"Debased" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... again, it must be remembered what an alliance with such a Government as that of China is likely to involve. Her civil administration, based although it may be on a system excellently well suited to a people like the Chinese, is so weakened, save in a few isolated instances, by the incapacity, and so debased by the venality of its executive, that it has long since forfeited the confidence and good-will of the masses, and rebellion has only to raise its head to find a fruitful soil for its speedy growth and development. Her army is numerically large, and can be recruited ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... pomp, and gratifying the mind with endless diversity. Other poets display cabinets of precious rarities, minutely finished, wrought into shape, and polished into brightness. Shakespeare opens a mine which contains gold and diamonds in unexhaustible plenty, though clouded by incrustations, debased by impurities, and mingled with a mass ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... contemptible—the colours pass from dirty red into brown and black. These certainly are the worst wall-paintings I have ever met with, worse even than the coarsest painted shrines on the waysides of Italy; indeed no Church save the Greek Church would tolerate an art thus debased. A year after my journey to Kief I travelled through the Tyrol on my way from the Ammergau Passion Play. The whole of this district abounds in frescoes, many being on the external walls of private dwellings. This village ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... have thrust aside the tribute which is due to such men alone. Would you dash out the signature of one who declares you his trustee for a legacy to your children? No, you would not. Neither will you reject the proofs of high esteem, however manifested, which England, however debased, is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... the besetting sin of the people was the desire of wealth. He traced the effects of the ignoble struggle for gain in the degradation of character, in the debased tone of public and private life. The main current of existence being defiled, his duty was clear. Even more than other men he was pledged to resist the evil tendency of the time. In some ways, no doubt, he was as frail and faulty as the weakest of his hearers, ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... after all! Had he not acted ill and ungratefully in deserting him? His own vessel filled to the brim with grief, had he not let the waters of its bitterness overflow into the heart of the soutar? The wail of that violin echoed now in Robert's heart, not for Flodden, not for himself, but for the debased nature that drew forth the plaint. Comrades in misery, why should they part? What right had he to forsake an old friend and benefactor because he himself was unhappy? He would go and see him the very next night. And he would make friends once ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... season, but even at the first it struck me as odd to see two men, not outwardly debased, so soberly intent on their game of killing. And in the end I got sick of the big blood-rusted traps and the stretching-rings and the blood-smeared cutting-boards and the smell of pelts being cured. ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... young Republic—its direst, deadliest bane. For although his rule was not continuous, its evil effects were. Unfortunately, the demoralisation brought about by despotism extends beyond the reign or life of the despot; and Santa Anna had so debased the Mexican people, both socially and politically, as to render them unfitted for almost any form of constitutional government. They had become incapable of distinguishing between the friends of freedom and its foes; and in the intervals of Liberal administration, because the Millennium did ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... of the attachment of a man to principles, which every day's experience was so fatally for himself contradicting. To see the human mind in one of the most enlightened nations of the world, and after a lapse of some thousand years, debased by such a fermentation of disgusting passions, of fear, cruelty, malice, revenge, ambition, madness, and folly as would have disgraced the most savage nation in the most barbarous age must have been such a tremendous shock to his ideas of the necessary ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... to many a less prominent Maskil after him: "Despite his learning and philosophy he sank deeper than the most degraded of his fellow-men, because in repudiating his ancestral faith he had lost the staff which, through all their humiliations, served as a prop even to the most debased ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... astonished that he should come to me now with proposals for peace; he who endeavored to excite all the princes of Germany to crush me. I have acted with too much condescension to the court of France. Compelled by the necessities of my situation I debased my royal dignity by writing to the cardinal in terms which would have softened the most obdurate rock. He insolently rejected my entreaties; and the only answer I obtained was that his most Christian majesty had contracted engagements which he could ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... made in the way of coining the public money; but it was soon found that this had only made matters worse. For now, side by side with a pure and unimpaired and full-valued currency, and mingled up everywhere with it, there was the old, clipped, debased, and far too light gold and silver money; till troubles arose in connection with the coinage and circulation of the country that can only be told by Macaulay's extraordinarily graphic pen. 'It may well be doubted,' Macaulay says, in the twenty-first chapter of ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... the bridge in undignified attitudes are the debased Fang and two of his mercenary accomplices. They are, as usual, bending their footsteps in the direction of the hospitality of a house that announces its purpose beneath the sign of a spreading bush. They are positioned as crossing the river to a set purpose, and the bridge ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... sciences, and all the amiable virtues flourished, instead of being a pestilent marsh where swine-like ignorance wallowed, and artful hypocrites, like so many wills-o'-the-wisp, played antic gambols about, around and above debased humanity. ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... could not exist in such a state as that, and my condition would be pitiable indeed. All others would be equally miserable. The human race would multiply, until the fruits of the soil would be insufficient for its support; and earth would be filled with degenerate beings, starved in body and debased in mind—all clinging to an existence utterly without joy. Life is dark to me, but not to others: these are matters beyond you, and it is presumptuous in one of your condition to attempt to comfort me ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... communities; and accordingly, she has so disposed matters in the constitution of men's minds, and of society, that communities shall in every instance do it homage. In proof of this, we find, in every age and nation, wherever Nature is not totally debased by art or crime, that the most powerful orator, has almost always been found to be the most influential man. Every other qualification in society has been made to bend to this, and even reason itself is often for the moment ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... upon the worthiness or the unworthiness of writer folk, he is, to-day, said to be one of the greatest writers of his generation. He is a realist—a modern of the moderns. His pen has never been debased by an inartistic and antiquated idealism. His claim to genius rests securely upon the fact that he has no ideals. He writes for that select circle of leaders who, like the Taines and the Rutlidges, are capable of ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... People it seeks its own gain. It has ceased to be a means to good democratic government, and has grown to be an end in itself. In its rivalry to other parties, in its struggle for power, in its scramble for the spoils of office, in its eagerness to secure votes, it has debased political ideals, it has corrupted citizenship, it has abandoned truth, it has proclaimed smooth lies, it has betrayed the State, it has almost destroyed the nation. Happy indeed will it be if this war, which is revealing to us the hideousness and deadliness of ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... international statesmanship. Let us be fair. German merchants, German traders had the reputation of being as upright and straightforward as any traders in the world. But if the currency of German commerce is to be debased to the level of her statesmanship, no trader from Shanghai to Valparaiso will ever look at a German signature again. This doctrine of the scrap of paper, this doctrine which is superscribed by ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... to fill the office of pastor, but the same sad defections from sobriety followed. For a considerable time after this his friends lost sight of him. Then he was found in the streets of New York City by the president of the college from which he had first graduated, wretched and debased from drink, coatless and hatless. His old friend took him to a hotel, and then brought his case to the notice of the people at a prayer-meeting held in the evening at one of the churches. His case was immediately taken in hand and money raised to send him to the State Inebriate ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... debased they have grown. There's no utility in all this. There couldn't be any really ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... this woman; she is mine, mine alone! she loves me! Has she not smiled upon me as, touch by touch, I painted her? She has a soul,—the soul with which I endowed her. She would blush if other eyes than mine beheld her. Let her be seen?—where is the husband, the lover, so debased as to lend his wife to dishonor? When you paint a picture for the court you do not put your whole soul into it; you sell to courtiers your tricked-out lay-figures. My painting is not a picture; it is a sentiment, ...
— The Hidden Masterpiece • Honore de Balzac
... hundred years, in a state of unlettered rudeness. The Negro all this time has been an intellectual starveling. This has been more especially the condition of the black woman of the South. Now and then a black man has risen above the debased condition of his people. Various causes would contribute to the advantage of the men: the relation of servants to superior masters; attendance at courts with them; their presence at political meetings; listening to ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... face of Philip left Lilburne terror-stricken with conviction. But the man's crafty ability, debased as it was, triumphed even over remorse for the dread guilt meditated,—over gratitude for the dread guilt spared. He glanced at Beaufort—at Dykeman, who now, slowly recovering, gazed at him with eyes that seemed starting from their sockets; and lastly fixed his look on Philip himself. There were ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... and the story, true as it is pitiful, of the fish that turned to woman, and then back again to fish, in which he that runs may read an example from the Mermaid Cycle. They are to be found to-day, often in debased and barely recognisable guise, in the hands of the peripatetic ballad-mongers who still haunt fairs and sing in the streets, and in the memories of multitudes of country folks who know scarce any other literature bearing the magic trademark of ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... one's most desperate adventure into reality had been the consumption of a small claret hot with a slice of lemon in it in a back-street public-house. Thus Mr. Kipling brought a new violence and wonder, a sort of debased Byronism, into the imagination of youth; at least, he put a crown upon the violence and wonder which youth had long previously discovered for itself in penny dreadfuls and in its rebellion against conventions ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... archfiend an object of worship, but because the Gypsy language, descending directly from the Sanskrit, has retained in its primitive exalted sense a word which the English language has received only in its debased and perverted sense. The Teutonic words devil, teufel, diuval, djofull, djevful, may all be traced back to the Zend dev, [97] a name in which is implicitly contained the record of the oldest monotheistic revolution known to history. The influence of the so-called Zoroastrian ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... could obtain religious instruction and the advantages of civilisation, for they were, he knew, being dragged from one state of barbarism to another, in many cases infinitely worse, where they would become utterly degraded and debased. ...
— Ned Garth - Made Prisoner in Africa. A Tale of the Slave Trade • W. H. G. Kingston
... adulterations of food, so appallingly prevalent, will suggest an illustration of this point. There are commodities in which the mixture of cheaper ingredients cannot be detected by the purchaser, and which in their debased form can be offered at so low a price as to drive the genuine commodities which they replace out of the market; and thus the alternative is presented to the hitherto honest dealer to participate in ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... youth before they discover that "Author by Profession" is a denomination ridiculously assumed, for it is none! The first efforts of men of genius are usually honourable ones; but too often they suffer that genius to be debased. Many who would have composed history have turned voluminous party-writers; many a noble satirist has become a hungry libeller. Men who are starved in society, hold to it but loosely. They are the children ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... of purplish red scarce redder than the red skin; pale blue eyes tending to a watery greyness, leaden, vague, sad, but with angry streakings of red; something inexpressibly sad, gloomy, helpless, vacant and debased in the whole face: such was the man who awaited Louise of Stolberg in the Compagnoni-Marefoschi palace at Macerata, and who, on Good Friday the 17th of April 1772, wedded her in the palace chapel and signed his name in the register ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... francs in order that he might not be a slave to money; living with a woman whom he loved, he had always insisted, although he had two daughters, on living with her 'en union libre', and in not acknowledging his children legally, because the law debased the ties which attached him to them and lessened his duties; it was conscience that sanctioned these duties; and nature, like conscience, made him the most faithful of lovers, the best, the most affectionate, the most tender of fathers. Tall, ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot
... stated to have its headquarters somewhere in the interior of the country—some located it in this neighbourhood, and some in that—which was stated to still practise, and to always have practised, in unbroken historical continuity, the debased, unclean, mystic, and bloody rites, of a form of idolatry which had had its birth in a period of the world's story which was so remote, that to all intents and purposes it might be described ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... from the tables of the rich. And the worst of it all was the degradation of the human being; this was no case of the free naked savage, hunting and devouring his prey in the primeval forests; here civilised man was found, sunk into brutishness, with all the stigmas of his fall, debased, disfigured, and enfeebled, amidst the luxury and refinement of that city of Paris which is one of the queens ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... shrank as the preacher said "hell." He gave a maudlin cry, and almost whimpered, "No, sir, no, preacher, I am a-goin' to reform." John had known what note to touch in this debased nature. Not love, nor hope, nor shame, would move Tom Davis, but fear stung him into a semblance of sobriety. "I'll come along wi' you," he went on, swaying back and forth, and steadying himself with a hand on the lumber against which he had been leaning. "This is the last time, ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... now become a habit with me more enchaining—and infinitely more debased—than ever was opium to the smoker, or alcohol to the drunkard. I count it among the prime necessaries of my life: it is my brandy, my bacchanal, my secret sin. I have burned Calcutta, Pekin, and San Francisco. In spite ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... mention a crime that he has not perpetrated than to discover a good or just action that he ever performed. He is so notorious a villain that even the infamous National Convention expelled him from its bosom, and since his Ministry no man has been found base enough, in my debased country, to extenuate, much less to defend, his past enormities. In a nation so greatly corrupted and immoral, this alone is more ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... is ugly, because it distorts the natural lines of the figure, and gives an appearance of uncertainty and unsafeness.... Men seldom take to wife a girl who has too small a waist, whether natural or artificial." "In architecture, a pillar or support of any kind is called debased and bad in art if what is supported be too heavy for the thing supporting, and if a base be abnormally heavy and large for what it upholds. The laws of proportion and balance must be understood. In ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... excited to take a little more drink, the constables are excited, the audience are excited to amusement; Messrs. Fetter and Felsh's court rocks with excitement: the only unexcited person present is the criminal, who looks calmly on, as if contemplating with horror the debased condition of those in whose hands an unjust ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... subject for me!" Iris broke out bitterly. "Hugh! you are an angel, by comparison with that man—how debased I must be to love him—how unworthy of your good opinion! Ask me anything you like; have no mercy on me. Oh," she cried, with reckless contempt for herself, "why don't you beat ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... equally upon the just and the unjust. Man's nature always responds to the truly high and beautiful; only the most degraded are deprived of this source of happiness. And there are but few women, till debased by cruelty, misery, or drink, that do not try in some humble way (but especially with their needle) to adorn their own persons, their children, and their homes; and if their art is not high, it yet has ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... Men write many fine and plausible arguments in support of monarchy, but the fact remains that where every man in a State has a vote, brutal laws are impossible. Arthur's people were of course poor material for a republic, because they had been debased so long by monarchy; and yet even they would have been intelligent enough to make short work of that law which the king had just been administering if it had been submitted to their full and free vote. There is a phrase which ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... that silence is to be observed by parties of the three sacrificial classes when a Sudra enters to remove their natural defilements, and thus the servile position of the Sudra is recognised. [15] Here it appears that the Sudra is identified with the sweeper or scavenger, the most debased and impure of modern Hindu castes. [16] In the Dharmashastras or law-books it is laid down that a person taking a Sudra's food for a month becomes a Sudra and after death becomes a dog. Issue begotten after eating a Sudra's food is of the Sudra caste. A person who ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... was coming along the curved path that led from the gate to the house. It must be the man he was waiting for, and now was the time to wreak his vengeance. He sprang to his feet, grasped his club, and stood for a moment irresolute. But either the instinct of the convict, beaten, driven, and debased, or the influence of the child, which was still strong upon him, impelled him, after the first momentary pause, to ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... they killed them without mercy. These were great shambling parodies of humanity, long-armed, short-legged, twice as heavy as men, with close-set reddish eyes and heavy bone-crushing jaws. They may have been incredibly debased humans, or perhaps beasts on the very threshold of manhood. From what he had seen of conditions on this planet, Kalvar Dard suspected the latter to be the case. In a million or so years, they might evolve into something like humanity. Already, the Hairy ...
— Genesis • H. Beam Piper
... savage people to pass of itself from the savage state to the civilized. But the primitive man, as described by Horace in his Satires, and asserted by Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and others, is far below the savage. The lowest, most degraded, and most debased savage tribe that has yet been discovered has at least some rude outlines or feeble reminiscences of a social state, of government, morals, law, and religion, for even in superstition the most gross there is a reminiscence of true religion; but the people in ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... the soiling earth, and glorying in his own corruption, sought to eternise here his very sins by naming the stars of heaven after heroes, conquerors, murderers, violators of the mandates of the Maker whom they had forgotten, or whose attributes they had debased by their own foul imaginations. They believed themselves, in the delusion of their own idolatries, to be "Lords of the world and Demigods of Fame," while they were the slaves of their own sins and their own sinful Deities. Should we have been wiser in our generation than they, but for ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... absorbed in the common emotions of common life, and speaking to the common man. But there need not necessarily be that coarseness of sentiment, that crudity of thought, that bigotry of limited sympathy, mis-called patriotism, which has debased the level of so much of Mr. Kipling's writing. I should say that Mr. G.K. Chesterton owes more than he supposes to the influence, direct or indirect, of Mr. Kipling; that though his opinions, his sympathies, his conclusions are all diametrically opposed to those ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... not an age for a man to follow the strict morality of better times, yet sure mankind is not yet so debased but that there will ever be found some few men who will scorn to join concert with the public voice when it is not ...
— A Lecture on the Study of History • Lord Acton
... exact, yet sums up the phenomenon with comprehensive clearness, when a cause of degeneration acts upon a man, he may have defective children, whose deficiency increases in the two or three following generations, until it is extinguished in the final sterility of exceedingly debased individuals. According to Morel, madmen, criminals, epileptics and idiots form the sad series in this extinction of man. The man who dies leaving strong descendants, does not really die, but is ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... utilitarian, lacking in cultural significance. Rational knowledge is supposed to be something which touches reality in ultimate, intellectual fashion; to be pursued for its own sake and properly to terminate in purely theoretical insight, not debased by application in behavior. Socially, the distinction corresponds to that of the intelligence used by the working classes and that used by a learned class remote from concern with the means of living. ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... may be permitted to conclude by quoting the magnificent final words of The Descent of Man: "We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man, with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system—with all these exalted powers—Man still bears in ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... The floor of this great circular hall was thronged with chieftains, warriors and women, and at one end was a great raised platform upon which squatted the most hideous beast I had ever put my eyes upon. He had all the cold, hard, cruel, terrible features of the green warriors, but accentuated and debased by the animal passions to which he had given himself over for many years. There was not a mark of dignity or pride upon his bestial countenance, while his enormous bulk spread itself out upon the platform where he squatted like ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... were celebrated for their beauty and their European complexions. They worshipped idols, drank wine in silver cups or vases, used chairs and tables, and spoke a language unknown to their neighbours." Their religion seems to have been a sort of debased Deism: they believed in a God; at the same time they worshipped a great number of idols, which they said represented the great men that had passed from among them; and he described a scene at which he had been present, when a goat or a ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... realized the extent of his guilt. Had he not attempted to efface and atone for his conduct, he should never have felt all the infamy of it, nor she all the wrong perpetrated against her. Only now it all came out in all its horror. He now for the first time perceived how her soul had been debased, and she finally understood it. At first Nekhludoff had played with his feelings and delighted in his own contrition; now he was simply horrified. He now felt that to abandon her was impossible. And yet he could not see the ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... of Sow Iron will yield coib annis, although now debased by the late mispending of the Stock, but wil bee brought ...
— Iron Making in the Olden Times - as instanced in the Ancient Mines, Forges, and Furnaces of The Forest of Dean • H. G. Nicholls
... the hulks where they wound them In iron, tortured and flogged them; Out of the streets where they chased them, Taxed them, and then bayonetted them; Out of the homes where they spied on them (Using their daughters and wives); Out of the church where they fretted them, Rotted their souls and debased them, Trained them to answer with knives, Then cursed them all at their prayers!— Out of cold lands, not theirs, Where they exiled them, starved them, lied on them; Back they come like a wind, in vain Cramped up in the hills, ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... individual importance of employers consoled them for their political dependence; and the subservience of transportation to their material prosperity, reconciled them to the restrictions it imposed. The free workman found it an obstacle to his advancement: it depressed his wages and debased his position, but gave him nothing. If his industry raised him, he yet retained the sympathies of his early life: he remained distrustful of the rich, jealous of rank, and fond of the equality of human rights. Trial by jury, legislative assemblies, and ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... getting money to pay the men for doing the work—a very great difficulty. The bank was not in the habit of having large cheques drawn upon it to pay money; for nearly all the merchants kept their cash in safes in their offices, and it was a very debased kind of money, coins composed of half copper and half silver, and very much defaced. You had to take a good many of them on faith. I had to send down fifteen days before the pay day came round, to commence getting the ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... The present Susunhan, descended from both Hindu and Arab ancestry, maintains a brilliant simulacrum of royal state, and his huge Kraton, far surpassing that of Djokjacarta, contains 10,000 inhabitants. The pronounced Hindu type, though debased and degraded, remains noticeable even amid the all-pervading environment of squalor and disorder, which dims the gorgeous colour and brilliant ceremonial, producing the effect of jewels flung in the dust. A dense throng of brown humanity, clad and unclad, walks to and fro beneath the ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... trance" and their subsequent hallucinations, illusions, and delusions gave to them what they deemed to be a transcendental insight into the construction of the universe and what was expected between "fallen" and debased man and his omnipotent creator. These men keenly apprehended what some today, in a gentler age, have called ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... imagine that their souls are cooped and cabined in, unless they have some man, or some body of men, dependent on their mercy. The desire of having some one below them descends to those who are the very lowest of all,—and a Protestant cobbler, debased by his poverty, but exalted by his share of the ruling church, feels a pride in knowing it is by his generosity alone that the peer, whose footman's instep he measures, is able to keep his ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... was alleged to have made a profitable business of supplying spies and armed men to capitalists under the pretense of safeguarding property. These armed bands really constituted private armies; recruited often from the most debased and worthless part of the population, as well as from the needy and shifty, they were, it was charged, composed largely of men who would perjure themselves, fabricate evidence, provoke trouble, and slaughter without scruple for pay. Some, as was well ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... introducing arts among the semi-barbarous Britons, which, in eighteen hundred and forty years, or after the lapse of nearly sixty generations, would qualify Britain to become mistress of Imperial Rome; while one country would become so exalted, and the other be so debased, that the event would excite little attention, and be deemed but of secondary importance? Possibly after another sixty generations, the posterity of the savage tribes near Sierra Leone, or New Holland, may arbitrate the fate of London, ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... gaze. The beast, ever docile and submissive, has cringed at his feet, fawned to his touch, and licked the hand that snatched away the half-devoured morsel. Obedient to voice and eye, the giant strength and sinewy grace have been debased to make the sport of multitudes; the noble, pliant frame has contorted itself to execute the mean antics of the low-comedy ape—to counterfeit death like a poodle dog; to leap through gaudily-painted rings at the word of command; ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... demos, as the Greeks would say, and was therefore a democratic politician. [Footnote: A politician is a person versed in the science of government, from the Greek words polis, a city, polites, a citizen. Though a very honorable title, it has been debased in familiar usage until it has come to mean in turn a partisan, a dabbler in public affairs, ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... turned with hardened hearts from the truth which was sent into the world by the grace of God, and they remained the prophets of error. The doctrines which the sages had associated with the idea of Serapis, debased and degraded by the most contemptible trivialities; lost all their worth and dignity; and after the great Apostle to whom this basilica is dedicated, had brought the gospel to Alexandria, the idol's throne began to totter, and the tidings of salvation ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... burning, illuminating speech, of heart-compelling speech! To tell my people how to make this country truly great and truly free, how to keep it free from the sordid things, the cruel things, the unjust, the unclean, the loathsome things that have debased and degraded the older nations, that are debasing and degrading even your young, great nation. Ah, to be a missionary with a tongue of fire, with a message of light! A missionary to my people to help them to high and worthy living, to help them to God! ONLY a missionary! What would ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... would have uttered a positive interdiction. He loved Mary as the apple of his eye, and she loved him with a tender, self-devoted affection. To him, she was a choice and beautiful flower, and even though his mind had become, in a certain degree, degraded and debased by intemperance, there was in it a quick instinct of protection when ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... once, in the course of my life, I have found myself under the painful necessity of telling falsehoods to the woman I loved; but in this case, after so true, so touching an appeal, how could I be otherwise than sincere? I felt myself sufficiently debased by my crime, and I could not degrade myself still more by falsehood. I was so far from being disposed to such a line of conduct that I could not speak, and I ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... rather heard was trivial gossip about the author, followed by shallow, and I thought pedantic, judgments upon an author's lack of movement or aerial quality. If one of the approved authors under discussion seemed to me painfully sordid and debased, one was told to look out for his tonic realism and his virile force. How many times in those sad hours was I informed that the artist had no concern with ethical problems! If I maintained that an artist's concern is with any motives that sway humanity, ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... gipsy quarter, with neither beauty, colour, nor even a touch of barbarism, is a squalid, brutal place, consisting of little dens built in the rock of the mountain which stands opposite the Alhambra. Worse than hovels, they are the lairs of wild beasts, foetid and oppressive, inhabited by debased creatures, with the low forehead, the copper skin, and the shifty cruel look of the Spanish gipsy. They surround the visitor in their rags and tatters, clamouring for alms, and for exorbitant sums proposing to dance. Even in the slums of great cities I have not seen a life more bestial. ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... part, of the author's invention, founded upon the current reputation of his after years. And we may be happy in so considering them, since they would betray a character, even in earliest manhood, too depraved and debased for honorable mention, although his errors were no doubt altogether beyond the palliation of a woman's pen. Yet we would fain look at him, in youth at least, as undebauched and uncorrupt, however stained may be the record ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... Incas from Garcilaso de la Vega—himself of the royal race on his mother's side, his father having been one of the Spanish adventurers—can avoid the conclusion that the religion of the Incas, thus utterly destroyed by the Spaniards, was much more nearly that of Christ than the debased worship introduced in its place. The whole story of these "Children of the Sun," told by one of themselves afterwards in Cordoba, where he is always careful to keep on the right side of the Inquisition by pretending to be a "Christian after the manner of his father," is fascinatingly ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... justice, are another. The doctrines of Confucius are worthy to be placed with those of Solon; the rescripts of the celestial emperor, abound in common-places of unbending integrity and the sternest equity; but notwithstanding all this, the morals of the people are debased, the very foundations of virtue are sapped by bribery and corruption, with all their concomitant vices; the sword of justice is arrested; and license is widely given to the violation of public and private rights. Some instances of this unblushing ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... the human greatness which approaches most nearly to divine greatness, and of which the undefinable expression beautifies the most ordinary features." In "Les Paysans" we have another fine portrait, L'Abbe Brossette, who is doing his work nobly among debased and cunning peasants. "To serve was his motto, to serve the Church and the Monarchy at the most menaced points; to serve in the last rank, like a soldier who feels destined sooner or later to rise to generalship, by his desire to do well, ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... metallic sound.—Through paths of the Gizune, they had returned on foot from Spain, heavy with copper coin bearing the effigy of the gentle, little King Alfonso XIII. A new trick of the smugglers: for Itchoua's account, they had exchanged over there with profit, a big sum of money for this debased coin, destined to be circulated at par at the coming fairs, in different villages of the Landes where Spanish cents are current. They were bringing, in their pockets, in their shirts, some forty kilos of copper. They made all this fall like rain on the antique granite of the ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... between the empyrean of his fancy and the squalid desert of reality; cramped and foiled in his most strenuous exertions; dissatisfied with his best performances, disgusted with his fortune, this Man of Letters too often spends his weary days in conflicts with obscure misery: harassed, chagrined, debased, or maddened; the victim at once of tragedy and farce; the last forlorn outpost in the war of Mind against Matter. Many are the noble souls that have perished bitterly, with their tasks unfinished, under ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... troops to arms; nor trumpet blare betrayed Their nightly march: but rapidly he seized All needed instruments of blood and war. Of Latian race the most part of his train, Yet to barbarian customs were their minds By long forgetfulness of Rome debased: Else had it shamed to serve the Pharian King; But now his vassal and his minion's word Compel obedience. Those who serve in camps Lose faith and love of kin: their pittance earned (21) Makes just the deed: and for their sordid pay, Not for themselves, they threaten Caesar's ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... much that is beautiful and charming you cannot believe that is in itself vile and unholy, can you? If we are to think God's thoughts after him we must come to look upon sex as something to be thought of and spoken of only with reverence, never to be jested about or debased in any way. You begin to see that more is involved in the coming into manhood than you had supposed. But we have not gone over the whole matter yet. You have read the first chapter of Genesis how that God made man in his own image, and out of the dust of the earth. ...
— Almost A Man • Mary Wood-Allen
... Genoa owe its liberty to slaves? Shall our pure gold be debased by this alloy? (He disengages them.) Gentlemen, you must be content to take up your abode within my palace until our business be decided. (To the sentinels.) These are your prisoners; you answer for their safety! Guard them with loaded arms. (They are led off—a ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... employ extra ships to accommodate the emigrants. Oppression in Ireland, and oppression all over Europe, drives the people into emigration; but a large portion of the emigration consists of a substantial population; yet we have enough of the turbulent and debased element to make a serious danger in our large cities, and a formidable competition with native American labor. The more laborers, and the fewer employers, the worse it is for labor. But perhaps American wealth and ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... of God!" came from Pell, who had half risen. At that instant Pedro shot from his hip at the debased creature. The form stiffened and collapsed like a bag, ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne
... but they're not afraid of us—a flying-machine means nothing to them, does not terrify them as it would human savages. They're too debased even to feel fear!"—even as this thought crossed his brain he, too, saw the terrible thing that the girl had cried out at ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... maintained: yet I see bloody and degrading superstitions gradually losing their power. I see the morality, the philosophy, the taste of Europe, beginning to produce a salutary effect on the hearts and understandings of our subjects. I see the public mind of India, that public mind which we found debased and contracted by the worst forms of political and religious tyranny, expanding itself to just and noble views of the ends of government and of the social duties ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... filled by Veccus, an ecclesiastic of learning and moderation; and the emperor was still urged by the same motives, to persevere in the same professions. But in his private language Palaeologus affected to deplore the pride, and to blame the innovations, of the Latins; and while he debased his character by this double hypocrisy, he justified and punished the opposition of his subjects. By the joint suffrage of the new and the ancient Rome, a sentence of excommunication was pronounced against the obstinate schismatics; the censures of the church were executed ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... the doctrines of departed spirits returning to visit the scenes and beings which were dear to them during the body's existence, though it has been debased by the absurd superstitions of the vulgar, in itself is awfully solemn and sublime.... Raise it above the frivolous purposes to which it has been applied; strip it of the gloom and horror with which it has been surrounded; and there is none of the whole circle ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... gladdened the prospect and eye; I have eased the hot forehead of fever and pain; I have made the parched meadows grow fertile with grain. I can tell of the powerful wheel of the mill, That ground out the flour, and turned at my will. I can tell of manhood debased by you, That I have uplifted and crowned anew. I cheer, I help, I strengthen and aid; I gladden the heart of man and maid; I set the wine-chained captive free, And all are better for ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... impudent eyes, he says: 'Yes, Sam's right for once. Pierce tried to let this one go, too, but ain't you took a look at his hocks!' Then along comes Dean Duke, the ratty old foreman in Pierce's stable, and he don't ogle a bit, either, like you'd expect one of his debased calibre to, but just stops and talks this horse over with 'em and says yes, it was his bad hocks that lost the sale, and he tells 'em how he had told Pierce just what to do to get him shaped up for a quick sale, but Pierce wouldn't listen to him, thinking he knew it all ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... And when I need you, Lucien, you'll hear from me. I wanted you to understand the situation. I may have to call on you suddenly; you may get some strange message by some queer messenger. Look at this ring. Will you know it? A brown stone marked with Greek characters. It's debased Greek. The stone was dug up near Smyrna, where it had lain for fourteen hundred years. It's a talisman. You'll listen to anyone who brings you ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... analogous to these? Must it not be regretted that the Spaniards should have brought war with all its attendant horrors, and the maladies and vices of a different climate, along with what they in their pride called civilization, amongst a rich and happy people, whose descendants, impoverished and debased as they are, have not even the recollection of their ancient prosperity to console ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... not so debased, but that its good points still excel its bad! Just as you see but one real miser in a fixed proportion of men; so, are there, I believe, quite as small a representative set of absolutely heartless persons. I am certain that the "good Samaritans" outvie ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... of a fraternal love for the welfare of all men. Too much stress cannot be laid on this. There can be little doubt that if it were not for the charity and beneficence and for the strong spirit of humanity, which lives in a strange strength, even in the hearts of the debased and evil-minded, the industrial warfare which our modern competition has come to be would have wrought tenfold more evil than it has, and would have already arrayed class against class with other weapons than those of peaceable industry. May Heaven grant that ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... period, he waded as well as he could through a morass of volumes, pamphlets, and debates, until he learned to his confusion that the Bank of England itself and all the best British financial writers held that restriction was a fatal mistake, and that the best treatment of a debased currency was to let it alone, as the Bank had in fact done. Time and patience were ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... except Bone Stillman and Henry Frazer had been assiduously training him all his life. They who know how naturally life runs on in any sphere will understand that Carl did not at the time feel that he was debased. He lived twenty-four hours a day and kept busy, with no more wonder at himself than is displayed by the professional burglar or the man who devotes all his youth to learning Greek or soldiering. Nevertheless, the work itself was so ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... offering that a misbegotten son of poverty and rhyme has to give? I have a longing to take you by the hand and unburden my heart by saying, "Sir, I honour you as a man who supports the dignity of human nature, amid an age when frivolity and avarice have, between them, debased us below the brutes that perish!" But, alas, Sir! to me you are unapproachable. It is true, the Muses baptised me in Castalian streams; but the thoughtless gipsies forgot to give me a name. As the sex have served many a good fellow, the Nine have given me a great deal of pleasure; but, bewitching ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... being eastward of this; a plain low tower, crowned with wooden spirelet and covered with lead. Taking these in detail: the tower has two lancet windows in the lower part of the west wall, above these a small debased window, and again, above this, a two-light window of the Decorated style, similar windows on the north and south sides, and at the top an embattled Perpendicular parapet. The tower opens on the nave with a lofty ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... of their homes, was also utilized by the more sober spirits as an argument wherewith to restrain the more ardent from attempting to renew the struggle under similar conditions. The observances of the religion of Thor and Odin, or rather of that debased form of it which prevailed among this singular people, were celebrated under their more alluring aspects: frequent feasts and dances captivated the laughter-loving islanders, who had been tried somewhat severely by the severity of the regime ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... will tell thee very briefly. These have no hope of death; and their blind life is so debased, that they are envious of every other lot. Fame of them the world permitteth not to be; mercy and justice disdain them. Let us not speak of them, but do ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... of the Promptorium I have now in hand. In the Harl. MS. 221. is found "Sabrace, sabracia, Comm." The authority cited, the Commentarius Curialium, is still unknown to me; and I have failed in searching for the word sabracia, which is not found in Ducange, or other glossaries of debased Latinity. Mr. Halliwell gives "Sabras, salve, plaster;" but he cites no authority. It appears, however, rather to signify a tonic or astringent solution than a salve. I have hitherto found it ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 41, Saturday, August 10, 1850 • Various
... the chief lessons he left them wrought well for the casting out of all with which the feudal system had debased the patriarchal; and the poverty shared with the clan had powerfully helped: it was spoken against the growing talionic regard of human relations—that, namely, the conditions of a bargain fulfilled on both sides, all is fulfilled between the ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... Princes! that a strict account will be asked of your doings and non-doings, and a people newly-born will not fail to pay you in the coin you paid. Every one who shall have actively betrayed the trust of the people, disowned his fathers, and debased his blood by arraying himself against the Mother—he shall be crushed to dust and ashes.... Do you doubt our grim earnestness! If so hear the name of Dhingra and be dumb. In the name of that martyr, O Indian Princes, we ask you to think ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... by law and the traditions of the feudal system; not only was he unjust and cruel towards the Templars in order to appropriate their riches; but he committed, over and over again, that kind of spoliation which imports most trouble into the general life of a people; he debased the coinage so often and to such an extent, that he was everywhere called "the base coiner." This was a financial process of which none of his predecessors, neither St. Louis nor Philip Augustus, had set him an example, though they had quite as many costly wars and expeditions ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... my heated fancy! I know thee by the cunning with which thou wouldst deceive the wretches whom thou hast made subservient to power. Begone, and hover around the brows of the beggar, of the monk, of the debased slave, and of all those who have their hearts fettered by unnatural bonds; and who keep their senses locked up, in order to escape from the claws of despair. The powers of my soul require room, and let Him who has given me it ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... translation in its philosophical meaning as the supposed reality underlying appearances, but if we observe that in the parallel following clause we find 'treasures,' it seems more likely that in the text, it is to be taken in its secondary, and much debased meaning of wealth, material possessions. But the prize held out here to the lovers of heavenly wisdom is much more than worldly good. In deepest truth, the being which is theirs is God Himself. They who love and seek the wisdom of this book possess Him, and in possessing ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... affair," said his companion sorrowfully. "Death, I sometimes think, would be the best thing that could befall me. I am a life convict, you remember, found guilty by a jury, and condemned to pass a life at hard, degrading labor in company with ruffians of the lowest, most debased type. It is not a future to look forward ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... training, was a close student of the affairs of his country, and he saw that which raised grave doubts in his mind as to the outcome of his career. He saw many of the civil institutions of his country debased by the power of wealth under the thin guise of the constitutional protection of property. He saw the Army which he had sworn to serve faithfully becoming prostituted by this same power, and used at times for ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... distribute the remainder of our stock through an inlet in the wall, and we drew away sick in head and heart from that den of repulsive degradation, greed, brutality, cruelty, selfishness, and all infuriate and debased passion—that damnable magazine of disease physical and moral. It is undeniable that there were many there whose faces were passport to the Court of Lucifer—murderers, and dire malefactors; but better to have decapitated them than ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... race is this, so despised and ill-treated, so poor and ignorant, that in a brief time on our shores can build the finest temple to God which this country has yet seen? What will the people, to whom we have described this race as sunk in papistical stupidity, debased, unenterprising, think, when they gaze on this absolute proof ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... required to be mastered; and as such became in itself a sort of secondary aim; but the followers of Giotto merely utilized his observations—of Nature, and in so doing gradually conventionalized and debased these second-hand observations. Giotto's forms are wilfully incomplete, because they aim at mere suggestion, but they are not conventional: they are diagrams, not symbols, and thence it is that Giotto seems nearer to the Renaissance than do his latest followers, not excepting ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... all over the world," we heard him begin. "Deceived, decoyed, inveighed, in order to be made a laughing-stock before the most debased of all mankind, that woman and her associates." This was really a meditation. And then he screamed: "I will kill you all." Once more he started worrying the door but it was a startlingly feeble effort which he abandoned almost at ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... America. The floors, the doors, the cornices and mouldings are cheap in material, dingily garish in colour. Especially painful are the crude blue-and-yellow mosaic tiles of the corridors. The mural decorations belong to several artistic periods, all equally debased. On the whole, it is inconceivable that Congress should for long content itself with an abode which, without being venerable, is simply out of date. The main architectural proportions of the interior ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... face stiffening from its genial unbent look into formality as he turned to her,—"the place itself I do not understand to be very disagreeable; it is the character of the population which must make it a hard place to live in. They are exceedingly debased. ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... fear of exaggeration that the most notable thing was the increase of superstition. This was due in part at least to the growth in Japan of the power of Buddhism, and, be it understood, of Buddhism of a degraded and debased form. The effort to combine Buddhism and Shinto probably robbed the latter of any power it might otherwise have had to withstand superstition. Although men of the greatest ability went into the Buddhist monasteries, including many Imperial princes, their eminence did not make them better leaders ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... incapable of the illogical exchange. It is to deny that the seed sprang from a root; it is to replace a grand and illimitable theism by a finite and vainglorious bathos. Of all the creeds that have debased mankind, the new creed that would centre itself in man seems to me the poorest and the most baseless of all. If humanity be but a vibrion, a conglomeration of gases, a mere mould holding chemicals, a mere bundle of phosphorus and carbon, ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... for the eyes to wheel round upon Anthony, and they were immediately debased from the telltale white of that leg ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... previously described. Happening to take up the educational problem as a phase of his activity against the political and social and ecclesiastical conditions of his age, drawing freely on Locke's Thoughts for ideas, and inspired by a feeling that so corrupt and debased was his age that if he rejected everything accepted by it and adopted the opposite he would reach the truth, Rousseau restated his political theories as to the control of man by society and his ideas as to a life according to ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... character, possibly—tearful, humbled, supplicating. No; his instincts told him that not even the last extremity of danger would force a tear from those proud eyes, nor bow that haughty head an inch. How this wild, fierce worship maddened him! So longing, yet so slavish—so reckless, so debased, yet all the while cursed with a certain leavening of the true faith, that drove him to despair. But come what might, in a few minutes he would see her again. Even at such a time, there was something of repose and happiness in ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... base, a. debased, impure, spurious, alloyed, counterfeit; low-minded, unworthy, ignoble, mean, servile, groveling; despicable, discreditable, disgraceful, venal; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... of relief with which the most opposite hues are approximated, blend all into harmony. Romeo and Juliet are not poetical beings placed on a prosaic background; nor are they, like Thekla and Max in the Wallenstein, two angels of light amid the darkest and harshest, the most debased and revolting aspects of humanity; but every circumstance, and every personage, and every shade of character in each, tends to the developement of the sentiment which is the subject of the drama. The poetry, too, the richest that can possibly be conceived, is interfused through all the characters; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 563, August 25, 1832 • Various |
