"Undermine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is my turn now. To escape fear, you will thrust your wife from the house; fear, you say, would undermine your strength. But will longing strengthen it? If you love me, it will not ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... but Traddles. He was too unfortunate even to come through a supper like anybody else. He was taken ill in the night—quite prostrate he was—in consequence of Crab; and after being drugged to an extent which Demple (whose father was a doctor) said was enough to undermine a horse's constitution, received a caning and six chapters of Greek Testament for ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... arguments so closely resemble those of the Jesuits that they might have been inspired direct from the Vatican, or, which is the same thing, the notorious "court-chaplain party" in Berlin. No wonder, then, that these propositions, which would undermine the whole liberty of science, have met with the loudest approbation from the "Germania," the "New Evangelical Church Times" ("Neue Evangelischen Kirchenzeitung"), and other leading, equivocating organs of the Church militant. On the other hand, these odious ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... degree of knowledge to be found only in the Omniscience of the Deity. It is, in fact, by giving its full weight to this difficulty, that the doctrine of utility has been employed by some foreign writers, in their attempts to undermine the whole foundation of morals. "The goodness of actions," says Beausobre, in his Pyrrhonisme Raisonable, "depends upon their consequences, which man cannot foresee, nor accurately ascertain." What harmony, indeed, or what consistency of moral sentiment can we expect from a system, by which man himself ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie
... not favor him this time, and another hand will seize the field of action and the great profits. He knows that he has enemies and rivals who envy, who undermine him. Well, he will win also in this case, only he would like something afterward—what? He himself does not know what—perhaps rest. To go for a time to Switzerland or Italy. For what purpose? He is not over curious about art and nature, he has no time ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... him understand. It was hard to undermine his trust, step by step, inch by inch, till he found no hope, no shred of doubt to cling to. But it had to be done. If only to avert worse calamities and more heart-rending scenes, he must know at once, and before he took another step in relation to Miss ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... to-day are sleepless in their endeavours to undermine the faith of Ireland through the same agency; while it is to be feared that some of the guardians of that sacred treasure are inclined to imitate the dreamy lethargy that led to ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... it was, he came back to Roche Craie and began to get his estate in order. Elizabeth besought him to take her back to court where she had been a great favorite, but he feared that the life of gaiety would undermine her not too strenuous piety, ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... shown in acts of betrayal, torture, or wanton hostility; never in valiancy or perseverance of contest. I recollect no mediaeval demon who shows as much insulting, resisting, or contending power as Bunyan's Apollyon. They can only cheat, undermine, and mock; never overthrow. Judas, as we should naturally anticipate, has not in this scene the nimbus of an Apostle; yet we shall find it restored to him in the next design. We shall discover the reason of this only by a careful consideration of the ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... Nicholas always showed sympathy. Let news of a single wrong to a serf get through the hedges about the Russian majesty, and woe to the guilty master! Many of these wrongs came to Nicholas's notice; and he came to hate the system, and tried to undermine it. Opposition met him, of course; not so much the ponderous laziness of Peter's time as an opposition, polite and elastic, which never ranted and never stood up—for then Nicholas would have throttled it and stamped upon it. But it did its best to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... affect to give a declaration of the national will, and are as ambiguous as the Delphic Oracle; and it is said that their half- measures, and determination not to see that public opinion is against them, and that a thorough change can alone undermine this military revolution, will contribute more than ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... murmurs and doubts which these cause reach his ear? Has an ordinary man the courage to demand such sacrifices, and would not such efforts most certainly demoralise the Army, break up the bands of discipline, and, in short, undermine its military virtue, if firm reliance on the greatness and infallibility of the Commander did not compensate for all? Here, therefore, it is that we should pay respect; it is these miracles of execution ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... which are indeed likewise simple, but possess the peculiar property, as parts of space, of filling it merely by their aggregation. I shall not repeat here the common and clear refutations of this absurdity, which are to be found everywhere in numbers: every one knows that it is impossible to undermine the evidence of mathematics by mere discursive conceptions; I shall only remark that, if in this case philosophy endeavours to gain an advantage over mathematics by sophistical artifices, it is because it forgets that the discussion relates solely to Phenomena and their conditions. It is ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... praise, E'en as a bird, conceal'd in sylvan ways, May laud the rose, and wish, from hour to hour, That he had petals like the empress-flower, And there could grow, unwing'd, and be a bud, With all his warblings ta'en at singing-flood And turned to vagaries of the wildest scent To undermine the meekness ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay
... imaginary duty prescribed by law, that only to make you understand wherein you have failed towards me, I should be obliged to enter into details which would offend your dignity, and instruct you in matters which would seem to you to undermine all morality." ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... propaganda can prevent the majority from becoming Communists, yet capitalist laws and police forces cannot prevent the Communists, while still a minority, from acquiring a supremacy of military power. It is thought that secret propaganda can undermine the army and navy, although it is admittedly impossible to get the majority to vote at elections for the programme of the Bolsheviks. This view is based upon Russian experience, where the army and navy had suffered defeat and had been brutally ill used by incompetent Tsarist authorities. ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... sleep upon the ground, March in your armour thorough watery fens, Sustain the scorching heat and freezing cold, Hunger and thirst, [111] right adjuncts of the war; And, after this, to scale a castle-wall, Besiege a fort, to undermine a town, And make whole cities caper in the air: Then next, the way to fortify your men; In champion [112] grounds what figure serves you best, For which [113] the quinque-angle form is meet, Because the corners there may fall more flat Whereas [114] the fort may fittest be ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe
... PHILOSOPHY.—ANSWER.—Sixthly, you will say there have been a great many things explained by matter and motion; take away these and you destroy the whole corpuscular philosophy, and undermine those mechanical principles which have been applied with so much success to account for the PHENOMENA. In short, whatever advances have been made, either by ancient or modern philosophers, in the study of nature do all proceed on the supposition ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley
... I'll do," he resumed, "I'll take that skate of yours down to the barn and throw some hay into him. He looks like it would do him good in case the shock don't undermine ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... could not openly atone. He asked himself as he stood by the brazier, the bowab apathetically rolling cigarettes at his feet, whether, in the flow of circumstance, the fact that he could not make open restitution, or take punishment for his unlawful act, would undermine the structure of his character. He was on the threshold of his career: action had not yet begun; he was standing like a swimmer on a high shore, looking into depths beneath which have never been plumbed by mortal man, wondering what currents, what rocks, lay beneath the surface of the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... rain, vapour, and imperceptible atmospheric influences; and, as the worm devours the lineaments of his mortal beauty, so the lichens and the moss and the most insignificant plants shall feed upon his columns and his pyramids, and the most humble and insignificant insects shall undermine and sap the foundations of his colossal works, and make their habitations amongst the ruins of his palaces and the falling seats of his ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... the ancient testimony of the Society of Friends to the true nature of spiritual worship may be fully maintained by all who claim that name; and that they may be watchful against the introduction of practices which will undermine the support of this testimony, and thus lead those who profess to be the children of the Light, back into a dependence upon forms, out of which their forefathers in the Truth were brought by that remarkable outpouring ...
— On Singing and Music • Society of Friends
... instituted in any form, then women slaves were particularly valued, not only for their labor, but because they might be either concubines or wives. It is evident, then, that war and slavery would thus indirectly tend to undermine the maternal system. ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... "The Custom House"; alluding to "old King Derby, old Billy Gray, old Simon Forrester, and many another magnate of his day; whose powdered head, however, was scarcely in the tomb, before his mountain-pile of wealth began to dwindle." But Nathaniel's family neither helped to undermine the heap, nor accumulated a rival one. However good the forecast that his immediate ancestors had made, as to the quickest and broadest road to wealth, they travelled long in the wake of success without ever winning it, themselves. The malediction that fell on Justice Hathorne's head might with some ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... was time for Brigham to "bend his finger." If a governor could openly criticise polygamy, and a judge seek to undermine Young's legal and military authority, without a protest, his days of power were certainly drawing to a close. Accordingly, a big mass-meeting was held in Salt Lake City on March 3, 1863, "for the purpose of investigating certain acts of several of the United States ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... Heaven, of course I would not speak flippantly of it; but though towards Heaven we look with reverence and humble hope, I do not know that Tom, Dick and Harry's notions of it have any special claim to our respect.) Such publicity would destroy all individuality, and undermine the foundations of society. Clairvoyance—if there be any such thing—always seemed to me a stupid impertinence. When people pay visits to me, I wish them to come to the front door, and ring the bell, and send up their names. I don't wish them to climb in at the window, or creep through ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... bored through the darkness upon me. Hunched up in the deck chair, with his legs crossed under him, he was like an animated Buddha venting a dark philosophy and seeking to undermine my ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... to achieve nothing, and so retreated without taking anv spoils. Thus they remained during the week of the two'Easters (Palm Sunday to Easter Day), and fashioned engines of divers sorts, and set such miners as they had to work underground and so undermine the wall. And thus did they celebrate Easter (10th April) before Adrianople, being but few in number and scant ...
— Memoirs or Chronicle of The Fourth Crusade and The Conquest of Constantinople • Geoffrey de Villehardouin
... deterioration of health through disturbed balance of the constitution. The brain, or rather particular parts of it, are often over-stimulated, while the body is neglected. In many ways education and civilization foster nervousness and weakness, and undermine the rude natural health and spirits of the human animal. Alcohol, tobacco, tea, coffee, extra brain work, late hours, dissipation, overwork, indoor life, division of labour, preservation of the weak, and many other causes, all help to injure the ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... jealousies, the petty intrigues and the meannesses and the misunderstandings in life assail you,—rise above them. Be like a lighthouse that illumines and beautifies the snarling, swashing waves of the storm that threaten it, that seek to undermine it and seek to wash over it. This is Conquest. When the chance to win fame, wealth, success or the attainment of your heart's desire, by sacrifice of honor or principle, comes to you and it does not affect you long ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan
... England, whose fleets ruled the European seas, who lent her aid to his enemies, and instigated their opposition, was his most dangerous foe. By a gigantic measure, known as the continental system, he sought to undermine her power. The whole of the continent of Europe, as far as his influence was felt, was, by an edict, published at Berlin on the 21st of November, 1806, closed against British trade; nay, he went so far as to lay an embargo on all English goods lying in store and to make prisoners of war of all the ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... moody ways to the solitude, and said it showed how Government spoilt the futures of its best men. Moriarty had built himself the plinth of a very god reputation in the bridge-dam-girder line. But he knew, every night of the week, that he was taking steps to undermine that reputation with L. L. L. and "Christopher" and little nips of liqueurs, and filth of that kind. He had a sound constitution and a great brain, or else he would have broken down and died like a sick camel in the district, as better men ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... predicted, the assertion that Joel had prophesied only after the captivity. No one, of course, has been willing to agree with him in this; but as long as the devastation by the locusts is understood literally, it will not be possible to undermine the grounds upon which he supports his views. It is altogether in vain that people spend their labour in disputing the fact, so obvious and evident, that the discourse here concerns the total ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... to be needless in this regard, how well soever they may, possibly, intend to Natural Religion, do herein entertain an Opinion that would undermine it: Experience shewing us that Natural Light, unassisted by Revelation, is insufficent to the Ends of Natural Religion: A Truth necessary to be acknowledg'd to the having a due value for the benefit that we receive by the Revelation of Jesus Christ; ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... Clifford, Chesterfield, and Mulgrave.[16] But, though the recollection of the contemned Odes, like the spretae injuria formae of Juno, still continued to prompt these overflowings of Swift's satire, he had too much taste and perception of poetry to attempt, gravely, to undermine, by a formal criticism, the merits of ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... did much to undermine feudalism; and it almost regenerated the spirit of Christianity in the thirteenth century. "Man of the people," writes R. F. O'Connor, "he did more for the people than ever yet had been done by any one; whose vocation was to revive ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... said the man in black; "and if the rest of your church were like them we should quickly bid adieu to all hope of converting these regions, but we are thankful to be able to say that such folks are not numerous; there are, moreover, causes at work quite sufficient to undermine even their zeal. Their sons return at the vacations, from Oxford and Cambridge, puppies, full of the nonsense which they have imbibed from Platitude professors; and this nonsense they retail at home, where it fails not to make some impression, whilst the ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... Louise. Every thing seemed to combine to magnify the power of the king. Still, the pleasure-loving monarch, while apparently wholly resigning himself to the career of a voluptuary, was with instinctive sagacity striving to undermine the resources of the haughty nobility, and to render his own court ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... only different, but opposed in strong contradistinction. The wrath of our ancestors, for example, was coloured GULES; it broke forth in acts of open and sanguinary violence against the objects of its fury. Our malignant feelings, which must seek gratification through more indirect channels, and undermine the obstacles which they cannot openly bear down, may be rather said to be tinctured SABLE. But the deep-ruling impulse is the same in both cases; and the proud peer who can now only ruin his neighbour according to law, by protracted suits, is the genuine ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... fluids could have taught Mrs. Scudder a better rle for this morning, than her tender gravity, and her constant expedients to break and ripple, by changing employments, that deep, deadly under-current of thoughts which she feared might undermine her child's life. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... literature, &c., we must refer our readers to Boswell's teeming narrative. In 1783, he had a stroke of palsy, which deprived him for a time of speech. That returned to him, however, but a complication of complaints, including asthma, sciatica, and dropsy, began gradually to undermine his powerful frame. He continued to the last to cherish the prospect of a tour to Italy, but never accomplished his purpose. Death had all along been his great object of dread, and its fast approaches were regarded with unmitigated ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... into the habit of "hoarding" our food parcels and carrying a small lunch to the mines each day. These lunches had to be carefully secreted or the Germans would steal them. They could not understand how it was that starving England could send food abroad to us. The sight of these lunches helped to undermine their faith in the truth of the official information they ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... beasts.'" {196} He also gave a ball at Mariquita, which passed off with eclat, the governor from Honda, with a host of friends, honouring it with their presence. It was, indeed, necessary to "make a party" in this way, as other schemers were already trying to undermine the Colombian company in influential directions. The engineer did not exaggerate when he said, "The uncertainty of transacting business in this country is ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... confirm his renown at home. He now stood before his admirers in all the dignity of types; and it was in vain for that miserable tribe of "animalculae, who live by feeding on the body of genius," to attempt to undermine a reputation that was embalmed in the faith of so many parishes. The brochure was diligently scattered through the provinces, lauded around the tea-pot, openly extolled in the prints—by some kindred spirit, as was manifest in the striking ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... is coming, too, when the employer who maintains conditions in his mills that subtly undermine the virtue of his women workers will be regarded ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... an Influence over our Actions, and is in many Cases so impregnable a Fence to Virtue; what can more undermine Morality than that Politeness which reigns among the unthinking Part of Mankind, and treats as unfashionable the most ingenuous Part of our Behaviour; which recommends Impudence as good Breeding, and keeps a Man always ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... hiatus, but have been derailed by a second intifadah that broke out in September 2000. The resulting widespread violence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Israel's military response, and instability within the Palestinian Authority continue to undermine progress ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... this to meet with harsh treatment, much less cruelty, was, if not to ruin it completely, at least to undermine all confidence. Yet this, sad to relate, was now precisely what befell. Up to this, life had been without a cloud. Of course, as in every other society, there had been the necessity of fending for oneself—of ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... running in the dark through the woods west of Fort William. After the rain of early summer, wash-outs that undermine the track are numerous and the express had been delayed. Now, however, the road was good and the engineer drove his big locomotive with throttle wide open. Black smoke blew about the rocking cars, cinders rattled on the roofs, and showers of sparks sped past the windows. ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... moment!" Prince Andrew repeated. "To them it is only a moment affording opportunities to undermine a rival and obtain an extra cross or ribbon. For me tomorrow means this: a Russian army of a hundred thousand and a French army of a hundred thousand have met to fight, and the thing is that these two hundred thousand men will fight and the side that fights more fiercely and ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... President Wilson did not care to put himself in the position of appearing to precipitate a political crisis in either country, so he finally gave way on this point also. These concessions proved to be the most serious mistakes that he made at Paris, for they did more than anything else to undermine the faith of liberals everywhere ...
— From Isolation to Leadership, Revised - A Review of American Foreign Policy • John Holladay Latane
... traitors can, the basis is but frail. I mean such traitors as the vacant world Echoes most stunningly: not fur-robed knaves Whose whispers raise the dreaming bloodhound's ear Against benighted famished wanderers; While with remorseless guilt they undermine Palace and shed, their very father's house, O blind! their own, their children's heritage, To leave more ample space for fearful wealth. Plunder in some most harmless guise they swathe, Call it some very meek and hallowed name, Some known and borne by ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... conversations, disapproved of the system of the secretary of the treasury I acknowledge and avow; and this was not merely a speculative difference. His system flowed from principles adverse to liberty, and was calculated to undermine and demolish the republic by creating an influence of his department over the members of the legislature. I saw this influence actually produced, and its first fruits to be the establishment of the great outlines of his project, ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... where shall we begin to undermine this Colossus; let us see;" and his majesty began ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the clouded navy hide; He fills the Greeks with terror and dismay, And gives great Hector the predestined day. Strong in themselves, but stronger in his aid, Close to the works their rigid siege they laid. In vain the mounds and massy beams defend, While these they undermine, and those they rend; Upheaved the piles that prop the solid wall; And heaps on heaps the smoky ruins fall. Greece on her ramparts stands the fierce alarms; The crowded bulwarks blaze with waving arms, Shield touching shield, a long refulgent row; Whence hissing ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... The whole of Popery lies in the assumption of a Church, as a numerical unit, infallible in the highest degree, inasmuch as both which is Scripture, and what Scripture teaches, is infallible by derivation only from an infallible decision of the Church. Fairly undermine or blow up this: and all the remaining peculiar tenets of Romanism fall with it, or stand by their own right as ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... suffered a sort of exhaustion that made the effects of the evil more and more left. Thus, from the time Philip's somewhat tardy imagination had been made to realize his home, his father, and his sisters, the home-sickness, and weariness of his captivity, which had already begun to undermine his health and spirits, took ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pray, can you solve me the following problem? Given a man with a wife and six children: let him be obliged always to exhibit himself when outside his own door in a suit of black broadcloth, such as will not undermine the foundations of the Establishment by a paltry plebeian glossiness or an unseemly whiteness at the edges; in a snowy cravat, which is a serious investment of labour in the hemming, starching, and ironing departments; and in a hat which shows no symptom of taking to the hideous ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... RALPH. Undermine the other fellow. You can't go to those movie people now, Maud. They'd star you as the celebrated Maud Builder who gave her father into custody. Come to us instead, and have perfect freedom, till ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... began, and in 1891 and 1892, as many as fourteen actions were brought against the adepts of the Great Candle, and numbers of them were sentenced to imprisonment and to the confiscation of their goods. All this in spite of the fact that their beliefs did not in any way threaten to undermine the foundations ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... the Pope; for this resistance of Anselm to the King was the cause of the popes themselves against the monarchs of Europe. Anselm simply acted as the vicegerent of the Pope. To submit to the dictation of the King in a spiritual matter was to undermine the authority of Rome. I do not attempt to settle the merits of the question, but only to describe the contest. To settle the merits of such a question is to settle the question whether the papal power in its plenitude was good or evil for ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... that none remain unvisited by, and that bring, here the death of a husband, yonder the moral downfall of a beloved child; that lie, here in a long and serious illness, yonder in the wrecking of a warmly nursed plan;—not these undermine her (the housewife's) freshness and strength. It is the small, daily-recurring marrow and bone-gnawing cares.... How many millions of brave little house-mothers cook and scour away their vigor of life, their ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... will dispute that all the typical movements of our time are upon this road towards simplification. Each system seeks to be more fundamental than the other; each seeks, in the literal sense, to undermine the other. In art, for example, the old conception of man, classic as the Apollo Belvedere, has first been attacked by the realist, who asserts that man, as a fact of natural history, is a creature with colourless ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... would think it, lady Feng was endowed with a poor physique. From her youth up, moreover, she had not known how to husband her health; and emulation and contentiousness had, more than anything else, combined to undermine her vital energies. Hence it was that although her complaint was a simple miscarriage, it had really, after all, been the outcome of loss of vigour. After a month symptoms of emissions of blood began also to show themselves. And notwithstanding her reluctance to utter ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... Gregory XI moved back again to Rome after the popes had been exiles for seventy years, during which much had happened to undermine the papal power and supremacy. Yet the discredit into which the papacy had fallen during its stay at Avignon was as nothing compared with the disasters which befell it after ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... depends upon the practical meaning. You cannot reduce the beauty of a bridge or a cathedral to such factors as mere size and fine proportions, without relation to function. No preconceived idea of the purity of beauty can undermine our intuition of ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... title, he politely asked the reason of their visit. "To learn your system of instruction." Still more gratified, he paid them every attention. Availing themselves of their advantage, the legates used every effort to undermine his teaching and lessen his authority. Hananiah, enraged by their conduct, summoned an assembly, and denounced their treachery. The people cried out, "That which thou hast built, thou canst not so soon pull down; the hedge which thou hast ...
— Hebrew Literature
... to work right and left and to undermine the walls, until large portions of them tumble over ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... fancy, and to admire him in return; his life, strength, and pluck made him a ready pupil in all schemes of mischief, and Upton, who had often noticed him, would have been the first to shudder had he known how far his example went to undermine all Eric's lingering good resolutions, and injure permanently the boy of whom he ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... also determined, that thanks should be given by the town of Mansoul to Mr. Prywell, for his diligent seeking of the welfare of their town: and further, that forasmuch as he was so naturally inclined to seek their good, and also to undermine their foes, they gave him a commission of scout-master-general, for the good of the ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... industrialists bent upon the absorbing object of productive efficiency; but they have paid a price they little realize. For in the attainment of this minor object, they have made a tremendous breach in the greatest defense of the existing order of society against the advancing enemy. To undermine the foundations of Liberty is to open ...
— What Prohibition Has Done to America • Fabian Franklin
... on his return home, that the Vekeel's crimes far exceeded his worst fears. Obada's proceedings had begun to undermine that respect for Arab rule and Moslem justice which Amru had done his utmost to secure. It was only by a miracle that Orion had escaped his plots, for he had three times sent assassins to the prison, and it was ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... emulation by individual merchants, and soon transcended its former bounds. Expeditions were fitted out by various persons from Montreal and Michilimackinac, and rivalships and jealousies of course ensued. The trade was injured by their artifices to outbid and undermine each other; the Indians were debauched by the sale of spirituous liquors, which had been prohibited under the French rule. Scenes of drunkeness, brutality, and brawl were the consequence, in the Indian villages and around ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... clamour has turned a slippery statesmen from the paths of patriotism and propriety, and whose subterranean machinations—aided and abetted by men versed in Jesuistic and Machiavellian strategy, and who believe that the end justifies the means—threaten to undermine the British Empire, and to involve the citizens of England in political and financial ruin. A pretty pass for a respectable individual like John Bull. England to be worked by the wire-pulling of a few under-bred, half-educated priests! whose tincture of ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... the rising sun. All the arts of Haman had been needed to wean him from her and to teach him to forget her. How rarely does a vile, unholy counsellor or companion seek to corrupt a private man, or a prince, or a ruler, without striving first to undermine the influence of the ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... the war had been from the outset distasteful; and he had been much disturbed by the constant intrigues of the Orangist party to undermine his position. He was aware that in this hour of the country's need the eyes of a considerable part of the people, even in Holland, were more and more directed to the young prince. There was a magic ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... which pretend to instruct the public in the intricacies of foreign policy, but which actually mask clever propaganda operations designed to sell 'co-existence' to Americans. There are many of these propaganda outfits working to undermine Americans' faith in America, but none, in our opinion, is as slick or as smooth or as dangerous as the Foreign Policy Association of Russian-born Vera ...
— The Invisible Government • Dan Smoot
... the occasion of the espousals, and of the fire which consumed the dancing-hall, and the tragic death of several persons, notably of the sister of the prince. They drew from this coincidence bad auguries; some from ill-will, and in order to undermine the enthusiasm inspired by the high fortunes of Napoleon; others from a superstitious credulity, as if there could have been any serious connection between a fire which cost the lives of several persons, and the very usual accident of a storm in June, which ruined the toilets, ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... turn of the great nobles. For ages the nobility of France had been the worst among her many afflictions. From age to age attempts had been made to curb them. In the fifteenth century Charles VII. had done much to undermine their power, and Louis XI. had done much to crush it. But strong as was the policy of Charles, and cunning as was the policy of Louis, they had made one omission, and that omission left France, though advanced, miserable. For these monarchs had not cut the root of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... putting too much trust in riches; but they are to be considered as something infinitely worse than mere reverses of fortune: the disorders they generate shake the very foundations of morals; and while shattering the industry, they undermine the economy and frugality and rend the integrity of mankind. We doubt whether any of the great forms of evil incident to our imperfect civilization—the slave-trade, debauchery, pauperism—cause more individual anguish or more public detriment than these incessant revolutions ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... The government also obtained an IMF standby loan in January 1992 and reached agreements with commercial bankers on the repayment of interest arrears and on the reduction of debt and debt service payments. Galloping inflation - the rate doubled in 1992 - continues to undermine economic stability. Itamar FRANCO, who assumed the presidency following President COLLOR'S resignation in December 1992, has promised to support the basic premises of COLLOR'S reform program but has yet to define clearly his economic policies. Brazil's natural resources ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... anybody here who takes pleasure in them, who thinks that such writing and such witticisms as he gets purveyed to him in these sheets do really help the cause of truth and intellectual freedom, I shall not attack his position from the front. I shall try to undermine it. I shall aim at rousing in him such a state of feeling as may suddenly convince him that what is injured by writing of this sort is not the orthodox Christian, or the Church, or Jesus of Nazareth, but always and inevitably the man who writes it and the ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of Naples was the existence of so powerful and independent a prince as Lodovico. But the old king preferred to have recourse to his usual expedients of cunning and intrigue, and while he employed every artifice to undermine Lodovico's influence both at the other courts of Italy and in France, he sent ambassadors to congratulate the Moro on his son's birth, and only expostulated in a friendly manner with his kinsman. Lodovico himself, however, was too astute ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... power are intimately connected with population, and depend in a great measure upon it, wherever they are the cause of introducing a taste that will, in the end, depopulate a country, they must, in so far, undermine their own support, and bring on decay. This is a case that applies to all northern nations, and particularly to Britain; in order, therefore, to treat the subject at full length, it will be better to enter into the minute examination ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... travel by rail; and that if the Romans are allowed to go from home, and to see new objects, new faces, and to hear new ideas, a process will be commenced which will ultimately, and at no distant day, undermine the papacy. But among men of ordinary intelligence there will be but one opinion regarding a system that sees an enemy not only in the Bible, but in the most necessary and useful arts,—in the steam-ship, in the railroad, in the electric ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... is coming to be as much of a civic problem as it ever has been a family problem. Upon the normality of its children the strength and perpetuity of the state depend, as surely as the dependency and delinquency of its children undermine the prowess and menace the life of the state. The education and discipline, labor and recreation of the child figure larger all the while in our legislation and taxes, our thinking ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... at other periods low and feeble; different tributaries, also, draining peculiar countries and soils, and therefore charged with peculiar sediment, are swollen at distinct periods. It was also shown that the waves of the sea and currents undermine the cliffs during wintry storms, and sweep away the materials into the deep, after which a season of tranquillity succeeds, when nothing but the finest mud is spread by the movements of the ocean over the ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... as the mayor let fall his word of powerful threat, and doubted it. Once recovered from the indisposition which now weakened him, he would find means to thwart any attempts made by Mayor Packard to undermine the position he had taken as the legal husband of Olympia—sufficiently so, at least, to hinder happiness between the pair whose wedded life he not only envied but was determined to break up, unless some flaw in his past could be ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... accident, can they raise or lift themselves up. Trees serve as beds to them; they lean themselves against them, and thus reclining only slightly, they take their rest; when the huntsmen have discovered from the footsteps of these animals whither they are accustomed to betake themselves, they either undermine all the trees at the roots, or cut into them so far that the upper part of the trees may appear to be left standing. When they have leant upon them, according to their habit, they knock down by their weight the unsupported trees, and fall ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... of great influence among the people were these sad-faced priests, until the Bolsheviks came to undermine their power; for the Bolsheviks have spared not the old Imperial government. The church had been a potent organization for the Czar to strengthen his sway throughout his far-reaching dominions and every priest was an enlisted crusader of the ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... Remember that all of your counts begin with the left foot unless you are instructed to the contrary. Remember always, when you hop, to land with the knees bent; otherwise, the landing of the body with stiff legs after the hops will be a shock to the nervous system which in time will undermine your health. ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... races or the treatment of the alien Jew, there lay the sense that the degradation of any class of labour in one country affected its status in all, and that to be insular on industrial questions was to undermine everything that the pioneers of English Labour had ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... Doge, Lomellino, Manfrone, and Conari, men who had established the fame of Venice on so firm a basis that it would require centuries to undermine it; men in whose society one seemed to be withdrawn from the circle of ordinary mortals, and honoured by the intercourse of superior beings, men who now graciously received the Florentine stranger into their intimacy, ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis
... which Washington had latterly experienced from this man, had preyed upon his spirits, and contributed, with his incessant toils and anxieties, to undermine his health. For some time he struggled with repeated attacks of dysentery and fever, and continued in the exercise of his duties; but the increased violence of his malady, and the urgent advice of his friend Dr. Craik, the army surgeon, induced him to relinquish his post towards ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... Sin and Its Bitter Consequences. David's high ideals and noble chivalry could not withstand the enervating influence of his growing harem. The degrading influence of polygamy with its luxury, pleasure seeking and jealousies was soon to undermine his character. His sins and weak indulgencies were destined to work family and national disaster. These sins reached a climax in his trespass with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah. In this crime he fell from his ...
— The Bible Period by Period - A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... information, the gradual decline of the old hereditary prejudices of caste and parish which act automatically as instincts, and are useful as instincts to the small groups in which the individual is born and in which he lives. How could such a profound change in the condition of humanity fail to undermine everywhere the order of things which group men together? Why should not the new milieu at once attack all ancient forms of society? For, at the moment of its establishment, there exists in Europe a general form of society manifest through features in common; a monarchy—hereditary royalty, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the sound of my name, and would now and then secretly lend an ear to what was being said upon his other side. In fact I soon made up my mind that it was for his benefit Miss Kingsley was talking. She hoped to undermine my influence by an unflattering description of my doings in society. It was doubtless her cue to make her guests regard ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... for the legitimate cravings of our nature. Whenever I hear a man speak sneeringly of marriage, if I have to conclude that he says what he feels, I may not think him a fool, but I strongly suspect that he is a blackguard. "He who attacks marriage; he who by word or deed sets himself to undermine this foundation of our moral society, must settle the matter with me, and if I do not bring him to reason, then I have nothing more to do with him." So wrote Goethe, and I echo his ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... offering to kneel as she made the solemn protestation. All this was painful to the prisoner, who distinctly foresaw the consequences. Still, so profound was his reverence for Ghita's singleness of heart and mind, that he would not, by look or gesture, in any manner endeavor to undermine that sacred love of truth which he knew formed the very foundations of her character. She was accordingly sworn, without anything occurring to alarm her affectations, or to apprise her of what might be the sad result ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... however, took a leap which did not fall far short of that which Jefferson proposed. The instructions they prepared, at least, made it manifest unto all men, that, although they professed loyalty to the sovereign, their aim was to undermine his throne; or, in other words, to obtain independence. They averred their allegiance to King George, declared that they sincerely approved of a constitutional connexion with their mother country, and even professed a willingness to submit to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... lost to the republicans of Birmingham, Manchester, and other great commercial towns, where "men fall out they know not why;" and where their increasing wealth and prosperity are the best eulogiums on the constitution they attempt to undermine. ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... Things would be sufficiently Criminal; what then must the Man deserve, who could be found so hardy, in Breach of his Oath and Honour, to act the Reverse of all these? And such is the Doctor: He contemns the Power he should revere; he strives to undermine that Government he ought to uphold; he endeavours at Reflexions upon those he should have in the highest Honour and Esteem; he is leading People into Disaffection and Disloyalty who are committed to his Care for right Information; ...
— A Letter From a Clergyman to his Friend, - with an Account of the Travels of Captain Lemuel Gulliver • Anonymous
... devil played at chess with me, and, yielding a pawn, thought to gain a queen of me; taking advantage of my honest endeavours; and, whilst I laboured to raise the struc- ture of my reason, he strove to undermine ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... years, and of which the Heads of Houses are the legitimate maintainers in this place. They exclude me, as far as may be, from the University Pulpit; and, though I never have preached strong doctrine in it, they do so rightly, so far as this, that they understand that my sermons are calculated to undermine things established. I cannot disguise from myself that they are. No one will deny that most of my sermons are on moral subjects, not doctrinal; still I am leading my hearers to the Primitive Church, if you will, but not to the Church of England. Now, ought one to be ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... that he resented the domination of Jewish belief and thought by the alien Greek speculation. In a style free from rhetoric, and characterized rather by a severe brevity and precision, he undertakes to undermine the Aristotelian position by using the Stagirite's own weapons, logical analysis and proof. His chief work is the "Or Adonai," ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... Viceroy, and Morley never forgave him. K. told me this himself and he told me also that he resented the correspondence which was, he knew, being carried on, behind his (K.'s) back, between the army in France and his (K.'s) own political Boss: that sort of action was, he considered, calculated to undermine authority. ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... defeats, they said, gave them less pain than his intrigues. Since he had been a prisoner, there was no section of the victorious party which had not been the object both of his flatteries and of his machinations; but never was he more unfortunate than when he attempted at once to cajole and to undermine Cromwell. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... object in becoming an inmate of Vellenaux. First, that of securing a comfortable home for several years. But her grand scheme was that of making herself so necessary to the Baronet, that she could, in time, undermine the defences, carry the Citadel by stratagem, and finally become the envied mistress of Vellenaux. But a few months residence under the same roof served to convince her of the fallacy of the project; for there were two grand difficulties that she could not ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... contingencies are here involved! Meanwhile the influences which imperil in Ireland the principle of Authority, in the domains alike of politics and of morals, are at work incessantly, to undermine and deteriorate the character of the Irish people, to take the vigour and the manhood out of them, to unfit them day by day, not only for good citizenship in the British Empire or the United States, but for good citizenship in any possible Ireland under any possible form of government. To ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... an understanding which—as I have already telegraphed You—my Government endeavors to aid with all possible effort. Naturally military measures by Russia, which might be construed as a menace by Austria-Hungary, would accelerate a calamity which both of us desire to avoid and would undermine my position as mediator which—upon Your appeal to my friendship and ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... substance: "I hope, Mr. Ainsworth, that you will take better care of your health in future (hear, hear). No, no, you are not taking care of your health at all (laughter). We all expect you to be Prime Minister, and that is the reason we would like you not to roam about so much and undermine your constitution (cheers). You are always travelling. You are like the Wandering Jew. No! you are like a little bird on a bough. To-day, we see you on a tree near the door; to-morrow, we see you on a tree a hundred ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... questionings which absorbed the attention of the learned, the indignation excited by the seeming vagaries of a Paracelsus, the fear and trembling lest the strange doctrine of Copernicus should undermine the faith of centuries, were all helps to the germination of the seed—stimuli to thought which urged it on to explore the new fields opened up to its occupation. This given, all that has since followed ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... be a mystical theologian, a psychologist may be a believer in ghosts. For science, too, which had promised to supply a new and solid foundation for philosophy, has allowed philosophy rather to undermine its foundation, and is seen eating its own words, through the mouths of some of its accredited spokesmen, and reducing itself to something utterly conventional and insecure. It is characteristic of human nature to be as impatient of ignorance regarding what is not known as lazy in acquiring ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... is of interest in what it tells us of Pope himself. Mr. Elwin's idea that in the 'Essay on Man' Pope, "partly the dupe, partly the accomplice of Bolingbroke," was attempting craftily to undermine the foundations of religion, is a notion curiously compounded of critical blindness and theological rancor. In spite of all its incoherencies and futilities the 'Essay' is an honest attempt to express Pope's opinions, borrowed in part, of course, from his admired friend, but in part ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... travelling-bags and contained so much nutrition that a port-manteau full of it would furnish the daily rations of any army. Luckily even her iron constitution could not stand the strain of such ideal living for long, and her growing anaemia threatened to undermine a constitution seriously impaired by the precepts of perfect health. A course of beef-steaks and other substantial viands loaded with uric acid restored her ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... is a danger, on the other hand, that the encouraged and morbid feeling may weaken or bias the understanding, or that the over shrewd and keen understanding may shorten the imagination, or that the understanding and imagination together may take place of, or undermine, the resolution, as in Hamlet. So in the mere bodily frame there is a delightful perfection of the senses, consistent with the utmost health of the muscular system, as in the quick sight and hearing of an active savage: ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... originate there. They are the mortal enemies of the House of Commons, who would persuade them to think or to act as if they were a self-originated magistracy, independent of the people and unconnected with their opinions and feelings. Under a pretence of exalting the dignity, they undermine the very foundations of this House. When the question is asked here, what disturbs the people, whence all this clamour, we apply to the treasury-bench, and they tell us it is from the efforts of libellers and the wickedness ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... and St. Petersburg and was warmly supported by us. On July 28th the Kaiser telegraphed to the Czar begging him to remember that it was Austria-Hungary's right and duty to stop the Greater-Serbian agitation, as this threatened to undermine Austria's existence. (Cries of indignation.) The Kaiser pointed out to the Czar the gulf between monarchical interests and the outrage at Serajewo; he begged him to give his personal support to ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... exploded? And is not this objection odd From rogues who ne'er believed a God? For liberty a champion stout, Though not so Gospel-ward devout. While others, hither sent to save us Come but to plunder and enslave us; Nor ever own'd a power divine, But Mammon, and the German line. Say, how did Rundle undermine 'em? Who shew'd a better jus divinum? From ancient canons would not vary, But thrice refused episcopari. Our bishop's predecessor, Magus, Would offer all the sands of Tagus; Or sell his children, house, and lands, For that one gift, to lay on hands: ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... you have in part acknowledged it, by your laughing at our easy delivery of your cautionary towns: The best is, we are used by you as well as your own princes of the house of Orange: We and they have set you up, and you undermine their ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... Church, old sects and schisms, the Councils, affairs of Papal policy—these things had a very genuine interest for her; circumstances favouring, she might have become an erudite woman; But the conditions were so far from favourable that all she succeeded in doing was to undermine her health. Upon a sudden breakdown there followed mental lassitude, from which she never recovered. It being subsequently her duty to read novels aloud for the lady whom she 'companioned,' new novels at the rate of a volume a day, she lost all power of giving her mind to anything but the feebler ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... These attempts to undermine Washington owed their real vitality to the Continental Congress, and it is safe to say that but for Washington's political enemies no army rival would have ventured to push forward. In what the opposition in that body consisted, and to ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... were well again. I fear, if your malady disturbs you as much as it did, it must wear on your strength very much, and it seems in itself dangerous. However, it is good to think that your composure is such that disease can only do its legitimate work, and not undermine two ways,—the body with its pains, and the body through the mind with thoughts and fears ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... the same way. Lanfranc did not at once enforce the full rigour of Hildebrand's decrees. Marriage was forbidden for the future; the capitular clergy had to part from their wives; but the vested interest of the parish priest was respected. In another point William directly helped to undermine his own authority and the independence of his kingdom. He exempted his abbey of the Battle from the authority of the diocesan bishop. With this began a crowd of such exemptions, which, by weakening local authority, strengthened the power of the Roman see. All ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman
... men, Mr. Newman had an unschooled aptitude for the science, and had practised it with profit on his competitors and employees before he knew a word of its technology. In Carrick's bare and lamp-lit study they had joined forces to bewilder and undermine the intelligence of the sly spaniel, and there had been sessions of hypnotism, with Mr. Newman rigid in trances, while Carrick groped, as it were, among the springs of his mind. The pair of them had incurred the ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... miserable Herreros in Africa, and he heard the deputies of the Holy Father's political party screaming their rage like jaguars in a jungle night. All over Europe the Catholic Church organized fake labor unions, the "yellows," as they were called, to scab upon the workers and undermine the revolutionary movement. The Holy Father himself issued precise instructions for the management of these agencies of betrayal. Hear the most pious and ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... act," Mr. Adams resumed, "intended to undermine the political virtue of the people. Two years ago our wives and daughters exhibited their allegiance to lofty principles by signing an agreement not to drink tea until the obnoxious laws then existing ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... which your Majesty awoke nervous and agitated can be realized only in so far that we shall still have many stormy and noisy parliamentary debates, which must unfortunately undermine the prestige of the Parliaments and seriously interfere with State business. Your Majesty's presence at these debates is an impossibility; and I regard such scenes as we have lately witnessed in the Reichstag regrettable enough as a standard of our morals and our political education, perhaps ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... that forgiveness I can live," said he, rising to his feet. "I came back into this room that my children should not see their father's humiliation. Oh! the sight constantly before their eyes of a father so guilty as I am is a terrible thing; it must undermine parental influence and break every family tie. So I cannot remain among you, and I must go to spare you the odious spectacle of a father bereft of dignity. Do not oppose my departure Adeline. It would only be to load with your own hand the pistol to blow ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... for marriage, she set to work to undermine Jonah's obstinacy. She proceeded warily, and made no open attack; but Jonah began to notice with uneasiness that he could not talk for five minutes without stumbling on marriage. In the midst of a conversation on the weather, he would be amazed to find the theme turn to the praise ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... old Puritan commentators has it: 'The tower is so deep that no pioneer can undermine it, so thick that no cannon can breach it, so high that no ladder can scale it.' 'The righteous runneth into it,' and is perched up there; and can look down like Lear from his cliff, and all the troubles that afflict the lower levels shall 'show ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... in many lands. All the rest of the New Testament except Revelation had been written. Some had arisen, who disputed the deity of Jesus and while the gospel is not a mere polemic against that false teaching, it does, by establishing the true teaching thoroughly undermine the false. He perhaps wrote to Christians of all nationalities, whose history had by this time been enriched by the blood of martyrs for the faith. Instead of the Messiah in whom Jews would find a Savior or the mighty worker in whom the Roman would find him, or the ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... everything under the sun, and some things over it; they read the same books and compared notes afterward; they went out sketching together, and instructed each other in the ways of art; and they carefully examined the foundations of each other's beliefs, and endeavoured respectively to strengthen and undermine the same. Gradually they fell into the habit of wondering every morning whether or not they should meet during the coming day; and of congratulating themselves nearly every evening that they had succeeded in ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... relaxation of government controls. Heavily dependent on cocoa, gold, and timber exports, economic growth is threatened by a poor cocoa harvest and higher oil prices in 1991. Rising inflation—unofficially estimated at 50%—could undermine Ghana's relationships with multilateral lenders. Civil service wage increases and the cost of peacekeeping forces sent to Liberia are boosting government expenditures and undercutting structural adjustment reforms. Ghana opened a ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... whatever for such schemes and intrigues as you and all the rest of them delight in. In France and Russia, even in Austria, it is different. The working of all great organisation there is underground—it is easy enough to meet plot by counterplot, to suborn, to deceive, to undermine. But here all the great games of life seem to be played with the cards upon the table. We are hopelessly out of place. I cannot think, Prince, what ill chance led you to ever contemplate making ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... McGaw's failure to undermine Tom's business with Babcock, and his complete discomfiture over Crane's coal contract at the fort, only intensified ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... appropriating to their own use the provisions and supplies of the colonists.[87] It is also known that a commercial company of Baltimore, whose business it was to prosecute the African slave trade, was jealous of the Society and tried to undermine it. In addition, the trials and hardships incidental to founding the colony had reduced many of the settlers to want.[88] The most ignorant could thus fathom their condition: "We suffer: if the Society have means and does not apply them to our relief, it is without benevolence; if it have not means, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... spring even from unreal causes, we point out that although you allow to such effects, being non-sublatcd as it were, a kind of existence called 'empirical' (or 'conventional'—vyvahrika), you yourself acknowledge that fundamentally they are nothing but products of avidy; you thus undermine your own position. We have, on the other hand, already disposed of this your view above, when proving that in all cases effects are originated by real causes only. Nor may you plead that what perception tells us in such cases is contradicted by Scripture; ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut |
