"Degrading" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the blame entirely on the English, and spoke with great bitterness of the ill-treatment of Philip, the native chief, who came as passenger in the ship. He described and mimicked his cleaning shoes and knives; his being flogged when he refused to do this degrading work; and, finally, his speech to his countrymen when he came on shore, soliciting their assistance in capturing the vessel, and revenging his ill-treatment. Over and over again our friend George, ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... form no opinion," he replied. "I have no idea. I was lying in a ditch inanimate. This is a degrading confession, sir; I can only say in self-defence that perhaps (in your good nature) you have made yourself partly responsible for my shame. I am not used to these ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... earth with useless and unfortunate beings. This changed view upon population will partly follow from the substitution of rational ideas for those prejudices which have penetrated morals with an austerity that is corrupting and degrading.[77] The movement will be further aided by one of the most important steps in human progress—the destruction, namely, of the prejudices that have established inequality of rights between the two sexes, and which are so mischievous even to ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... gone, the young campaign manager had an attack of moral nausea. It seemed such a prodigious waste of time and energy to traffic and chaffer with these petty scoundrels. Thus far, every phase of the actual political problem seemed to be meanly degrading, and he was beginning to long keenly for an opportunity to do some really ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... was the famous New York Committee of Seventy, organized in 1894 after Dr. Parkhurst's lurid disclosures of police connivance with every degrading vice. A call was issued by thirty-three well-known citizens for a non-partizan mass meeting, and at this meeting a committee of seventy was appointed "with full power to confer with other anti-Tammany organizations, and to take such actions as may be necessary to further the objects of this ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... each other at one of these exhibitions of gladiators, and were soon after married. Gibbon, in speaking of the lies which Severus told his two competitors in the contest for empire, says, 'Falsehood and insincerity, unsuitable as they seem to the dignity of public transactions, offend us with a less degrading idea of meanness than when they are found in the intercourse of private life. In the latter, they discover a want of courage; in the other, only a defect of power; and, as it is impossible for the most able statesmen to subdue millions ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... benefit from his labors. He had no adequate support, no relief from the most sordid and worrying cares of life. He found himself almost forced into competition that was degrading. Had he entered into it he would have thrown down with his own hand the structure he had spent his life in rearing. He was alternately warmed by the admiration and love of a few and chilled by general apathy, and has chosen wisely in going ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... not understand English wives," he said gently, with a curious melancholy in his voice. "Love and worship such as you give me they think shameful and shocking. To love a man for himself, for his face, for his body is degrading. They are so pure, they love him only for his purse. They tell him to take his passion to dancing-girls like you. They hate to bear him children. They like to live in his house, be clothed at his expense, ride in his carriage, ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... advantage, to swear before ex parte committees to pretended private conversations between the President and themselves, incapable from their nature of being disproved, thus furnishing material for harassing him, degrading him in the eyes of the country, and eventually, should he be a weak or a timid man, rendering him subservient to improper influences in order to avoid such persecutions and annoyances; because they tend to destroy that ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... the same feelings of reverence as when we kneel at that altar, for we are coming to that which is part of God's image—made in His likeness. And as we speak to them, when they answer purely and simply, the Word of God speaks through them. This is not degrading the sacraments—nay, but raising all human life—nay, raising the sacraments as well, for it brings them into relation with real life, and transforms the poor magical abstractions ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... accepted it. "Want to go out to de nigger houses, Sah," is the universal impulse of sociability, when they wish to cross the lines. "He hab twenty house-servants, an' two hundred head o' nigger," is a still more degrading form of phrase, in which the epithet is limited to the field-hands, and they estimated like so many cattle. This want of self-respect of course interferes with the authority of the non-commissioned officers, which is always difficult to sustain, even in white ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... the lieutenant-general, treacherously seized by the tribunes, besides being mangled in every part of his body, had his nose and ears cut off, and was left for dead. Then, recovering from his wounds, he threw the tribunes into chains; beat them, tortured them with every species of degrading punishment, and put them to death in a cruel manner, forbidding them to be buried. Such atonements has the goddess exacted from the despoilers of her temple; nor will she cease to pursue them, with every species of vengeance, till the sacred money shall ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... Shakbag are almost as perfect. It is when we compare Arden of Feversham with Macbeth that we realize how the meanness of the action and the comparative absence of morality outweigh any accuracy of detail, degrading the dramatist to the level of a mere purveyor of excitement. The truth is, even the interest palls, for there is no skill displayed in the evolution of the plot. The story is merely unrolled in a series of murderous attempts which agitate us less and less as they are repeated, ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... from the first,—but rather a most winning and attaching companion. It was a sentiment of friendly ease, that seemed to bring with it a great relief from tension. The sordid cares and frictions of the last few weeks, and the degrading memories of the day itself, alike ceased to ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... rank from a high command and post of great responsibility and trust to one heretofore regarded as appropriate to an inferior grade, may be regarded as elevating the dignity of the new command, but looks much more like degrading the officer, and to that extent impairs the good effect desired to be produced. Besides, it is impossible for any officer not to feel that in taking such inferior command, although it is even for the avowed purpose of ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... the committee I presented a series of resolutions, impeaching the Christian theology—as well as all other forms of religion, for their degrading teachings in regard to woman—which the majority of the committee thought too strong and pointed, and, after much deliberation, they substituted the above, handing over to the Jews what I had laid at the door of the Christians. They thought they ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... the prison well satisfied with his day's work. The labour, hard though it was, was an absolute pleasure to him. There was, moreover, nothing degrading in it, and while the overseers had plied their whips freely on the backs of many of his companions, he had not only escaped, but had, he felt, succeeded in pleasing his masters. The next morning when the gangs were drawn up in the yard before starting ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... by bribery, for Ivan condescended to buy the interference of a Tartar princess. So slavish and degrading was his outward seeming that his wife, a noble and spirited lady, the daughter of the Emperor of Byzantium, could with difficulty prevail upon him to forego the humiliating usages which had hitherto attended the reception of the Mongol envoys. It had been customary on the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... by many—and the fool comes in and spends the whole residue, twenty thousand pounds perhaps, for Satan and the corruption of the world. But some may say, Are not all things given us richly to enjoy? Yes; but it would be degrading indeed to the members of the Kingdom of Christ, to make their rich enjoyment appear in consuming on their own lusts like the members of the kingdom of Satan, those things which they are permitted to apply to the exaltation of their Lord and Redeemer. Be assured, my dear ...
— Christian Devotedness • Anthony Norris Groves
... universal dinner time in the east, I went to dine with the Governor Mohammed 'Abdu'l Hadi; it was a miserable degrading scene of gorging the pilaff with the hands and squeezing the butter of it through the fingers, without even water for drink supplied by the servants. The guests were about a dozen in number, and they were crowded so closely round the tinned tray as only to admit of their ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... sin, of which he had thought he had so truly and deeply repented, but another which he had always been taught was a very low and degrading vice. Oh, could there be forgiveness ...
— Elsie's New Relations • Martha Finley
... full in the chest. The wound, however, would perhaps not have been mortal, but, shortly after, having carried the place by storm, and in his delight at finding the treasure almost intact, he gave himself up madly to degrading orgies, during which he had already dissipated the greater part of his treasure, and died of his wound twelve days later; first having, however, graciously pardoned the bowman who caused ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... islands and cocoa- nuts, of course, is worse than useless; a man possessed with the idea that he is making a sacrifice will never do; and a man who thinks any kind of work "beneath a gentleman" will simply be in the way, and be rather uncomfortable at seeing the Bishop do what he thinks degrading to do himself. I write all this quite freely, wishing to convey, if possible, some idea to you of the kind of men we need. And if the right fellow is moved by God's grace to come out, what a welcome we will ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... either through lack of education or through insufficient mental capacity'.[77] Along the lines of this philosophy no permanent industrial advance is possible. It may improve the product for a time, but only at the cost of degrading the producer. If we are to make happiness our test, and to stand by our definition of happiness as involving free activity, such a system, destructive as it is of any real or intense relationship between the workman and his work, stands self-condemned. If we are looking ...
— Progress and History • Various
... hope that the Folk Lore Society, just instituted, will consider such details and variations, and endeavour to trace their history and origin, and fearlessly give prominence to the still existing superstitions, and exhibit their degrading influence ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... those which the barbarism of centuries has consecrated. It will one day seem incredible that until the year 1826 there existed no law in the Great Antilles to prevent the sale of young infants and their separation from their parents, or to prohibit the degrading custom of marking the negroes with a hot iron, merely to enable these human cattle to be more easily recognized. Enact laws to obviate the possibility of a barbarous outrage; fix, in every sugar estate, the proportion between the least number of negresses and that of the labouring negroes; grant ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... leaders who laid down their lives during this half century and more of civil wars makes one shudder for man's inhumanity to man. Little progress was made. The Romish Church held its parasitic clutch upon state and people, impoverishing and degrading both, until the burden became too great to bear; and, in 1857, the Laws of Reform were enacted and the constitution amended, causing the church to disgorge its millions of ill-gotten wealth, and also depriving it of its power for ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... Auletes, the father, went on toward Rome. So far as his character and his story were known among the surrounding nations, he was the object of universal obloquy, both on account of his previous career of degrading vice, and now, still more, for this ignoble flight from the difficulties in which his vices ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... whom they met coming into Jerusalem from the country, and him they compelled to carry the cross of Jesus. No Roman or Jew would have voluntarily incurred the ignominy of bearing such a gruesome burden; for every detail connected with the carrying out of a sentence of crucifixion was regarded as degrading. The man so forced to walk in the footsteps of Jesus, bearing the cross upon which the Savior of the world was to consummate His glorious mission, was Simon, a native of Cyrene. From Mark's statement that Simon was the father of Alexander and Rufus we infer ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... that when he walked through the main street at Shaw, it seemed as if all the town belonged to him. It is difficult for us to understand quite accurately the social code of the Georgian era, when a man might indulge in pleasures which seem to us coarse and degrading, and yet retain all the pride and all the bearing ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... their smoking-rooms he heard certain practices, which he had always believed to be degrading and abominable, discussed with shouts of laughter. Those matters which until now he had regarded with an almost sacred veneration were subjects for immense jokes. A few years ago he would have been horrified at it all, but the fine quality ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... issues: air pollution from power plant emissions results in acid rain; acidification of lakes and reservoirs degrading water quality and threatening aquatic life; Japan's appetite for fish and tropical timber is contributing to the depletion of these resources in ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... this preeminence? Does a license to preach transform a man into a higher order of beings and endow him with a natural quality to govern? Are the laity an inferior order of beings, fit only to be slaves and to be governed? Is it good policy for mankind to subject themselves to such degrading vassalage and abject submission? Reason, common sense, and the Bible, with united voice, proclaim to all mankind that they are all born free and equal; that every member of a church or Christian congregation must be on the same footing in respect of church government, and that the CONSTITUTION, ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... is immensely below the American laborer, and still has to be watched as a thief, for the want of a little morality intermixed with his religious instruction. It is a degrading sight to stand at the door of one of the large coach manufactories at Mexico, and to witness the manner in which they search them, one by one, as they come out. The natives, who have learned the most difficult ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... and orating for Democracy's illustrious Candidate and the Noble Cause, mashallah! one ought to do a little canvassing for Honesty and Truth among Democracy's leaders, tuft-hunters, political stock-jobbers, and such like. O, for a higher stump, my Boss, to preach to those who are supporting and degrading the stumps and the ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... "slavery impoverishes the soil, makes the whites shun labor, feeling it to be degrading, and it keeps the white children from industrial ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... scarcely inferior to that of my cousin, I can not see how the privilege of which I availed myself in proposing for her hand, can be construed into a breach of confidence. I trust, sir, that you have not contemplated your brother's son in any degrading or unbecoming attitude." ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... hearing it treated with contempt. An attempt has been made to explain the whole, by asserting that, to put an end to the extravagances of Don Juan, and to pacify the family of Ulloa, without exposing the delinquent to the degrading penalties of justice, he was decoyed into this convent under a false pretext, and either plunged into a perpetual dungeon, or privately hurried out of existence; while the story of the statue was ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... understand you?" she said, with her rich gray eyes wide open under their startled lashes. "My father has spoken of a degrading condition? Is ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... well weighed the policy of this measure, and do they know its inevitable result? If not, I will tell them. The direct effect on the minds of the Canadian population will be a determination as soon as possible to get rid of a dominion which entails on them results so mischievous and degrading. Every year will hereafter strengthen the feeling, and lasting enmity and discord will thus be entailed on the mother country and the colony—discord that will cease only when the colony shall become a great, powerful, and independent community. The immediate effects of this feeling will ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... If you do not know what I think about marriage, buy The Kreutzer Sonata. It is not customary to have more than one wife. Consequently, anything which has one in it—as, for instance, the date of WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR—reminds me of marriage, and is, therefore, degrading. Why, the very word "match" suggests marriage: and yet we allow young children to sell whole boxes of them in the streets. Horrible! Do you think our lower orders would become discontented, and strike, if they had not seen matches doing it ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 21, 1891 • Various
... persons to a routine of clerk's work broken only by a three weeks' holiday in the decline of the year. On less lively, fanciful, and amiable persons than my old friend, the New Road and the daily desk do verily exercise a degrading and much to be regretted influence. But Mr. Harrison brought the freshness of pastoral simplicity into the most faded corners of the Green, lightened with his cheerful heart the most leaden hours of the office, and gathered during his three weeks' holiday in the neighborhood, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... it until morning came, nor did any other engagements prevent him from putting in an appearance at his habitual haunt, even though it were past midnight before he were free. As already remarked, however, it was not to sit and drink like a sot that he gave way to this degrading habit, but to get himself "exalted" as he called it, and then when he was duly "exalted" came the firework display of wit and glowing fancy, going on hour after hour without rest or interruption for the space of five or six hours at once. If his tongue was not the medium through ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... Gloucestershire—that renowned, heroic, irresistible Thomas—beaten Molyneux the negro artist in the presence of twenty thousand roaring Britons? and shall the practice of an art which has rejoiced in such a master as the illustrious Game Chicken, Hannibal of the Ring, be held degrading by an Englishman of sufficient inches who, albeit a Tory and a High Churchman, is at bottom as thoroughgoing a Republican as ever took the word of command from Colonel Cromwell? And if all this fail, if he get nobody to put on the gloves with him, if the tents ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... has been brought out by studies is the fact that degrading ideals are practically wanting in children. You were no doubt shocked to discover that Eddy was planning to become a burglar, or a pirate chief, or a tramp, or an ordinary highwayman. But a careful analysis ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... the correct method of its application, for in such cases the delinquent is usually an effective rather than an ineffective person, and when he has purged his fault we continue to punish him in petty and underhand ways, mostly degrading to those on whom they are inflicted and always degrading to those who inflict them. We have found no substitute for the sharper way of our ancestors, which was not only more effective socially, but even more ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... said Des Hermies, "a veritable prostitution. To advertise a thing for sale is to accept the degrading familiarities ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... by him to the emperor. He proposed that the emperor should abandon the traditions which had grown up respecting his person and his court, and rule his empire with personal supervision. To do this successfully, he recommended that the capital be transferred from the place of its degrading superstitions to a new home. He suggested that Osaka be the ...
— Japan • David Murray
... action that is allowed to men were allowed to them. Ruder the best aspect of education, children are subjected to a mild despotism for the good of themselves and of society; and their confidence in the wisdom and goodness of those who ordain and apply this despotism, neutralizes the bad passions and degrading feelings, which under less favourable conditions are ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... fallen to the share of most others, may pass his life without a fact of any sort to impeach his disinterestedness, and yet not be able to express a generous or just sentiment in behalf of his fellow-creatures, without laying himself open to suspicions that are as degrading to those who entertain them, as they are injurious to all independence of thought, ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... by a realizing sense of our position, and by example, action and generous thought, recommend our cause to the consideration of others. We should persevere for the attainment of every commendable virtue, to raise the mind from the degrading haunts of intemperance and folly; we should be distinguished for usefulness to society and the community at large. A good Odd-Fellow must necessarily be an upright and useful member of the community. The precepts inculcated are calculated to stimulate to the faithful performance of every moral and ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... peculiarly fitted to render it productive. It must be our business to form them according to our views, by associating them in these by a common interest. In conquering them by benefits, instead of subjugating them by crimes, or degrading them by corruption, let us lead them to social order and to happiness, by our moral superiority, instead of dragging them under scourges and chains to misery and death, we shall then have accomplished a useful and a glorious enterprise; we shall have raised our commercial ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... in accents that vainly struggled for calm, "if thou hast admitted to thy heart one unworthy thought towards a Moorish infidel, dig deep and root it out, even with the knife, and to the death—so wilt thou save this hand from that degrading task." ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book I. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... learn to laugh that laugh with the crowd? Must she gain knowledge of the unclean, the vicious, the degrading things of life by actual contact? Was it not enough for her to know that those things were in the world as she knew that there was fever in the marsh lands; or must she go in person into the muck and ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... Dundas's arm a smart stroke with Miss Beaufort's purse; and laughing, to show the strong opposition between his broad white teeth and the miserable mouth of his lordly rival, hoped to alarm him by his familiarity, and to obtain a triumph over the ladies by degrading them in ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... considerations in view surely a serious, thoughtful, and thorough study of the louse, in all its varieties and species, is neither belittling nor degrading, nor a waste of time. We venture to say, moreover, that more light will be thrown on the classification and morphology of insects by the study of the parasitic species, and other degraded, wingless forms that do not always live parasitically, especially of their embryology ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... under unhealthful conditions. Women and children were set to run the machines, and their strength was often cruelly overtaxed. Women and children were also employed in the coal mines, under terribly degrading conditions. One of the great functions of our modern governments has been to pass laws to protect the working men and women and to improve their condition. Germany has been particularly active in this sort of regulation, and has gone so far as ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... whence it comes, nor what it costs. If, at least, you had to justify your expenses, the excuse of some great passion, or of some object, were it absurd, ardently pursued! But I defy you to confess upon what degrading pleasures you lavish our humble economies. I defy you to tell us what you mean to do with the sum that you demand to-night,—that sum for which you would have our mother stoop to beg the assistance of a shop-keeper, to whom we would be compelled to reveal ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... the woman exterminating sexual love between man and woman, it would for the first time fully enfranchise it. The element of physical force and capture which dominated the most primitive sex relations, the more degrading element of seduction and purchase by means of wealth or material good offered to woman in our modern societies, would then give place to the untrammelled action of attraction and affection alone between the sexes, and sexual love, after its long pilgrimage in the deserts, ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... despised but though the stern voice of public opinion in England and elsewhere produced a reluctant suspension of massacre and pillage, the murderers and plunderers were still left unpunished, and even caressed and rewarded for their crimes; and whilst protestants in France suffered the most cruel and degrading pains and penalties for alleged trifling crimes, catholics, covered with blood, and guilty of numerous and horrid murders, ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... were of a satisfactory kind. He had succeeded, and he cared for nothing but success. When he thought of Sir Reginald Eversleigh, a contemptuous smile crossed his pale lips. "To work for such a creature as that," he said to himself, "would indeed be degrading; but he is only an accident in the ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... touching publicly on anything that had passed between himself and Undine had become unthinkable. Insensibly he had been subdued to the point of view about him, and the idea of calling on the law to repair his shattered happiness struck him as even more grotesque than it was degrading. Nevertheless, some contradictory impulse of his divided spirit made him resent, on the part of his mother and sister, a too-ready acceptance of his attitude. There were moments when their tacit assumption that his wife was banished and forgotten irritated him like the hushed tread of ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... troubadours drew a much sharper distinction between spiritual and sensual love. The latter was regarded as degrading and base (at least in principle) and woe to the man who held, or rather, avowed, another opinion. His reward was the contempt of every man and woman of culture. "I ask no more of my mistress than that she should ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... be cheaper to purchase the friendship of Algiers by paying a money-tribute, as had been done for some time by European nations, or to purchase the protection of those nations. It appears strange that suggestions so degrading to the character of a free and independent nation should not have ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... only wrought by horse-power,—an animal tread-mill in fact. Whether the horses working this were here on good behaviour, or not, I could not rightly ascertain, but certainly they were scampish-looking steeds, their physiognomical expression was low and dogged, such as one might expect from the degrading ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... I, of which we were speaking before is lighter still,—I mean the duty of degrading the offspring of the guardians when inferior, and of elevating into the rank of guardians the offspring of the lower classes, when naturally superior. The intention was, that, in the case of the citizens generally, ...
— The Republic • Plato
... uncontrollably into hysteria and tears. Here was Mrs. Croyle, a grown woman, standing in front of her like a mutinous obstinate child, looking like one too, talking like one and bidding Joan leave her Wub alone. Whence did she get that ridiculous name? It was all degrading ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... unhappy influence on the manners of our people produced by the existence of slavery among us. The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions—the most unremitting despotism on the one part and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do what he sees others do. If ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... you resign yourself to play a degrading part—in spite of the noblest face to be seen in Italy? Can you drop from the blue sky where you dwell, into the bed of a courtesan? In short, can you, an angel of refinement, of pure and spotless beauty, condescend to imagine what the love ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... on a table in the sitting-room beyond which extended other rooms that, in addition to being ugly, were dark. But Lennox had no degrading manias for comfort. Pending the great day he camped in these rooms, above which, on an upper storey was a duplex apartment which, if Margaret liked, ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... "most degrading experience of all, Hatszegi no longer attempts to conceal from his wife his outrageous liaisons with pretty peasant women. The thing has long been a byeword, though his wife knew nothing of it—but she knows it now. Nor ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... been hugely disgusted with his position, the sight of the girl seemed to have suddenly crystallized all those weeks of self-contempt into a sudden almost mad desire to escape what he considered his degrading and effeminating surroundings. One must bear with Jimmy and judge him leniently, for after all, notwithstanding his college diploma and physique, he was still but a boy and so while it is difficult for a mature and sober judgment to countenance his next step, if one can look back ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... him his word, but after leaving him he repented altogether of what he had said to him, perceiving how foolishly he had acted, as he might have revenged himself upon Camilla in some less cruel and degrading way. He cursed his want of sense, condemned his hasty resolution, and knew not what course to take to undo the mischief or find some ready escape from it. At last he decided upon revealing all to Camilla, and, as there was no want of opportunity for doing ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... co-worker, as one gentleman asks another, and here you are making these niggery motions! They are disgusting! They are defiling! They are beneath the dignity of one gentleman to another, sir! What makes it more degrading, I perceive by your mannerism that you assume a specious servility, sir, as if you would flatter ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... Gowan had not foreseen, that both Mr and Mrs Meagles were more liberal than before to their daughter, when their communication was only with her and her young child: and that his high spirit found itself better provided with money, without being under the degrading necessity of ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... his majesty's navy were directed to act as custom-house officers on the coast of America, as well as in the British Channel, but, from the complaints made, the Admiralty released them from a service which they considered as degrading to their situation. ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... "field hands" as the "mud sill," and all glad of any opportunity offered to rise above the despised position, the great wonder is that so many were willing to continue an occupation considered so degrading. The fact is, that it was to a very great extent simply a matter of accepting cheerfully the inevitable that held so many of the freedmen to the farms and ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... ordinary cur, who makes his place in the affections of his owner because he has attractive or useful qualities of mind. It appears to me, in a word, that our treatment of this noble animal, where he is bred for ornament, is in effect degrading. ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... a spark to gunpowder. The oaths, the insult, the whole degrading episode, combined to drive McRae out of the self-restraint he had imposed on himself. He took one step forward. With a wide sweep of the clenched fist he buffeted the smuggler on the ear. Taken by surprise, West went spinning against the ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... child—an infant! and now he was a man, and knew what life meant in its greatest and best. That was part of the wonder of this lady, with all her intense sensuousness and absence of what European nations call morality; there was yet nothing low or degrading in her influence, its tendency was to exalt and elevate into broad views and logical reasonings. Nothing small would ever again appeal to Paul. His whole outlook was vaster and more ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... conclude I would be half-mobbed by reporters; and as it was clear he had once been fond of me—hateful as I felt it even to admit the fact to myself—he might really have desired to save me annoyance and trouble. It was degrading, to be sure, even to think I owed anything of any sort to such a wretch as that murderer; yet in a certain corner of my heart I couldn't help being thankful to him. But how strange to feel I had come there on purpose to hunt ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... as they like," replied His Grace. "I do not know, no more do you, what would happen if this degrading instrument were employed, but what I do know is that a true English physician should cure his patients only ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... Nature requires no man to make proclamation of his doings and hat-makings; Nature forbids all men to make such. There is not a man or hat-maker born into the world but feels, or has felt, that he is degrading himself if he speak of his excellencies and prowesses, and supremacy in his craft: his inmost heart says to him, "Leave thy friends to speak of these; if possible, thy enemies to speak of these; but at all events, thy friends!" He feels that he is already a poor braggart; ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... little Brothers and Sisters of the Rich. Their set was quite different from ours. But when mamma died nearly two years ago, and I was alone, they did call, and Cousin Emily offered me a home. I was to give up all my work, of course, which she considered degrading, and was simply to make myself useful to her as a daughter of the house might do. That was ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... Ere I can fully to the fact agree; Valour and study may by order gain, By order sovereigns hold more steady reign; Through all the tribes of nature order runs, And rules around in systems and in suns: Still has the love of order found a place, With all that's low, degrading, mean, and base, With all that merits scorn, and all that meets disgrace - In the cold miser, of all change afraid; In pompous men in public seats obey'd; In humble placemen, heralds, solemn drones, ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... me!" exclaimed Thaddeus; "what a degrading system of deceit must govern the lives of ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... "The awe that even the principal ministers felt in the presence of Napoleon would not be credited in England. His courtiers literally trembled before him. 'In what sort of a humour is the Emperor to-day?' was a frequent question in Paris.... How I have blushed for the adulation, the degrading, I may almost say the blasphemous flattery that has been offered before the throne of Napoleon by men of the highest rank. But perhaps I ought to make some allowance for those who had witnessed the horrors of the Revolution. Can, however, ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... all future importunity, painful to me, and, all circumstances considered, degrading to Sir George, whose honor is very dear to me, though I am obliged to refuse him that hand which he surely cannot wish to receive without my heart, I am compelled to say, that, without an idea of ever being united to Colonel Rivers, I will ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... these sad evidences of the degraded condition of the people. I wandered around and examined the idols, most of which had in front of them, and in some instances on their flat heads, offerings of tobacco, food, red cotton, and other things. My heart was sad at these evidences of such degrading idolatry, and I was deeply impressed with my need of wisdom and aid from on high, so that when I met the people who here worshipped these idols I might so preach Christ and Him crucified that they would be constrained to accept Him ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... or revolting, fell almost by its own weight. The more solid materials it contained were first transmuted into allegories, and then expressed in the language of science and philosophy. The original intuitions, which had been encumbered with degrading superstitions and deadening ceremonies, again declared their power and their persistence, though sometimes under disguises which rendered them hard ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... thinks that because the first emigrant in our family dates back a couple of hundred years or so we are something rather special in the way of human beings, and I know very well that he thought it most degrading for a daughter of his to be in such a miserable place. Of course it is really very clean, Aunt Jennie, because Yves has been trained on a man o' war, where the men spend nearly all of their time scrubbing ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... therefore, sentenced to the severest and most degrading punishment known in the institution—to the so-called "monk's penalty." That is to say, the future young soldier, in the coarse woollen garment of a mendicant friar, was on his knees, to devour his meal from an earthen vessel in the middle of the ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... for two years. If he attempted to escape from servitude, he was to be branded again and made a slave for life; if still refractory he could be sentenced as a felon. The intention of the Act was merciful, its effect probably more degrading than that of the superseded statutes. At any rate, it failed entirely of its purpose and ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... being bites; but we not must jump to a conclusion that the teeth which inflicted them were human. It is a strange case, and one which I feel assured must give you all much uneasiness, as, indeed, it gave me; but, as I said before, I will not let my judgment give in to the fearful and degrading superstition which all the circumstances connected with this strange ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... honestly anxious that their country shall in days to come show a fine and happy race, are strangely blind to the laws of heredity. They carelessly admit those whose children to the third and fourth generation must be a degrading influence. On the other hand, the Colony gains greatly by the regular and deliberate importation of English experts. Every year a small but important number of these are engaged and brought out. They vary from bishops and professors to skilled artizans and drill-instructors; ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... do you think so? [Laughing loudly] It is a good thing Darwin can't hear what you are saying! He would be furious with you for degrading the human race. Soon, thanks to your kindness, only invalids and hypochondriacs will be ...
— Ivanoff - A Play • Anton Checkov
... bills, the men would deteriorate.... Naturally there were differences,—"squabbles," as she called them; but she would have been horrified if any one had suggested that these petty squabbles, the state of mind they produced or indicated, were infinitely more degrading, more deteriorating to them both, than adultery. It never entered her mind that either she or her husband could be unfaithful, that Falkner could ever care for any other woman than her. "Why, we married ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... modern Italy; and was infinitely more favorable to the development of the mental powers than the far- extended and sluggish empires of Asia. Lastly, a familiar intercourse with the Europeans served to mitigate in the Spanish Arabs some of the more degrading superstitions incident to their religion, and to impart to them nobler ideas of the independence and moral dignity of man, than are to be found in the slaves ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... passion which excites no other emotion than that of aversion or contempt, because it is natural to believe that when so degrading a vice takes possession of one's soul it destroys every spark of generosity and fills it with meanness. Accordingly, Gustave had a long and fearful conflict with himself in order to subdue this instinctive ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience
... promises made to them as elephant-hunters. I had no objection to their trying to better their condition, but was annoyed at finding that they would not tell their intentions, but ran away as if I were using compulsion. I have learned more of the degrading nature of slavery of late than I ever conceived before. Our 20 millions were well spent in ridding ourselves of the incubus, and I think we ought to assist our countrymen in the West Indies to import free labor from India.... ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... may say that whenever the moral judgment of the community at large does not brand an offence as sordid and degrading, and does not feel the offence to be one which destroys its respect for the personal character of the prisoner, it may there be held that prison treatment ought to be different from that awarded ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... that these soul-blasting and hope-killing exposures—so degrading to the criminal, so demoralizing to the community,—these foul, in-human blots on our fair and dearly loved Puritan Lord's Day, were never frequent, nor did the form of punishment obtain for a long time. In 1681 two women were sentenced to sit during service on a high stool in the middle ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... pity, no mercy, nor compunction towards her, such as arose in many men's bosoms after a little time, and have been rife ever since both in writers and readers. The Detection is without ruth, and assumes the most criminal and degrading motives throughout. Its intention clearly is to convince Scotland, England, and the world of Mary's utter depravity, and the impossibility of any excuse for her or argument in her favour. The strong and fiery indignation in it ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... depth of poverty which corrupts soul and body alike. But might not the girls be somehow put into the way of earning a decent livelihood? Ida knew so well the effect upon them of the occupations to which they mostly turned, occupations degrading to womanhood, blighting every hope. Even to give them the means of remaining at home would not greatly help them; there they still breathed a vile atmosphere. To remove them altogether was the only efficient way, and ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... poet had to live by patronage and not by the public. In a pecuniary point of view his subservience to men in high position was often successful. An almost universal custom, it was not regarded as degrading; but the poet must have been peculiarly constituted who ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... which the stillness of the evening produces on the mind. There is none of that rioting or confusion by which an assembly of the middling classes in England is too often disgraced; no quarrelling or intoxication even among the poorest ranks, and little appearance of that degrading want which destroys the pleasing idea of public happiness. The people appear all to enjoy a certain share of individual prosperity; their intercourse is conducted with unbroken harmony, and they seem to resign ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... is such love as Vaughan's that Honorias value. Because a woman's nature is not proof against deterioration, because a large and long-continued infusion of gross blood, and perhaps even the monotonous pressure of rough, pitiless, degrading circumstances, may displace, eat out, rub off the delicacy of a soul, may change its texture to unnatural coarseness and scatter ashes for beauty, women do exist, victims rather than culprits, coarse against their nature, hard, material, grasping, the saddest sight ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... wherein the proudest of us all feels himself to be nothing more than he is: but I find myself unable to manage it with decorum; these details are of a species of horror so nauseous and disgusting, they are so degrading to the sufferers and to the hearers, they are so humiliating to human nature itself, that, on better thoughts, I find it more advisable to throw a pall over this hideous object, and to leave ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... reasoning. It came so to speak, of itself. The possibility of a lay career never so much as occurred to me. Having adopted with the utmost seriousness and docility the principles of my teachers, and having brought myself to consider all commercial and mercenary pursuits as inferior and degrading, and only fit for those who had failed in their studies, it was only natural that I should wish to be what they were. They were my patterns in life, and my sole ambition was to be like them, professor at the College of Treguier, ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... oath through his ground teeth; he would have liked to scratch the ashes of his father from their resting-place, and wreak his vengeance on them, whenever this degrading fact ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... daily life, then will the maiden of a pure heart believe that her dream is real, and that the man of her choice is pure; whose heart is free and open as her own; all of whose thoughts may be avowed; who is incapable of wronging the innocent, or still further degrading the fallen,—a man, in short, whose brute nature is entirely subject to the impulses of his better self. Such men there are in countless numbers, who have kept themselves free from stain, and who can look the purest maiden in the eye ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton |
