"Corruption" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Canadians were a conquered people, but they had found the British king no tyrant and they had experienced the paradox of being freer under the conqueror than they had been under their own sovereign. The last days of French rule in Canada were disgraced by corruption and tyranny almost unbelievable. The Canadian peasant had been cruelly robbed and he had conceived for his French rulers a dislike which appears still in his attitude towards the motherland of France. For his new British master he had assuredly no love, but he ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... veil their thought more; even the lower class in towns employ more restraint, more euphemisms, than peasants. Thus in the towns a child may easily fail to comprehend when risky subjects are talked of in his presence. It may be said that the corruption of towns, though more concealed, is all the deeper. Maybe, but that concealment preserves children from it. The town child sees prostitutes in the street every day without distinguishing them from other people. In the country he would every day hear it stated in the crudest ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... escape. He forced himself to regard the great Enemy of Man as his best friend—his only comforter and refuge. But just when he deemed himself well armed, least vulnerable, and most secure, the awful reality of death—its horrible accompaniments—dissolution, corruption, rottenness, decay, and its still more awful and obscure uncertainties, started suddenly before him, and sent a sickening chill through every pore of his unnerved flesh. Then he retreated from his position—fled, as it were, for life, and dared not look behind, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... people did not know what to do with their money. There were sumptuary laws which forbade their spending it, either they or their wives or daughters, in dress; apparently they could not even wear Genoa velvet, which had to be sold abroad for the corruption of the outside world; and this is said to be the reason why there were so many palaces built in Genoa in the days of the republic. People who did not wish to figure in that hall of fame put their surplus into the immense and often ugly edifices which we still see ministering to their pride ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... than did George Poindexter the people of Mississippi. His talents were indisputably of the first order, and, whatever may have been his short comings morally, none can say his political life was stained with selfishness or corruption. Every trust reposed in him was faithfully and ably discharged, and to him, more than to any of her public servants, is she indebted for the proud position she occupied before the tyrants' heel was ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... the first. The design and object of this Institution is to reclaim the youthful criminal by firm but kind and judicious treatment; to make his prison a place of purification and improvement, not of demoralisation and corruption; to impress upon him that there is but one path, and that one sober industry, which can ever lead him to happiness; to teach him how it may be trodden, if his footsteps have never yet been led that way; and to lure ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... may be connected with an equally famous namesake, Robin Goodfellow; and that he may have been so called from the hood or hoodikin, which is a well-known characteristic of the mischievous elves. I believe, however, it is now generally admitted that "Robin Hood" is a corruption {322} of "Robin o' th' Wood" equivalent to "silvaticus" or "wildman"—a term which, as we learn from Ordericus, was generally given to those Saxons who fled to the woods and morasses, and long held them against their ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various
... you stand. That poor creature has sunk into the gulf which yawns beneath your feet. May God, in his mercy, look upon her! But you, beautiful as one of heaven's angels—as yet pure and sinless as a child—must you fall, sink, perish, in this mass of loathsome corruption? Better ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... be read with surprise by that numerous and respectable class of the community, who hold as an article of faith, (to use the words of our author,) that in Mohammedan countries "every prince is a tyrant; every court of justice full of corruption; and all the people sunk in depravity, ignorance, and misery:" and who cling to the comfortable delusion that we have succeeded, by the equity of our civil government, in attaching to our rule the population of India. As a view of this important subject from ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... announced by the prophets Oseas and Jonas after the exposure of each offence. Devoid of any proper plot, the play merely brings together various incidents to exhibit such social evils as usury, legal corruption, filial ingratitude, friction between master and servant. Intermingled, with only the slightest connexion, are the widely different stories of King Rasni's amours, of the thirsty career of a drunken blacksmith, and of the prophet Jonah—his disobedience, strange sea-journey, mission in Nineveh and ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... of her voice. That voice was all that was left to remind him of his once beautiful Isabella; it was still as sweet as in the days when her beauty had almost maddened him—that beauty which had flown forever, and left its possessor a hideous mass of blood and corruption. ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... say, Gwyn. Some old Celtic name, or a corruption. It has always been called so, as far as I could trace when I bought the land; and there it is, and there let ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... in support of their opinion, adduce a passage from Pliny, who says, "the Fluentini are near the flowing of the Arno." This, however, may be incorrect, for Pliny speaks of the locality of the Florentini, not of the name by which they were known. And it seems as if the word Fluentini were a corruption, because Frontinus and Cornelius Tacitus, who wrote at nearly the same period as Pliny, call them Florentia and Florentini; for, in the time of Tiberius, they were governed like the other cities of Italy. Besides, Cornelius refers to the coming of ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... pregnant with lessons in this direction. During the war we imposed an internal-revenue tax on distilled spirits of so large an amount that it not only produced less revenue than a smaller tax would have done, but it created gigantic frauds, public corruption, and infinite devices to escape the payment. The following table will show how the production, as indicated by the tax, fell off when the tax was excessive. It forced evasions by distillers. It has been found by various experiences that with ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... is I believe no more than a corruption. Shakspeare, who is not always very nice about his versification, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 76, April 12, 1851 • Various
... power does not militate against the right of the press to publish full reports of trials and judgments or to make with fairness, good faith, candour and decency, comments and criticisms on what passed at the trial and on the correctness of the verdict or the judgment. To impute corruption is said to go beyond the limits of fair criticism. Shortt (Law relating to Works of Literature) states the law to be that the temperate and respectful discussion of judicial determination is not prohibited, but mere invective and abuse, and still more the imputation of false, corrupt ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... degenerate blood The old corruption reigns, And, mingling with the crooked flood, Wanders thro' all ...
— Hymns and Spiritual Songs • Isaac Watts
... liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections. If an election is to be determined by a majority of a single vote, and that can be procured by a party through artifice or corruption, the Government may be the choice of a party for its own ends, not of the nation for the national good. If that solitary suffrage can be obtained by foreign nations by flattery or menaces, by fraud or violence, by terror, intrigue, or venality, ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... "Historical and Critical Dictionary," in which the lives of men were associated with a comment that suggested, from the ills of life, the absence of divine care in the shaping of the world. Doubt was born of the corruption of society; Nature and Man were said to be against faith in the rule of a God, wise, just, and merciful. In 1710, after Bayle's death, Leibnitz, a German philosopher then resident in Paris, wrote in French a book, with a title formed from Greek words meaning Justice of God, Theodicee, in ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... sullied my own life. I have lived amongst people I despised, holding myself aloof as far as was possible. I have been laughed at, hated, ill-used for that which has been called pride; but I have at least preserved myself unpolluted by the corruption that surrounded me. If you can believe this, if you can take me upon trust, and stretch forth your hand to help me, knowing no more of me than I have now told you, I shall accept your assistance proudly and gratefully. But if you cannot believe, let ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... has engendered broadcast political corruption in order to enrich himself and his associate railroad magnates ...
— How Members of Congress Are Bribed • Joseph Moore
... investigation, is to make people believe their statements, even when founded on the most extensive practical knowledge, or the more accurate statistical inquiry. There is such a prodigious difference between the condition of mankind and the progress of corruption in the agricultural or pastoral, and manufacturing or densely peopled districts, that those accustomed to the former will not believe any statements made regarding the latter. They say they are incredible or exaggerated; that the persons who make ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... Indian Islands) says that this is the eagle-wood of commerce. Its name in Malay and Javanese is kalambak or kalambah, but it is also known in these languages by that of gahru, or kayu-gahru, gahru-wood, a corruption of the Sanscrit Agharu. This sweet-scented wood has been used immemorially as an incense throughout eastern countries, and was early introduced into Europe by the Portuguese. The perfumed wood is evidently the result of a disease in the tree, produced ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... in a few weeks afterward the poor thing died—causing the lampooners of the Court to say, that the king in expelling evil out of the infant of Tom Esmond and Isabella his wife, expelled the life out of it, which was nothing but corruption. ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... till the year is up and the time of danger past. 'Fore God, that merchant skipper has left his mark on us, and pretty fools we were to think that such a maid would be quarantined for the cause he gave. It is easy to see now that her corruption broke forth in the journey, and that save throwing her over they had no choice but to board her up until they should come to some port ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... all creatures waited on? Why do the prodigal elements supply Life and food to me, being more pure than I, Simpler, and further from corruption? Why brook'st thou, ignorant horse, subjection? Why do you, bull and boar, so sillily Dissemble weakness, and by one man's stroke die, Whose whole kind you might swallow and feed upon? Weaker I am, woe's me! and worse than you: You have not sinned, nor need be timorous, But wonder at a greater, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... only a CORRUPTION. We will call you Margaret," insisted Mrs. Chichester, dismissing the subject once and for all. But Peg was not to be turned so lightly aside. ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... however brief, can pretend to be complete which does not refer to this. The blame of it is usually laid upon the public works policy. The money borrowed and spent by the Treasury is often spoken of as having been wasted in political jobs, and as having led to nothing except parliamentary corruption and an eternal burden of indebtedness and taxation. This is but true to a very limited extent. It was not the public borrowing of the Colony, but the private debts of the colonists, which, following the extraordinary fall in the prices of their raw products between 1873 and 1895, plunged ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... moment in scratching off the bad and substituting the good. It is just so with the Democratic women. I have seen the effects of female suffrage, and instead of being a means of encouragement to fraud and corruption, it tends greatly to purify elections and give ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... fortnight at Weymar to finish everything. I give you then rendez-vous at the Altenburg, where your former quarters await you. No one will bother you there, and you can give yourself up to cultivating murrendos [La Mara thinks there was a joke in connection with this; I cannot help thinking it is a corruption of morendo, and that perhaps Rubinstein joked about cultivating a particular touch or nuance.—Translator's note] to your heart's content whenever the fancy takes you. Try therefore not to be too long over your farewells to the Tannhausers of the banks of the Rhine ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... shared his refusal to be blinded by custom, theory or even patriotism. In his accounts of army life he had commented fearlessly on the cruelty of the punishments and described his fellow officers as made ill by seeing a private receive five hundred lashes. He had noted corruption in the "Train Service" which "was consequently divested of its genuine claim to honour." Feted by the planters of Jamaica, he had yet spoken with horror ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... earliest satires on the character of the Doctrinaire is to be found in the Book of Jonah. Jonah was a prophet by profession. He received a call to preach in the city of Nineveh, which he accepted after some hesitation. He denounced civic corruption and declared that in forty days the city would be destroyed. Having performed this professional duty, Jonah felt that there was nothing left for him but to await with pious resignation the fulfillment of his prophecy. But in ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... inventive genius, who has labored long and hard, Till success has crowned his research, should receive a just reward. The Machine's a great invention, that's continually clear, Out of nothing but corruption making millions every year— Out of muck and filth of cities making dollars neat and clean— Where's the fellow who ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... the slightest degree indulge in license on the principle that the Sovereign is entitled to enjoyment. It is our wish therefore that all officials, be they high or low, should purify their hearts and cleanse themselves of all forms of old corruption; constantly keeping in mind the real interests of the people. Every bit of vitality of the people they shall be able to preserve shall go to strengthen the life of the country for whatever it is worth. ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... The place ought to be in keeping with what is contained therein. Now by His Resurrection Christ entered upon an immortal and incorruptible life. But whereas our dwelling-place is one of generation and corruption, the heavenly place is one of incorruption. And consequently it was not fitting that Christ should remain upon earth after the Resurrection; but it was fitting that He should ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... derivation of this word from the name of a certain Borghese, said to have been a notorious counterfeiter of bank-notes. But is it not more probably a corruption of bagasse, which, as applied to the pressed sugarcane, means simply something worthless? The word originally meant a worthless woman, whence our "baggage" in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... had. The stuff was on Danny as well as on the wheel, and we smelt like a procession of dead whales. For after the first choking explosion of the thing it reeked of nothing but corruption. It was the Skunk's Misery brew all right, only ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... rearing. The small sneezing plant, a vegetable smelling-bottle, is still employed in headach by the common people of Sicily, who bruise the leaves and sniff their pungency: its vulgar name, malupertusu, is the corruption of Marum del Cortuso, as we find it in the ancient herbal of Durante. The Ferula communis or Saracinisca, a legacy left to the Sicilian pedagogues by their eastern lords, is sold in fagots at the green-grocers, and fulfils the scholastic office of birch; and, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... hampered by having the defence of the revolted colonists as their sole issue, denounced in unmeasured language the incompetence, corruption, and despotism of the North Ministry, singling out Sandwich, at the Admiralty, and Germaine, Secretary for the Colonies, as objects for especial invective. Party hatred festered in army and navy, Whig and Tory admirals distrusting each other and engaging in bitter quarrels, ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... meaning "crooked river." But as to the latter the doctors disagree, some claiming that Susquehanna, which is not an Iroquois but an Algonquin word, means "muddy stream"; others, following Dr. Beauchamp, that it is a corruption of a word meaning "river with long reaches." It must be confessed that Cooper credited the Indian words with intelligible and appropriate meanings, so that, in the absence of agreement among the specialists, the interpretations which he made popular will continue to satisfy the ordinary ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... Something askew. The curse of high-placed guilt Is on you, if the warning tocsin's knell, Clanging forth fiercely, hath not force to tell The hearer that Fate's hourglass fast runs out. That spectral Comet flames, beset about With miasmatic mist, and lurid fume, Conquering Corruption threatens hideous doom. Yet, yet the Bow of Promise gleams above, Herald of Hope to her whom all men mark ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 29, 1893 • Various
... of the great tragedy. 'If, as appears from the wonderful success of Luther's cause, God wills all this'—thus did Erasmus reason—'and He has perhaps judged such a drastic surgeon as Luther necessary for the corruption of these times, then it is not my business to withstand him.' But he was not left in peace. While he went on protesting that he had nothing to do with Luther and differed widely from him, the defenders of the old Church adhered to the standpoint urged as early as 1520 by Nicholas ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... dedicated to St. Vedast, Bishop of Arras.'' Newcourt makes a similar mistake in his Repertorium, but Thomas Fuller knew the truth, and in his Church History refers to "St. Vedastus, anglice St. Fosters.'' This is the fact, and the name St. Fauster or Foster is nothing more than a corruption of St. Vedast, all the steps of which we now know. My friend Mr. Danby P. Fry worked this out some years ago, but his difficulty rested with the second syllable of the name Foster; but the links in the chain of evidence have been completed by reference to Mr. H. C. Maxwell Lyte's ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... palace, Oriel his church, and University his school or academy. Of these Brasenose College is still called, in its formal style, 'the King's Hall,' which is the name by which Alfred himself, in his laws, calls his palace; and it has its present singular name from a corruption of brasinium, or brasin-huse, as having been originally located in that part of the royal mansion which was devoted to the then important accommodation of a brew-house." Churton, in his Life of Bishop Smyth, p. 277., ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... the Castle servants, the result of their conscious strength in corruption, that scouted with contempt and insult, out of the Irish House of Commons in 1795, the petition of three millions of Catholics, fully and impartially represented. Was not this an aggression of administration against the people? And yet the partisans of that administration—nay, ...
— The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed • Anonymous
... C and the copy familiarly employed by Chrysostom, has to be added the copy which Cyril of Alexandria(575) employed; as well as evidently sundry other Codices extant at Constantinople about A.D. 500. That the corruption of the text of S. Matthew's Gospel under review is ancient therefore, and was once very widely spread, is certain. The question remains,—and this is the only point to ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... sanitation can transform a belt of swamps with an annual rainfall of 150 inches into a health-resort. The yellow-lined faces of the American engineers told their own tale, although they had no longer to contend with the fearful mortality from yellow fever which, together with venality and corruption, effectually wrecked Ferdinand de Lesseps' attempt to pierce ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... storax-tree and other aromatics which they are wont to use, and clothing it in the best garments which the dead man possessed; then, after having kept and mourned over it for three days, they buried it. Others anointed the body with aromatic balsams which prevent corruption, especially with the juice of a sort of ivy which grows there abundantly, and is truly a very valuable drug, which they call buyo. [92] It is very pungent, and for the living is a notable stimulant, also strengthening the teeth, hardening the gums, and sweetening the breath. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... legislation on the subject of cooperation, the mutual isolation of the educated and wage-earning classes, the lack of business ability among wage earners, and the altogether too frequent venality and corruption among cooperators. ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... flourishing towns where every modern and up-to-date accommodation is to be found. These seaside resorts are thronged with a cosmopolitan population composed of tourists, business men, nabobs and adventurers. There life rolls on in the refined corruption of fashionable society amidst sports and amusements, scandals and intrigues, every race and every tongue contributing its share of good and evil. A motley crowd swarms their streets, presenting to the eye of an onlooker the picturesque spectacle that the contrast of costumes always produces. ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... much caution, so that it must be a very unusual thing to find one who, merely out of regard to his virtue, and for his being esteemed a singularly good man, was raised up to so great a dignity, degenerate into corruption and vice; and if such a thing should fall out, for man is a changeable creature, yet, there being few priests, and these having no authority but what rises out of the respect that is paid them, nothing of great consequence to the public can proceed from the ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... support the Constitution and thereby become a citizen. Five years later, Congress feared that the warring powers of Europe would send undesirable aliens to the United States. "Coming from a quarter of the world so full of disorder and corruption," said a speaker in the House, "they might contaminate the purity and simplicity of the American character." A new naturalisation law was passed, requiring an alien to give three years' notice of his intention to change his allegiance—a kind of period of repentance. The required time of residence ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... of the Dutch name of Lindegreen (green lime-trees) resided at Hull within the last fifty years or more. Now the "junior" of this name would be called in Dutch "Lindegroen jonger," which may have originated the corruption "Land o' green ginger." This conjecture would amount to solution of the question, if the Lindegreens had about 150 years ago any property or occupation in this lane. The Dutch had necessarily much intercourse with Hull: ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 204, September 24, 1853 • Various
... now ope thine eyes, and first behold Th' effects which thy original crime hath wrought In some, to spring from thee, who never touch'd Th' excepted tree, nor with the snake conspir'd, Nor sinn'd thy sin; yet from that sin derive Corruption to bring ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... AND POPULAR TRUSTS. A strenuous resistance to every appearance of lawless power; a spirit of independence carried to some degree of enthusiasm; an inquisitive character to discover, and a bold one to display, every corruption and every error of government; these are the qualities which recommend a man to a seat in the House of Commons, in open and merely popular elections. An indolent and submissive disposition; a disposition to think charitably ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... Judgments, and the Inflicting of Punishments. Book VII. Consequences of the Different Principles of the Three Governments with Respect to Sumptuary Laws, Luxury, and the Condition of Women. Book VIII. Of the Corruption of the Principles of the Three Governments. Book XIV. Of Laws as Relative to ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... sign or sound of bees. Worms of the riper grave unhid By any kindly coffin lid, Obscene and shameless to the light, Seethe in insatiate appetite, Through putrid offal, while above The hissing blow-fly seeks his love, Whose offspring, supping where they supt, Consume corruption twice corrupt. ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... spiritual death we speak not now). It is not, though this be exitus a morte: it is introitus in mortem; though it be an issue from manifold deaths of this world, yet it is an entrance into the death of corruption and putrefaction, and vermiculation, and incineration, and dispersion in and from the grave, in which every dead man dies over again. It was a prerogative peculiar to Christ, not to die this death, not to see corruption. What gave him this privilege? Not Joseph's great proportion ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... nations. No autocratic Government could be trusted to keep faith within it or observe its covenants. It must be a league of honor, a partnership of opinion. Intrigue would eat its vitals away, the plottings of inner circles who could plan what they would and render account to no one would be a corruption seated at its very heart. Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honor steady to a common end and prefer the interests of mankind to any ...
— In Our First Year of the War - Messages and Addresses to the Congress and the People, - March 5, 1917 to January 6, 1918 • Woodrow Wilson
... "carry," far from being a corruption, is pure old English, and is used in the Bible, and by Smollett, though it is amusing to note that the "Georgia Gazetteer" for 1837, mentions as a lamentable provincialism such an application of the word ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... at his cigar and then, in a calm historian's tone, he proceeded to sketch for his friend some pictures of the corruption which was rife abroad. He summarised the vices of many capitals and seemed inclined to award the palm to Berlin. Some things he could not vouch for (his friends had told him), but of others he had had personal experience. He spared neither rank nor caste. He revealed many of ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... expressed: "A vain, heartless woman; one of the most revolting stories in history, and she might have been such a queen! A good woman is the most beautiful thing on earth, but a bad woman is a source of corruption.... Had only her soul been clean, dogs might have been welcome ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... among the rich or the poor, among the cherished or castaways. It fell as thickly upon the gravestones in Trinity's ancient churchyard as upon the freshly turned earth in a corner of the paupers' burying ground; and it set upon black corruption wherever it was in evidence the ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... firm and unyielding. In a state of tranquillity, wealth, and luxury, our descendants would forget the arts of war, and the noble activity and zeal which made their ancestors invincible. Every art of corruption would be employed to loosen the bond of union which renders our resistance formidable. When the spirit of liberty which now animates our hearts and gives success to our arms is extinct, our numbers will accelerate our ruin, and render us easier victims ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... that which is spiritual. And in all its many forms she appreciated luxury, even entertaining a kindness for that necessary handmaid of luxury—waste. Appreciated these the more ardently, that, with birth-pangs at the beginning of each human life, death-pangs and the corruption of the inevitable grave at the close of each, all this lapping, meanwhile, of the doomed flesh in exaggerations of ease and splendour seemed to her among the very finest ironies of the great comedy of existence. It ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... Shaking a knife with tyrant's blood red-wet, Or—aping "Paris-goods" in art, dress, ladies. You'll spy him—as a Yankee—gassing loud About his pride, and yet chin-deep in snobbery; Leaving State matters to corruption's crowd, And justifying (literary) robbery. Whilst as a Briton! Bless us, 'twould take time To picture Homo in his guise Britannic. Here he is making a fine art of crime, There he is fussing in a Puritan panic; Here with MCMUCK he plays the prurient spy, And there ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 13, 1890 • Various
... to a thousand years; and with equal justice may the lexicographer be derided, who being able to produce no example of a nation that has preserved their words and phrases from mutability, shall imagine that his dictionary can embalm his language, and secure it from corruption and decay, that it is in his power to change sublunary nature, and clear the world at once from folly, vanity ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... sort of objection were made to leaders at Public Meetings, we should, I imagine, have very few meetings. One might be told to keep to his snuff shop, another to his haberdashery, and so on. Indeed, the tools of Corruption are so very nice upon this head, that I have never yet heard of any one trade, or calling, which they did not despise, if a man who came forward against abuses happened to be of that trade or calling; and, on the other hand, there is nothing too low or ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... during the period there brought to view the ministers of religion, power-seeking and apostate as they were, were unable to enforce their claims by the power of persecution. Under the present seal, however, is represented a later stage of their corruption, when a great hierarchal system, sustained and upheld by the arm of civil power, was able to bear tyrannical rule over a great portion of the earth. During this period clerical ambition and usurpation reached ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... revolution of 1848, the principle of royalty had so much spoiled the nature and envenomed the character of public office, that (of course except those who derived their authority by election—which we for our municipal life conserved amongst all the corruption of European royalty through centuries) no patriot accepted an office in the government: to have accepted one was to have ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... surrender the portcullis and the moat, the bastion and the well-manned towers, which were the features of every castle with which hitherto I have played, in order to take the field with allies so unromantic as a brace of rooks. You may tell me that "rook" is a corruption of this or that word, meaning something which has never laid an egg in its life. It may be so, but in that case you cannot blame me for continuing to call it the castle which ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... was the first time that I began to conceive a very high opinion of the talents and personal courage of Abraham Lincoln. He retorted upon Ewing with great severity, denouncing his insinuations imputing corruption to him and his colleagues, and paying back with usury all that Ewing had said, when everybody thought and believed that he was digging his own grave; for it was known that Ewing would not quietly pocket any insinuations ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... have dinner," said Munger to some of his admirers, "as long as we get it after all? Now if old Punch (this was an irreverent corruption of the head-master's name current in certain sets at Grandcourt)—if old Punch had stopped our grub ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... with his cheery smile, noticing Moses loitering. He called him "Reb" out of courtesy and in acknowledgment of his piety. The real "Reb" was a fine figure of a man, with matter, if not piety, enough for two Moses Ansells. Reb was a popular corruption of ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... accustomed to argue thus:—If all things have followed from the necessity of the most perfect nature of God, how is it that so many imperfections have arisen in Nature—corruption, for instance, of things till they stink; deformity, exciting disgust; confusion, evil, crime, etc.? But, as I have just observed, all this is easily answered. For the perfection of things is to be judged by their nature and power alone; nor are they more ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... Pericles, Nicias, who subsequently fell in Sicily, appeared as leader of the aristocracy, and Cleon son of Cleaenetus of the people. The latter seems, more than any one else, to have been the cause of the corruption of the democracy by his wild undertakings; and he was the first to use unseemly shouting and coarse abuse on the Bema, and to harangue the people with his cloak girt up short about him, whereas all his predecessors had spoken decently ...
— The Athenian Constitution • Aristotle
... cry of graft: the Republicans saw in the transaction the corruption of the existing Democratic regime. A committee was appointed by the House of Representatives to investigate the matter, and the testimony which they took covers three hundred and seven pages. Some witnesses ...
— Old Fort Snelling - 1819-1858 • Marcus L. Hansen
... religious persecution. That was when Scipio of Asia had been accused and not acquitted of having taken a bribe of six thousand pounds of gold and four hundred and eighty pounds of silver to favour Antiochus. It was in the first days of Rome's corruption, when the brilliant army of Asia first brought the love of foreign luxury to Rome; when the soldiers, enriched with booty, began to have brass bedsteads, rich coverlets and curtains, and other things of ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... the finest face man ever looked at?' 'I could hear Trim talk so for ever,' cried Susanah, 'What is it?' Susanah laid her head on Trim's shoulder—'but corruption!'—Susanah took it off. ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... made. The digging up and the preparing of these roots for the Paris manufacturers form now an important industry in the mountain villages. In England they are called briar-root pipes, briar being a corruption of the ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... whose bodies rest in sleep,— I know there is a blessed shore, Opening its ports for me and mine; And, gazing Time's wide waters o'er, I weary for that land divine, Where we were born, where you and I Shall meet our dearest, when we die; From suffering and corruption free, ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... invaluable apparatus erected in the lobby of the House of Commons, and so, by compelling every member to submit to the operation of filtration, cleanse the house from its present accumulation of corruption, though we defy Stuckey himself to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... sample: "I have known you turn a matter of hearsay, into a matter of heresy; Damon into a daemon; a delicious girl, into a delirious girl; the comic muse, into a comic mouse; a Jewish Rabbi, into a Jewish Rabbit; and when a correspondent, lamenting the corruption of the times, exclaimed 'O Mores!' you made him cry, 'O Moses!'" And here is an extract from another paper which explains the aforegoing reference to "horse Races": "1763—Spring Meeting... Mr. Wilkes's ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... Khan. "A thief, who boasts of thieving in the presence of sahibs! So is corruption, ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... made by Sir Joshua Reynolds, that the greatest man is he who forms the taste of a nation, and that the next greatest is he who corrupts it. The true classical style of Hooker and his fellows was easily open to corruption; and Sir Thomas Brown it was, who, though a writer of great genius, first effectually injured the literary taste of the nation by his introduction of learned words, merely because they were learned. It would be difficult to describe Brown adequately; exuberant ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... And for her mother had her taught before The secret virtue of each herb that springs, Besides fit charms for every wound or sore Corruption breedeth or misfortune brings, — An art esteemed in those times of yore, Beseeming daughters of great lords and kings — She would herself be surgeon to her knight, And heal him with her skill, or ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... trade is the most powerful of all "interests" in the corruption of politics, one of the most demoralizing phases of our American life. [Footnote: H. S. Warner, op. cit, chap. XI.] The saloon power is in politics with a grim determination to keep its business ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... This systematic corruption of the best threatens to assume the proportions of a national disaster. It is the system, not the actors in it, which M. Faguet analyses and invites us ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... of gateau, as was bel for beau. Susanna, on her part, speaks of the wardrobe in my bedroom as an 'awmry.' It certainly contains no weapons, so cannot be an armoury, and we conjecture that her word must be a corruption of armoire. ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... aggravates, and which survives the establishment of good laws. As I have already indicated, the dislike and the systematic evasion by smuggling of the trade laws during the long period when the revolt was incubating harmed American character, and probably sowed the seed of future corruption and dissension. However true that may be, it is certainly true that the American rebels showed no more heroism or self-sacrifice than the average Englishman or Irishman in any other part of the world might have been expected to show under similar conditions. Historians and ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... Malcolm kept bachelor's hall in the great house. The only women in the household were an old black cook, and the housekeeper, known as "Viney"—a Negro corruption of Lavinia—a tall, comely young light mulattress, with a dash of Cherokee blood, which gave her straighter, blacker and more glossy hair than most women of mixed race have, and perhaps a somewhat different ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... fulfilled its educative and regenerative mission. It dwelt on the victories which Italians had won in other days over their oppressors, and it tacitly reminded them that they were still oppressed by foreign governments; it portrayed their own former corruption and crimes, and so taught them the virtues which alone could cure the ills their vices had brought upon them. Only secondarily political, and primarily moral, it forbade the Italians to hope to be good citizens without ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... deserved to fall. He uniformly represents them as extravagant, selfish, ostentatious, luxurious, frivolous, Epicurean in opinions and in life, oppressive in all their social relations, haughty beyond endurance, and controlling the popular elections by means of bribery and corruption. It would be difficult to refute these charges. The Patricians probably gave themselves up to all the pleasures incident to power and unbounded wealth, in a corrupt and wicked age. They had their palaces in the city and their villas in the country, their ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... such as these, which belong purely to the imagination. Its name has been inextricably entangled with literature by Pierre de Bourdeilles, Seigneur de Brantme, author of the famous and scandalous 'Mmoires'—terrible chronicles of sixteenth-century venality, intrigue, and corruption, written in a spirit of the gayest cynicism. Brantme—he is known to the world by no other name now—was the spiritual as well as the temporal lord here, for he was abbot of the ancient abbey which was founded on this spot in the eleventh ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... respecting Tartuffe and his wife, and Vadius and Trissotin fall by the ears, undoubtedly belongs; but the endless disquisitions of Alceste and Philinte as to the manner in which we ought to behave amid the falsity and corruption of the world do not in the slightest respect belong to it. They are serious, and yet they cannot satisfy us as exhausting the subject; and as dialogues which at the end leave the characters precisely at the same point as at the beginning, they are ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... exhibited. For three days and three nights the city and its inhabitants were surrendered to the brutal soldiery. The imagination shrinks from contemplating the awful scene. The world of woe may be challenged to exhibit any thing worse. Fearful, indeed, must be the corruption when man can be capable of such inhumanity to his fellow man. War unchains the tiger ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... child, but I have first my work to do, and enough of it too—but listen to what they have made me become." Hastily, in a low voice, she related to Marie the story of her corruption, excited as before, her limbs shaking and her fists clinched. "They say we old women resemble cats, but from to-day forth I know that is a shameful lie! If I had possessed their nature and claws, I should have sprung at the throat of this rascal, and ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... a River, or near a Bridge. Dr. Robertson says, History of America, Vol. II. p. 126, that the Indians were very ignorant of the use of Metals; Artificers in Metals were scarce, and on that account a Name might be given to a Bridge or Valley where one dwelt. Doeg Indians, may be a corruption of Madog's Indians. Cape Atros, Cape Hateras; near Cape Fair in Carolina, which last may be Cape Mair, the Cape of Mary, i. e. the Virgin Mary.—I would just observe that some parts in Europe seem to have derived ...
— An Enquiry into the Truth of the Tradition, Concerning the - Discovery of America, by Prince Madog ab Owen Gwynedd, about the Year, 1170 • John Williams
... of strange personal contrition, as though he were more to blame than any of his compeers—"We have failed to follow the Master's teaching in its true perfection. We have planted in ourselves a seed of corruption, and we have permitted—nay, some of us have encouraged—its poisonous growth, till it now threatens to contaminate the whole field ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... is extreamly afraid, lest any of those Barbarous Hebrew Words should disfigure the purity of the Latin Tongue; when surely he cou'd not but know, that this pure Latin Tongue it self, for which he's so much concerned, is nothing but the gradual Corruption or Barbarizing of the Greek; as that of the Phonician and Hebrew before; and the Italian, and his own French too, from the Latin afterwards, by the adulterous mixture of 'tis hard to say how many Languages: So that between 'em, they'd make it impossible for a Christian Poet to write a good ...
— Epistle to a Friend Concerning Poetry (1700) and the Essay on Heroic Poetry (second edition, 1697) • Samuel Wesley
... for I have you. We two shall be together through the ages—for ever and for ever. Heart of my heart, you have striven manfully and well, and if you did not altogether succeed in saving my flesh from premature corruption, be satisfied in that you ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... its recesses, its 'imperials,' its 'wills,' its 'Salisbury boots,' its 'sword-cases,' its front pockets, side pockets, rear pockets, its 'hammer-cloth cellars' (which a lady explains to me as a corruption from hamper-cloth, as originally a cloth for hiding a hamper, stored with viaticum), until all the uses and needs of man, and of human life, savage or civilised, were met with separate provision by ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... parties alike, repaid the public liberality by striking a secret and envenomed blow at the reputation of every one who was not the ready tool of power—who strewed the slime of rankling malice and mercenary scorn over the bud and promise of genius, because it was not fostered in the hotbed of corruption, or warped by the trammels of servility—who supported the worst abuses of authority in the worst spirit—who joined a gang of desperadoes to spread calumny, contempt, infamy, wherever they were merited by honesty or talent ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... "Corruption indeed, brothers; and who is there among us to whom the corruptions of our rulers are unknown? Who cannot point to the wars made that should not have been made? to the banks broken that should not have broken? And who in Rome cannot point to the Ministers ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... and his conscience; and with condescending to evasive, indirect courses, in the temper of a quibbler. Now the Chief Justice is something more than a lawyer, now considerably less. At one moment he is setting common law at defiance, at another he is twisting the law to the purposes of corruption, and taking refuge behind the forms which he is expressly charged with heroically setting at defiance. Had Lord Mansfield been less timorous, Junius might have been less daring. At the close of one of his letters the reckless assailant writes ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... if woman be a slave? 1045 Chain one who lives, and breathes this boundless air, To the corruption of a closed grave! Can they whose mates are beasts, condemned to bear Scorn, heavier far than toil or anguish, dare To trample their oppressors? in their home 1050 Among their babes, thou knowest a curse would wear The shape ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... as Jugurtha, fall in with his Scaurus or Albinus. It must be owned that this hope was not without reason; although the very example of Jugurtha had on the other hand shown how foolish it was to confound the bribery of a Roman commander and the corruption of a Roman army with the conquest ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... MARY, that thy story Touches all hearts—for there we see thee. The soul's corruption and its glory, Its death and life combine ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... loathsome leperos; and again, amongst these might be seen numerous groups of perfumed dandies and elegantly dressed ladies, who contrasted with the throng of Indians as swamp-lilies do with the filth and corruption of a pestilential marsh. In spite of the broad sunlight, rockets were going off on all sides, to the great amusement of the Indians, who burst out into screams of wild delight each time that one of the fiery missiles caused alarm and confusion amongst the gaily attired dames who thronged the balconies, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... the name of the tomb of Haroun, stands upon the same spot which has always been regarded as the burying-place of Aaron; and there remains little doubt, therefore, that the mountain to the west of Petra, is the Mount Hor of the Scriptures, Mousa being, perhaps, an Arabic corruption of Mosera, where Aaron is said to have died. [Deuter.c.x.v.6. In addition to the proofs of the site of Petra, just stated, it is worthy of remark that the distance of eighty-three Roman miles from Aila, or AElana, to Petra, in ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... in front. It was adorned with statues in soft stone, half-eaten away, but still gesticulating in corruption, after the manner of the seventeenth century. Beneath the bridge there tumbled and swelled and ran fast a great confusion of yellow water: it was the Tiber. Far on the right were white barracks of huge and of hideous appearance; over these the Dome of St Peter's rose and ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... one family. Our readers will remember how fully we have exposed the unscrupulous tricks of the old fox Plausaby, the contemptible land-shark who runs Metropolisville, and who now has temporary possession of the county-seat by means of a series of gigantic frauds, and of wholesale bribery and corruption and nefarious ballot-box stuffing. The fair Katy Charlton, who was drowned by the heart-rending calamity of last week, was his step-daughter, and now her brother, Albert Charlton, is arrested as a vile and dishonest mail-robber, and the victim whose land-warrant he stole was Miss ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... foreign investment and modern production methods have helped spur production of both domestic and export goods. Aggregate output has more than doubled since 1978. On the darker side, the leadership has often experienced in its hybrid system the worst results of socialism (bureaucracy, lassitude, corruption) and of capitalism (windfall gains and stepped-up inflation). Beijing thus has periodically backtracked, retightening central controls at intervals and thereby lessening the credibility of the reform process. In 1991 output rose substantially, particularly in ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... was unsparing of his censure on Cavour and the "Piedmontese party," he was no apologist for the old state of things in Italy. So far from it, that he launched out freely in attack of Papal bigotry, superstition, and corruption, and freely corroborated our own Premier's assertions, by calling the Pope's the "worst government in Europe." In fact, he showed very clearly that the smaller states of Italy were well or ill administered in the ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... powerful magnates did not dare to resist judicial decrees, armed attacks rarely took place, and violence almost never went unpunished. Well known in history is the sad end of Prince Wasil Sanguszko, and of Stadnicki, called the Devil.—The corruption of public morals in the Commonwealth increased the number of forays, which continually disturbed the peace of Lithuania. [The rendering of zajazd by foray is of course inexact and conventional; but the translator did not wish ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... found company, The patriarch Enoch, and the mighty seer Elias; nor as yet those sainted three Have seen corruption, but in garden, clear Of earth's foul air, will joy eternity Of spring, till they angelic trumpets hear, Sounding through heaven and earth, proclaim aloud Christ's second ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... degraded branch of the whole art of architecture, one hardly worthy of being included under the name—that, namely, with which we have lately been occupied, whose ostensible object is the mere provision of shelter and comfort for the despicable shell within whose darkness and corruption that purity of perception to which all high art is addressed is, during ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... expense of accomplishing these projects, is a corruption of morals. To revolutionize Connecticut it will be necessary to circulate, without any intermission, many gross falsehoods respecting the men in power, the judges, legislators and magistrates, and ...
— Count The Cost • Jonathan Steadfast
... discover the substantial purport, the real side of the divine idea, and to justify the so much despised reality of things; for Reason is the comprehension of the divine work. But as to what concerns the perversion, corruption, and ruin of religious, ethical, and moral purposes and states of society generally, it must be affirmed that, in their essence, these are infinite and eternal, but that the forms they assume may be of a limited order, and consequently may belong to the domain of mere nature and be subject to the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... so beclouded your mind that you've come to look upon Chu-tzu as full of fraud and falsehood. But when you by and bye go out into the world and see all those mighty concerns reeking with greed and corruption, you'll even go so far as to treat ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... for he died, we suppose,—no physician has been allowed to come on board to see the body,—of confluent small-pox. I have seen, since we parted, great suffering, but nothing physical to be compared to this, where the once fair and expressive mould of man is thus lost in corruption before life has fled. He died yesterday morning, and was buried in deep water, the American Consul's barge towing out one from this ship which bore the body, about six o'clock. It was Sunday. A divinely calm, glowing afternoon had succeeded ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... from her that I first heard of the relations existing between the underworld and the police of New York. But then my idea of the Russian police had always been associated in my mind with everything cruel and dishonest, so the corruption of the New York police did not ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... pursue the truth; with the aid of the Most High and with the best use of human reason, was a privilege secured by the commonwealth, at the expense of two generations of continuous bloodshed. To lie fettered, soul and body, at the feet of authority wielded by a priesthood in its last stage of corruption, and monarchy almost reduced to imbecility, was the lot of the chivalrous, genial; but much ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... had brought to France. He reaches Paris with an empty purse, and is not sorry to meet his brother, who welcomes him kindly, and supplies his wants, but refuses to recant, and attempts to justify his backsliding. In the course of his defence he gives an insight into the prevalent corruption of the time, and shows how the private vices of great political leaders often marred the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... 2d. The corruption of the cheap trash literature, that is now ordinarily supplied for the amusement and instruction of the American people,—and that threatens to uproot and annihilate all the notions of virtue and morals that remain, in spite of sectarianism,—calls for some antidote, ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... necessary to take away "the sun-images;" indeed, the latter king found that the horses and chariots which his predecessors, Manasseh and Amon, had dedicated to sun worship were kept at the very entrance to the temple. In spite of his reformation, however, the evil spread until the final corruption of Jerusalem was shown in vision to Ezekiel, "Seventy men of the ancients"—that is the complete Sanhedrim—offered incense to creeping things and abominable beasts; the women wept for Tammuz, probably the sun-god in his decline ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder |
