"Corrupting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Here was a young man who believed in nothing, and openly said so, who took part in those terrible atheistical meetings and discussions, which, as Father Russell had solemnly said, were like a plague-centre in Manchester, drawing in and corrupting soul after soul. And Dora was to help in throwing her young cousin, while she was still almost a child with no 'Church principles' to aid and protect her, into the hands of this enemy of ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the Levitical priests, had the disease been this creeping infection, have ever themselves escaped it, obliged as they were by their very office to submit the leper to actual handling and closest examination?... Leprosy was nothing short of a living death, a corrupting of all the humors, a poisoning of the very springs, of life; a dissolution, little by little, of the whole body, so that one limb after another actually decayed and fell away. Aaron exactly describes the appearance which the leper presented to the eyes of the beholders, when, ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... interested in life and in themselves, that I could fancy those gloomy eyes at the head of the table watched them with a sort of envy, I think there must be something fatal to gaiety in the mere responsibilities of wealth; I am sure that there is something corrupting in the labours of its acquisition. I think I had rather be a vagrant, with a crust in my knapsack, a blue sky above me, and the adventurous road before me, than look upon the world with a pair of eyes so laughterless as his who was ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... and I am quite alone,—not that I was much better off when he was here, for he was wont, of late, to shun my poor room like a "lazar house," and when I spoke to his mother about it, she muttered something about "example" and "corrupting." 'Sdeath, Morton, is your old uncle, who loves all living things, down to poor Ponto the dog, the sort of man whose example corrupts youth? As for thy mother, she grows more solitary every day; and I don't know how it is, but I am not so fond of strange faces as I used to be. 'Tis a new thing ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... pestilence during this century is ascribed to the disturbed conditions of the elements that preceded it. For a number of years Asia and Europe had suffered from mighty earthquakes, furious tornadoes, violent floods, clouds of locusts darkening the air and poisoning it with their corrupting bodies. Whether these natural disturbances were the cause of the plague is not certainly known, but many writers on the subject regard the connection as both probable and possible. The disease was brought from the Orient ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... December, 1641, the House of Commons, then on the brink of open rupture with the king, presented a remonstrance to Charles at Hampton Court, complaining that he had permitted "another state, molded within this state, independent in government, contrary in interest and affection, secretly corrupting the ignorant or negligent professors of religion, and clearly uniting themselves against such." Lord Baltimore, perceiving that his property rights were coming into jeopardy, wrote to the too zealous priests, warning them that they were under English law and were not to expect from ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... made an offer of no less than seven hundred talents and all manner of other advantages he pleased to demand; with the compliment that he would entirely commit himself and all his affairs to his disposal. Phocion answered sharply, Harpalus should repent of it, if he did not quickly leave off corrupting and debauching the city, which for the time silenced him, and checked his proceedings. But afterwards, when the Athenians were deliberating in council about him, he found those that had received money ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... there—especially by disinterested white societies in America, which interferingly came forward in a measure which was originated solely by ourselves (and that, too, but a few of us), as our only hope for the regeneration of our race from the curse and corrupting influences ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... speak for you, Jacobus. I've known you a long time and your example is corrupting, but I trust that I ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Scripture as a symbol of evil, some have interpreted this Parable in a very different manner. But the meaning assigned to it above is in accordance with ancient interpretation; and the other explanation is involved in difficulties. For, if the leaven represents a corrupting influence, the Parable would describe the Kingdom of Heaven either as having an evil effect upon the world, or else as progressing itself towards corruption till the whole ...
— The Kingdom of Heaven; What is it? • Edward Burbidge
... hotbeds of rank infidelity. Even the State cabinets that controlled the professorial chairs could not believe for a long time that men who had been chosen to teach theology were spending all their power in corrupting the religious sentiment of the land. Large congregations were sometimes startled with strange announcements from their pastors, to the effect that the supposed miraculous dividing of the Red Sea was only occasioned by certain ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... necessary it now seemed to subject his judgment to a new test! Doubtless a wealth of artistic subjects had come to him from the world of reality which he had placed far above everything else, but a greater and nobler one from the sphere which he had shunned as unfruitful and corrupting. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... means to be a "census spiritual" of American society. Elenor Murray, in her birth and love and sufferings and desperate end, is represented as pure nature, "essential genius," acting out its fated processes in a world of futile or corrupting inhibitions. But Mr. Masters has less skill at portraying the sheer genius of an individual than at arraigning the inhibitions of the individual's society. When he steps down from his watch-tower ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... somewhat mollify his anger to reflect, that perhaps none of the assembly which he describes, was capable of any nobler employment, and that he who does his best, however little, is always to be distinguished from him who does nothing. Whatever busies the mind without corrupting it, has at least this use, that it rescues the day from idleness, and he that is never idle will not ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... girding up our loins to press onward. Not despondency, not slothful anguish, is what you now require,—but effort! Has there been an unalterable evil in your young life? Then crowd it out with good, or it will lie corrupting there forever, and cause your capacity for better things ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... also, the site of the heathen worship, and the day of its special observance, were transformed into the occasion and place of observance of the Christian festival of “All Hallows,” or “All Saints” day; and in the course of re-corrupting time the offering on behalf of the dead by the heathen, and the commemorative ceremony of the early Christian, passed into “prayers for the dead,” which became general in a later age. Further, to give their sympathies a wider compass, the old ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... draining of this superfluous Humidity is for strengthning the Timber, and hindring Corruption, from this, That those Piles which are interlaced among the Stones in the Walls and Fortifications of Towns endure for ever without Corrupting, when they have been burnt a little on ...
— An Abridgment of the Architecture of Vitruvius - Containing a System of the Whole Works of that Author • Vitruvius
... character and narrowness of the foundation on which rested their legislation and government. None but members of the Congregational Churches were eligible to legislate or fill any office in the colony, or even to be an elector. A more narrow-minded and corrupting test of qualification for civil or political office, or for the elective franchise, can hardly be conceived.[201] However rich a man might be, and whatever might be his education or social position, if he were not a member of the Congregational Church he was an "alien in the ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... been given to the American people for their sins in politics and economics. His opponents may scold him as much as they please. They may call him a demagogue and a charlatan; they may accuse him of corrupting the public mind and pandering to degrading passions; they may declare that his abusive attacks on the late Mr. McKinley were at least indirectly the cause of that gentleman's assassination; they may, in short, behave and talk as if he were a much more dangerous ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... well thought of, and honour and reputation come to the person who promoted its pleasures or desires, no nature is so well constituted or strong that it would not be mastered by it. So the public man must oppose the praise not of men but of bad actions, for such praise is corrupting, and causes people to imitate and emulate what is base as if it were noble. But it is best refuted by putting it side by side with the truth: as Theodorus the tragic actor is reported to have said once to Satyrus the ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... gew-gawish and idolatrous as it was, was not sufficiently tinselly and idolatrous for them, so they must be Popes, but in a sneaking way, still calling themselves Church-of-England men, in order to batten on the bounty of the church which they were betraying, and likewise have opportunities of corrupting such lads as might still resort ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... OF THE PRESS. The true forces that hurtfully control too many newspapers are not those of arbitrary governments but the corrupting influences of moneyed and political interests, fear of the liquor power, and the desire to ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... concerning a Larger Catechism, we find these amongst others—"All devising, counseling, commanding, using, and any ways approving any religious worship not instituted by God himself, tolerating a false religion.—— All superstitious devices, corrupting the worship of God, adding to it, taking from it, whether invented and taken up of ourselves, or received by tradition from others, though under the title of antiquity, custom, devotion, good intent, or any other pretence whatsoever." ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery
... "But now that we have tried the two Extremes, we know just what to do with Art. We shall send him to a small Town, where he may associate with bright Youth of his own age and yet be away from the distracting and corrupting Influences of the ...
— People You Know • George Ade
... whose head I do not think a pure thought has entered for forty years; in whose heart an honorable feeling would droop for very loneliness;—in evil he was ripe and rotten; hoary and depraved in deed, in word, in his present life and in all his past; evil when by himself, and viler among men; corrupting to the young;—to domestic fidelity, a recreant; to common honor, a traitor; to honesty, an outlaw; to religion, a hypocrite;—base in all that is worthy of man, and accomplished in whatever is disgraceful; ...
— Twelve Causes of Dishonesty • Henry Ward Beecher
... up this necessity, and should teach us to be very diligent to win to acquaintance with it, and to make sure that we are in it, and to hold it fast, and to keep it pure in our practice, without mixing any thing with it, or corrupting ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... sounding of the sixth trumpet, a "voice comes from the four horns of the golden altar," the immediate presence of the Almighty. This indicates punishment to be inflicted upon men for corrupting the gospel, similar to the judgment of fire from the "golden censer," (ch. viii. 5.) The effects of the first woe may be supposed to reach from the early part of the seventh century to the latter part of the thirteenth,—the period of Arabian locusts. During the latter part of ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... were arrested by the officers of Eriberto, the Archbishop of Milan, who endeavored to win them back to the Catholic faith. Instead of being converted, they tried to spread their heresy throughout the city. The civil magistrates, realizing their corrupting influence, had a stake erected in the public square with a cross in front of it; and in spite of the Archbishop's protest, they required the heretics either to reverence the cross they had blasphemed, or to enter the flaming pile. Some were converted, but the majority of them, covering their faces ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... people to perpetuate their savage wars, in order to supply the demands of this most unnatural traffic, by which great numbers of mankind, free by nature, are subject to inextricable bondage, and which hath often been observed to fill their possessors with haughtiness, tyranny, luxury, and barbarity, corrupting the minds and debasing the morals of their children, to the unspeakable prejudice of religion and virtue, and the exclusion of that holy spirit of universal love, meekness, and charity, which is the unchangeable nature and the glory of true Christianity. We, therefore, can do no less, than, ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... calling the place Mount Wollaston. With him came that wit, versifier, and prince of roysterers, Thomas Morton, who, after Wollaston had moved on to Virginia, became "lord of misrule." Dubbing his seat Merrymount, drinking, carousing, and corrupting the Indians, affronting the decorous Separatists at Plymouth, Morton later became a serious menace to the peace of Massachusetts Bay. The Pilgrims felt that the coming of such adventurers and scoffers, who were none too scrupulous in their dealings with either ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... seceders rapidly lost sight of the divine truths which had been communicated to them from their common ancestor, and fell into the most grievous theological errors, corrupting the purity of the worship and the orthodoxy of the religious faith which they ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... is to be interlarded with lewd songs or dances, and tagged at the conclusion with a ludicrous and beastly farce? I cannot therefore, in conscience, give youth any other advice than to avoid such diversions as cannot be indulged without the utmost danger of perverting their taste, and corrupting their morals.' ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... generations, as to the necessary effect of slavery, a priori, and its actual influence as shown by the facts, few will suppose that anything we could have done would have stayed its course or prevented it from working out its legitimate effects on the white subjects of its corrupting dominion. Northern acquiescence or even sympathy may have sometimes helped to make it sit more easily on the consciences of its supporters. Many profess to think that Northern fanaticism, as they call it, acted ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... his own actions, his own speeches at the beginning of his career, are the strongest evidence of his corruption. {10} According to his own public declaration at that time, he was the first Athenian to perceive that Philip had designs against the Hellenes and was corrupting certain leading men in Arcadia. With Ischander, the son of Neoptolemus, to second him in his performance, he came before the Council and he came before the people, to speak on the subject: he persuaded you to send envoys in all directions to bring together ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... sudden sternness in his voice, 'that what you have done is only excusable in consideration of your youth and extreme ignorance of what are considered the laws of domestic honour. I receive you into my house as a member of my family—you induce one of my servants—corrupting her with a bribe, I ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... of the Bank to bad and partial payments, the giving and allowing exorbitant interest, high premiums and discounts, contracting dear and bad bargains; the general debasing and corrupting of coin, and such like, by which means things were brought to such a pass that even 8 per cent. interest on the land-tax, although payable within the year, would not answer. Guineas, he says, on a sudden rose to 30s. per piece, or more; all currency of other money was stopped, hardly ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... all the world, For our indulgence of the flesh, our base Compounding with his enemies the Jews. But at Madonna Mary's intercession, He charged an angel with this gracious word, "Whoso will scourge himself for forty days, And labor towards the clean extermination Of earth's corrupting vermin, shall be saved." Oh, what vast peace this message brought my soul! I have learned to love the ecstasy of pain. When the sweat stands upon my flesh, the blood Throbs in my bursting veins, my twisted muscles Are cramped with agony, I seem to crawl Anigh his feet who suffered ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... small part of which cannot be better bestowed than in educating these poor creatures; in teaching them to recognise those divine laws which they have broken; in leading them step by step into those paths of piety and peace they have never known. Ignorance has been the most powerful agent in corrupting these perishing criminals. Give them healthful employment, the means of emigrating to countries where labour is amply remunerated, and will secure for them comfort, independence, and self-respect. In Canada, these victims of over-population ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... women and children, who cannot live on gravity alone, need something to satisfy their gayer, lighter moods and hours, and he who ministers to this want is in a business established by the Author of our nature. If he worthily fulfils his mission, and amuses without corrupting, he need never feel that he has lived ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... night, for it had been snowing in the early part of the evening; that snow was suffering from a fall of blacks: and as evil communications corrupt good manners, the evil communication of the London soot was corrupting the good manners of the heavenly snow, which had become smirched by the town's embrace, and was sorrowfully weeping itself away ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... and people, it is the very nature of his office to remove from one scale into the other, or sometimes put his own weight in the lightest, so as to bring both to an equilibrium; and lastly, that the other party had been above twenty years corrupting the nobility with republican principles, which nothing but the royal prerogative could ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... called her winged sonne Cupid, rash enough and hardy, who by his evill manners contemning all publique justice and law, armed with fire and arrowes, running up and down in the nights from house to house, and corrupting the lawfull marriages of every person, doth nothing but that which is evill, who although that hee were of his owne proper nature sufficiently prone to worke mischiefe, yet she egged him forward with ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... adherents are the victims of authoritative falsehood. Its Mass and countless other ceremonies differ in no essential respect from ancient pagan worship. Of spirituality it has none. And so it can do none of the works of the Master. Its corrupting faith is foully materialistic. It has been weighed and found wanting. And as the human mind expands, the incoming light must drive out the black beliefs and deeds of Holy Church, else the oncoming centuries will ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... heart in the presence of Osiris, and the man, even though guilty, goes free. Forms of charms were prepared by the priests, and the name of any one who could pay was inserted in blanks left for this purpose.[201] This sort of corrupting procedure was reproduced in some periods of Christianity. In the early Church a custom existed of receiving baptism on behalf of such as died unbaptized;[202] here, apparently, a magical efficacy was ascribed to the act. The first mention of prayer for the dead occurs in ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... stated above (A. 1), the opposition between prodigality and covetousness is one of excess and deficiency; either of which destroys the mean of virtue. Now a thing is vicious and sinful through corrupting the good of virtue. Hence it follows that prodigality ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... opponents. These were the Sadducaean notables who long had headed the struggle against the Idumaean interlopers. Having thus made away with the leaders of the Jerusalem aristocracy, he directed his efforts to the business of corrupting the rest. He appointed to the most important posts obscure individuals, of priestly descent, from Babylon and Alexandria, and thus replaced with creatures of his own the old aristocracy. Nor did he rest content ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... "I'm often surprised at the liberty, I might almost say the licence, that is met with in Protestants in connection with their religion. Take the case of young Mr. Coppinger that I was speaking of. That was a melancholy instance of evil communications corrupting good manners. I may say that I regard with anxiety a too great freedom, what I may call an unrestrained intercourse, between members of the two churches—that is, indeed, if I am justified in describing as a ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... Anglo-American marriages in our international high life, has become honeycombed with monarchism. We might have held that the inevitable effect of such marriages was to undermine the republican ideal at the very source of the commonwealth's existence, and by corrupting the heart of American motherhood must have weakened the fibre of our future citizenship to the point of supinely accepting any usurpation that promised ranks and titles and ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... sciences! What grand palaces and temples had been erected! What a multitude of captives had added to the pomp and wealth of the proudest city of antiquity! Babylon the great,—-"the glory of kingdoms," "the praise of the whole earth," the centre of all that was civilized and all that was corrupting in the Oriental world, with its soothsayers, its magicians, its necromancers, its priests, its nobles,—was now to fall, for its abominations cried ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... circumstances either sanctify or condemn the same action!—What care ought we to take not to confound the distinctions of right and wrong, when self comes in the question!—I condemned in Mr. Lovelace the corrupting of a servant of my father's; and now I am glad to give a kind of indirect approbation of that fault, by inquiring of him what he hears, by that or any other way, of the manner in which my relations took my ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... represent the most advanced civilization of the century—we had seen this brilliant star of anti-slavery Massachusetts "pale his ineffectual fires" before the steady glare, the intolerance, blandishment, and corrupting influences of the slave power—and tell the nation they must ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... be hastily concluded that this involves the extinction of the private practitioner. What it will really mean for him is release from his present degrading and scientifically corrupting slavery to his patients. As I have already shown the doctor who has to live by pleasing his patients in competition with everybody who has walked the hospitals, scraped through the examinations, and bought a brass plate, soon finds himself ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... conventions of civility is to seek a method for putting our faults at their ease." He adds the rather subtle distinction that "politeness flatters the vices of others, and civility prevents us from displaying our own. It is a barrier raised by men to prevent them from corrupting each other." That which flatters vice can hardly be called politeness, but is rather adulation. Civility and politeness are only slightly different in degree; civility is cold and very respectful, politeness has a suggestion of flattery. ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... of Germany and her methods of waging war upon others. The main features of it all have long been revealed while each day brings to light more of the details. We have seen the studied effort to make perverts of sixty millions of German people. We know of the corrupting of the business interests of the Empire to secure their support. We know that war had been decreed before the pretext on which it was declared had happened. We know Austria was and is the creature of Germany. We have beheld the violation of innocent Belgium, the hideous outrages ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... to be considered immoral which the Court is bound to assist in doing? It is not for us to denounce as legally immoral a practice which is permitted and sanctioned by the supreme law of the land!" "It is said the practice of Slavery is corrupting in its influence on public morals. But the practice of bringing slaves here was much more common thirty years ago than now. If this practice be so corrupting, why is it tolerated in other States?"... "The law of New York allows even foreigners ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... the return under Ezra to the beginning of the desperate resistance against Rome, show us the heroic and triumphant struggle of the Maccabees, which rescued the religion and independence of the nation from the corrupting sway of the Syrian Greeks, adding to the glorious sum of its memorials, and stimulating continuous efforts of a more peaceful sort to maintain and develop that national life which the heroes had fought and died for, by internal ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... the dependent that is found in all professional people who habitually work for and associate with the rich only. They had no sense of dependence; they were not dependents, for they gave more than value received. Yet so corrupting is the atmosphere about rich people that Gourdain, who had other rich clients, no less than Clelie who got her whole living from Palmer, was at a glance in the flea class and not in the dog class. Brent looked for signs of the ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... not occur to a geometer to ask with trepidation what difference it would make to the Pythagorean proposition if the hypothenuse were said to be wise and good. Yet metaphysicians, confounding dialectic with physics and thereby corrupting both, will discuss for ever the difference it makes to substance whether you call it matter or God. Nevertheless, no decorative epithets can give substance any other attributes than those which it has; that is, other than the actual appearances ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... to their relations with aborigines and general native policy, as referred to in previous chapters. It also imperceptibly fostered sentiments confounding legality with grace, and the by-product of that subtle corrupting leaven which is apt to see a splint in the eye of another whilst unmindful of the ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... him, somehow. They wouldn't talk about it while I was around. I wonder why?" Outfield stopped suddenly and frowned perplexedly. "Why, a month or six weeks ago I would have been one of the first they would have asked to help! I'm afraid it's associating with you, Joel. You're corrupting me! Say, didn't I make a mess of it this afternoon? I got about ten yards off the beach and just had to give up and pull back—and pull hard. Blessed if I didn't begin to wonder once if I'd make it! The fact is, ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... ignorant class in their childhood and youth. One of the most obvious circumstances is the perfect non-existence in their minds of any notion or question what their life is for, taken as a whole. Among a crowd of trifling and corrupting ideas that soon find a place in them, there is never the reflective thought,—For what purpose am I alive? What is it that I should be, more than the animal that I am? Does it signify what I may be?—But surely, it is with ill omen that the human creature advances into life ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... who had been lifted on to the throne of a murdered father, must have had a strong will and a love of goodness to have resisted the corrupting influences of royalty in a land full of idols. Here again we see that, great as may be the power of circumstances, they do not determine character; for it is always open to us either to determine whether we ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... and to control the Pope. The Church itself, after emerging from an heroic struggle with centuries of barbarism, had been obliged to accept and use the feudal system as a means of self-defence; and now the wrongs, the injustices, the selfishness of feudal society were beginning to exercise a corrupting influence on the exterior of the Church itself. Unselfish and holy men in ecclesiastical places, both high and humble, preserved the spirit and sanctity of Christian faith, but were not able wholly to counteract the evils of pride, wealth, and luxury that invaded the Church from the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... of the living world. Craving for purer subjects of thought, they find in the contemplation of crystals and magnets a happiness more dramatic and less childish than the happiness found by the mathematicians in abstract numbers, because they see in the crystals beauty and movement without the corrupting appetites of fleshly vitality. In such Materialism as that of Lucretius and Tyndall there is a nobility which produces poetry: John Davidson found his highest inspiration in it. Even its pessimism as it faces the cooling of the sun and the return of the ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... instigated by the circulars sent out by the Abolition confederates in the Senate. These preachers had been led by an atrocious falsehood "to desecrate the pulpit, and prostitute the sacred desk to the miserable and corrupting influence of party politics." What right had these misguided men to speak in the name of Almighty God upon a political question? It was an attempt to establish in this country the doctrine that clergymen have a peculiar right to determine the will of ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... however, Fashion, corrupting like these other forms of rule, almost wholly ceases to be an imitation of the best, and becomes an imitation of quite other than the best. As those who take orders are not those having a special fitness for the priestly ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... to mix together these men under the most favourable circumstances for corrupting one another. Every man must come out worse than he went in; but this wrong is not so great as that which the untried prisoners suffer in being forced into the society of condemned criminals, while their trials drag on from session ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... fiction, which tend to inflame the mind and excite the passions. Only in total abstinence from illicit pleasures is there safety, morals, and health, while integrity, peace and happiness are the conscious rewards of virtue. Impurity travels downward with intemperance, obscenity and corrupting diseases, to degradation and death. A dissolute, licentious, free-and-easy life is filled with the dregs of human suffering, iniquity and despair. The penalties which follow a violation of the law of chastity are found to be ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... durable morality which belongs to the Ideal, and instructs us playfully while it interests, in the passions, and through the heart. First—to deal fearlessly with that universal unsoundness in social justice which makes distinctions so marked and iniquitous between Vice and Crime—viz., between the corrupting habits and the violent act—which scarce touches the former with the lightest twig in the fasces—which lifts against the latter the edge of the Lictor's axe. Let a child steal an apple in sport, let a starveling steal a roll in despair, ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... insoluble problem, have resigned themselves to the cheerless gloom of Skepticism. In reviewing all these speculations and theories, we must bear in mind that their authors and advocates, although more thoughtful and inquisitive than the great majority of mankind, were equally subject to the same corrupting influence,—"the evil heart of unbelief,"—and that the same cause which produced practical Atheism in some, and abject Superstition in others, may also have operated, but more insidiously, in producing Speculative Infidelity in the minds of those who are more addicted to abstruse philosophical ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... wayward and mischeuous, that when theyr husbandes hath them in their arms a bed, they scholde & chyde making that same plesure their lewd condicions (that expelseth all displeasures oute of their husbandes mynde unpleasaunt and lytell set bi corrupting the medecine that shuld haue cured al deadly greifes, & odible offences. xantip. That is no newes to me. Eula. Though the woman shulde be well ware and wyse that she shulde neuer be disobedient vnto her husband yet she ought to be most circumspect that at meting she shew ...
— A Merry Dialogue Declaringe the Properties of Shrowde Shrews and Honest Wives • Desiderius Erasmus
... upon keeping Jack for the same reason he preserves me from your corrupting influence. He thinks the boy is another little brand he has snatched from your burning. And I hope you will consent to his remaining with us, for he is a great comfort now to my sad heart. He will write to you, of course, ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... sum. Bennett, in the course of time, had a chance been given to him, would have made the Courier and Inquirer powerful enough to cast off all party ties; and this he would have done merely by improving it as a vehicle of news. But he was kept down upon one of those ridiculous, tantalizing, corrupting salaries, which are a little more than a single man needs, but not enough for him to marry upon. This salary was increased by the proprietors giving him a small share in the small profits of the printing-office; so that, after fourteen years of hard labor and Scotch economy, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... widely awake to the degradation which they suffer in having property vested in their persons, and they are also conscious of the deep and corrupting disgrace of having our wives and children owned by other men—men, who have shown to the world that their own virtue is not infallible, and who have given us no flattering encouragement to entrust that of our wives and daughters ...
— The Fugitive Blacksmith - or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington • James W. C. Pennington
... not the editor of the Tribune has been intensely ambitious for office. It would have been a blessed thing for the country if the editor of the Journal had been impelled by the same passion. For avarice is more ignoble than ambition, and the craving for jobs has a more corrupting influence, alike on the individual and the public, than aspiration to office."—New ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... personally conciliating, or, if the reader pleases, corrupting the ministers of Charles, was perhaps what the King had proposed to himself as a principal object of his visit, even if his art should fail to cajole the Duke himself. The connection betwixt France and Burgundy was so close that most of the nobles belonging to the latter country had hopes ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... be misinformed in its contacts with other children. Only, parents ought to remember that their child, however carefully brought up and protected, at any time and of its own motion, may itself be that corrupting "other child" against which we are so ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... "you're going to stand in and work with me as you haven't worked for a year. It's going to be worth it. Opal McCoppet, and one Searle Bostwick, of New York, have stolen my claim by corrupting Lawrence for twenty thousand dollars, running a false reservation line, and maybe putting Culver out of the way because he was square in ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... termination a in Anta was converted into is. Hence the word Antis, which is employed by all old writers and geographers; and even now is in common use among the Indian population of Southern Peru. The Spaniards, according to their practice of corrupting the words of the Quichua language, have transformed Antis into Andes, and they apply the name without distinction to the western and the eastern chain ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... and customs upon crime cannot be overlooked. The custom in certain communities, for example, of carrying concealed weapons undoubtedly has much to do with the swollen homicide statistics of the United States. Vicious and corrupting customs, such as compulsory social drinking, and the like, undoubtedly greatly influence crime. Even the luxury and extravagance of the rich might easily be shown to have a demoralizing effect, both upon the upper and ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... affluent to escape the envy and repinings of men, who, unable to draw the real distinctions that separate the gentleman from the low-minded and grovelling, impute their advantages to accidents and money. But, even the few who permitted this malign and corrupting tendency to influence their feelings, could not deny that their master was just and benevolent, though he did not always exhibit this justice and benevolence precisely in the way best calculated to soothe their own craving self-love, and exaggerated notions of assumed natural claims. ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... but in other regions also it nearly concerns us. Resuming, as words do, the past, shaping the future, how important it is that significant facts or tendencies in the world's history should receive their right names. It is a corrupting of the very springs and sources of knowledge, when we bind up not a truth, but an error, in the very nomenclature which we use. It is the putting of an obstacle in the way, which, however imperceptibly, is yet ever at work, ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... undigested matama and grass there were found twenty-five short, thick, white worms, sticking like leeches into the coating of the stomach, while the intestines were almost alive with the numbers of long white worms. I was satisfied that neither man nor beast could long exist with such a mass of corrupting ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... disagreeable this leaven was to the taste. The water with which it was mixed had been procured upon the sea-shore, and had been preserved afterwards in the skin of a goat newly killed. To prevent it from corrupting, they had mixed a kind of pitch with it, which rendered the smell of it doubly noxious. The same water was given us to drink, and, bad as it was, our allowance of it ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... Duplanty was persuading Pons to engage Mme. Cantinet as his nurse, Fraisier had sent for her. He had plied the beadle's wife with sophistical reasoning and subtlety. It was difficult to resist his corrupting influence. And as for Mme. Cantinet—a lean, sallow woman, with large teeth and thin lips—her intelligence, as so often happens with women of the people, had been blunted by a hard life, till she had come to look upon the slenderest daily wage as prosperity. She soon consented to ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... Cassio was his major-domo, or, as some say, his lieutenant. But after a while happens along (capita) another soldier of Othello, who wants Cassio's employment, and so accuses him to the general of corrupting his wife. Very well, Signori! Without thinking an instant, Othello, being made so, flew into a passion (si riscaldo la testa), and killed his wife; and then when her innocence came out, he killed himself and that liar; and the State ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... servants as the Pythia at Delphi from the attendants that swept out the temple. But not the less her conscience, in all stages of her life, having or not having any special knowledge of religion, acknowledged a pathetic weight of obligation to remove from her household all confessedly corrupting influences. And here was one which she could not remove. What chiefly she feared, on behalf of her servants, was either, 1st, the danger from the simple fact, now suddenly made known to them, that it was possible for a person unusually gifted to deny Christianity; such a denial and haughty ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... may it be a guileless heart! In heaven's own sight of priceless worth! Where nought corrupting e'er hath part, Pure, as the source which ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various
... forth to show how recent English writers are corrupting the language; and, in doing so, he ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... honors, and empty titles, had so completely blinded him to the virtues of his daughter, and to the sacred character of his own duties as a father, bound by the first principles of nature to promote her happiness, without corrupting her virtues, or weakening her moral impressions—we say these things had so blinded him, and hardened his heart against all the purer duties and responsibilities of life, that he looked upon his daughter as a hardened, ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... avoiding—perhaps hating. Until Death, stepping in between, removes him to another tribunal than this petty justice of ours, and laying a solemn finger on our mouths, forbids us either to think or utter a word of hatred against that which is now—what?—a disembodied spirit—a handful of corrupting clay. ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... paupers' bodies, and had struck their roots in the graves of men, sodden, while alive, in steaming courts and drunken hungry dens. And here, in truth, they lay, parted from the living by a little earth and a board or two—lay thick and close—corrupting in body as they had in mind—a dense and squalid crowd. Here they lay, cheek by jowl with life: no deeper down than the feet of the throng that passed there every day, and piled high as their throats. ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... the knowledge of the Roman authorities; a secret nocturnal festival in honour of the god Bacchus had been first introduced into Etruria through a Greek priest, and, spreading like a cancer, had rapidly reached Rome and propagated itself over all Italy, everywhere corrupting families and giving rise to the most heinous crimes, unparalleled unchastity, falsifying of testaments, and murdering by poison. More than 7000 men were sentenced to punishment, most of them to death, on this account, and rigorous enactments were issued as to the future; yet they did ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... view of nature, and compare generally rainbows, sunrises, roses, violets, butterflies, birds, gold-fish, rubies, opals, and corals, with alligators, hippopotami, lions, wolves, bears, swine, sharks, slugs, bones, fungi,[21] frogs, and corrupting, stinging, destroying things in general, and you will feel then how the question stands between the colorists and chiaroscurists,—which of them have nature and life on their side, and which ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... women, in order to care for the house and family of God, neglect their own: our men are active only in vice and heroic only in shame; childhood develops amid ignorance and routine, youth lives its best years without ideals, and a sterile manhood serves only as an example for corrupting youth. Gladly do I die! Claudite iam rivos, ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... the heart of Germany; while he is scattering broadcast the seeds of treachery, discord, and mischief; while he is persuading the German princes to turn traitors to Germany; while he is poisoning and corrupting the hearts of the people and degrading their characters to such an extent, that the sense of fidelity, honesty, and constancy will soon become extinct in Germany, and all the Germans will be nothing but a horde of slaves, who ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... not strange, knowing the character of the popes, that pagan expressions should color the writings of their courtiers. Poggio was a papal secretary, and so was Bembo, a cardinal who refused to read Paul's epistles for fear of corrupting his Latinity. In his exquisite search for classical equivalents for the rude phrases of the gospel, he referred, in a papal breve, to Christ as "Minerva sprung from the head of Jove," and to the Holy Ghost as "the breath of the celestial Zephyr." Conceived in the ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... the council, it may be well to say a word. It was increased to nine, and a new election was made, the incumbents holding their offices for life. This last provision was made to prevent the worst part, and the most corrupting influence of politics, viz., the elections, from getting too much sway over the public mind. The new council ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... defined dualism and sacerdotal sway, was ingrafted on the native religion of the Iranians through the influence of tribes with whom they mingled in Media. The Magi, according to one account, were charged by Darius with corrupting the Zoroastrian faith and worship. Whatever may have been their origin, they became the leaders in worship, and privy-counselors to the sovereign. They were likewise astrologers, and interpreters of ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... were struck with terror as they contemplated its social condition; they drew their lessons, not from France, not from abroad, but from themselves and the scenes around them; and half in the hope of rescuing that ancient Commonwealth from the corrupting element of slavery, and half in the agony of despair, they went in advance of all the world in their reprobation of the slave-trade and of slavery, and of the dangerous condition of the white man ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... difficult to estimate the corrupting effect upon practice and morals of a religious system which embraced within it so many sensual and degrading elements. Where impurity is made an essential part of religion, there the very fountain of life is poisoned, and that ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... flanks Paphlagoneion. As its waters flow 'Twixt fertile acres, once a year they turn To blood, when comes the woeful day whereon Died Memnon. Thence a sick and choking reek Steams: thou wouldst say that from a wound unhealed Corrupting humours breathed an evil stench. Ay, so the Gods ordained: but now flew on Bearing Dawn's mighty son the rushing winds Skimming earth's face and palled ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... Achmed mournfully, his great liquid brown eyes resting sorrowfully upon Mr. Middleton. "What a corrupting effect the haste to get rich has upon American youth. My friend, it cannot be that you intend to take ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... and an affectionate boy, Wilton," he said; "and you have kept your good feelings unchanged, I am happy to find. Depend upon it, when one can do so, amongst all the troubles, and cares, and corrupting things of this world, we find in the feelings of the heart that consolation, when sorrows and disappointments assail us, which no gift or favour of man can impart. I believe, indeed, that within the last six months, with all the bodily pains and mental anxieties I have had to ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... parlor, therefore, from the corrupting influence of all immoral associations. Be not carried away by the pomp and glare of refined and decorated wickedness. Let not the ornaments and magnificence of mere outward life divert your attention from those hidden principles which prompt to action. In the choice of companions ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... to be noted that it is the fact that Art is this intense form of Individualism that makes the public try to exercise over it in an authority that is as immoral as it is ridiculous, and as corrupting as it is contemptible. It is not quite their fault. The public has always, and in every age, been badly brought up. They are continually asking Art to be popular, to please their want of taste, to flatter their absurd ...
— The Soul of Man • Oscar Wilde
... secondary gods, evidence of a supreme God presiding over all things; and the secondary gods performing many things which belonged to the province of the "Almighty One," with many degrading, vile and corrupting habits. ...
— The Christian Foundation, April, 1880
... to attempt to excuse him in this as in so many other things. It is, I have no doubt, a most monstrous thing to attempt to corrupt a young girl just out of a convent. But I think Edward had no idea at all of corrupting her. I believe that he simply loved her. He said that that was the way of it and I, at least, believe him and I believe too that she was the only woman he ever really loved. He said that that was so; and he did enough to prove it. And Leonora ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... equivocal silence and still more equivocal action on this subject, by which they have left their Southern brethren to infer, that Northern piety sanctions slavery. It is the doctrine of expediency, so prevalent and corrupting in the American Church, which has deceived you into the belief, that a large share of the professing Christians in the free States, think slavery to be sinless. This share, which you have in your eye, is, as well as the remainder, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... incriminating acts. In the court they say, quite openly, that the sentence has already been fixed. What does it mean? Do the authorities fear that the judges will deal too mercifully with the enemies of the government? Having so long and so assiduously kept corrupting their servants, is the government still unassured of their readiness ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... conquest of a woman but that of depriving another of her; and not able to persuade any one of his passion, because he spoke to her, as at all other times, in jest: but cruelly revenging himself on those who refused to hear him; corrupting the servants of those whom they did favour, counterfeiting their handwriting, intercepting their letters, disconcerting their rendezvous; in one word, disturbing their amours by everything which a rival, prodigal, indefatigable, and full of artifice, can be imagined to do. The straitest ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... of forged hooks, giving accounts of the same events, different from those of the books of the New Testament. The different sects, and the church itself, was torn by as many schisms then as it ever has been since, who mutually accuse each other of corrupting the Christians scriptures, and of lying, and cheating ...
— Letter to the Reverend Mr. Cary • George English |
