which you will be pleased to buy for me an ounce of oil of vitriol; not spirit of vitriol, but oil of ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... many reasons given, first and last, why women should not vote, but I desire to say, in the full light of a ripe experience, that some of them are fallacious. I refer more particularly to the argument that it will degrade women to go to the polls and vote like a little man. While I am not and have never been a howler for female suffrage, I must admit that it is much more of a success ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... ran through Sydney, and he shivered. Suppose his father knew that he was going to do this mean, contemptible thing—run away and degrade himself—what would he say? and how would he act? Like Barnaby spoke, his old ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... England. The only other alternative was to continue the deception by suppressing the letter, and to confess the truth when they were securely married. What arts of persuasion Ingleby used—what base advantage he might previously have taken of her love and her trust in him to degrade Miss Blanchard to his own level—I cannot say. He did degrade her. The letter never went to its destination; and, with the daughter's privity and consent, the father's confidence was abused to ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... indications in his youthful operas of the power which was destined later to work such changes in the world of opera. He was at first whole-hearted in his devotion to the school of Porpora, Hasse and the others who did so much to degrade Italian opera. 'Artaserse,' his first work, was produced in 1741, the year in which Handel bade farewell for ever to the stage. It was successful, and was promptly followed by others no less fortunate. In 1745 Gluck ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... mankind we contemplate, we shall perceive that the portion of vanity allotted us by nature, when it is not corrected by a sound judgement, and rendered subservient to useful purposes, is sure either to degrade or mislead us. ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... his own eyes monarchy compelled to degrade itself, and to inflict its death-wound with its own hand; he saw the throne that base courtiers had dragged through the mire defiled by the grip of parricidal hands, and buried, fathoms deep, beneath a sea of blood; ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... insignificant cases only, of course he had no opportunities for distinction. He could not stand in the street and beg for clients, or drag men forcibly into his chambers and compel them to be clients; and he would not degrade the dignity of his calling by advertising for clients, or taking any means whatever to get them, except by establishing a reputation for professional learning and integrity. The only inducement which he ever put in the way of clients, was a series of signs, outside the ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... little or nothing about simple amusements which are so popular in the United States, and acquire from their elders their knowledge of betting and taking part in games of chance, two evils which unquestionably have done much to degrade the race as ...
— Spalding's Official Baseball Guide - 1913 • John B. Foster
... an immense sale, and some of which are now in their tenth or twelfth editions. I have for some time past thought that the trick of puffing, as it is now practised both by authors and publishers, is likely to degrade the literary character, and to deprave the public taste, in a frightful degree. I really think that we ought to try what effect satire will have upon this nuisance, and I doubt whether we can ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... death, and that, if a cordial were administered to him in the form of a salary, he would trouble himself little about the drained veins of the commonwealth. "We did not," said the Whig orators, "degrade ourselves by suing for peace when our flag was chased out of our own Channel, when Tourville's fleet lay at anchor in Torbay, when the Irish nation was in arms against us, when every post from the Netherlands brought news of some disaster, when we had to contend against the genius ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that he was to beg her pardon, confess himself to have done wrong, and allow her to return in triumph! That was the light in which he regarded his own position; but he promised to himself that let his own misery be what it might he would never so degrade him. The only person who had been true to him was Bozzle. Let them all look to it. If there were any further intercourse between his wife and Colonel Osborne, he would take the matter into open court, ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... meet such exigencies as may arise; for I foresee that all the faithful servants of the late King who may refuse to defer to the authority of the Marquis d'Ancre, will have enough upon their hands. As for me," he pursued vehemently, "I would rather die than degrade myself by the slightest concession to this wretched, low-born Italian, who is the greatest rascal of all those concerned in the murder of the King." "Which," adds Rambure for himself, ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... from the defective intelligence, but maintains its own integrity only by repudiating the testimony of the reason. In the distinction between knowledge as means and love as end, it is easy, indeed, to detect a tendency to degrade the former into a mere temporary expedient, whereby moral ends may be served. The poet speaks of "such knowledge as is possible to man." The attitude he assumes towards it is apologetic, and betrays a keen consciousness of its limitation, and particularly of its utter inadequacy to represent ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... clergyman] is actually a member of every 'push' in his neighbourhood, and the effect has been not to degrade the pastor, but to sweeten and ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... ocean, and in sight Of those ribbed wind-streaks running into white. If I the death of Love had deeply planned, I never could have made it half so sure, As by the unblest kisses which upbraid The full-waked sense; or failing that, degrade? 'Tis morning: but no morning can restore What we have forfeited. I see no sin: The wrong is mixed. In tragic life, God wot, No villain need be! Passions spin the plot: We are betrayed by what ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... well—very well—if Fate decrees them a happy marriage; but, if otherwise, give their existence some object, their time some occupation, or the peevishness of disappointment, and the listlessness of idleness will infallibly degrade their nature.... Lonely as I am, how should I be if Providence had never given me courage to adopt a career...? How should I be with youth past, sisters lost, a resident in a moorland parish where there is not a single educated family? In that case ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... measure of Scottish misery. There is a pride in the independence of his country, of which even the peasant is conscious; but in this case not only national but religious feelings were outraged. With the civil consequences of an union which would degrade Scotland to the state of a province, the ministers in their ecclesiastical capacity had no concern; but they forbade[a] the people to give consent or support to the measure, because it was contrary to the covenant, and tended "to draw with it a subordination of the kirk to the state in the ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... own genius sufficient vituperation for the bourgeois. I am at a loss to understand by what logic genius gains the right to hate the bourgeois. It has not the excuse of the bourgeois—stupidity. That the crowd hates superiority and is venomously anxious to degrade it to its own level, is one of Ouida's many delusions about life. Discounting vulgar curiosity, a good deal of the crowd's interest in genius, however annoying and ridiculous the shapes it takes, springs at bottom from a sense of reverence and admiration; and surely it is ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... learn cookery and household buying under her supervision. All the boys do their own dishwashing, sweeping and bed-making. Once three boys about fourteen years old went on strike because the proctor asked them to scrub the dining-room floor on their knees. They thought this work would degrade them, and they started toward the superintendent's office. On the way they met me and ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... occasions when necessity demands, being wholly given over to the chase, to war, and politics, but they retain the knowledge. Indeed, were a noble to be known not to be able to read and write, the prince would at once degrade him, and the sentence would be upheld by the entire caste. No other but the nobles are permitted to acquire these arts; if any attempt to do so, they are enslaved and punished. But none do attempt; of what avail would it be ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... their pure and spiritual faith; yet not unmindful, in the mean time, of the labor yet to be done, to draw away the remaining multitudes of idolaters from the superstitions which, while they infatuate, degrade and brutalize them. With the zeal of the early apostles of this religion, they are applying themselves, with untiring diligence, to soften and subdue the stony heart of hoary Paganism, receiving but too often, as their only return, curses and threats—now ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... They were entirely without discipline or bravery, while all this was passed over unnoticed by their commanders, because the knights were the most influential men among the Achaeans, and were able to promote or degrade whom they pleased. Philopoemen, however, could not allow this state of things to continue. He went round to each of the cities of the Achaean League, and by personally appealing to the young men's sense of honour, by punishment where it was necessary, and by careful training, exercises, ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... therefore, be conceived that I mean to degrade or vilify the literary character, when I would only separate the Author from those polluters of the press who have turned a vestal into a prostitute; a grotesque race of famished buffoons or laughing assassins; or that populace of unhappy beings, who are driven to perish in their ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... the nature of the case is, that deliberately to set yourself as the occupation of your life to amuse the adult and to astonish, or even to terrify, the infant population of your native land, is to degrade yourself. ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... ceased to be interested in Hoskin, the reticence of whose passion had seemed like a touch of ice to her fevered nerves. But this was Baroness Miyazaki's opportunity to discredit Yae, to crush her rival out of serious competition, and to degrade her to the demi-monde. It was done promptly and ruthlessly; for the Baroness's gossip carried weight throughout the diplomatic, professional and missionary circles, even where her person was held in ridicule. The facts of Hoskin's suicide became ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... decision, if I were to heap violent and gross abuse even on Abershaw, or any other highwayman, who was deservedly hanged a hundred years ago, I might actually be indicted for a libel. Such a course, gentlemen, would be to degrade your judgments from a decision upon the thought, and opinions (which, are alone important) of an author to a criticism and condemnation of his words, and would be waging war with the vocabulary and the dictionary, a degradation, ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... as a deliberate insult to the Duke of Orleans, to exclude him from the Chamber of Peers, and to degrade him in the eyes of the partisans of the king. This pitiful spirit of persecution greatly increased the general popularity of the duke, which led to a redoubled clamor of calumny on the part of his opponents. He was accused of seeking to rally around him the malcontents, of courting the favor ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... alone in the stern of the boat with a number of letters in his left hand pressed against his leg, looking fixedly at the water. The yacht was already standing out to sea, but Edmund had not glanced a farewell at beautiful and yet prosperous Genoa, a city that no modern materialism can degrade. Like a young bride of the sea, she is decked by things old and things new, and her marble palaces do not appear to be insulted by the jostling of modern commerce. All things are kept fresh and pure on that wonderful coast. Something had happened, of ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... the hopeless poor and of degraded men, I had in my mind only the feeble or detestable adults who degrade our civilisation; but I have by no means forgotten the unhappy little souls who develop into wastrels unless they are taken away from hideous surroundings which cramp vitality, destroy all childish happiness, and turn into brutes poor young creatures who bear the human image. Lately I heard one ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman |
