"Degenerate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... handsomest young man in Athens. He was aristocratic, proud, insolent, and needlessly rich. He had a passion for gambling, horse-racing, dog-fighting, and indulged in the churchly habit of doing that which he ought not and leaving undone that which he should have done. He was worse than that degenerate scion of a proud ancestry, who a-kneiping went with his lady friends in the Cincinnati fountain, after the opera, on a wager. He whipped a man who admitted he did not have a copy of the "Iliad" in his house; publicly destroyed ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... pages of a dictionary in an endeavour to express her feelings and the pleasure she experienced in seeing these faithful retainers again: she wept, and the old men wept, and we all agreed, as elderly people will, that in former days the sun was brighter and life altogether rosier than in these degenerate times. Before leaving, the old servants simultaneously lifted their arms in the Mahommedan gesture of blessing, with all the innate dignity of the Oriental; it was really a very touching sight, nor do I think that the very ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... laudable attempts to bring about a closer connection with that country by means of a wise and liberal treaty of commerce brought on him the severe censure of the opposition. He was told in the House of Commons that he was a degenerate son, and that his partiality for the hereditary foes of our island was enough to make his great father's bones stir under the pavement ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... up a complete system of allusions similar to the allegories of our own classics but superior in that they never degenerate into frozen symbols, but on the contrary keep in close touch with nature, investing her with a vibrant life, in which human consciousness vanishes making way for the dawning consciousness ...
— Chinese Painters - A Critical Study • Raphael Petrucci
... brought from Europe lose in a few years their distinctive qualities, and degenerate at length into the cur with erect ears, kuyu, vulgarly called the pariah dog. An instance did not occur of any one going mad during the period of my residence. Many of them are affected with ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... their caresses are lavished on others. Such friendships are not only silly, they are even dangerous. They are a weakening of moral fiber, a waste of mawkish sentimentality. They may be even worse. Such friendship may degenerate even into a species of self-abuse ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... at the incoherence of what I write. Diverse emotions inflame me; thoughts at times assail me truly worthy of my immortal soul; but at times also I fall into a lamentable state of dejection, and I am reminded of the weak and degenerate characters whose baseness you have painted to me in such strong colors, in order that I might abhor them. In the state in which I am to-day I am ready for good or for evil. God have pity upon me! I already know what prayer is—a solemn and reflexive supplication, so personal that it is not compatible ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... end, not in the fifth century, as ordinarily considered, but in the fifteenth; not at Rome, but at Constantinople, where the Eastern empire survived the Western for a thousand years. At length, in 1453, the Turks captured Constantinople, set a broad foot upon the degenerate empire of the East, and crushed out the last feeble remnants of life left in the pygmy successor of ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... Dunn, again, "how village girls fall for a bankclerk—when we are made of the very stuff their own brothers are made of. Most of us came from a farm or a village. The bank has fitted us out with a shine and a shave, also has made us more useless year after year, and when we degenerate sufficiently the girls begin to adore us. I used to correspond with ten ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... profusion of gold and silver, that glittered on the sideboards, the numerous dishes, that covered the tables, the number and gay liveries of the attendants, with the chivalric and splendid attire of the guests, united to form a scene of magnificence, such as we may not hope to see in these DEGENERATE DAYS. ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... am a man of few words, and, therefore, constitutionally economical of them; but brevity is apt to degenerate into obscurity. Writing a book, however, and book-making, are two very different things: "spinning a yarn" is mechanical, and book-making savours of trade, and is the employment of a manufacturer. The author ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... the Leprechawn of Ireland, a relic of the pagan mythology of that country. By birth the Leprechawn is of low descent, his father being an evil spirit and his mother a degenerate fairy; by nature he is a mischief-maker, the Puck of the Emerald Isle. He is of diminutive size, about three feet high, and is dressed in a little red jacket or roundabout, with red breeches buckled at the knee, gray or black ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... activities of mind, and their connection with definite parts of the brain; psychiatry has shown that those psychical processes are disturbed or destroyed if these parts of the brain become diseased or degenerate. Histology has revealed to us the extremely complicated structure and arrangement of the ganglion-cells. But, for the settlement of this momentous question, the discoveries of the last ten years with regard to the more minute occurrences in the process of ...
— Monism as Connecting Religion and Science • Ernst Haeckel
... sincere in disbelief based on rational grounds. He had found those who evaded and some who were indifferent, many who compromised, never before a sweeping denial. He could not picture an atheist as other than a perverted monster, a moral degenerate, the personification of all evil. This was his conception of such as denied his God. Blasphemers. Foredoomed to hell. Yet he had found MacLeod hospitable, ready with kindly advice, occupying a position of trust in the service of a great company. Was it after all possible that ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... in her eyes. But so headlong was he in the attempt, and so misguided, that presently he overshot his mark by dropping an unflattering word concerning Crispin, whereby he attributed to the Tavern Knight's influence and example the degenerate change that had of ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... springing from episodes of the Moorish wars, and the romances novelescos, which deal with romantic incidents of daily life. The romances juglarescos are longer poems, mostly concerned with Charlemagne page 254 and his peers, veritable degenerate epics, composed by itinerant minstrels to be sung in streets and taverns to throngs of apprentices and rustics. They have not the spontaneity and vigor which characterize the better ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... forefathers have exterminated all the Indians, and their degenerate children no longer dwell in garrisoned houses nor hear any war-whoop in their path. It would be well, perchance, if many an "English Chaplin" in these days could exhibit as unquestionable trophies of his valor as did "good young Frye." We have need to be as sturdy pioneers still ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... rest in the same manner, he observed that one of his grandsons, for his better accommodation, had rolled a large snow-ball, and placed it below his head. The wrath of the ancient chief was awakened by a symptom of what he conceived to be degenerate luxury. 'Out upon thee,' said he, kicking the frozen bolster from the head which it supported, 'art thou so effeminate as to need a pillow?' The officer of engineers, whose curious Letters from the Highlands have been more than once quoted, tells a similar story ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... a fortitude beyond description she had faced it, gently, quietly, but firmly faced it—firmly, because she had to be firm in keeping him within those bounds the invasion of which would have killed her. And after the first struggle with his unchangeable brutality it had been easier: for into his degenerate brain there had come a faint understanding of the real situation and of her. He had kept his side of the gulf, but gloating on this touch between the old luxurious, indulgent life, with its refined vices, and this present ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... thirtieth of September, 1809, Governor Harrison called all the tribes that claimed certain lands between the White and Wabash rivers to a council. Only a few of the weak and degenerate tribes answered the summons. Nevertheless, he went through the ceremony of making a treaty by which the United States government claimed three million acres of ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... repugnant world which surrounds him. As a postillion of the State he has frequent communications with the distant world which glows vaguely on his mental horizon. Everything displeases him: both the savage country in which he has to live, and the world of stupid, degenerate, and miserable postillions whom he mercilessly criticizes. His random attempts to get away fail. Despairing, he becomes an accomplice in a crime so that he can leave this solitary place and go where ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... observation as at other times. It may, in some schools, where the number is small, or the prevailing habits of seriousness and order are good, be well to allow the older scholars to read the prayer in rotation, taking especial care that it does not degenerate into a mere reading exercise; but that it is understood, both by readers and hearers, to be a solemn act of religious worship. In a word, if the teacher is really honest and sincere in his wish to lead his pupils to the ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... be between its practices and its professions. Again and again its poet goes back to the heroic founders of Spoon River, back to the days which nurtured Lincoln, whose shadow lies mighty, beneficent, too often unheeded, over the degenerate sons and daughters of a smaller day; and from an older, robuster integrity Mr. Masters takes a standard by which he morosely measures the purposelessness and furtiveness and supineness and dulness of the village which ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... eldest son is in a blacksmith's shop at Worcester, and is sending her part of his weekly savings. But it has been a poor season for canaries, and a still poorer one for lodgers; for people in these degenerate days prefer to be nearer the hotels and the mild gaieties of the larger settlements. It is all very well so long as I remain with her, and she wishes fervently that that may be for ever; for never, she says, eloquently, never in all her Cheltenham and Belvern ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... young lady's boudoir—a place of business and not a drawing-room. It was a very pretty room, as Sarrasin saw at a glance when he entered it with a grand and old-fashioned bow, such as men make no more in these degenerate days. It was very quietly decorated with delicate colours, and a few etchings and many flowers; and Dolores herself came from behind her writing desk, smiling and blushing, to meet her tall visitor. The old soldier scanned her as he ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... reproach himself, and thenceforth, as before, he went straight to his aim in silence. We all know what that aim was; we also know that it was never given to any man to succeed more fully. With less conviction or less firmness, it is probable that, notwithstanding his natural genius, his degenerate works would not have long survived those of his mediocre rivals now completely forgotten. But truth of expression, purity of style, and grandeur of form belong to all time. Gluck's fine passages will always be fine. Victor Hugo is right: the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... recorded the facts as they occurred, and the impressions as they arose, without attempting to make a case against any person or any policy. Indeed, I fear that assailing none, I may have offended all. Neutrality may degenerate into an ignominious isolation. An honest and unprejudiced attempt to discern the truth is my sole defence, as the good opinion of the reader has been throughout my chief aspiration, and can be in the end ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... only tolerable within narrow limits, and always require careful watching; for they may easily become excessive or even betray an animus; and in either case they pass at once into quite a different category. From cases of excusable oscitancy they degenerate, either into instances of inexcusable licentiousness, or else into ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... conceal the most sinister combinations. You are only an honest countryman wandering amongst a crowd of courtiers,—virtue in danger amidst a myriad of vices: they speak our language, and we do not know theirs. Would it be possible that they should not deceive us? Louis XVI., of a degenerate race, without elevation of mind, or energy of will, allowed himself to be enthralled early in life by religious prejudices, which have even lessened his intellect; fascinated by a giddy queen, who unites to Austrian insolence the enchantment of beauty and the ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... him—and I have seen them going in both directions. I do not know of any argument that can be used to prove that man is an improved monkey that may not be used just as well to prove that the monkey is a degenerate man, and the latter theory is more ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... once, on the other. Deplorable errors, innumerable mistakes, are thus committed—particularly in the intermediate parts—errors which the chorus-master and the conductor do not perceive. Once established, these errors degenerate into habits, and become part and ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... proportions disregarded in his plays? What necessity is there at times to put one piece into another? Are not his discussions and monologues too long? Does not his own exuberant genius become a fatigue to himself and to his readers? Are not, perhaps, his characters too real? and do they not often degenerate, without motive, from the sublime into the ridiculous? Would Hamlet have appeared less interesting or less mad had he not spoken indelicate and cruel words to Ophelia? Would Laertes have seemed less grieved on hearing of the death of his sister had he ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... gigantic and symmetrical figures of most of the warriors, who seemed as they reclined, in native ease and gracefulness, with their half naked bodies exposed to view, rather like statues from some master hand, than beings of a race whom we had heard characterized as degenerate and debased. They were clad in leggins and moccasins of buckskin, and wore blankets, which were thrown around them in the manner of the Roman toga, so as to leave their right arms bare. The youngest among ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... And from the see (whose bounty to the just And needy is gone by, not through its fault, But his who fills it basely, he besought, No dispensation for commuted wrong, Nor the first vacant fortune, nor the tenth), That to God's paupers rightly appertain, But, 'gainst an erring and degenerate world, Licence to fight, in favour of that seed, From which the twice twelve cions gird thee round. Then, with sage doctrine and good will to help, Forth on his great apostleship he far'd, Like torrent bursting from a lofty vein; And, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... forced to cohabit with them, for Relief and Conversation; and that in process of Time, they conform'd themselves to the Manners of their Indian Relations. And thus we see, how apt Humane Nature is to degenerate. ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... form is so unique that it is well to notice that the throwing-stick in Eskimoland has its simplest form in the center and not in the extremities of its whole area. It is as yet unsafe to speculate concerning the origin of this implement. A rude form is as likely to be a degenerate son as to be the relic of a barbaric ancestry. Among the theories of origin respecting the Eskimo, that which claims for them a more southern habitat long ago is of great force. If, following retreating ice, they first struck ...
— Throwing-sticks in the National Museum • Otis T. Mason
... the northern extremity of the Island of Ceylon, in the beginning of the year 1819: when, one morning, my servant called me an hour or two before my usual time, with, 'Master, master! people sent for master's dogs—tiger in the town!' Now, my dogs chanced to be some very degenerate specimens of a fine species, called the Poligar dog, which I should designate as a sort of wiry-haired grayhound, without scent. I kept them to hunt jackals; but tigers are very different things: ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... and a perverted and fantastic style of writing assigned to an epoch remarkable for the severity and precision of its taste? If Spain is meant, the attack is perfectly intelligible, as the epoch is exactly that when Spanish taste began to degenerate, and the style of Spanish writers to become vicious, inflated, and fantastic, in imitation of Gongora, who did so much to ruin the literature of his country; as other writers of much less ability, but who addressed themselves to a public ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... parrot, "of such excellencies as these are women composed. It is said that 'wet cloth will extinguish fire and bad food will destroy strength; a degenerate son ruins a family, and when a friend is in wrath he takes away life. But a woman is an inflicter of grief in love and in hate, whatever she does turns out to be for our ill. Truly the Deity has created woman a strange being in this world.' ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... distance, but forbear the prize. Then fierce Tydides stoops; and from the fields Heaved with vast force, a rocky fragment wields. Not two strong men the enormous weight could raise, Such men as live in these degenerate days:(147) He swung it round; and, gathering strength to throw, Discharged the ponderous ruin at the foe. Where to the hip the inserted thigh unites, Full on the bone the pointed marble lights; Through ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... is affected, and they are raised to a higher level. In this way then, in successful cases, the worthless men become workmen. Worthless men are changed into economic assets. The dependents become independent. Working by means of the laws of environment and association, the Army elevates the degenerate from a pseudo-social and anti-social class to a higher level and to social position. Where individuality was lost, ...
— The Social Work of the Salvation Army • Edwin Gifford Lamb
... Francis de Valois, to whom she was affianced, was a poor, bilious, degenerate weakling, stunted in figure, uncomely of face. He was shy and timid, shunning active exercises, and though at the time of his marriage (1558) he was too young to have been actively engaged in the vices ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... adds a steady current of what I may be allowed to call the rancid. That is exciting to the moralist; but what more particularly interests the artist is this tendency of the extreme of detail, when followed as a principle, to degenerate into mere feux-de-joie of literary tricking. The other day even M. Daudet was to be heard babbling of audible colours ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... from keeping a close watch that would degenerate into drudgery and to remain alive to events even when resting, with her back turned on the net, the ambushed Spider always has her foot upon the telegraph-wire. Of my observations on this subject, ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... their acclamations disparaging remarks upon his predecessor, whom they affected to regard as the issue of an adulterous intrigue, and as no true Arsacid. Tiridates was pleased to reward the unseemly flattery of these degenerate Greeks by a new arrangement of their constitution. Hitherto they had lived under the government of a Senate of Three Hundred members, the wisest and wealthiest of the citizens, a certain control being, however, secured ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... distinctions are rapidly disappearing. In fact, we have scarcely any thing left, even now, but the shadow of a true aristocracy, and that is only to be found in Virginia. At the North, mere wealth makes a man a gentleman; and this new invention of these degenerate times is fast being adopted even here in the 'Old Dominion.' But it won't do—unless a man is born and bred a gentleman, he ...
— Words for the Wise • T. S. Arthur
... it!" she cried. "What woman worth her salt doesn't regret it, doesn't want to live, even if she has to suffer for it? And those people—the revolutionaries, I mean, the rebels—they live, they're the only ones who do live. The rest of us degenerate in a painless paralysis we think of as pleasure. Look at me! I'm incapable of committing a single original act, even though I might conceive one. Well, there was a time when I should have been equal to anything and wouldn't ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... marks an important era in Roman history. Large treasures were obtained from this and other Greek cities in Southern Italy. Luxury became more fashionable; morals began to degenerate. Greed for wealth obtained by plunder began to get possession of the Romans. From now on the moral tone of the people continued to degenerate in proportion as ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... Emperor Augustus, of Herod and his degenerate son, Antipater, and of his daughter "the incomparable" Salome. A great triumph in the art of ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... To finish the concluding fable. "What ails my child?" the mother cries, "Whose sorrows now have fill'd your eyes?" "Oh, dear Mamma, can he want friends Who writes for such exalted ends? Oh, base, degenerate human kind! Had I a fortune to my mind, Should Gay complain; but now, alas! Through what a world am I to pass; Where friendship's but an empty name, And merit's scarcely paid in fame." Resolv'd to lull his woes to rest. She told him he should hope the best; That who instruct the royal race. ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... feared none? At this rate I have effected nothing. The great founder of Rome, I heard in Holland, slew his brother for despiting the weakness of his walls; and shall the founder of this better place spare a degenerate son, who prefers a vagabond life to a civilized one, a cart to a city, a Scythian to a Muscovite? Have I not shaved my people, and breeched them? Have I not formed them into regular armies, with bands of music and haversacks? Are bows better than cannon? shepherds than dragoons, mare's milk ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... Have we yet realised its significance? Have we pictured, are we able to picture to ourselves, what company He kept? Among what surroundings His divine figure was actually seen? In what purlieus of degenerate Jerusalem? In what iniquitous splendours? In what orgies of the Gentiles? And who are they to whom He showed most tenderness? Who but the rich young man? The woman taken in adultery? And Mary Magdalene with her seven devils? ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... far as she can; she must watch the characters of the men who approach her charge, and endeavor to save the inexperienced girl from the dangers of a bad marriage, if possible. To perform this feat, and not to degenerate into a Spanish duenna, a dragon, or a Mrs. General—who was simply a fool—is a very ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... the following sub-races failed to modify the type, which still remained essentially Toltec; and hundreds of thousands of years later we find one of their remote family races ruling magnificently in Mexico and Peru, long ages before their degenerate descendants were conquered by the fiercer Aztec tribes from the north. The complexion of this race was also a red-brown, but they were redder or more copper-coloured than the Tlavatli. They also were a tall race, ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... combine, instead of work for one's self in an independent business, tends to magnify the value of mere money-income gained through smartness rather than by ability. If life is made too easy, men will settle into indolent sterility, just as animals and plants degenerate ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... production of serfdom, stupid, without education, and even without religion. Euphemia was his mistress, and a victim of heredity. All the symptoms of degenerate life were in her. But the ruling spirit in this crime was Maslova, who was the mouthpiece of the lowest phenomenon of decadence. "This woman," said the prosecutor without looking at her, "received an education—you have heard here the evidence ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... the whole Mediterranean." Vain boast! Within one year Corfu, in two years Malta, were rent away from the state that could not support them by its ships. Nay, more: had Bonaparte not taken the latter stronghold out of the hands of its degenerate but innocuous government, that citadel of the Mediterranean would perhaps—would probably—never have passed into those of his chief enemy. There is here also a lesson ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... boasted institutions appeared in my eyes; it seemed to me as if I saw the kingdoms of the earth through an inverted spy-glass, or rather that, being myself grown and elevated, I looked down on the rest of my degenerate race with ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... apt to degenerate into occasions of riot, and in 1432 the following statute was passed with a view ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... each degenerate race hath fled Its shameful rites and orgies dread: Grim Baal in glowing furnace cast Sinks to ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... were communities, scarce known by name In these degenerate days, but once far-famed, Where liberty and justice, hand in hand, Ordered the common weal; where great men grew Up to their natural eminence, and none Saving the wise, just, eloquent, were great; Where power was of God's gift to whom he gave Supremacy of ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... Howsoever, it may be perceived what manner of life there would be, where there were no common power to fear, by the manner of life which men that have formerly lived under a peaceful government used to degenerate ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... of the current theory therefore fall back on the hypothesis that the Australians are sadly degenerate.(1) Chiefs, it is argued, or kings, they once had, and the gods are surviving ghosts of these wholly forgotten potentates. To this we reply that we know not the very faintest trace of Australian degeneration. Sir John ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... believed, hesitate to signify to her son that the King was not his father—and this in the presence of that King and of Napoleon. Could crime justify crime—could the fiendish lusts and hatreds of a degenerate race offer any excuse for the deliberate guilt of a masculine genius, the conduct of this abject court might have apologised for the policy which it perhaps tempted the pampered ambition of Napoleon to commence, and which it now encouraged ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... flexibility, than it has gained in condensation and copiousness)—I read with sedulous accuracy the Minnesinger (or singers of love, the Provencal poets of the Swabian court) and the metrical romances; and then laboured through sufficient specimens of the master singers, their degenerate successors; not however without occasional pleasure from the rude, yet interesting strains of Hans Sachs, the cobbler of Nuremberg. Of this man's genius five folio volumes with double columns are extant in print, and nearly an equal number in manuscript; yet the indefatigable ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... all seeming, and no being. If you would know how a man speaks in earnest, Read here this passage, where St. Peter thunders In Paradise against degenerate Popes And the corruptions of the church, till all The heaven about him blushes like a sunset. I beg you to take note of what he says About the Papal seals, for that concerns Your office ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... likely would die on the gallows or be strapped in an electric chair before he got his deserts. His mind had passed through innumerable phases since he left his sister's house in Washington, and now as he shamelessly flirted with Miss Seebrook he knew himself for an unmoral creature, a degenerate who was all the more dangerous for being able to pass muster among decent folk. He had always imagined that citizens of the underworld were limited in their social indulgences to cautious meetings in the back ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... It was currently reported that every forest had one within its precincts, who ruled over the woodmen, and exacted tribute from them in the shape of little blocks of wood ready hewn for the fire of his underground palace,—such blocks as are bought at shops in these degenerate days, ...
— Wonder-Box Tales • Jean Ingelow
... regarding certain local conditions. In the place of individual advice, we have thus to a certain degree obtained general economic investigations from which each can gather what he needs. It seems that sometimes the danger of letting such offices degenerate into mere agencies for employment has not been avoided, but that is one of the perils of the first development. The mother institute in Boston, too, under its new direction emphasizes more the economic and hygienic ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg
... convertible into vices, so in some cases did the best traits of these people degenerate. Their frugality too often became parsimony; their devotion grim bigotry; and all this in a greater degree perhaps than could be predicated of the more immediate subjects ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... grimace, and affectation, 10 Though foes to sense, are harmless to the nation. Our last redress is dint of verse to try, And Satire is our Court of Chancery. This way took Horace to reform an age, Not bad enough to need an author's rage: But yours,[19] who lived in more degenerate times, Was forced to fasten deep, and worry crimes. Yet you, my friend, have temper'd him so well, You make him smile in spite of all his zeal: An art peculiar to yourself alone, 20 To join the virtues of two styles ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... ballad book flung heedlessly on my desk was—what should it be but the little morocco case, empty now, in which our Francesca keeps her dead mother's engagement ring,—the mother who died when she was a wee child. Truly a very pretty modern ballad to be sung in these unromantic, degenerate days! ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... that the people should be held responsible for all damage done to roads, railways, and telegraphs by guerillas. His orders, it is true, were warranted by the practice of war. But "forced requisitions," unless conducted on a well-understood system, must inevitably degenerate into plunder and oppression; and Pope, in punishing civilians, was not careful to distinguish between the acts of guerillas and those of the regular Confederate cavalry. "These orders," says a Northern historian, "were followed by the ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... or more the old wolf sat there, challenging his degenerate mates in every silence, calling the tame to be wild, the bound to be free again, and listening gravely to the wailing answer of the dogs, which refused with groanings, as if dragging themselves away from overmastering temptation. ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... the Indians at his speech, because such attractions are rare in Belleville, and the Indian would come to see what it is that stirs up so much his white friend and brother. Of course, the Indian in his degenerate days, would take the chance to get drunk, and, being in a whiskey stupor, he naturally supposed that Mr. Grayson was chanting a chant of victory, and quite as naturally he chanted in return his own chant, and also quite ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... of women, When Breffni's good sword would have sought That man, thro' a million of foe-men, Who dared but to wrong thee in thought! While now—oh degenerate daughter Of Erin, how fallen is thy fame! And thro' ages of bondage and slaughter, Our country ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... struck and stirred popular imagination. Some century earlier the last of the minstrels might have fashioned the last of the ballads out of that Homeric fight and chase; but the spirit was dead, or had been reincarnated already in Mr. Sheriff Scott, and the degenerate moorsmen must be content to tell the tale in prose, and to make of the "Four Black Brothers" a unit after the fashion of the "Twelve Apostles" or ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... swarm of stars," or "one little whole world," how shall we see her—with what sense of wonder and splendor—through the eyes of the flatboatman or the swamper, the raftsman, the island squatter, the trading-scow man, the runaway slave in the canebrake, the woodyard man, or the "pirooter"—that degenerate heir, dwarfed to a parasite, of the terrible, earlier-day land-pirates and river-wolves of Plum Point and Crow's Nest Island? To such sorts, self-described as human snapping-turtles and alligators, her peacock show ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... and spare, yet erect as ever, the iron-gray hair, closely shaven beard, dark complexion, and black eyes still formidably alive, made on me an impression at once of extreme age and unabated will. A prophet!—still delivering his message—but well aware that it found but few listeners in a degenerate world. He began immediately to talk politics, denouncing English Imperialism, whether of the Tory or the Liberal type. Canadian loyalty to the Empire was a mere delusion. A few years, he said, would see the Dominion merged ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... suburb known as the "Indian quarter;" sometimes also called "Spanish town"—both name having reference to the fact, that some queer little shanties around are inhabited by pure-blooded Indians and half-breeds, with poor whites of Spanish extraction—these last the degenerate descendants of heroic soldiers who originally established ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... am well aware that this custom of adorning graves with flowers prevails in other countries besides England. Indeed, in some it is much more general, and is observed even by the rich and fashionable; but it is then apt to lose its simplicity and to degenerate into affectation. Bright, in his travels in Lower Hungary, tells of monuments of marble and recesses formed for retirement, with seats placed among bowers of greenhouse plants, and that the graves generally are covered with the gayest flowers of the season. He gives a casual picture ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... hand felt Out along the wall for support. Was this a dream, some ghastly, soul-terrifying nightmare! Danglar! Those working lips! That callous viciousness, that leer in the degenerate face. It seemed to bring a weakness to her limbs, and seek to rob her of the strength to stand. She could not even hope against hope; she knew that Danglar was in deadly earnest. Danglar would not have the slightest compunction, let alone ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... able-bodied persons—mostly women to do the dishwashing of the country. And note that this is most filthy and deadening and brutalizing work; that it is a cause of anemia, nervousness, ugliness, and ill-temper; of prostitution, suicide, and insanity; of drunken husbands and degenerate children—for all of which things the community has naturally to pay. And now consider that in each of my little free communities there would be a machine which would wash and dry the dishes, and do it, not merely to the eye and the touch, but scientifically—sterilizing ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... great object of Jefferson's life was to promote popular education as an essential condition to the safety of the republic. While he advocated unbounded liberty, he knew well enough that it would degenerate into license unless the people were well-informed. But what interested him the most was the University of Virginia, in whose behalf he spent the best part of his declining years. He gave money freely himself, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... father attained to the post of duumvir and became the foremost citizen of the place, after filling all the municipal offices of honour. I myself, immediately after my first entry into the municipal senate, succeeded to my father's position in the community, and, as I hope, am in no ways a degenerate successor, but receive like honour and esteem for my maintenance of the dignity of my position. Why do I mention this? That you, Aemilianus, may be less angry with me in future and may more readily pardon me for having been negligent ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... of rulers, the greatest and most liberal statesmen, heroes, and conspicuous conquerors, originated in violations of the Decalogue, and those nations and kingdoms which have been founded upon strictly ecclesiastical ideas, have all sunk beneath the shifting sands of time, or have become so degenerate as to be bywords and ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... their goal had been Canaan. They were not mere Bedawin; they belonged to that portion of the Semitic race which had made settlements and founded kingdoms in Moab and Ammon and Edom, and their residence in the cultured land of the Nile had made it impossible for them ever to degenerate into the lawless robbers of the wilderness. They were settled Bedawin, not Bedawin proper; not Bedawin by blood and descent, but Semites who had adopted the wandering and pastoral habits of the Bedawin tribes. They were like their brethren of Edom, who, though they came to Egypt ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... receiver, and announced the new development. The Frenchman did not betray any cognizance of it. He had collapsed into a chair, and looked the degenerate ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... degenerate state of the father's nervous system. Now, it is undoubted that he may transmit this same degenerate nervous system to his offspring and thus as his children grow up it is not to be wondered at if the same craving for drink is to be found in them as was ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... happens that these are often the noblest of their sex. Yet another small section remain single from an honest dislike of marriage and its duties. It is perhaps not too severe to say that a woman who has absolutely no vocation for wifehood and motherhood must be a degenerate, and so lacking in the best feminine instincts as to deserve the reproach of being 'sexless.' This type is apparently increasing! I shall deal with it ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... is said, by Ruffhead, to have told Warburton, that "Young had much of a sublime genius, though without common sense; so that his genius, having no guide, was perpetually liable to degenerate into bombast. This made him pass a foolish youth, the sport of peers and poets: but his having a very good heart enabled him to support the clerical character when he assumed it, first with decency, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... been built out across the beach into four or five feet of water, and you have to step gingerly lest you slip on the slime. At the end of the wall a solid stairway cut in the hillside leads up to the temple. It was formerly used daily by thousands of worshipers, but in this degenerate age nobody but tourists ever climb it. Every boat load that lands is greeted by a group of bright-eyed children, who follow the sahibs (gentlemen) and mem-sahibs (ladies) up the stairs, begging for backsheesh and offering for sale curios beetles and other ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... dear Ned, but there are needles and thread in the chest: why didn't you mend your knicks, as you call them? Don't let's degenerate into scarecrows because we are obliged to live this Robinson Crusoe-like life. It's many years since I read that book, Chris, but if I recollect right he used not only to mend his own clothes, but make ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... nobleman, the gratified uncle kept saying to himself, than that big dullard, the Honourable Balder. It filled him with a new pleasure to remember that Alfred had visiting cards presenting his name as D'Aubigny, which everybody of education knew was what the degenerate Dabney really stood for. The lad and his sister had united upon this excellent change long ago at Cheltenham, and oddly enough they had confessed it to their uncle, at the beginning of the trip, with a show of trepidation, as if they feared his anger. ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... politely made a collection among the audience. They gained their livelihood. The wolf was lettered, likewise the man. The wolf had been trained by the man, or had trained himself unassisted, to divers wolfish arts, which swelled the receipts. "Above all things, do not degenerate into a man," his friend would ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... conditional upon human perfection, which was a logical absurdity. Russia was a country as poor and dull as Persia. The intellectual class was hopeless; in Pekarsky's opinion the overwhelming majority in it were incompetent persons, good for nothing. The people were drunken, lazy, thievish, and degenerate. We had no science, our literature was uncouth, our commerce rested on swindling—"No selling without cheating." And everything was in that style, and everything was a ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Ariadne of the Vatican. This represents a woman reclining in a studied sentimental attitude, her arms thrown about her head, her body swathed in its protecting drapery. To the same period also belongs almost the last notable work of Greek art, the degenerate and sensuous conception of the Venus de Medici. In this statue the goddess stands as if rising from the sea, her attitude reserved, yet coquettish and self-conscious. The form is technically perfect, graceful, and soft in its refinement, but compared with the earlier Aphrodites ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... repay The debt thou claim'st in this exhausted age? Thou givest our lyres a theme, that might engage Those that could send thy name o'er sea and land, While sea and land shall last; for Homer's rage A theme; a theme for Milton's mighty hand - How much unmeet for us, a faint degenerate band! ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... white and purple all over the ceiling. It touched Ferris, when Don Ippolito confessed that this decoration had been the distraction of his own vacant moments, to find that it was like certain grape-arbors he had seen in remote corners of Venice before the doors of degenerate palaces, or forming the entrances of open-air restaurants, and did not seem at all to have been studied from grape- arbors in the country. He perceived the archaic striving for exact truth, and he successfully ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... juices to dissolve the siliceous skeletons of the diatoms on which they feed: they anchor themselves in the mud and pass water in and out of their bodies: sometimes the current is stimulated by cilia. There were colonies of Gorgonacea, which share their food unselfishly; and corals and marine degenerate worms, which started to live in little cells like coral, but have gone down in the world. And there were starfishes, sea-urchins, brittle-stars, feather-stars and sea-cucumbers. The sea-urchins are formed ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... has tried in vain to patronize her. For many years past the average German has held that the French are a nation of "degenerate weaklings." Inspired by these sentiments, with a mixture of hate, the German troops invaded France, and it is a promising symptom that during twelve months of war respect for French valour has taken the ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... history—the Medes and the Persians. The Medes at the west, nearer the Assyrians, destroyed Nineveh and its empire (625). But soon they softened their manners, taking the flowing robes, the indolent life, the superstitious religion of the degenerate Assyrians. They at last ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos |
