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Corrupt   Listen
verb
Corrupt  v. i.  
1.
To become putrid or tainted; to putrefy; to rot.
2.
To become vitiated; to lose purity or goodness.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Corrupt" Quotes from Famous Books



... Rome teach, though nearly for a thousand years after Christ came Christian ministers, whom they acknowledged as belonging to their communion, were allowed to marry like other men; and certainly those who did so were less corrupt than the celibates who, having no family ties, became the servile ...
— Villegagnon - A Tale of the Huguenot Persecution • W.H.G. Kingston

... great hindrances to a steady fixing, by hope, on God; there are good frames of heart, enlargements in duties, with other the like, that have through the darkness, and the legality of our spirits been great hindrances to Israel. Not that their natural tendency is to turn us aside; but our corrupt reason getting the upper hand, and bearing the stroke in judgment, converts our minds and consciences to the making of wrong conclusions upon them. 4. Besides, as the mind and conscience, by reason, is oft deluded to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... of a woman getting once out of bounds and then stopping short of no excess, and became boundlessly corrupt. There was no horror we two could possibly commit that ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous

... uncle was forgetting the principles for which he professed to stand as a public man? Was it just possible that this fellow, McCorquodale, knew what he was talking about? Wasn't it men of that stamp who became the tools for corrupt practices—the boodlers, the heelers who did the actual ballot-stuffing, the personating at the polls, the bribing? Did McCorquodale ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse

... we ought to hold firmly and assert, especially we bishops who preside in the Church, that we may prove the episcopate itself to be one and undivided. Let no one deceive the brotherhood by a falsehood; let no one corrupt the truth by a perfidious prevarication. The episcopate is one, each part of which is held by each one in its entirety. The Church, also, is one which is spread abroad far and wide into a multitude by an increase of fruitfulness. As there are many rays of the sun, but one light, ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... him.[1093] Through the parable Jesus answered His own question as to whether the baptism of John was of God or of man. The Lord's affirmation, "Verily I say unto you, That the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you," was condemnatory of the corrupt though sanctimonious polity of the hierarchy throughout. It was not wholly without intimation of possible reformation, however. He did not say that the repentant sinners should enter, and the priestly hypocrites stand forever ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... number; the victories of the consuls, and the rapine of the praetors, were sufficient to adorn Rome with all the master-pieces of Greece and Italy. They introduced the fashion of having a taste for the beautiful works of Greek art. At a later period, such was the corrupt state of taste, that painting was almost left to be practiced by slaves, and the painter was estimated by the quantity of work that he ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... Hanky? I am convinced; I have not another word to say. The man is a true Erewhonian; he has our corrupt ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler

... speak. The parts are capriciously put together: filled, and even crammed, with ornaments of apparently all ages: concluding with the Grecian mixture introduced in the reign of Francis I. The buttresses are, however, generally, lofty and airy. In the midst of this complicated and corrupt style of architecture, the tower and spire rise like a structure built by preternatural hands; and I am not sure that, at this moment, I can recollect any thing of equal beauty and effect in the whole range of ecclesiastical edifices in ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... we let our selfish personal interests govern and mold our public and social action. Altruism will not heal the inward sore, but at best only put on its surface a plausible plaster which leaves the inward still corrupt; for altruism is a policy and not an impulse, proceeding not from the heart but from the intelligence—the policy of enlightened selfishness. It has already been tried thoroughly, and proved thoroughly inefficient; it is the ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... solemn and a soul so pure a man less corrupt would have faltered; but without a moment's hesitation this depraved, remorseless creature ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss

... company, another person who stands close to him is buying the bonds of laborers and mechanics, widows and orphans, at little more than fifty per cent of their face value? My friends, when you find a corrupt lawyer and a rapacious banker in collusion, what chance have the ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson

... faculties moderation is preferable to abstinence. It is better to direct them toward the ends they are intended to accomplish that to stifle and suppress them. But the thirst for intoxicating drink is unnatural. It creates abnormal cravings; it produces diseased conditions which corrupt and destroy the very powers of nerve and brain on which the faculties of reason and control depend. "Touch not, taste not, handle not," is the only rule that can insure one against the fearful ravages of this beastly ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde

... everything she possesses in the world. My grandfather, although I had conducted myself from the first with the utmost circumspection, is full of jealousy and mistrust, and suspected me of loving her. He said nothing to her, but attacked me in private, and charged me with designing to corrupt the fidelity to himself—observe his selfishness— of a young creature who was his only disinterested and faithful companion. The upshot of it was that I was to renounce her or be renounced by him. Of course, I was not going to yield to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... it be possible that a world which rather neglected Barry Lyndon was devoted to Marchionesses and Milliners? Lady Fanny is represented as having editors and reviewers at her feet; she sits among the flowers, like the Sirens, and around her are the bones of critics corrupt in death. She is puffed for the sake of her bouquets, her dinners, her affabilities and condescensions. She gives a reviewer a great garnet pin, adorned wherewith he paces the town. Her adorers compare her to "him who sleeps by Avon." In one of Mr. Black's novels there is a lady ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang

... Jasher, the "Book of the Upright." Many modern writers attribute its authorship to David himself; others reject this view; all agree in regarding it as extremely ancient. The title, "Song of the Bow," is based on the possibly corrupt text ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... established. It was not, therefore, professedly on a religious account that he had suffered deprivation and imprisonment, but on an obscure charge of having participated in some traitorous or rebellious design: a charge brought against him, in the opinion of most, falsely, and through the corrupt procurement of Northumberland, to whose project of erecting the bishopric of Durham into a county palatine for himself, the deprivation of Tonstal, and the abolition of the see by act of parliament, were indispensable preliminaries. This meek and ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... of the bondholders. The army may be paid regularly, but the lot of the fellaheen and inhabitants of the Soudan is the same oppressed lot as before. The prisons are as full of unfortunates as ever they were, the local tribunals are as corrupt, and Tewfik will always oppose their being affiliated to the mixed tribunals of Alexandria, and thus afford protection to the judges of the local tribunals, should they adjudicate justly. Tewfik is essentially one of the Ameer class. I believe he would be willing to ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... self-disgust. His muddy past returned upon him, mingled, as always, with that invincible respect for her, and belief in something high and unstained in the depths of his own nature, to which his weakened and corrupt will was yet unable to give ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... by Europeans due chiefly to the fierce resistance of the native Caribs. France ceded possession to Great Britain in 1763, which made the island a colony in 1805. In 1980, two years after independence, Dominica's fortunes improved when a corrupt and tyrannical administration was replaced by that of Mary Eugenia CHARLES, the first female prime minister in the Caribbean, who remained in office for 15 years. Some 3,000 Carib Indians still living on Dominica are the ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... the home-heart, and lies in the parlor just to show their visiting friends that they have a bible! Go into the nursery and other private apartments of that home, and you see no bible, while you behold piles of romance and filthy novels,—those exponents of a vitiated taste and a corrupt society, suited to destroy the young forever;—whose outward appearance indicates a studied perusal by both parents and children, and shows perhaps that they have been wept over; and whose inward substance must ever nauseate healthy reason, as well as poison ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips

... Protarchus, and so we are to say (are we?) that there is no difference in pleasures, but that they are all alike; and the examples which have just been cited do not pierce our dull minds, but we go on arguing all the same, like the weakest and most inexperienced reasoners? (Probably corrupt.) ...
— Philebus • Plato

... the fourth century of the era in which we live; and maintained such a strong influence, that for century after century the whole land was in darkness and ignorance; and though the Christian religion has remained, it is in a debased and corrupt form. Europe knew nothing of Abyssinia worth the name for ages. Then a princess of Judah, Judith, prosecuted designs upon poor Abyssinia, sought out the members of the reigning family, and would have caused each one to be slain. Fortunately, a young prince was carried off to a place ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston

... had a corrupt form of idolatry which came from the Persians, and worshipped not one, but a ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 22, April 8, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... common cry of curs, whose breath I hate As reek of rotten fens, whose love I prize As the dead carcasses of unburied men That do corrupt the ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy

... were the craft gilds. [Footnote: The craft gild was also called a company, or a mistery, or metier (French), or Zunft (German).] Springing into prominence in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the craft gild sometimes, as in Germany, voiced a popular revolt against corrupt and oligarchical merchant gilds, and sometimes most frequently so in England—worked quite harmoniously with the merchant gild, to which its own members belonged. In common with the merchant gild, the craft gild had religious and social aspects, and like the merchant gild it insisted on righteous ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... could rouse the fancy, or affect the inner thought. A great gulf was fixed between them and it,—a gulf which for three centuries, at least, charity alone could bridge over. It was not till near the fourth century that heathenism began, to any marked extent, to modify the character and to corrupt the purity ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... Archelaus as having occurred 'quite lately' is only a fiction, probably suggested by the Gorgias, where the story of Archelaus is told, and a similar phrase occurs;—ta gar echthes kai proen gegonota tauta, k.t.l. There are several passages which are either corrupt or extremely ill-expressed. But there is a modern interest in the subject of the dialogue; and it is a good example of a short spurious work, which may be attributed to the second or ...
— Eryxias • An Imitator of Plato

... a Boston family and a gentleman of means. He took great interest in our experiment and its hoped-for results. I have not words to praise his kindness, and his gentlemanly manner and bearing towards us all. He looked on life from a high standpoint. Wealth did not corrupt him. He was a Christian in large heartedness and philanthropy. He recognized his Maker's image in all men; the garment he saw through; the color he saw through; and he desired above all things the education, progress and culture of ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman

... outward shows be least themselves;[82] The world is still deceiv'd with ornament. In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt, But, being season'd with a gracious voice,[83] Obscures the show of evil? In religion, What damned error, but some sober brow Will bless it and approve it[84] with a text, Hiding the grossness with lair ornament? There is ...
— The Merchant of Venice [liberally edited by Charles Kean] • William Shakespeare

... powers of reproduction enabling them, when a part decays, to throw it off, and to supply its place by a new and vigorous vegetation, so it is with the Church—the spiritual vine which the Lord has planted. Its government may degenerate into a corrupt tyranny by which its most precious liberties may be invaded or destroyed, but the freemen of the Lord are not bound to submit to any such domination. Were even all the ecclesiastical rulers to become traitors to the King of Zion, the Church would not therefore perish. The living members ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... humanity, and dignity of mind, which formerly characterized this nation. War suspends the rules of moral obligation, and what is long suspended is in danger of being totally abrogated. Civil wars strike deepest of all into the manners of the people. They vitiate their politics; they corrupt their morals; they pervert even the natural taste and relish of equity and justice. By teaching us to consider our fellow-citizens in an hostile light, the whole body of our nation becomes gradually less dear to us. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... the ninth century. Lucian, the Greek satirist, also utilized the same material in a condensed form in his 'Lucius, or the Ass.' But Apuleius greatly expanded the legend, introduced into it numerous episodes, and made it the background of a vivid picture of the manners and customs of a corrupt age. Yet underneath its lively portraiture there runs a current of mysticism at variance with the naive rehearsal of the hero's adventures, and this has tempted critics to find a hidden meaning in the story. Bishop Warburton, in his 'Divine Legation ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... holy and refined souls is potent also with the multitude, and the religion of the multitude is ever vulgar and abnormal; it ever will be tinctured with fanaticism and superstition while men are what they are. A people's religion is ever a corrupt religion. If you are to have a Catholic Church you must put up with fish of every kind, guests good and bad, vessels of gold, vessels of earth. You may beat religion out of men, if you will, and then their excesses will take a different direction; but if you make ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church

... vengeance on your tyrants and oppressors! The education of the masses means the downfall of false creeds,—the ruin of all false priests! For it is only through the ignorance of the many that tyrannical dominion is given into the hands of the few! Slavish submission to a corrupt government would be impossible if we all refused to be slaves. O friends, O brothers, throw off your chains! Break down your prison doors! Some good you have done already—be brave and strong to do more! Press forward fearlessly and strive for liberty and justice! ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... not without foundation. Such are the morals, or rather the manners, of the lower order of French wives. Gallantry is, in fact, as much in fashion, and as generally prevalent through all orders, as in the most corrupt aera of the monarchy—perhaps, indeed, more so; as religion, though manifestly reviving, has not yet recovered ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney

... and the years, Among new men, strange faces, other minds." And slowly answered Arthur from the barge: "The old order changeth, yielding place to new, And God fulfils himself in many ways, Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. Comfort thyself: what comfort is in me? I have lived my life, and that which I have done May He within himself make pure! but thou, If thou shouldst never see my face again, Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer Than this world dreams ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... is not charged with a royalty as is customary in other gold-producing countries, but with 5 per cent. only upon the net profits; but here an intolerant and corrupt domination proves much more prejudicial than a ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas

... horses; consequently having continual access to Charles, to whom he made himself highly agreeable, as being heir to the property; giving him such insights into the worst side of sporting life, and such truthful accounts of low life in Sydney, as would have gone far to corrupt a lad of far ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... been rejected by the House of Lords. It is needless to say that Captain Yorke stood in the Tory interest. In his address and speeches he expressed himself in favour of a moderate scheme of reform which would abolish such constituencies as were proved to be saleable and corrupt, and as ready to support a proper extension of the franchise. But he refused altogether to sacrifice the agricultural interest to that of the manufacturer, and took his stand upon the necessity of affording protection to the farmer by the ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury

... regret. For Mrs. Guthrie Brimston's vulgarity and coarseness of mind were always balanced by her undoubted propriety of conduct, and her faults were altogether preferable to the exceeding polish and refinement which covered the absolutely corrupt life of a new acquaintance Colonel Colquhoun had made at this time, a Mrs. Drinkworthy, who would not have lingered alone with him anywhere in public, but dressed sumptuously at his expense the whole season. The different ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... Latins expounded the bible, for many parts, in Latin, to Latin men, among which they dwelt, and Latin was a common language to their people about Rome, and beyond, and on this half, as English is common language to our people, and yet this day the common people in Italy speak Latin corrupt, as true men say, that han been in Italy; and the number of translators out of Greek into Latin passeth man's knowing, as Austin witnesseth in the 2nd book of Christian Teaching, and saith thus, "the translators out of Hebrew ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various

... striking picture of the endless falsities of a Parisian woman of innocent Madonna-like beauty. It was dramatized and played at the Vaudeville in 1889, but without much success. 'Le Disciple' is an elaborate attempt to prove that present scientific theories tend to corrupt manners and to encourage pessimism. In 'Cosmopolis,' a study of foreign life in Italy, Bourget shows that the same passions ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... spirit-rapping, have crept, like astrology under the Roman Empire, into the void left by religious faith. Wealth has been pouring into England, and luxury with wealth. Our public journals proclaim, as you may perhaps have seen, that the society of our capital is unusually corrupt. The comic as well as the serious signs of the reaction appear everywhere. A tone of affected cynicism pervades a portion of our high intellect; and a pretended passion for prize-fighting shows that men of culture ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various

... to the character of angels. That tinkers are not alone in their practice of multiplying the blemishes on which their healing art is invoked, seems broadly illustrated by the practice of verbal critics. Those who have applied themselves to the ancient classics, are notorious for their corrupt dealings in this way. And Coleridge founded an argument against the whole body upon the confessedly dreadful failure of Bentley, prince of all the order, when applied to a case where most of us ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... mother was born," Mrs. Klein said. "All the good ones were, all the ones who tried to entertain instead of shock or corrupt." ...
— The Mighty Dead • William Campbell Gault

... the marriage is mentioned in due course, with Dorothy's comments. His leadership of the "Country Party," when the reins of government were taken from the discredited Cabal, is not matter for these pages, neither are we much concerned to know that he was greedy of wealth and honours, corrupt himself, and a corrupter of others. This is the conventional character of all statesmen of all dates and in all ages, reflected in the mirror of envious opposition; no one believes the description to be true. Judged by the moral ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry

... riches were his, which were more precious in the sight of good men, and he showed himself incorruptible, and not to be bought at any price. It were easy for him to have turned a deluge of wealth into his house; but he knew that gifts insensibly corrupt,—that the specious pretext of gratitude is the snare in which the greatest souls allow themselves to be caught,—that a man covered with favors has difficulty in setting himself against injustice in all its forms, and that a magistrate divided between a ...
— The Best Portraits in Engraving • Charles Sumner

... her head as in bland compassion for such an idea. "It isn't a payment, you goose—it's a bribe! I've withstood him, these trying weeks, as a rock the tempest; but he wrote that and left it there, the fiend, to tempt me—to corrupt me!" ...
— The Outcry • Henry James

... balanced any loss of Irish members; but in Ireland the priest party were coaxed by the Whigs, and concessions made to them unworthy the dignity of imperial administration. The whig government in Ireland was utterly unprincipled and corrupt. At the close of the year a great law case established that in a singular manner. The case is given in law reports as Birch versus Somerville, Bart. Birch was a Dublin newspaper proprietor; Somerville, Bart., the Irish ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... learnt to interpret for myself the imprecating verses of the Psalms of my inward and spiritual enemies, the old Adam and all his corrupt menials; and thus I am no longer, as I used to be, stopped or scandalized by such passages as vindictive ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... wonderfully popular with the Roman people. When they placed his statue in the Temple of Hygieia, they did not enumerate his campaigns or triumphs in the inscription on the base, but wrote what we may translate as follows: "This statue was erected to Cato because, when Censor, finding the state of Rome corrupt and degenerate, he, by introducing wise regulations and ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long

... not bear any position of any kind for more than a few minutes at a time. Bed was a place of torture; but if he got up, he cried for it again, at least for a change of suffering. At the end of three months he died. His stomach, duodenum, and liver were all in the same corrupt state as his brother's, and more than that, the surface of his body was burnt away. This, said the doctors; was no dubious sign of poisoning; although, they added, it sometimes happened that a 'cacochyme' produced ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... that course, which, taken apart from those other collateral injunctions, must needs be vain and fruitless. For if they fell upon one kind of strictness, unless their care were equal to regulate all other things of like aptness to corrupt the mind, that single endeavour they knew would be but a fond labour; to shut and fortify one gate against corruption, and be necessitated to leave others round about ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton

... permitted, through gross defect in the laws, to build up interests in dealing out poisons to the public, are they to be compensated, like the purveyors of wholesome products, when the public decrees that their destructive activities shall cease? Because a corrupt legislature once gave away valuable franchises, are we and our children, and our children's children, forever to pay tribute, in the shape of interest on compensation funds, to the heirs of the shameless grantees? Because the land of a country ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various

... For, gentlemen, this is an age in which the principles of men who utter public opinion dominate the world. It makes no difference what is done for the time being. After the struggle is over the jury will sit, and nobody can corrupt that jury. ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson

... form of the coarse, common wish to have a finger in the pie and a share in the work of saving oneself, as a drowning man will sometimes half drown his rescuer by trying to use his own limbs. These tendencies that Paul fought, and which he feared would corrupt the Corinthians from their simple and exclusive reliance on Christ, and Christ alone, as the ground and author of their salvation, are perennial in human nature, and we have to be on our guard for ever and for ever against them. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... you realize that the principle reason the British-American financiers have sent you to fight us for, is because we were sensible enough to repudiate the war debts of the bloody, corrupt old Czar? ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore

... inducing advantage, a dishonest gain, then the act was a larceny." And, in another instruction, he told the jury, "that if they believed, from the evidence, that the prisoner, before receiving the slaves on board, imbued their minds with discontent, persuaded them to go with him, and, by corrupt influences and inducements, caused them to come to his ship, and then took and carried them down the river, then ...
— Personal Memoir Of Daniel Drayton - For Four Years And Four Months A Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) In Washington Jail • Daniel Drayton

... flooded with obscene pictures and immodest representations which corrupt our youths? If the agents of Satan employ means so vile for a bad end; if they are cunning enough to pour through the senses into the hearts of the unwary the insidious poison of sin, by placing before them lascivious portraits, in God's name, why should not we sanctify the souls ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons

... he can infallibly put his finger on the cause of death, and, in cases where poisoning is suspected, the nature of the poison used. Now all this supposed exactness and infallibility is imaginary; and to treat a doctor as if his mistakes were necessarily malicious or corrupt malpractices (an inevitable deduction from the postulate that the doctor, being omniscient, cannot make mistakes) is as unjust as to blame the nearest apothecary for not being prepared to supply you with sixpenny-worth of the elixir of life, or the ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw

... understand me; he asked me if I were mad; frightened, I cried, 'But, my God, what do you wish to become of me now? If you have no pity on me, have at least some pity on your child!' 'What a horror!' cried he, raising his hands toward heaven. 'How, wretch! You have the audacity to accuse me of being corrupt enough to descend to a girl of your class! you have effrontery enough to accuse me!—I, who have a hundred times repeated before the most respectable witnesses that you would be ruined, vile wanton. Leave my house this moment—I thrust ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue

... punishment of some of the parties whose conduct was complained of." The broad result appears to have been that the guilty for the most part escaped punishment, unless, indeed, some of them lost their positions, of which no certain information exists; but the corrupt combination was broken up, and measures were adopted to prevent the recurrence of the same iniquities. Upon Nelson himself the effect was twofold. His energy and intelligence could not fail to impress the powerful men with whom he was in this way ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... Were it not true its very boldness and apparent foolishness would be its refutation. And what would be the character of mind that could invent such a thought? What depths of wickedness! What cruelty! What callousness! The spring from which such a statement, if false, could rise must be corrupt indeed. But how different in fact! What severe righteousness! What depths of holiness! What elevated morality! What warmth of tender affection! What clear reasoning! Every word that he has written testifies that he has not attempted to deceive. Paul was ...
— Studies in Prophecy • Arno C. Gaebelein

... cried to his esquires, "Who are these, and what is this distressing spectacle?" They, unable to conceal what he had with his own eyes seen, answered, "These be human sufferings, which spring from corrupt matter, and from a body full of evil humours." The young prince asked, "Are these the fortune of all men?" They answered, "Not of all, but of those in whom the principle of health is turned away by ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus

... prizes, which are drawn out of wheels, one of which contains the numbers of the tickets, and the other the corresponding blanks and prizes. Besides the consideration that this, as well as all other kinds of gambling for money, tends to corrupt the public morals, it is also to be considered that the purchasers of the tickets are never permitted to play the game on fair and equal ground. The world neither ever saw, nor ever will see, a perfectly fair lottery; or one in which the whole gain compensated the whole loss; because the undertaker ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 1: Curiosities of the Old Lottery • Henry M. Brooks

... when England is very subtle. She thought that because our politics have become largely financial that they had become wholly financial; that because our aristocrats had become pretty cynical that they had become entirely corrupt. They could not seize the subtlety by which a rather used-up English gentleman might sell a coronet when he would not sell a fortress; might lower the public standards and yet ...
— The Barbarism of Berlin • G. K. Chesterton

... this consecrated shroud! Let us learn from him to repulse all but the highest ambition, let us try to concentrate our labor upon efforts which will leave more lasting effects than the vain leading of the fashions of the passing hour. Let us renounce the corrupt spirit of the times in which we live, with all that is not worthy of art, all that will not endure, all that does not contain in itself some spark of that eternal and immaterial beauty, which it is the task of art to reveal and unveil as the condition of its own glory! Let us remember ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt

... natives crossed themselves and said their prayers to a major-general in the United States Army! It is the only instance, I believe, on record, where a major-general has been raised to the dignity of a saint without even being dead. St. George of England, we are told, was originally a corrupt army contractor of Cappadocia, but he was not canonised until long after his death, when the memory of his contracts was no more. For Major-General Dix was reserved the peculiar privilege of being at the same time United States Minister ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan

... finest fellows I ever knew—one of those beings whose meteor-like flame traverses our path, and leaves an imperishable recollection of its brilliancy.... I have often held him up as an example to be followed of scrupulous exactness, and of a probity, I fear, alas! too uncompromising in these corrupt times." ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper

... a master in the construction of dialogue. Inaccurate observation defeated him here as it defeated him in so many other enterprises of his. He even failed to notice that the man who talks corrupt English six days in the week must and will talk it on the seventh, and can't help himself. In the Deerslayer story he lets Deerslayer talk the showiest kind of book-talk sometimes, and at other times the basest of base dialects. For instance, when some one asks him if he ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... creatures of Madam the Countess, put about me. Oh Philander, what can I do? Thy advice, or I am lost: but how, alas, shall I either convey these to thee, or receive any thing from thee, unless some god of love, in pity of our miseries, should offer us his aid? I will try to corrupt my new boy, I see good nature, pity and generosity in his looks, he is well born too, ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn

... 'There is no refuge or asylum but with the Almighty; from God we came, and to God we must return; but if you put us to death, you will do it wrongfully, for the treacherous vizier hath accused me falsely, and he alone is guilty.' She then informed us of his having endeavoured to corrupt her by rich presents, and that she had put his messengers ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... Reform was foiled, as Burke put it, because the turnspit in the king's kitchen was a member of parliament. Such sinecures and the pensions on the civil list or the Irish establishment provided the funds by which the king could build up a personal influence, which was yet occult, irresponsible, and corrupt. The measure passed by Burke in 1782[2] made a beginning in the removal ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... to a Malay's heart lies through his pocket. Market place and hideous women. Beauties of the Harems. Present population. Cholera. Exports. Former Chinese pepper plantations. Good water supply. Nobles corrupt; lower classes not. The late Sultan Mumim. The present Sultan. Kampongs, or parishes and guilds. Methods of fishing: Kelongs; Rambat; peculiar mode of prawn-catching; Serambau; Pukat; hook and line; tuba fishing. Sago. Tobacco; its growth ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher

... Persian preface by the Editor, Ahmed al-Shirwani (A.D. 1814), was cut short at the end of the first two hundred Nights, and thus made room for Sir William Hay Macnaghten's Edition (4 vols. royal 4to) of 1839-42. This ("Mac."), as by far the least corrupt and the most complete, has been assumed for my basis with occasional reference to the Breslau Edition ("Bres.") wretchedly edited from a hideous Egyptian MS. by Dr. Maximilian Habicht (1825-43). The Bayrut Text "Alif-Leila we Leila" (4 ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... might give way in a moment of weakness to the temptations of a corrupt nature, sought relief in suicide, which was called the endura. There were two forms for the sick heretic, suffocation and fasting. The candidate for death was asked whether he desired to be a martyr or a confessor. If he chose to be a martyr, they placed a handkerchief or a pillow over his ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard

... "Your mind is so corrupt that you cannot conceive of an honest friendship, even between near relations. You fill me with repulsion—I measured the depth of your degeneracy at Pisa. That is why I left you. I wanted to breathe in an uninfected atmosphere. My cousin is a person of remarkable ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... proved against them, many charges broke down under inquiry, and, as time went on, the official class saw that their interest lay in condoning rather than in punishing scandals. Some of the worst offenders, such as the greedy and corrupt Adam of Stratton, were never restored to office;[2] but Hengham, the chief justice of the King's Bench, was soon reinstated. There were not enough good lawyers in England to make it prudent for Edward to dispense with ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout

... against, and to defeat which you would unite hostile elements? Is it to defeat these ideas that you would risk scenes of violence in the House, or the subversion of the constitution by the Senate of the United States? Is it to defeat this noble policy that you would longer trust a broken-down, corrupt and demoralized administration? Is it for this that you would continue in power a party that, by a long enjoyment of the patronage of the government, has ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... advantages are that no convicts have been brought to Western Australia to corrupt the manners of either sex, or to lead them astray by their vicious example; and that a great want of labour has been always felt, so that any assistance that could have been procured from the natives would have been a material benefit to ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey

... wind? No! the sweetest winds of earth could not have drawn such language from the corrupt and frenzied chords of my spirit. No demon whispered it!" exclaimed Helen, still gazing upwards. "Was it a heavenly warning for me, the most miserable outcast on the wide earth?" The mad tempest was dispersed; it rolled back its sullen clouds from her soul; and, with a trembling cry for mercy, ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey

... believe yourself guilty?" I demanded, with horror. "O novice of yesterday, how corrupt art thou today! Because you weep, you fondly imagine yourself innocent? What you consider the evidence of your conscience is only remorse; and what murderer does not experience it? If your virtue cries out, is it not because it feels the approach of death? O wretch! ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset

... Pennsylvania, a bitter Anglophobist. Mr. Ingersoll, in February, made a savage attack upon the Ashburton negotiation, the treaty of Washington, and upon Mr. Webster personally, alleging that as Secretary of State he had been guilty of a variety of grave misdemeanors, including a corrupt use of the public money. Some of these charges, those relating to the payment of McLeod's counsel by our government, to instructions to the Attorney-General to take charge of McLeod's defence, and to a threat by Mr. Webster that if McLeod were not released New York would ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge

... for gathering for Robin Hood, a traytour, and a theif, to put out a preacher; to have his office lesse esteemed; to preferre Robin Hood before the ministration of God's word; and all this hath come of unpreaching prelates. This realme hath been ill provided for, that it hath had such corrupt judgments in it, to prefer Robin Hood to God's word."—Bishop Latimer's sixth ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... that a want of balance of mind, very common among men, leads them to judge of what they do not know, and not to judge of what they do know. They, as St. Jude declares, blaspheme in what they know not, and corrupt themselves in what they know.[2] They are blind to what passes in their own homes, but preternaturally clear-sighted to all happening in ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus

... the Dablers of our time contrive, that has no weight nor wheel to move the mind, nor indeed nothing but an empty sound; she shall have cloaths, but not made by Geometry; Horses and Coach, but of no immortal Race: I will not have a Scholar in my house above a gentle Reader; they corrupt the foolish Women with their subtle Problems; I'le have my house call'd ignorance, to fright prating Philosophers ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher - Vol. 2 of 10: Introduction to The Elder Brother • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... railed against those pursuits of life which made men rich and prosperous. He began to think with the French demagogue, that "property was a theft," and to regard with great favor the socialistic doctrines then coming into vogue. The American social system he pronounced corrupt and rotten, and deserving to be uprooted and subverted. And this was the rustic boy, who, a few months before, had left his home so full of hope, and ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage

... confronted, and bribed the Auditor with a hundred ducats. By this means Reitz only suffered a year's imprisonment, and the loss of his commission. I was afterwards closely confined in a chamber, for having endeavoured to corrupt the King's officers, and was guarded with ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck

... base of a rock crumbling to dust, at the foot of a tree that is splitting asunder?... You may command what is opposed to nature, but you will not be obeyed. You will multiply evil-doers and the unhappy by fear, by punishment, and by remorse; you will deprave men's consciences; you will corrupt their minds; they will have lost the polar star of their ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley

... words she loved evil for the sake of evil. She rejoiced in other people's vices; she liked to sow the seeds of evil, in order to see it flourish. And that, too, by fraud on an enormous scale. It was not enough for her to corrupt individuals, she only did that to keep her hand in; what she wished to do was to corrupt the masses. By slightly altering it after her own fashion, she might have used Caligula's famous wish. She also might have wished that the whole human race had ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant

... land, and lose a thousand dollars worth of stocks or merchandise. Both Katy and her mother, while they were gathering the treasures of this world, were also "laying up treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt." Want had taught them its hard lessons, and they had come out of the fiery furnace of affliction the wiser and the better for the severe ordeal. The mother's foolish pride had been rebuked, the daughter's ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic

... from his wife's lips one serious word! What would she be if trouble came upon him? She was not a child of God. He did not know that she ever sought the Lord. She went to church once a day and read her prayers, and that was all. She was not one of the chosen; she might corrupt Robert and he might fall away and so commit the sin against the Holy Ghost. He went to his room, and, shutting the door, wept bitter tears. 'O my son, Absalom,' he cried, 'my son, my son Absalom! Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham

... Enemy propaganda to the contrary, remember that this man is not a hypocrite. He is occasionally stupid; he is at times obstinate; he is frequently high-handed; and often he would rather be misunderstood than explain. But he is neither tyrannical nor corrupt. He went into this War because he felt it his duty to do so, and not because ...
— Getting Together • Ian Hay

... not yet full-grown, twelve and fifteen hours a day; the unscrupulous exploiters on a large scale, who raise the price of the people's food, and in their eagerness for fabulous gain conspire by every corrupt means to crush their less crafty or less shameless competitors. As we hate wrong, must we not hate them? Shall we assail greed and exploitation merely in the abstract? What effect will that have? Which one of the oppressors will not hypocritically assent to such abstract ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler

... the case of their editor and abridger Mr. Skelton. Like most other very original things they drew after them a flock of imbecile imitations; and up to the present day those who have lived in the remoter parts of Scotland must know, or recently remember, dreary compositions in corrupt following of the Noctes, with exaggerated attempts at Christopher's worst mannerisms, and invariably including a ghastly caricature of the Shepherd. Even in themselves they abound in stumbling-blocks, which are perhaps multiplied, at least at the threshold, by the arbitrary separation ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... States introduced such vulgar words and offensive ribaldry into a similar work, what columns of abuse would have issued from the Johnsonian presses against the wretch who could thus sully his book and corrupt the language!" He criticises the accuracy with which Johnson has discriminated the different senses of the same word, and words nearly synonymous. The illustrative quotations which bear so much of the praise bestowed upon Johnson's Dictionary ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder

... his decent broadcloth. If it had any rights he denied them. Therefore in the person of his son they reasserted their claim; and young Tyson paid it honorably and conscientiously to the full. In a year's time he knew enough of the world and the lust of it to satisfy the corrupt affections of generations of Baptist ministers, with the result that his university career was suddenly, mysteriously cut short. He had made too many ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair

... nothing when the matter was again brought on the carpet, but just to come to the vote at once. Accordingly this was done, but it made no difference to Mr Hickery; on the contrary, he said, in a vehement manner, that he was sure there must be some corrupt understanding among us, otherwise a matter of such importance could not have been decided by a silent vote; and at every session of the council, till some new matter of difference cast up, he continued cuckooing about the lamp-job, as he ...
— The Provost • John Galt

... in which his friend Lafayette was engaged as a chief actor, was exhibiting a most alarming and disappointing aspect to the friends of genuine liberty; and the dreams of the marquis, that his country was speedily to be redeemed from disorder and corrupt rule, were disturbed by dismal visions of reality. "Whatever expectations I had conceived of a speedy termination to our revolutionary troubles," he wrote to Washington as early as the previous March, "I still am tossed about in the ocean of factions and commotions ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... semi-critical version of Strabo, where the whole expedition resolves itself into an invasion of some unknown king, of some unknown country, whose wealth stands typified in the golden fleece. Such writers as Strabo commit a two-fold error. They corrupt history, and they destroy the legend. They write an unauthorised narrative, and explain the nature and genius of the fable in a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various

... a certain woman in this city whose business it is, at least so I judge, to corrupt, morally and physically, young school and messenger boys, as you will surmise by a conversation which took place this very morning, and it is not her first offense. She called for her party, and as I could not get them at once, I asked ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts

... Their impassioned devotion to emancipation of life from external restrictions which operated to the exclusive advantage of the class to whom a past feudal system consigned power, found intellectual formulation in a worship of nature. To give "nature" full swing was to replace an artificial, corrupt, and inequitable social order by a new and better kingdom of humanity. Unrestrained faith in Nature as both a model and a working power was strengthened by the advances of natural science. Inquiry freed from prejudice and artificial ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey

... too long rested satisfied in the circumscribed limits which corrupt customs and a perverted application of the Scriptures have marked out for her, and that it is time she should move in the enlarged sphere which her great Creator ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... the grandest is that which lay at the root of the monastic system,—that religion is the wedlock of the soul to God; although the method in which this idea was exemplified was a faulty one, or, at any rate, one which rapidly became corrupt, even if it was not so at first. The wonderful worship of the middle ages at least taught men to serve God in retirement of life and unworldliness of spirit, and gave demonstration of holiness and righteousness in men who did their work in the world even though they lived out of ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris

... before they can perform it, so they are not made villains by the commission of a crime, but were villains before they committed it; and the right of public interference with their conduct begins when they begin to corrupt themselves,—not merely at the moment when they have proved themselves ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin

... an all-embracing word, and may well be used to describe this exalted attachment, as also to qualify the great sculptor's affection for a faithful servant or for a charming friend. We ought not, however, to distort the truth of biography or to corrupt criticism, from a personal wish to make more out of his feeling than fact and probability warrant. This is what has been done by all who approached the study of Michelangelo's life and writings. Of late years, the determination to see Vittoria Colonna through ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... preserved by just an inch, from Popery, slavery, massacre, and the Pretender, I must own it prudence in us, still to go on with the same cry, which hath ever since been so effectually observed, that the true political dirt is wholly removed, and thrown on its proper dunghills, there to corrupt, and be ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift

... oath in this act prescribed, such person so offending and being thereof duly convicted, shall be subject to the pains, penalties, and disabilities which by law are provided for the punishment of the crime of wilful and corrupt perjury. ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan

... of their history these mendicant monks of old had welcomed to their third order crowds of citizens and peasants as well as multitudes of princes and kings.[363] Now they languished corrupt and decadent among the French friars. Quarrels and schisms were frequent. Notwithstanding Colette of Corbie's attempted restoration of the rule, the old discipline was nowhere observed.[364] These ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France

... Death of Jonathan. It was not strange in that corrupt age that Jonathan, who had risen to power largely by intrigue, should himself in the end fall a prey to treachery. Tryphon, the general who secretly aspired to the Syrian throne, by lies succeeded in misleading even ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent

... true patriots, but none of them were "office seekers" or "corrupt politicians." They loved more than any other their own native land, because of its sacred literature and religious institutions, but they were loyal and true to those who ruled over them in a foreign land. If any of them had manifested a political ambition, ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger

... 'Give ye to every one that asketh, and from him that desireth to borrow turn not ye away, for, if ye lend to them from whom ye hope to receive, what new thing do ye? for even the publicans do this. But ye, lay not up for yourselves upon the earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and robbers break through, but lay up for yourselves in the heavens, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt. For what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world but destroy his soul? or what shall he give in ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler

... contrary, The Philosopher says (Ethic. ii, 2, 3) that "virtue is engendered and corrupted by contrary causes." Now one virtuous act does not cause a virtue, as stated above (Q. 51, A. 3): and, consequently, one sinful act does not corrupt virtue. Therefore they can be ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... it is a mighty force. See that you use it for good purposes—to teach, exhort, ennoble the people, and not to mislead and corrupt them. Corrupt and venal orators are the assassins of the public liberties ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... the agitation of the European whose susceptibility is offended at a state of things that he finds hard to reconcile with the reverence and purity of Divine worship; but it is the outcry of the reverent Hindu against one of the corrupt and degrading practices that, in the course of centuries, have crept into his religion. In this particular instance the Mysore Government cannot be accused of acting hastily. As long ago as February, 1892, they issued a circular order describing ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael



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