"Degradation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... waiting Brahmin, "We'll return together." He now felt no excitement at all; it was as if he had been immersed in ice water. It was Kathlyn, not the least doubt of it, bought and sold in the slave mart. Misery, degradation . . . then he smiled. He knew Kathlyn Hare. If he did not come to her aid ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... poverty striking and obvious. The west of London, with its vast wealth, its homes of refinement and elegance, and its appliances for the enjoyment of art, science, and literature, is separated from the poverty, the degradation, the misery, and the sorrow of the East End by a gulf as great as that which separated Lazarus from Dives. It is difficult for those who are at ease, whose lives, to use Wordsworth's felicitous phrase, are made up "of cheerful yesterdays and confident to-morrows"—it ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... lifted it toward his. "Patricia, don't make any mistake! There is nothing you care for so much as that boy. You can't give him up! If you had to walk over red-hot ploughshares to come to him, you would do it; if you could win him a moment's happiness by a lifetime of poverty and misery and degradation, you would do it. And so would I, little wife. That is the tie which still unites us; that is the tie which is too strong ever to break. Come back to us, Patricia—to me and ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... sensibility, their rapidity of conception, their enthusiasm, and their courage. If in many instances he is degraded by moral and political slavery to the practice of the basest vices it engenders—and that below the level of ordinary degradation—let us reflect that the corruption of the best produces the worst, and that habits which subsist only in relation to a peculiar state of social institution may be expected to cease as soon as that relation is dissolved. In fact, the Greeks, since the admirable novel of Anastasius could ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... report. And as he listened he felt his heart sink lower and lower, and the old familiar feeling of dirtiness swept over him, the feeling of being a part in an enormous, overpowering scheme of corruption and degradation. The Berlin conference was reaching a common meeting ground, the report said, with Russian, Chinese, and American officials making the first real progress in the week of talks. Hope rising for an early armistice on ...
— Bear Trap • Alan Edward Nourse
... city he conceived the greatest dislike to.[98] "The condition of the common people here is abject and shocking. I am afraid the conventional idea of the picturesque is associated with such misery and degradation that a new picturesque will have to be established as the world goes onward. Except Fondi, there is nothing on earth that I have seen so dirty as Naples. I don't know what to liken the streets to where the mass of the lazzaroni live. You recollect that favourite pigstye ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... a few have been brought to their senses by missing what they hoped for, by failing to secure what they aimed at. A degradation in seats[13] and factional disputes involving disgrace, as well as being injured or terrified before they could make a move, has improved not a few. Yet one well born and courageous would prefer to die ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... seventeenth centuries, and indeed into the eighteenth. Most of Caxton's own types are of an earlier character, though they also much resemble Flemish or Cologne letter. After the end of the fifteenth century the degradation of printing, especially in Germany and Italy, went on apace; and by the end of the sixteenth century there was no really beautiful printing done: the best, mostly French or Low-Country, was neat and clear, ...
— The Art and Craft of Printing • William Morris
... was either enticed to London from wearisomeness of his situation, or banished from home, as it is said, in consequence of his irregularities. There he assumed the profession of a player, which he considered at first as a degradation, principally, perhaps, because of the wild excesses[18] into which he was seduced by the example of his comrades. It is extremely probable that the poetical fame which, in the progress of his career, he afterward acquired, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... {143} that in 400 B.C., just a year before the death of Socrates at Athens, this family of Stolid persons manifested themselves at Rome, shooting up from plebeian roots into places where they had no business; and preparing the way for the degradation of the entire Roman race under the Empire; their success being owed, remember also, to the faults of the patricians, for one of the laws passed by Calvus Stolo was that the Sibylline books should be in custody of ten men, of whom five should be plebeian, "that no falsifications might be introduced ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... Soil degradation - damage to the land's productive capacity because of poor agricultural practices such as the excessive use of pesticides or fertilizers, soil compaction from heavy equipment, or erosion of topsoil, eventually resulting in reduced ability to produce ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... to English, we find Shakespeare's knowledge of books in his own tongue beginning after the Conquest. The romances of the Middle Ages were in the Elizabethan time rapidly undergoing the process of degradation that was soon to end in the chap-books, but the material was still widely known. The particular versions read by the dramatist can rarely be determined on account of the slight nature of most of the references, but we find allusions to the ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... the Gerusia were to prepare the decrees and business to be submitted to the people; they had the power of inflicting death or degradation without written laws, they interpreted custom, and were intended to preserve and transmit it. The power of the kings may be divided into two heads—power at home—power abroad: power as a prince—power as a general. In the first it was limited and inconsiderable. Although the kings presided over ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... cannot imagine," said Don John, "how much it will be within my ability to do for you." The Governor was extremely anxious to purchase the only enemy whom Philip feared. The Prince had nothing personally to gain by a continuance of the contest. The ban, outlawry, degradation, pecuniary ruin, assassination, martyrdom—these were the only guerdons he could anticipate. He had much to lose: but yesterday loaded with dignities, surrounded by pomp and luxury, with many children to inherit ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... fool feels himself superior, and of some grave vices of a sort to which wise men feel little temptation. And, unfortunately, he conquered neither. Rather they conquered {49} him, and made his last years a degradation, and his memory one which his friends were glad to forget. After the death of Johnson in 1784, followed in 1789 by that of Mrs. Boswell, whom Johnson once justly and generously described as the prop and stay ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... complicated to be thoroughly intelligible. He was ordered to retire into the next room and write out his statement. His written narrative proved more obscure than his spoken words. In spite of his prayers that he might be spared the degradation of being arrested while still clad in his pontifical habits, he was at once sent to the Bastile. A day or two afterward Madame La Mothe was apprehended in the provinces, and Louis directed that a prosecution should ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... farther authentick information of his fatigues and perils before he escaped to France. Kings and subjects may both take a lesson of moderation from the melancholy fate of the House of Stuart; that Kings may not suffer degradation and exile, and subjects may not be harassed by the evils of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... few noble and generous souls who value, more than millions, purity of heart, frankness of soul, and who would a thousand times more readily pardon a passion than a lie, whose instinctive delicacy has divined the existence of this plague of the soul, the lowest step in human degradation. ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... leave to my children the inheritance of a country, the possession of territorial domain, the blessings of a national education, and the indisputable right of self-government; that they may not succeed to the servility and degradation bequeathed to us by our fathers. If we have not been born to fortunes, we should impart the seeds which shall germinate and give birth to ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... later Charles Julius Francis stood at the bar of justice convicted of perjury. His degradation had wrought no change in the dignity of his bearing or the impassiveness of his general appearance, and he received the sentence of the Court without a tremor, and with shoulders thrown back and head erect as befitted a scion of a ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... understand this feeling in Curran. The man's degradation seemed so complete to him that not even sacrilege could intensify it; yet clearly the hardened sinner saw some depths below his own which ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... "Work is no degradation," he answered hastily, "or my days in the Nantucket whaler might easily rise up in judgment against me; for I am certain there can be no more filthy or disgusting work on the face of the earth than I ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... of holy church, (for all these hateful names did he give him,") yet the King's writ for his execution was not forthcoming, and, as far as we have any means of knowing, never was it issued. In the case of Sautre, the sentence of his degradation and delivery to the secular power was passed, and the King's writ for execution is tested on the very same day, February 26th, 1401.[283] In the case of Badby, the sentence, the King's writ, and the execution of the persecuted victim, followed in one ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... N. deterioration, debasement; wane, ebb; recession &c. 287; retrogradation &c. 283[obs3]; decrease &c. 36. degeneracy, degeneration, degenerateness; degradation; depravation, depravement; devolution; depravity &c. 945; demoralization, retrogression; masochism. impairment, inquination|, injury, damage, loss, detriment, delaceration|, outrage, havoc, inroad, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... scene. He was not inclined to conversation, but sat moody and silent, with an expression of countenance strongly indicative of wounded pride and disappointed ambition. He seemed to feel deeply the degradation of his situation. Shorn of power among his people, compelled to acknowledge the authority of his rival, and bending beneath the infirmities of age, it is not singular that he should shrink from the prying gaze of curiosity, and sigh for the deep seclusion ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... had a beginning, [a doctrine] which only very learned men understood. Another was a prebend whom his illustrious Lordship held as a recluse in our college, for heinous and atrocious crimes, whose final end was a sentence of degradation, and delivery to the secular arm; the dean settled this case, without examining the documents in the case (which they did not find), by condemning him to six months of banishment to a country house of recreation." (Salazar, Hist. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... rise from this degradation are measured by the increased application of pit-coal and the diminished use ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... Nature, too, all manner of Ideals have their fatal limits and lot; their appointed periods, of youth, of maturity or perfection, of decline, degradation, and final death and disappearance. There is nothing born but has to die. Ideal monasteries, once grown real, do seek bed and board in this world; do find it more and more successfully; do get at length too intent on finding it, exclusively ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... converted into a farmhouse, but in it once a celebrated privateersman of Dieppe received the ambassadors of the King of Portugual. There are still many evidences of the former dignity and grandeur in its present degradation. ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Vol. 1, No. 10, October 1895. - French Farmhouses. • Various
... not an emergency whose evil results may fall on others and not on yourself. There is not one loyal American to whom Southern success does not portend misery, poverty, degradation. We have not yet felt the foot of the enemy on our soil, but if we pour away the life-blood of the nation little by little, why, a day will come when the blood will be exhausted, and the enemy, grown to fearful strength, will come ravaging over the border. Do not fold your ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... even, well understood, the one object. It is the Inspiration of the Almighty that giveth men understanding. For it must be repeated, and ever again repeated till poor mortals get to discern it, and awake from their baleful paralysis, and degradation under foul enchantments, That a man of Intellect, of real and not sham Intellect, is by the nature of him likewise inevitably a man of nobleness, a man of courage, rectitude, pious strength; who, even because ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... ancestry may bid defiance to all their equals of every Court in Christendom. This act of benevolence, as it was called in some German papers, is also an indirect chastisement of the refractory French nobility, who either demanded too high prices for their degradation, or abruptly refused to disgrace the names of ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... flourish, and above which, with the rapid growth of the ever-growing nuisance, no living thing will breathe with impunity. Look at our scientific machinery, which has destroyed domestic manufacture, which has substituted rottenness for strength in the thing made, and physical degradation in crowded towns for healthy and comfortable country life in the makers. The day would fail, if I should attempt to enumerate the evils which science has inflicted on mankind. I almost think it is the ultimate destiny of science ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... of false pretence. Bombastic masquerade of the genuine impulse is not uncommon among place-hunters in Parliament and popularity-hunters in constituencies, and the honest instinct is thereby brought into disrepute. Dr Johnson was thinking solely of the frauds and moral degradation which have been sheltered by self-seekers under the name of patriotism when he none too pleasantly remarked: "Patriotism is the ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... recognized custom. Of slavery as a consequence of crime there is also frequent mention, and it would appear that even men of rank might be overtaken by that fate, for when (A.D. 278) Takenouchi-no-Sukune's younger brother was convicted of slandering him, the culprit's punishment took the form of degradation and assignment to a life of slavery. The whole family of such an offender shared his fate. There is no evidence, however, that the treatment of the nuhi was inhuman or even harsh: they appear to have fared much as did the tomobe ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... have granted them abundant health and opportunity to labor through the little they can or will do, while perhaps her soul is never to bloom, nor her bright hair to fade; but after hardly escaping from degradation and corruption, all she might have been must sink again unprofitably in that dark house where she was born. How truly she may say, 'No man cared for my soul.' I do not mean to make myself an exception, for how long have I known her, and not thought of this till so late—perhaps ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... shone far above her as a god's; but she had been sucked down as deep again, and there is an extreme of degradation may meet even a god's altitude on equal terms. Stark mortal, stark god—its limit of suffering past, humanity joins the ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... become a mother, or with her new-born infant upon her bosom, should be the object of trembling care and sympathy wherever she bears her tender burden, or stretches her aching limbs. The very outcast of the streets has pity upon her sister in degradation, when the seal of promised maternity is impressed upon her. The remorseless vengeance of the law, brought down upon its victim by a machinery as sure as destiny, is arrested in its fall at a word which reveals her transient claim for mercy. The ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... formations from want of clear sections exhibiting their true order of position, or because the strata of each group are vertical. In such cases we sometimes discover that the more modern rock has been in part derived from the degradation of the older. Thus, for example, we may find chalk in one part of a country, and in another strata of clay, sand, and pebbles. If some of these pebbles consist of that peculiar flint, of which layers more or less continuous are characteristic of ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... his attachment to a military life, Colonel Washington possessed in too eminent a degree the proud and punctilious feelings of a soldier, to submit to a degradation so humiliating as was produced by his loss of rank. Professing his unabated inclination to continue in the service, if permitted to do so without a sacrifice too great to be made, he retired indignantly from the station assigned him, and answered the various letters which he received, pressing ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... The difficulty in conceiving this theory lies in the fact that the waves travel in straight lines. On the other hand, matter in a state of degradation may expel particles highly energised and of enormous velocity. Most antennae are covered with hairs of inconceivable fineness; others may contain cavities of almost infinite minuteness. Is it not thinkable that they are able to detect, in the gaseous atmosphere, floating particles that are not ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... my idea!" replied Yue-ts'un; "I've not as yet let you know that after my degradation from office, I spent the last couple of years in travelling for pleasure all over each province, and that I also myself came across two extraordinary youths. This is why, when a short while back you alluded to this Pao-yue, I at once conjectured, with a good deal of certainty, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... the town will be brought to light, and the condition of the poorer and more wretched of the inhabitants can hardly fail to be ameliorated. The reports from Sunderland exhibit a state of human misery, and necessarily of moral degradation, such as I hardly ever heard of, and it is no wonder, when a great part of the community is plunged into such a condition (and we may fairly suppose that there is a gradually mounting scale, with every degree of wretchedness up to the wealth and splendour which glitter on the surface of ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... temporary excitement of feeling died away, and sleep overcame him. In his sleep he dreamed, and his dream was vivid as reality. Not as of old did he find himself; but, in the vision that came to him, he was still in bondage and degradation, with a horribly distinct realization of his condition. His vile companions were around him, but greatly changed; for they appeared more like monsters of evil than men, and were malignant in their efforts to do harm. Against him they seemed to feel an especial hatred. Some glared ...
— The Two Wives - or, Lost and Won • T. S. Arthur
... suggested by the news of the Peterloo massacre, being by far the most important. Shelley attempted the composition of short popular songs which should stir the English people to a sense of what he felt to be their degradation. But he lacked the directness which alone could make such verses forcible, and the passionate apostrophe to the Men of England in his "Masque of Anarchy" marks the highest point of his achievement in ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... you know that thin Malacca cane in the hall? Yes, you do. Well, my dear, the law says it is an assault to thrash a boy, and that he ought to be left to the law to punish, which means prison and degradation. I'm going to take that cane, my ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... altogether without satisfaction. It was during this sojourn that he gained the little knowledge of life and human nature he possessed; and the creed and solemn manners of the land harmonised with his faith and habits. Among these strangers, too, the proud young Englishman felt not so keenly the degradation of his house; and sometimes, though his was not the fatal gift of imagination, sometimes he indulged in day dreams of its rise. Unpractised in business, and not gifted with that intuitive quickness which supplies experience and often ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... He was allowed to demand leave of absence to go home and defend himself. He was badly received, stripped of all military rank in England and Holland, and (as well as the officers under him) was not without fear of his degradation, and was even ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... delirium of fear, and the very delirium of vindictive malice; private and ignoble hatred of ancient origin, shrouding itself in the mask of patriotic wrath; the tiger glare of just vengeance, fresh from intolerable wrongs, and the never-to-be-forgotten ignominy of stripes and personal degradation; panic, self-palsied by its own excess; flight, eager or stealthy, according to the temper and means; volleying pursuit; the very frenzy of agitation under every mode of excitement; and here and there, towering aloft, the desperation of ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... will have grown pretty well reconciled to it. That is the worst of all. To be wicked and depraved, and to feel it, and to be wretched under it, is bad enough; but it is a great deal worse to have fallen into that depth of moral degradation, and to feel that really you don't care. The instinct of accommodation is not always a blessing. It is happy for us, that, though in youth we hoped to live in a castle or a palace, we can make up our mind to live in a little parsonage or a quiet street ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... to leave their homes and famine-struck condition, and the oppression of their lairds, for lands and houses of their own in a fairer and more fertile land, where independence and affluence were at their command. Nothing but misery and degradation at home; happiness, riches and advancement beyond the ocean. Under such a system it would be no special foresight to predict a famine, which came to pass in 1770 and again in 1782-3. Whatever may be the evils under the clan system, ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... itself is sufficient. There is no need to lead a way down the steps that brought the Rev. Samuel Bishop to his final degradation and ultimate death. The generous offer of the chaplaincy of a small union, the withdrawal of his son from Oxford, the dismissal of the tutelary services of the lady who had charge of his daughter's education, the replacing of a better man in ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... the national pride of Italy. An article in the Moniteur, speaking of a poem of Vincenzo Monti's, said: "What interest the poet has aroused, in recalling the glorious titles of ancient Italy, the disasters and degradation which followed this period of glory, in evoking the shades of those remote days, and after them, the shade of Dante who, by the wisdom of his maxims, is superior to the poets of other nations; of Dante, the most enthusiastic admirer of the former glory of ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... protested. In the fiery obstinacy of his determination, Gardiner was the incarnate expression of the fury of the ecclesiastical faction, smarting, as they were, under their long degradation, and under the irritating consciousness of those false oaths of submission which they had sworn to a power which they loathed. Once before, in the first reaction against Protestant excesses, the Bishop of ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... order to serve the Emperor of France. It was a terrible, heart-rending spectacle presented by Germany during these last years, and which could not but fill the heart of every patriot with shame and despair. And yet this period of degradation was necessary and even salutary, for it blinded Napoleon by the glaring sunshine of his power; it rendered him overbearing and reckless; he dared every thing, because he believed he would succeed in ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... it is, which should forever banish fear and unbelief! The Lord, the One seated there in the Holiest, knows us personally. He knew us before we ever were in existence. He saw us before the foundation of the world. He knew all our vileness and the depths of degradation. He knew us as we wandered in our sins. His loving eyes followed us then. He sought us in His love and brought us to Himself. He gave us His life and dwells in us. Each believing sinner, saved by grace, is one Spirit with the Lord. ...
— The Work Of Christ - Past, Present and Future • A. C. Gaebelein
... are certain other aspects of these Indian customs that are of peculiar interest. In my Ridgeway essay (op. cit. supra) I referred to the means by which in Nubia the degradation of the oblong Egyptian mastaba gave rise to the simple stone circle. This type spread to the west along the North African littoral, and also to the Eastern desert and Palestine. At some subsequent ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... purposes, body and soul. The man and the woman met, and in a flash the man saw what she had been, what she might have been, what, perhaps, in spite of all, she still was, somewhere, somehow. In her horrible degradation, in her dense despair, she fascinated him. He could only see the fire bursting out of the swamp. He could only feel on his cheek the breath of the spring in the darkness of the charnel-house. He knew that she gave to him his great lifework. Her monstrous habit he simply could ...
— The Collaborators - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... Irish, New Zealanders, and Scotch, whom I range alphabetically lest I should be thought to show prejudice or bias in any direction. But this is beyond the present purpose, which is merely to exhibit the tendency which this so-called degradation ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... the negro can trace with certainty his origin back to any of the older civilizations, and here for more than two hundred years his history has been a record of blood and tears, of ignorance, degradation, and slavery. And when nominally free, prejudice has assigned him the lowest positions and the humblest situations. I have not much hope of their progress while they are ...
— Minnie's Sacrifice • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... was exposed to every conceivable insult. As Louis was conducted to the Hotel de Ville, a hundred thousand armed men lined the way, and he passed along under the arch of their sabers crossed over his head. The cup of degradation he was compelled ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... the nobility of Rome and invited guests were present. He, however, gradually extended his audiences, and at length came out upon the public stage,—first, however, in order to prepare the public mind for what they would have otherwise considered a great degradation, inducing the sons of some of the principal nobility to come forward in similar entertainments. He was so pleased with the success which he imagined that he met with in this career that he devoted a large part of his time during his whole life to such performances. Of course, his love ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... beauty and harmony of inanimate Nature with the human degradation and deformity before me, I felt, as I confess I had never done before, the truth of a remark of a rare thinker, that "Nature is loved as the city of God, although, or rather because, it has no citizen. The beauty of Nature must ever be universal and mocking until the landscape has human ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... have enslaved me, and to retort scorn upon those that would have put my head below their feet. Too much, even in later life, I have perceived in men that pass for good men, a disposition to degrade (and if possible to degrade through self-degradation) those in whom unwillingly they feel any weight of oppression to themselves, by commanding qualities of intellect or character. They respect you: they are compelled to do so: and they hate to do so. Next, therefore, they seek ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... from despair, degradation, and death." And then she told me that, while travelling in the mountains with her husband, a certain Senor de la Vega, and several friends, they were set upon by a band of Pachatupecs who, after killing all the male members of ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... desolation it is hard to imagine. Yet the unhappy beings sank into a still deeper horror. Unable to relieve the pangs of hunger, they turned cannibal and fed upon each other. Thus the last depths of degradation were sounded, the last horrors of ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... husband's neglect, but the demon Opium to whom she was enslaved, body and soul, except in the lingering mother's tenderness that refused to give him her hungry child. She knew this well; and yet, in the moments of wretched unbenumbed consciousness, the sense of her want and degradation transformed itself continually into bitterness towards Godfrey. He was well off; and if she had her rights she would be well off too. The belief that he repented his marriage, and suffered from it, only aggravated her vindictiveness. Just and self-reproving thoughts do not come ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... of a scoundrel, there was Aaron Burr; but large as was the part which he played for a while in American politics, and near as it came to being very much larger, the presence of his name would have been a degradation of the series. Moreover his career was strictly selfish and personal; he led no party, represented no idea, and left no permanent trace. There was also William H. Crawford, who narrowly missed being President, and who was a greater man than many of the ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... he cannot, dares not, reflect, and consequently, drink is more necessary to him than ever. His mind, however, is likely soon to be free from the pain of thinking; for it is becoming gradually debauched and brutified—is sinking, in fact, to the lowest and most pitiable state of degradation. It was then, indeed, that he felt how the world deals with a man who ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... When subdued, they lead to heaven; when indulged in, they lead to perdition. This subjugation of the senses is the highest means of attaining spiritual light. Our senses are at the (cause) root of our spiritual advancement as also at the root of our spiritual degradation. By indulging in them, a person undoubtedly contracts vices, and by subduing these, he attains salvation. The self-restrained person who acquires mastery over the six senses inherent in our nature, is ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... admittance into that little room off the kitchen where something told him she was lying; he wished that he might see her once again before they buried her—but that would be presuming. He wished he knew of some plan whereby that poor body might be spared the degradation of interment in the lonely, windswept, desert cemetery, side by side with Indians, Mexicans, Greek section hands and the rude ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... can begin to specialise in mathematics at the same age as the lawyer begins to specialise in law or the surgeon in anatomy—than for him to be an expert in Choctaw, the Cabala or the Book of Mormon. I look back with feelings of shame and degradation to the days when, for the sake of a crust of bread, I prostituted my intelligence to wasting the precious hours of impressionable childhood, which could have been filled with so many beautiful and meaningful things, over this utterly futile and ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... Muller's whole system of mythology is based on reasoning analogous to this example. His mot d'ordre, as Professor Tiele says, is 'a disease of language.' This theory implies universal human degradation. Man was once, for all we know, rational enough; but his mysterious habit of using gender-terminations, and his perpetual misconceptions of the meaning of old words in his own language, reduced him to the irrational and often (as we now say) obscene and revolting absurdities ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... you. Do tell me what is the matter with me? I feel as if I had been scourged from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet!" They sat down together and went over the whole conversation, and she then saw and felt most keenly the insult and degradation concealed in the proposition of the two men, and agreed with Miss Anthony that she would sacrifice her life before she ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... inequalities of the earth's surface must be leveled, and its high lards brought down to the ocean. But, taking into account the internal forces of the earth, which, upheaving the sea bottom, give rise to new land, he thought that these operations of degradation and elevation might compensate each other: and that thus, for any assignable time, the general features of our planet might remain what they are. And inasmuch as, under these circumstances, there need be no limit to the propagation of animals and plants, it is clear that ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... been a notorious thoroughfare. Twenty years ago there were few places in the world that for crime, vice and degradation could be compared with it. Many changes for the better have taken place in the last few years, however. Following the Lexow Commission investigation, scores of the worst haunts of wickedness were closed and vice became less conspicuous. The Bowery, however, still maintains its individuality ...
— Dave Ranney • Dave Ranney
... making the biped a man: comes Hawes and turns him a brute. The whimpering moans of Carter were thoroughly animal, and the poor biped's degradation as well as his ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... him—set down, late in life, in the midst of strangers, to him cold and reserved—himself too proud to bend to those who disdained him as an Irishman—is he not more to be pitied than blamed for—yes, I, his son, must say the word—the degradation which has ensued? And do not the feelings, which have this moment forced him to leave the room, show of what he is capable? Oh, mother!" cried Lord Colambre, throwing himself at Lady Clonbrony's feet, "restore my father to himself! Should such feelings be wasted?—No; give them ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... immense Forces in the great caverns of evil beneath society; in the hideous degradation, squalor, wretchedness and destitution, vices and crimes that reek and simmer in the darkness in that populace below the people, of great cities. There disinterestedness vanishes, every one howls, searches, gropes, and gnaws ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... he turned, sick at heart, away from the painful and disgusting sight. "And all rebellion against the authority around me will but make plainer my own weakness. I have degraded myself; but there is a lower degradation still, and that I must avoid. Drag me to the ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur
... not go as a prisoner, but would be simply changing his residence. 'If I should consent to such degradation,' he cried, 'my ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... all the might of our civilization, but only succeed in scattering it into a dozen other forms. We hit slavery through a great civil war. Did we destroy it? No, we only changed it into hatred between sections of the country: in the South, into political corruption and chicanery, the degradation of the blacks through peonage, unjust laws, unfair and cruel treatment; and the degradation of the whites by their resorting to these practices, the paralyzation of the public conscience, and the ever over-hanging dread of what ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... in a speech gravely applauded by both sides of the House, announced the steps he had taken. An ultimatum had been sent to Ruritania demanding an apology, an indemnity of a hundred thousand marks, and the public degradation of Captain Tomsk, whose epaulettes were to be torn off by the Commander-in-Chief of the Essenland Army in the presence of a full corps of cinematograph artists. Failing this, war would ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... literature in the cheapest printed forms, the attainability, by the poorest, of the noblest productions of literary genius. Or if in congratulating yourself upon the marvellous progress of Scientific Inventions, hailing from the keen-brained West, you could condone the degradation of the English language in the mouths of Shakespeare's countrymen and countrywomen by the use of American slang phrases, common, vulgar, coarse, alternating with choice expressions culled from the vocabulary of the East ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... of the South and the millions of foreigners now crowding our shores, most of whom represent neither property, education, nor civilization, are all in the progress of events to be enfranchised, the best interests of the nation demand that we outweigh this incoming pauperism, ignorance, and degradation, with the wealth, education, and refinement of the women of the republic. On the high ground of safety to the Nation, and justice to citizens, I ask your support in the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... where we lay above the sea. All through the war I had seen her at intervals, enjoying life, finding the war a sort of lark, and I had hated her because she didn't care for the death and torture of men, for the possible defeat of her country, or the already achieved economic, moral, and intellectual degradation of the whole of Europe. She had merely profiteered out of it all, and had a good time. I remembered now my anger and my scorn; but I remembered too the squareness and the whiteness of her forehead under her newly-cut hair, that leave when I ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... the present state of things cannot long continue. Mind is the same every where, no matter what may be the complexion of the frame which it animates; there is a love of liberty which the scourge cannot eradicate. A hatred of oppression which centuries of degradation cannot extinguish. The slave will become conscious, sooner or later, of his strength—his physical superiority—and will exert it. His torch will be at the threshold, and his knife at the throat of the planter. Horrible and indiscriminate ...
— The Trial of Reuben Crandall, M.D. Charged with Publishing and Circulating Seditious and Incendiary Papers, &c. in the District of Columbia, with the Intent of Exciting Servile Insurrection. • Unknown
... so feebly individualized that the traveler may search for it in vain among the many rival peaks crowded along the axis of the range to north and south of it, which all alike are crumbling residual masses brought into relief in the degradation of the general mass of the range. The highest point on Mount Shasta, as determined by the State Geological Survey, is 14,440 feet above mean tide. That of Whitney, computed from fewer observations, is about 14,900 feet. But inasmuch as the average ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... sot; sometimes for as much as a month he would keep sober, and even when he gave way to temptation he never behaved with violence to his wife and children. Still, the character of his life had once more suffered a degradation, and he possessed no friends who could be of the least use to him. Snowdon, for some reason of his own, maintained a slight intercourse with the Peckovers, and through them he endeavoured to establish an intimacy with Hewett; ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... drunken woman. If we hear of "a drunken lady," we see a downfall, a glimpse of better days; chloral, opium, even cologne, may have brought her to it. The word still saves her miserable reputation a little. But the words "a drunken woman" merely suggest whiskey, degradation, ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... without stint. They had seen Portuguese soldiers seized on by regiments, and marched off to serve under French eagles. They had heard Junot's insolent order to their priests, commanding them to preach submission. They had witnessed the utter degradation of their country. They had just seen the plate of the churches, and the plunder of individuals, collected throughout the neighboring comarcas, escorted through the town, and, though groaning in spirit, they stood by with folded arms. But when ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... it a degradation of art that it should be enlisted by the makers of wall-papers? Are there not too many ugly and discordant posters? Do you consider trade and manufacture so sordid that they are beneath the ministrations of ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... how happy I was at this sudden change in my situation. I felt no degradation, for I had seen too little of society to be thoughtful about the differences of rank; and a boy of sixteen is seldom aristocratical. I had given up no friend; for there seemed to be no one in the world that cared for me, now my poor mother was dead. I had given up no ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... from the seventh or eighth century until the thirteenth or fourteenth. What was characteristic of those ages? Were they grand, noble? They were ages of ignorance, of superstition, of cruelty, of immorality, of poverty, of tyranny, of degradation. Almost everything existed that men would no longer bear to-day; and hardly any of the grand things that characterize modern civilization had then ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... must take into account the crushing influence of the feudal system, which gave the nobles almost absolute power over their serfs or dependants, thus encouraging lawlessness on the one hand, and causing degradation on the other. The scarcity and costliness of books before the invention of printing was another {116} formidable obstacle to any universal spread of education, all which causes tended to bring learning into contempt amongst the restless barons and their followers, ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... my degradation I had fancied my sufferings were over, but I had another humiliation before me. That came when I left prison, and was told off for duty, and put on sentry, as a private soldier. You can not conceive what a proud man endures at such a moment. I believe I would ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... be what is called a crumb of comfort, we shall have to pity the German nation for its victories as much as ourselves for our defeats, because this is the first act of its moral dissolution. The drama of its degradation has begun, and as this is being worked out by its own hands it will move very quickly. All these great material organizations in which right, justice, and the respect for humanity are not recognized, are colossi of clay, ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... of Africa are probably descended from the opulent, commercial, and ingenious Carthaginians who once contended with Rome for the empire of the world; and even nearer home, we might find in Southern Italy and her islands, proofs of a degradation not much inferior. What I contend for is the civilisation of the first patriarchal races who peopled the East, and who passed into Europe from Armenia, in which paradise is supposed to have been placed. The early civilisation of this race could only have been in consequence of their powers ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... development, both physical and intellectual, is that degree of freedom which finds its expression in the increase of numbers—what does this portentous fact of a stationary population bespeak? Simply, the utmost degradation of body and mind; vice in its most hideous forms; filth, disease, unnatural crimes; a hell upon earth. These are always the characteristics of nations which have been prevented from growing. The melancholy proofs of a condition of affairs ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... how great a portion of our globe is yet untouched by the vivifying light of the Cross; that the desolating systems of idolatry, of Mohammedism, of Romanism, and other false religions, are now overshadowing and blasting the nations. We should search for distinct knowledge of the intellectual degradation, of the moral corruption, of the oppression, wretchedness, and woe, of the groans uttered, and the tears shed, by the millions now subject to their galling sway, "as for hid treasures." Ignorance on these topics, at the present day, cannot be excusable. The organs of the various ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... in habits of indolence from his childhood, and see what it has brought him to. He has been in the habit of lounging about the streets unemployed, or perhaps watching for opportunities for mischief; step by step he descends in his moral degradation; vice succeeds folly, till a dark catalogue of crimes brings him to a drunkard's grave. State prison, or the gallows. While, on the other hand, take a man who has been accustomed to labor and toil for his ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... patriotic sentiment, citizen General," said Barrere. "Gallantry on the part of an insurgent royalist is an inspiration of the devil, sent to induce man to perpetuate the degradation and misery of his fellow-men. Such gallantry, or rather such frenzy, should give rise to anything but admiration in the ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... impossible. Their captors would have released them for ransom; but who was near to redeem them? So they were taken to Damascus, and, in the absence of such ransom, were exposed in the slave market. Oh, what degradation for the young knight! Hubert prayed for death, but it never came. Death flies the miserable, and seeks the happy who cling ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... both were different from what we are, we might be a hundred times more unhappy, but I should not have the consciousness that I am drawing near the shelter of Eumaeus. I understand that love merely spiritual remains a shadow, but love without spiritualism becomes utter degradation. It is another matter that some people touched by Circe's wand may find contentment in their degradation. It seems a sad thing and very strange that I, a man of the Hellenic type, should write thus. Scepticism even here steps in, and in regard to Hellenism I begin to have my doubts whether ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... murder by Stops, to which we have already referred, was one of the thunderclaps of the storm; but its morrow brought the peace of Vienna, and the degradation of Austria was the death-blow of the old Germanic organisation. These societies, which had received a mortal wound in 1806 and were now controlled by the French police, instead of continuing to meet in public, were forced to seek new members in the dark. In 1811 several agents ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... groundless: in spite of their honest plans and of brilliant appearances, the degradation, material as well as moral, of Roman society went on increasing. The wars, the luxury, the dilapidations, and the disturbances of the empire always raised its expenses much above its receipts. The rough miserliness of Vespasian and the wise ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... unoffending race of people, who dragged from the scenes of their nativity, and the habitations of their fathers, have been consigned by a gang of merciless kidnappers to perpetual slavery themselves, and to the still more intolerable necessity of bequeathing an existence of similar endurement and degradation to their offspring. After years of strenuous indefatigable exertion these friends of humanity, these noble champions of liberty have succeeded, if not in emancipating those, who had already been consigned to this unmerited doom, at least in preventing the further ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... well known to the town, for he was one of those whose tongues reveal their degradation as soon as they are intoxicated. He boasted of his exploits in the city and of the women he had brought to his ranch, and these revelations made him the hero of a certain type of loafer. His ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... The poor boy, who thought all his prospects blighted, was sent on shore, the tears running down his cheeks, as much from the applause and kind farewells of his shipmates, as from the idea of the degradation which he underwent. Now, the real culprit was young Malcolm, who, to oblige the captain, had taken his station at the foretop-gallant mast-head, because the dog "Ponto" thought proper to cut off his own tail. ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... will find themselves in positions in which service is mingled with activities of a baser sort, in which service is a little warped and deflected by old traditions and usage, by mercenary and commercial considerations, by some inherent or special degradation of purpose. The spirit of God will not let the believer rest until his life is readjusted and as far as possible freed from the waste of these base diversions. For example a scientific investigator, lit and inspired by great inquiries, may be hampered by the conditions of ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... social forces which exercise such a powerful influence on our characters, our lives, our customs, which produce the greatness of the State, or drag it down with irresistible strength from its pinnacle of glory to an abyss of degradation; to estimate such forces is the great and noble object of our lectures and researches in this University. Prosecute, most noble professors, your studies in this direction with all the energy of your enlightened ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson
... the pertinent words of Alford: "To endeavor to evade the work which he has appointed for each man, by refusing the bounty to save the trouble of seeking the grace, is an attempt which must ever end in degradation of the individual motives and in social demoralization, whatever present apparent effects ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.
... charity of all the nation for the relief of those miserable sufferers who came over for shelter," that, in deference to his wishes, the Government of James II. condemned the truth to the flames. Nothing in that monarch's reign proves more conclusively the depth of degradation to which his foreign policy and that of his brother had caused his ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... thirty steadings and other buildings, mostly in Gilsland, were burned. The angry English made reprisals. It was in one of them that the Scots who were taken were leashed "like doggis," and for this degradation Buccleuch and Ker of Cessford made the English pay most handsomely. Together those "twoo fyrebrandes of the Border" led an incursion into Tynedale, where, in broad daylight, they burned three hundred steadings and dwelling-houses, ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... displayed most sympathy with the people of colour on the Missouri question, prohibitions are taking place against their becoming residents. They are every where regarded as a nuisance, and must really be such as long as they are under the degradation which public sentiment inflicts on them. They are at the same time rapidly increasing from manumissions and from offspring, and of course lessening the general disproportion between the slaves and the whites. This ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... solemnly, "no doubt Heaven marked me for some such degradation as this, when I yielded to low propensities, and sought my pleasure and companions in the huts of ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... them. The principal families perished at the time of the conquest. The priests, sole depositaries of knowledge, were put to death; the manuscripts and hieroglyphical paintings were burnt, and the remaining Indians fell into that state of ignorance and degradation, from which they have never emerged. The rich Indian women preferred marrying their Spanish conquerors to allying themselves with the degraded remnant of their countrymen; poor artisans, workmen, porters, etc., of whom Cortes speaks as filling the streets of the great ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... lightning; and for a moment she felt as if her brain were on fire. She was alive but to one idea, and that the most painful that could be suggested to a delicate mind. She had heard herself recommended to the love of a man who was indifferent to her. Could there be such a humiliation—such a degradation? Colonel Lennox's embarrassment was scarcely less; but his mother saw not the mischief she had done, and she continued to speak without his having the power to interrupt her. But her words fell unheeded on Mary's ear—she could hear nothing but what she had already heard. Colonel Lennox ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... in a sense never to die. In this case they were not vital enough to render the illusion complete, so that the little man found himself caught in a very distressing confusion of the present and the past; yet he was sufficiently sensitive to recognise that it was true, and to fight against the degradation of returning, even in memory, to a former ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... in the dingy atmosphere. Crowds of men, women and children were heaped together in all directions, except on the bench and in a kind of pew which was reserved for such ladies as desired to witness the last degradation ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... that of enlistment necessarily includes the worst. In this fact is to be found the real moral superiority of the French and Prussian armies. Here, service, even in the ranks, is deemed honourable; whereas with us, or in England, it would be certain degradation to a man of the smallest pretension to enlist as a soldier, except in moments that made stronger appeals than usual to patriotism. In short, it is prima facie evidence of a degraded condition for a man to carry a musket ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... The wealth which had been accumulated during centuries of prosperity and repose was rapidly melting away. The intellectual superiority of the oppressed people only rendered them more keenly sensible of their political degradation. Literature and taste, indeed, still disguised with a flush of hectic loveliness and brilliancy the ravages of an incurable decay. The iron had not yet entered into the soul. The time was not yet come when eloquence was to be gagged, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... than this, at least wherever government has extended. But there is a vast deal more to be done; and it is a pity that in the first place suitable schools are not formed for the persons intending to emigrate, and opportunity given them to do so, without the degradation of crime, and the expense and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... of honor between friends, and with public humiliation to his wife, which he allowed himself to inflict, notwithstanding that he admitted her claims to his deferential consideration to be unbroken. In this contrast, of the exaltation of the hero and the patriot with the degradation of the man, lie the tragedy and the misery of Nelson's story. And this, too, was incurred on behalf of a woman whose reputation and conduct were such that no shred of dignity could attach to an infatuation as doting as it was blamable. The pitiful inadequacy of the temptation to the ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... sweet smile and pitying words still lingered in her heart. And should she ever see those dear relatives or that kind friend again? Or if she did, would she be able to look them in the face as a pure and stainless girl, or would she blush in their presence with a consciousness of degradation? But she was interrupted in these painful meditations by the sound of the key turning in the lock; and a moment afterwards Mr. Tickels entered the room, and advanced towards her. On observing her improved ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... the bench. Then to have come to this all in the brief space of a few months! It was incredible, terrible, heart rending! And what of the future? What was to be done to save her father from this impeachment which she knew well would hurry him to his grave? He could not survive that humiliation, that degradation. He must be saved ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... matter. I shortly after recommended to the Secretary the assignment of General Buell to duty. I received the assurance that duty would be offered to him; and afterwards the Secretary told me that he had offered Buell an assignment and that the latter had declined it, saying that it would be degradation to accept the assignment offered. I understood afterwards that he refused to serve under either Sherman or Canby because he had ranked them both. Both graduated before him and ranked him in the old army. Sherman ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... me, and was only a bit of a girl who'd never wanted a comfort on this earth until that time, and who starved with me then and for years. My God! my whole body burns when I think of it—that bit of a creature who'd never known the lack of a gratification and who was dragged down to every degradation by my curse." ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... high plane, one is unconsciously lifted to that plane. Men become Christians sometimes from the effect of sudden demands made upon their higher moral nature, demands which compel them to choose between a life higher than their present living, or a moral degradation. Such had been August's experience. He had been drawn upward toward God by the opportunity and necessity for heroic action. I have no doubt the good Samaritan got more out of his own kindness ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... pursue was tortuous, not definable, or to be explained in concise phraseology; but the one thought that rose paramount over all others was, that he must take his iniquitous punishment like a man. He had fought so strongly to shield the brother of the girl he loved that the cause in all its degradation had ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... darling project of his uncle. The terror of invasion has induced her to change the nature of her foreign policy. She will cling to the French alliance until the French emperor has satiated his national craving for her degradation; and not until he strikes her a blow, which will resound throughout the world, will England be prepared to battle with the Gaul. No future accession of territory would make France more formidable for the invasion of England than she ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... history who has lived without choosing either, up to the time when his love and defence of Miriam involve him in crime. Father Antonio, "the spectre of the catacombs," and Miriam's persecutor, is the outcome of a continual choice of evil and of utter degradation. These two extremes, more widely asunder than Prospero and Caliban, Hawthorne has linked together in his immense grasp of the inmost laws of life, and with a miraculous nicety of artistic skill. Then comes ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... the same time flowed from his lips in finished state, perfect in all useful knowledge. From his arms next issued the Kshatriya, or warriors; from his breast, the seat of life, came the Vaisya, or producers—shepherds, farmers, merchants; from his foot, in sign of degradation, sprang the Sudra, or serviles, doomed to menial duties for the other classes—serfs, domestics, laborers, artisans. Take notice, further, that the law, so born with them, forbade a man of one caste becoming a member of another; the ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... servants lest they should applaud, as last time, in the wrong place, and the daughters because he may be personal about them, as the time before. ERNEST is annoyed that there should be this speech at all when there is such a much better one coming, and BROCKLEHURST foresees the degradation of the peerage. All are thinking of themselves alone save CRICHTON, who knows his master's weakness, and fears he may stick in the middle. LORD LOAM, however, advances cheerfully to his doom. He sees ERNEST'S stool, and artfully stands on it, to his nephew's ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie
... the laborer is its power, under the lead of Christianity, to break down the unnatural distinctions of society, and to render labor of every sort, among all classes, acceptable and honorable. Ignorance is the degradation of labor, and when laborers, as a class, are ignorant, their vocation is necessarily shunned by some; and, being shunned by some, it is likely to be despised by others. Wherever the laboring population is ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... benevolent relative, coming to give them a "lift." In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, pecuniary help to a beginner is not a blessing, but a calamity. Under the appearance of aiding, it weakens its victims, and keeps them in perpetual slavery and degradation. ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... walking again. "But the moral degradation of it!" he snapped out at her over his shoulder. "I'd rather earn the meanest living, at an honest trade, and be ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... finer kind of reward than the financial. Among other things, they understood and respected the dignity of literature, and would not have expected an editor to run a literary venture in the interests of the illiterate. The further degradation of the public taste was not then the avowed object of popular magazines. Indeed—strange as it sounds nowadays—it was rather the education than the degradation of the public taste at which the editor aimed, and in that aim he found ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... employed for all, and all were submitted to these humiliating trials. Do not believe that these people are completely indifferent to this treatment! No, excepting the children, who cannot comprehend the state of degradation to which they are reduced, all, ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... later became Haiti. The French colony, based on forestry and sugar-related industries, became one of the wealthiest in the Caribbean, but only through the heavy importation of African slaves and considerable environmental degradation. In the late 18th century, Haiti's nearly half million slaves revolted under Toussaint L'OUVERTURE. After a prolonged struggle, Haiti became the first black republic to declare its independence in ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... presented, is in a very sad imbroglio. After our monstrous errors of policy and the infliction on Ireland of miseries and degradation unparalleled in Europe, to expect to bring things right without humiliation and without risks of what cannot be foreseen, seems to me conceit and ignorance. Evildoers must have humiliation, must have risks, when they try to go right. Opponents will always be able ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... instead of soaring superior, he kept hovering near the earth; his "kestrel courage fell," he appeared to be almost tamed to the domestic state to which he was reduced—yet now and then a rebel sense of his former freedom, and of his present degradation, would appear. "Ah! if I were but independent as you are! If I had but followed a profession as you have done!" said he to Alfred, when, apart from the crowd, they had an ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... guard-houses, at a multitude of town gates, and on every drawbridge, angle, and rampart, of a complete system of fortifications. Fifty times a day, I got down to harangue an infuriated soldiery about the Bottle. Through the filthy degradation of the abject and vile Roman States, I had as much difficulty in working my way with the Bottle, as if it had bottled up a complete system of heretical theology. In the Neapolitan country, where everybody was a spy, a soldier, a priest, or a lazzarone, the shameless ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... in affluence. Nevertheless they themselves are kept in poverty, degradation, and slavery by the capitalists whom they nourish by their labour. "The landlord owns the raw material and can live in idleness. The capitalist owns the machinery and can live in idleness. The worker has nothing, except his ability to work, and he cannot ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... supplanted the university professor, a system which implied the substitution of excercises performed by the pupil for instruction given by the teacher. Whatever advantages this system brought with it, it brought inevitably the degradation of the teacher, who was thus dispensed from knowledge, having only to attend to form. The time of the college tutor was engrossed by the details of scholastic superintendence, and the frivolous worry of academical ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... is that his sense of reality had always remained in a rudimentary state; it was, as it were, diffused over the world and mankind. For instance, his belief in the misery and degradation of earthly life, and the natural bestiality of man, was incurable; but of this or that individual he had no opinion; he was to John Norton a blank sheet of paper, to which he could not affix even a title. His childhood had been one of bitter tumult and passionate sorrow; the ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... of an English or Irish family of respectable rank, at a very early age the unhappy girl was found to be possessed of the fatal gift of beauty. She appeared for a short time on the stage as a dancer (for which degradation her sorrowing relatives put on mourning, and issued undertakers' cards to signify that she was now dead to them) and then blazed forth as the most notorious ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... Not satisfied with slowly killing its prisoners, and with burying the flower of our young generation in the Siberian desserts, the Government of Alexander III. resolved to break their spirit by deliberately submitting them to a regime of unheard-of brutality and degradation." ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... but so densely ignorant and of such sullen disposition that when a better man was offered, in the person of Dick Peveril, the boss was only too glad to return him to his hated task of car-pushing and accept the new-comer in his place. His sentence of degradation, pronounced only the day before, had been received as a personal affront by every wild-eyed car-pusher of the mine. All knew that some one must fill the place from which their leader had been ousted, and all were prepared to hate him the moment his ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... man one in nature with the Highest, by birthright a son of the gods, of an intelligence akin to theirs, and less than they only in degree. Through thus presenting at once his strength and his feebleness, his grandeur and his degradation, religion goes beyond philosophy or utility in suggesting motives for exertion, stimuli to labor. This phase of it ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... opportunity of forming an opinion of Africans who have never been debased by slavery, will rank them very much higher in the scale of intelligence, industry, and manhood, than others who know them only in a state of degradation. ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... feared it would be difficult, if not impossible, to meet the wishes of the illustrious strangers in the particular manner spoken of. The male inhabitants of the village were all warriors, to whom work of any description would be an unspeakable degradation. But he would see what could be done. If women, now, would serve the strangers' purpose as well as men, the thing could easily ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... Humanity, as by ministering to the bodily wants of other families, called to functions which require the devotion of all their thoughts. "We will add, by way of supplement to M. Comte's doctrine, that much of the daily physical work of a household, even in opulent families, if silly notions of degradation, common to all ranks, did not interfere, might very advantageously be performed by the family itself, at least by its younger members; to whom it would give healthful exercise of the bodily powers, which has now to be sought in modes far less useful, and also a familiar acquaintance ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... of overwrought sentimentality, of heedless surrender to the emotions and reveling in their exercise,—perils to whose magnitude Sterne so largely contributed—were grasped by saner minds, and energetic protest was entered against such degradation of mind and futile ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... had left the country in a wretched state. It was deeply in debt and the much needed public improvements were at a standstill. The country had long been divided between two parties, the missionary and the anti-missionary, the former seeking to save the natives from vice and degradation, the latter encouraging such vicious practices as lotteries and opium sales for their ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... characters. The Greek drama took up these traditional characters, and sometimes deepened, saddened, exalted the features—as Sophocles, for instance, does with his 'Ajax Flagellifer'—Ajax the knouter of sheep—where, by the way, the remorse and penitential grief of Ajax for his own self-degradation, and the depth of his affliction for the triumph which he had afforded to his enemies—taken in connection with the tender fears of his wife, Tecmessa, for the fate to which his gloomy despair was too manifestly driving him; her own conscious desolation, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... to distinguish between the holy and the unholy in that spirit? to prove, by the very degradation of the one, how high the other was. A character is never done justice to by extenuating its faults: so I do not agree to nisi bonum. It is kinder ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... was stayed whenever military success was checked. The Faith was meant for Arabia and not for the world, hence it is constitutionally incapable of change or development. The degradation of woman hinders the growth of freedom and civilization ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... became heavier than ever. The one power in the land to which they had been able to appeal for some sort of redress amid their troubles was the law courts. Now it was decreed that the courts should be dependent on the Volksraad. The Chief Justice protested against such a degradation of his high office, and he was dismissed in consequence without a pension. The judge who had condemned the reformers was chosen to fill the vacancy, and the protection of a fixed law was withdrawn ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... she readily. "And indeed, Cousin Rupert, I know more of this—of him than you do, and very sure am I he is no murderer—nor ever will be!" Here for a moment her glance rested on me, and meeting that look I forgot my wounded vanity and degradation awhile. ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... girl, burning in her shameful robe, saw it vastly otherwise. That a man could bend so low! That she should ever have loved a man with such a stooping back! To think of that made (for the moment) every other degradation light. Her part as yet was one of sufferance: to look handsome, languid with the excess of her burden of beauty; to smile slowly, to keep her eyes on her lap. Pure passivity all this, under which the miserable soul could torture in secret. As she often had a back-ache, it was easy to ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... sentenced these communities to the sort of fate which has befallen the beautiful island of Hayti, where the self-government of a population of emancipated negro slaves has brought nothing but anarchy and degradation. In such conditions the steady Reign of Law is the greatest boon that can be given to white settlers and coloured subjects alike; and the final authority is rightly retained by the home government, inspired, as British opinion has long ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... sometimes without time being allowed for a parting interview with their families. Such treatment would be cruel toward criminals; but these men are adjudged to toil, to stripes, to ignorance, to poverty, to hopeless degradation, on the pretence that they "owe service." This allegation all know to be utterly false, they having never promised to serve, and being legally incapable of making any contract. Every act of Christian kindness to these unhappy people, tending ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various |
