"Debasement" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sermon, I laid down my pencil on the dug-out floor with a little start. As in a flashlight I saw their truth. They created in my mind the picture of that AEgean evening, when Monty turned the moment of Doe's death, which so nearly brought me discouragement and debasement, into an ennobling memory. And I foresaw him going about healing the sores of this war with the ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... theological scandal-mongers, there is not a moderately intelligent jury of Christendom (if composed half of men and half of women) which, after examining all the available evidence, would not render a verdict in her favor of "Not Guilty." The statement that She "paid the price of her own daughter's debasement and disgrace for the head of John the Baptist," is an assertion born wholly of the ecclesiastical, distorted imagination. Not even a hint, much less an iota of proof, to warrant such an assertion, is found anywhere in history—sacred or profane. While some anonymous ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... the sovereign's power from such debasement! 270 Far rather, Sire, let it descend in vengeance On the base villain, on the faithless slave Who dared unbar the doors of these retirements! For whom? Has Casimir deserved this insult? O my misgiving heart! If—if—from Heaven 275 Yet not ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... immemorial enemy of mankind, which has wasted in the chase of chimeras very much of the world's best intellect, fatally perverted our moral sentiments, fomented discord and division, supported all the tyranny of privilege and sanctioned all debasement of the people. Far be it from me to argue this point with any dissident. I prefer to leave him to the logic of events, which has convinced me, and ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... for the dignity of God's image upon him, and for the price of his redemption, which he thinks is visibly marked upon his forehead, accounts himself both a fit person to do the noblest and godliest deeds, and much better worth than to deject and defile, with such a debasement and pollution as sin is, himself so highly ransomed, and ennobled to a new friendship and filial ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... civilization (Protocol 3). In the event of unfavorable action by any power or group of powers, it is to be met by resistance in the form of universal war (Protocol 7). Disorganization of the economic life of the world through the debasement and ruin of the credit and currency systems, of the principal nations, and the creation of "a universal economic crisis" are also to be used to ...
— The Jew and American Ideals • John Spargo
... romantic girl, she was good without misanthropy, pure without pretension, and joyous, as youth and hopes not crushed might make her. She was one of those of whom society might justly be proud. She obeyed its dictates without question, but her feelings underwent no debasement from the contact. If not a child of nature, she was by no ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... waved lines yield beneath the bodies and wildly lave the edge of the moulding, two birds, as if to mark the reverse of all order of nature, lowest of all sunk in the depth of them. In later times of debasement, water began to be represented with its waves, foam, etc., as on the Vendramin tomb at Venice, above cited; but even there, without any definite ornamental purpose, the sculptor meant partly to explain a story, partly to display dexterity ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... itself, anything good in that repels rather. I am not as blind as Romney, not to perceive this. He had to be blinded, observe, to be made to see; just as Marian had to be dragged through the uttermost debasement of circumstances to arrive at the sentiment of personal dignity. I am sorry, ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... Business will be treated of in boudoirs, and decided according to the caprice of abandoned women. They will dispose of administrations, lower politics to the level of their own minds, and even ecclesiastical dignities will depend on their patronage. As a consequence of that general debasement, an unmeasured disdain will arise in the inferior classes of all that is great in the state. Doubt will be applauded, and it will extend to the power of the king, the noblesse, and the clergy. The spirit ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... reproaches man with the "arrogant anthropocentric imagination" which leads him to look upon himself as the aim of earthly life and the centre of earthly nature; this, he says, is nothing but vanity and haughtiness. Several writers in the "Ausland" faithfully second him in this debasement of the value of man. Its editor ("Ausland," 1874, No. 48, p. 957), for instance, reproaches Ludwig Noire, although he otherwise sympathizes with him, that in his book "Die Welt als Entwicklung des Geistes" ("The World as Development of Mind"), Leipzig, Veit & Co., 1874, ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... process of self-debasement and generous exterior admiration the Tennessee Shad successfully perceived the heavy hanging and arranging brought ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... politicians, and Miss Burney among the rest, seem to have thought that any person who considered the subject with reference to the public interest, showed himself to be a bad-hearted man. Nobody wonders at this in a gentleman usher; but it is melancholy to see genius sinking into such debasement. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to a people who are so supinely indifferent to their own well-being,—who are really unconcerned about their own elevation. The friends of the industrious should faithfully tell them that they must exercise prudence, economy, and self-denial, if they would really be raised from selfish debasement, and become elevated to the dignity of thinking beings. It is only by practising the principles of self-dependence that they can achieve dignity, stability, and consideration in society; or that they ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... skin-deep, they might easily overcome it. . . . . Of course, we understand that the evil we contemplate is complex and retroactive—that the political degradation of the blacks is a cause as well as a consequence of their moral debasement. Had they never been enslaved, they would not now be so abject in soul; had they not been so abject, they could not have been enslaved. Our aborigines might have been crushed into slavery by overwhelming force; but they could ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... any other virtue. Politics and private life were alike demoralized by unceasing intrigues; and amidst strifes of Pope and Emperor, duchies and republics, cities and autocrats, there was formed that type of Italian character which is delineated in the pages of Macchiavelli. From the depths of debasement of that cynical age the Buonapartes were saved by their poverty, and by the isolation of their life at Sarzana. Yet the embassies discharged at intervals by the more talented members of the family showed that the gifts for intrigue ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... offer an impassable front of wood, and ears once attentive are deaf. And the pity is that they have closed not to the evil alone, but to the good. This is the crime of those who distort and degrade speech: they shake confidence generally. We consider as a calamity the debasement of the currency, the lowering of interest, the abolition of credit:—there is a misfortune greater than these: the loss of confidence, of that moral credit which honest people give one another, and which makes speech circulate like an authentic currency. Away with counterfeiters, speculators, ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... must be attacked in the derived propositions about which popular discussion centers, and the assault must be, not to prove that the doctrines are scientifically unsound, but that they tend to the impoverishment and debasement of the masses. These propositions are three, and I lay down as my thesis—for I abhor ...
— The Inhumanity of Socialism • Edward F. Adams
... minds and to direct the debates. The bull, nevertheless, if its exact tenor had been known, might well have produced in many respects a contrary effect to the wishes of the King. The reproaches of Boniface touching the debasement of the coinage and the royal exactions, reproaches which so irritated Philip, might have met with other sentiments from the townsmen. The chancellor, Peter Flotte, foresaw this; he distributed among the public, instead of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... style of art patronised by the Romans after the seat of empire was removed to the East; it has been described by Mr. Fairholt as "an engraftment of Oriental elaboration of detail upon classic forms, ending in their debasement." ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... that of subordination of man to things; and when later feudal law declared the serf ATTACHED TO THE GLEBE, it only periphrased the literal meaning of the word servus.[16] Spontaneous reason, oracle of fate itself, had therefore condemned the subaltern workman, before science had established his debasement. Such being the case, what can the efforts of philanthropy do for beings ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... for pictorial vraisemblance, without the childishness of the cave pictures. And their new art develops at the expense of decoration; it becomes perfect and sterile. What is commonly called decay is merely stylistic development. The exquisite art of Byzantium was wrongly considered as the debasement of Greco-Roman art. It was really the decorative expansion of it; the conventionalising of exaggerated realism. The same might have happened in Europe after the Baroque and Rococo fashions had their day; politics and commerce ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... experience does say, that every step in improvement has been so invariably accompanied by a step made in raising the social position of women, that historians and philosophers have been led to adopt their elevation or debasement as on the whole the surest test and most correct measure of the civilization of a people or an age. Through all the progressive period of human history, the condition of women has been approaching nearer to equality with men. This does not of itself prove ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... mortifying are those proofs of thy excellence? How deep is that debasement into which I am sunk, when I ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... was a bid for him to raise the ante, Morgan was starting off on a lame leg, he said. Ten dollars a night was as much as the friendship of any man that ever wore the collar of the law was worth to him. Take it or leave it, and be cursed to him, with embellishments of profanity and debasement of language which were new and astonishing even to Morgan's sophisticated ears. Peden turned his back to the new officer after drenching him down with this deluge of abuse, setting his face about ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... insensitive readers, as it surely must have ground and grated on the ears of an audience accustomed to enjoy the prose as well as the verse of Shakespeare and his kind. No graver offence can be committed or conceived by a writer with any claim to any but contemptuous remembrance than this debasement of the currency ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Rome too—as little was her gigantic power levelled with the dust by libels, but perished from the corruptions of the tyrannical government of the Emperors, which drained the nation of all its ancient virtue, and bred the slavery which produces an utter debasement of the mind (and which never could have been, if a free publication of political opinion had been suffered), and thus she fell an easy conquest and prey to the barbarians and Goths. Both these renowned states fell, because their governments and the people wanted ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... but of high religious attainments, and their painful exhibitions of fear, distrust, and gloom, originate in physical rather than in spiritual causes. It is interesting to witness this strange perversion of the imagination, this morbid debasement of the religious faculties, and dejection of mind, due to causes disturbing the functions of the liver and other ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... noise of disgust in his throat. It struck her as a mark of debasement that their bodies were moving more swiftly than their minds, and that each time they spoke they first gesticulated or made some wordless sound. He burst out, more loudly than she had ever heard him before: "Go and put ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... of theology on the minds of earnest, truth-seeking men—the total prostration of manly dignity, the perversion of the mental faculties, and the debasement of human nature, is truly stated by Mr. Barker in the ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... department. It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising the sovereignty. Usurpation is then an easy attainment, and an usurper soon found. The people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin. Let us, then, look to the great cause, and endeavor to preserve it in full force. Let us by all wise and constitutional measures promote intelligence among the people as the best means of preserving ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson
... of a wanderer, and continued his absence for months together. He shared the danger of his allies, and confided in their affection: he encouraged their sports, and so far as could a white man, without debasement, he became one among them. Hitherto the English had dealt treacherously, and rarely approached their camps, but to oppress, to mock, or to destroy them. They now discovered, that all were not enemies, and kindness was felt more powerfully by contrast. It is said by ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... description of the people of Tahiti (Polynesian Researches, 1832, vol. i, especially Chapters VI and IX), while emphasizing their extreme cleanliness, every person of every class bathing at least once or twice a day, dwells on what he considers their unspeakable moral debasement; "notwithstanding the apparent mildness of their disposition and the cheerful vivacity of their conversation, no portion of the human race was ever perhaps sunk lower in brutal ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... more affecting than that timorous debasement and self-humiliation of a woman. How she owns that it is she and not the man who is guilty; how she takes all the faults on her side; how she courts in a manner punishment for the wrongs which she has not committed and persists in shielding the real culprit! It is those who injure women who get ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... accompanied with its annoying symptoms, such as constipation, indigestion, diarrhea, auto-intoxication, emaciation, anemia, muddy complexion, foul breath, blotches and pimples on the face, each and all of which indicate a physical debasement. ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... above the animal world. Men live and die; nations rise and fall, but the struggle of individual lives and of individual nations must be measured not by their immediate needs, but as they tend to the debasement or perfection ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... Lauder to encounter him, when the Earl of Angus headed a conspiracy of nobles, such as Huntly, Lennox, and Buchan, seized Cochrane and other favourites of James, and hanged them over Lauder Bridge. The most tangible grievance was the increasing debasement of the coinage. James was immured at Edinburgh, but, by a compromise, Albany was restored to rank and estates. Meanwhile Gloucester captured Berwick, never to be recovered by Scotland. In 1483 Albany renewed, with many of the nobles, his intrigues with ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... mankind. They will remember that, while the office of ecclesiastical authority is to tolerate, to warn, and to guide, that of religious intelligence and zeal is not to leave the great work of intellectual and social civilisation to be the monopoly and privilege of others, but to save it from debasement by giving to it for leaders the children, not the enemies, of the Church. And at length, in the progress of political right and scientific knowledge, in the development of freedom in the State and of truth in literature, they will recognise one ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... of this description,' says Professor Child, 'are peculiarly liable to interpolation and debasement.' In this version the most offending stanza is the tenth; and the extra two lines in stt. 22 and 24 also appear to be unnecessary. The anapaestic metre of this ...
— Ballads of Scottish Tradition and Romance - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Third Series • Various
... when he saw the unhappy victims carried away by force; thrust into a dungeon in the hold of a ship, in which the interval of their passage from their native to a foreign land was filled up with misery, under every degree of debasement, and in chains; and when he saw them afterwards consigned to an eternal slavery; he could not but contemplate the whole system with horror. It was inhuman in its beginning, inhuman in its progress, and inhuman to the ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... best in man. In life, without her there is nothing. Much as the lot of woman in the East is to be deplored, that of man is still more deplorable. The revenge she takes is terrible, for she drags down with her, in her debasement, the higher life of man. I had noted the absence of music as one great want. Not an opera nor a concert—not even a hand-organ. Scarcely a sweet sound in all our journey. When we found an English church or a regimental band, we rejoiced. I went to hear the organ upon every occasion, and was seldom ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... attractive even, could make me stumble, simply by humbling herself. As by an excess of chivalry, I could not refuse a woman's request nor even await it. It was as though I must prevent her casting off her modesty at all costs by my own debasement; that is to say, as long as she desired only my body and not my heart. My heart remained out of shot range behind the walls of my true ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... The debasement is quite intelligible, when one remembers what accumulated miseries these provinces have undergone. Memories of refinement were starved out of the inhabitants by centuries of misrule, when nothing was of interest or of value save what helped to fill the belly. The work of bestialization was carried ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... — N. lowness &c. adj.; debasement, depression, prostration &c. (horizontal) 213; depression &c. (concave) 252. molehill; lowlands; basement floor, ground floor; rez de chaussee[Fr]; cellar; hold, bilge; feet, heels. low water; low tide, ebb tide, neap tide, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... hand in his, but made no attempt to translate the meaning of the moment into language. He had worked against her country; while she plied her rounds of mercy, he had written on the debasement and the fallacy of it all. Lying in the wreck of his idealism, in the grip of physical pain, dreading the torture of his own thoughts, could he express what her coming had meant? He wanted to tell her of his heart-hunger, of his loneliness, his gratitude, understanding, ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... an unregenerated person to perdition; but as I knew it to be only a temporary falling off, a specimen of that liberty by which the chosen and elected ones are made free, I closed my eyes on the wilful debasement of our principles, knowing that the transgressions could never be accounted to your charge, and that in good time you would come to your senses, and throw the whole weight of your crimes on the shoulders that had voluntarily ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... wealth resulting from prosperous industry is to be spent upon the gratification of unworthy desires, if the increasing perfection of manufacturing processes is to be accompanied by an increasing debasement of those who carry them on, I do not see the good ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... hereafter, in their physical, social, and moral light,—the level of slaves to one sole master, of tools to one universal agent. But the equalizing process does not stop here: beasts, birds, fishes, insects, all participate of the same honor or debasement; all are, like man, the slaves of God, the tools and automata of his will; and hence Mahomet is simply logical and self-consistent when in the Koran he informs his followers that birds, beasts, and the rest are 'nations' like themselves, nor does any intrinsic distinction exist ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... paths of guile; And fawn'd and smiled, to plunder and betray, Myself betray'd and plunder'd all the while; So gnaw'd the viper the corroding file; But now with pangs of keen remorse, I rue Those years of trouble and debasement vile. Yet why should I this cruel theme pursue? Fly, fly, detested thoughts, ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... legal rights enjoyed by the whites, as to the protection of person and property; but they were disqualified from political rights and social equality. But ... it is always to be remembered that in their contact with white men, they did not assume that creeping posture of debasement—nor did the whites expect it—which has more or less been forced upon them in fiction. In fact, their handsome, good-natured faces seem almost incapable of despair. It is true the whites were superior ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... extending the Gospel among the heathen has been for a few of the most self-sacrificing men and women to give up country and home and all the comforts and benefits of a Christian community, and then commence the family state amid such vice and debasement that it was ruinous to children to be trained in its midst. And so the result has been, in multitudes of cases, that children were born only to be sent from parents to be trained by strangers, and the true "Christian ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... crown, That not the midnight of Earth's blackest sin Can dim. All beauty emanates from soul, And all deformity. The piteous straw Where sickness writhes in suffering and want— The cold, bleak dwelling where the winds have will To brag o'er man's debasement, if possess'd In fortitude and patience, with the heart Clear in its honour, stedfast in its faith, Is to the eye of angels, beautiful as day; And this fair spot with all its waken'd charms Is purgatorial torture ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... the combative qualities, the argument forgets a darker moral phase. It forgets the moral wrecks which are the sad products of war; it forgets the effect of the loss of the refining influence of womanhood upon the soldier; it forgets the debasement of sinking men to the physical type of life. And the argument assumes that peace has no "equivalent for war," declared by a famous educator to be the greatest need of the age. Courage and endurance are as necessary in social reforms as in carnal battle. ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... him in society may raise her to any eminence that he himself may reach; but if a woman marry a man beneath her in society she always goes down to his level. That is a law inexorable, and there are no exceptions. Is any woman so high up that she can afford to plot for her own debasement? There is not a State in the American Union that has not for the last twenty years furnished an instance of the sudden departure of some intelligent woman from an affluent home to spend her life with some one who ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... supposed in which the higher race ought to submit to the sad fate of dilution and debasement of its blood,—as on an island, and where long continued wrong and suffering had to be atoned for. But this is hardly conceivable, because, even in what seems punishment and atonement, the law of harmonious development still rules. God does ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... Jews, soldiers, Bohemians, jesters, poets, monks, courtesans, swarmed and clustered here, and hustled one another in the streets. There was confusion of tongues, customs, and costumes, an inextricable mixture of splendour and rags, riches and misery, debasement and grandeur. The austere poets of the Middle Ages stigmatised the accursed city in their writings under the name of the ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - JOAN OF NAPLES—1343-1382 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... you the task of preventing, by the sole means which still remains after the others have been tried in vain, the destruction of every nobler impulse that may in the future possibly arise among us and this debasement of our entire nation. They present to you a true and omnipotent patriotism, which, in the conception of our nation as of one that is eternal, and as citizens of our own eternity, is to be deeply and ineradicably ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... badge of blood. And now, finding it here, the fable revived with added truth and conviction, the legend of the persicaria was as true to her as that other of the Lord's resurrection from death. Thus her views of Nature suffered some approach to debasement in a new direction, but this degradation, so to call it, brought mighty comfort to her soul, daily rounded the ragged edges of life, woke merciful trust and belief in a promised life of bliss beyond the grave, and embroidered thereupon a patchwork, not unbeautiful, built of fairy folk-lore, saintly ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... house in the scrub a number of men were drinking sake with much uproar, and a superb-looking Aino came out, staggered a few yards, and then fell backwards among the weeds, a picture of debasement. I forgot to tell you that before I left Biratori, I inveighed to the assembled Ainos against the practice and consequences of sake-drinking, and was met with the reply, "We must drink to the gods, or we shall die;" but Pipichari said, "You say that ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... occurred in Spain. It is impossible to conceive deeper degradation than that into which the Bourbon monarchy of that country had sunk, and the court had carried the country with it in its debasement. The population had fallen to ten millions, and of a nominal army of a hundred and twenty thousand men not fifty thousand were really effective. The host of office-holders and privileged nobility ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... thermometer decides the question, and here we give a diagram of it. Owing a stern and solemn duty to the public, PUNCH has indignantly spurned the offers of the British Association to join in their mummeries at Plymouth—to appear at their dinners for the debasement of science. No; here in his own pages, and in them only, doth he propound his invention. But he is not exclusive; having published his wonderful invention, he invites the makers to copy his plan. Mr. Murphy is already busily arranging his Almanac for 1842, by means of a PUNCH thermometer, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... to-day (as we venture to define him) views all this with some regret, and more concern. He sees that fine traditions are withering, that fine things are being marred by ignorant handling. He fears debasement, he hates vulgarity, and his realist soul admits the high probability of both in a society whose standards are broader than they are high. But he also sees new energies let loose and new resources discovered; he recognizes ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... debasement of that precious heritage called "love" is the bitterest possible reflection upon our modern civilization. The sort of attraction these unchaste, nakedly adorned, women "of fashion" hold out can never inspire that precious, ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... centre of that world, the Divine Trinity, surrounded by a hierarchy of angels and saints, contemplated and governed the insignificant sensible world in which the inferior spirits of men, burdened with the debasement of their material embodiment and continually solicited to their perdition by a no less numerous and almost as powerful hierarchy of devils, were constantly struggling on the edge of the pit ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... Prussia was promulgated, and time is rapidly effacing many of the social evils which that institution entailed. But this is not the case with Russia, where emancipation was only declared ten years ago, and is not completed even yet. The causes that superinduce the degradation and debasement of women can therefore still be seen at work in that country, and are thus depicted by an eye-witness. He is speaking of the condition of the peasantry of Russia subsequent to the decree of emancipation, and so far as my own observation in that country goes, I can corroborate ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... is a clock. To gravitate is to oscillate. One pole is attracted to the other. Francis I. is attracted by Triboulet; Louis XIV. is attracted by Lebel. There exists a deep affinity between extreme elevation and extreme debasement. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... deserved that title posterity will decide. But my greatness appeared sufficiently in that very act which seemed to you a debasement. ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... suffering of the poor under this system, plunged into a state of debasement not more tolerable than that of the Gallic plebs—and the injustices of the rich, in whom all political power was then vested—are facts well attested by the poems of Solon himself, even in the short fragments ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... formation of the universe, and pretend that he has only brought a crowning contribution to a common work; that he has only contributed some small portion to the genesis of beings; they are incapable, from the debasement of their reasonings, of raising their glances to the height of truth. Here, below, arts are subsequent to matter—introduced into life by the indispensable need of them. Wool existed before weaving made it supply one of nature's imperfections. Wood ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... I mean Rome. Its system was once prevalent in England, and, during the period that it prevailed there, was more prolific of debasement and crime than all other causes united. The people and the government at last becoming enlightened by means of the Scripture, spurned it from the island with disgust and horror, the land instantly after its disappearance becoming a fair field, in which ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... said I, 'is the fall and debasement of words; you talk of a gang, or set, of shorters; you are, perhaps, not aware that gang and set were, a thousand years ago, only connected with the great and Divine; they are ancient Norse words, which may be found in the heroic poems of the north, and in the Edda, a collection ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... think of the king and his suffering family, our sympathies are so enlisted in behalf of their woes that we condemn the letter as harsh and unfeeling. When we think for how many ages the people of France had been crushed into poverty and debasement, we rejoice to hear stern and uncompromising truth fall upon the ear of royalty. And yet Madame Roland's letter rather excites our admiration for her wonderful abilities than allures us to her by developments of female loveliness. This celebrated letter was presented ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... in God's image," born immortal and capable of progress, and so differing from Socrates and Shakspeare only in degree. It is but a sliding scale from this melancholy debasement up to the most regal condition of humanity. A traceable line of affinity unites these outcast children with the renowned historic races of the world: the Assyrian, the Egyptian, the Ethiopian, the Jew,—the beautiful Greek, the strong Roman, the keen Arab, the passionate Italian, the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... passed from Christ to Mahomet; and from that hour to this Islam has had sway within its walls. Not once since have its echoes been permitted to respond to a Christian prayer or a hymn to the Virgin. Nor was this the first instance when, to adequately punish a people for the debasement and perversions of his revelations, God, in righteous ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... barber to perform that essential part of his toilet was an expense which his foes could not incur. It was the studied endeavor of those who now rode upon the crested yet perilous billows of power, to degrade royalty to the lowest depths of debasement and contempt—that the beheading of the king and the queen might be regarded as merely the execution of a male and a female felon dragged from ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... degraded in his sty than ever was Diogenes in his tub; and yet presented with such ease and such eloquence, with such art and such mirth, so adorned with illustration and anecdote, so unconscious of debasement! ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... fortunate purchased life by the sacrifice of half their treasures. At this time, however, there suddenly broke forth a formidable insurrection amongst these miserable subjects—the Messenians of the Iberian Sparta. The Jews were so far aroused from their long debasement by omnipotent despair, that a single spark, falling on the ashes of their ancient spirit, rekindled the flame of the descendants of the fierce warriors of Palestine. They were encouraged and assisted by the suspected Christians, who had been involved in the same persecution; and the ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book IV. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... abate our energy, relax in our feelings, nor in the expressions which those feelings dictate. Nothing but corruption like his own could enable any man to see such a scene of desolation and ruin unmoved. We feel pity for the works of God and man; we feel horror for the debasement of human nature; and feeling thus, we give a loose to our indignation, and call upon your Lordships ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the maxim, Like priest, like people. May we say, Like God, like worshipper? If so, we must regard the Hindus as in the very mire of moral debasement. Just think of a whole people acting like Shiva, Doorga, and Krishna! I think it cannot be doubted by any one who looks at the nature of the human mind, and the power exercised over it by its belief, that the worship of these and similar gods, along with the prevalent pantheistic ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... cases of debasement she found more to admire than to contemn, and won the confidence of the fallen by manifesting her real respect. "There was in my family," writes a friend, "a very handsome young girl, who had been vicious in her habits, and ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... says the apostle, is the old man's course and nature. He will do naught but ruin himself. The longer continued, the greater his debasement. He draws down upon himself his own condemnation and penalty for body and soul; for in proportion as he becomes unbelieving and hard-hearted, does he become haughty, hateful and faithless, and eventually a perfect scoundrel and villain. This was your former manner of life, when as yet you were ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... fellow citizens, whose location is somewhat nearer the level of the sea, so that their physical elevation gives them many advantages that serve to compensate them for what they lack through moral debasement. The part of the main-top that fronts the bay, is a sheer precipice of two hundred feet; but on another part, it is simply too steep for any animal but a monkey to make a highway of. Down this part ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... powers of our soul, and we shall be solely occupied in comparing what we have done with what we ought to have done, then will the voice of conscience resume its force and its empire; then will the pure bliss which is born of self-content, and the bitter regret for self-debasement, distinguish by inexhaustible feelings the fate which each man will have prepared for himself. Ask me not, O my good friend, if there will be other sources of happiness and of misery; I do not know, and the ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... independent, still it may be said that poetically, and in spirit, the chorus was the source of its existence, and that without these persevering supporters and witnesses of the incident a totally different order of poetry would have grown out of the drama. The abolition of the chorus, and the debasement of this sensibly powerful organ into the characterless substitute of a confidant, is by no means such an improvement in the tragedy as the French, and their imitators, would have it ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Great ignorance and debasement still manifest in various features of the popular character.—Entire want, in early life, of any idea of a general and comprehensive purpose to be pursued—Gratification of the senses the chief good.—Cruelty a subsidiary resource.—Disposition to ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... upon its foibles and live at the cost of its passions than in absolute monarchies. Not because men are naturally worse in these States than elsewhere, but the temptation is stronger, and of easier access at the same time. The result is a far more extensive debasement of ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... interrupted the jockey. "How singular," said I, "is the fall and debasement of words; you talk of a gang, or set, of shorters; you are, perhaps, not aware that gang and set were, a thousand years ago, only connected with the great and Divine; they are ancient Norse words, which may ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... Bouillon. Louis relies upon me to win from Charles his consent to the withdrawal of the British troops from Holland. This will insure the fall of Luxembourg—the key to our success. You see, Buckingham, I must not fail. England's debasement shall ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... frequent a low tavern, not without detriment, but, without becoming thereby worthy of being classed with the lowest of the low. Do not misunderstand us, gentle reader. We do not wish in the slightest degree to palliate the coarse language, the debasement, the harsh villainy, which shock the virtuous when visiting the haunts of poverty. Our simple desire is to assure the sceptical that goodness and truth are sometimes found in strange questionable ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... circumstances, it is not surprising that temperance reformers appeal in vain on this question, and that their facts and arguments are viewed with plausible indifference, or insidious opposition, by persons whose appetites and instincts have been undergoing debasement, and perversion from the very dawn of their lives. My own deliberate conviction is that nothing but harm comes to nursing mothers, and to the infants who are dependent upon them, by the ordinary use of alcoholic beverages ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... should have scoffed at all that was noble and generous, both in religion and in earthly things; all that was nothing to them. And now they would insult the great God Himself by believing that all He cared for was a little mass in a convent chapel. What desecration! What debasement! When I went to M. le Cure, he smiled at my vehemence. There was pain in his smile, and it might be indignation; but he was ...
— A Beleaguered City • Mrs. Oliphant
... political equality of the races. It proposes to mix the pure Anglo-Saxon blood with the dark blood of Ethiopia! It proposes the amalgamation of civilization with barbarism. It proposes the debasement and downfall of this Republic, and the erection upon its ruins of a mighty military despotism. The alienation of that friendly sentiment and brotherly affection which existed among our people in the days of the Revolution, is prophetic of this; and unless reason resume her seat, and the ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... and simple taste in the people, yet there is a system of social debasement throughout Japan, which was here so obvious that it cannot be passed without notice. It is no worse, perhaps, than in Vienna or Paris, where the law affords it certain sanction; but when realized in ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... entertained some sentiment of their dignity. It is not possible for me, sir, to paint to you all my sensibility at this scandal which tends to the diminution of your commerce, to the oppression of ours, and to the debasement and vilification of republics. It is for Americans to make known their generous indignation at this outrage; and I must confine myself to demand of you a second time, to inform me of the measures which you have taken, in order to obtain restitution ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... sinking itself by its own free will and choice into the mire of the vulgarest social vice, and parting with every redeeming grace, modesty and virtue that once made it sacred and beautiful! I am quite aware that there are many men who not only look on, but even encourage this world-wide debasement of women in order to bring them down on a par with themselves—but I am not one of these. I know that when women cease to be womanly, then the sorrows of the world, already heavy, will be doubled ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... 1517. A Wilberforce in sentiment, he is the representation of "that shadow of shadows for good—Ottoman rule." The Turks, whether in their Pagan or Mohammedan phase, have only appeared on the world's scene to destroy. No social or civilizing art owes anything to the Turks but progressive debasement ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... day with a round of calls upon the various families of the neighborhood, and came home to his lodgings at Mr. Dubois's with his heart overwhelmed by the ignorance and debasement he had witnessed. ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... hold such noble thoughts in your heart concerning yourself, you will need no threatenings to keep you from self-debasement and self-defilement. You will not need to be told of the loss of physical strength or of beauty, of memory or of reason, through evil habits of solitary vice, for they will have no temptation for you, even as you do not need threats ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... gambling-houses of Paris, 'those dens of iniquity,' as he terms them. 'The varied scenes of frantic joy and human debasement,' he writes, 'which I witnessed at FRASCATI'S, were truly appalling. The extremes of excitement were as powerfully exhibited in the loser of twenty francs as in the man who had lost his twenty thousand.' The annexed sketch of the lamented career of poor CONWAY, who will ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... need: but the latter is justly deserving of blame, because, considered in itself, it satisfies the greed for gain, which knows no limit and tends to infinity. Hence trading, considered in itself, has a certain debasement attaching thereto, in so far as, by its very nature, it does not imply a virtuous or necessary end. Nevertheless gain which is the end of trading, though not implying, by its nature, anything virtuous ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... the arguments of Mr. Davis. "Suppose, instead of issuing paper money," said Mr. Bayard, "it had pleased Congress to order a debasement of our National coinage. Suppose twenty-five per cent more of alloy or worthless metal had been injected into our currency, and with that base coinage men had come forward to buy your bonds, what would be thought of the man who, when the day of payment of those bonds arrived, should say, 'I gave ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... socially beneficial, or in some cases positively harmful. Consider some of the commoner methods of growing rich. There is first the selling of rubbish for money, exemplified by the great patent medicine fortunes and the fortunes achieved by the debasement of journalism, the sale of prize-competition magazines and the like; next there is forestalling, the making of "corners" in such commodities as corn, nitrates, borax and the like; then there is the capture of what Americans call "franchises," securing at low terms by expedients that usually will ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... and nail had come from the North. Davis sent out men to scurry the country for old stoves and every iron scrap was picked up to be melted into weapons. At the close of the war tenpenny nails were used as five-cent pieces and currency in North Carolina. To crown all other disasters came the debasement of the currency. Macaulay says that the world has suffered less from bad kings than from bad shillings and sixpences. The Confederacy issued one billion dollars of paper money, States issued another flood of promises to pay, cities put out municipal ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... of it! I must go back to that dreadful wine shop, to the gaming tables; must continue to draw men there to be despoiled of their money, perhaps of their lives; must laugh and be gay, though my heart break at its own debasement. There have been many, ah, so many, I have lured to that place; and it came so near to costing you your life—you who were so ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... jockey. "How singular," said I, "is the fall and debasement of words! You talk of a gang, or set, of shorters: you are, perhaps, not aware that gang and set were, a thousand years ago, only connected with the great and Divine; they are ancient Norse words, which may be found in the heroic poems of the north, and in the Edda, a collection ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... earl's conduct so roused the indignation of the butchers of the city—a class of men scarcely less powerful than their brethren the fishmongers—that they made no secret that the price of meat would be raised still more if the debasement of the currency was carried out as proposed.(1340) Yet, in spite of all remonstrances and threats, a proclamation went forth that after the 17th August the shilling should be current for six pence sterling and no more, the groat for two pence, the penny for a halfpenny, and ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... an elector, and of eligibility to the office of a representative, of the people; in a word, that no person nor their posterity, may ever be debased beneath the level of the recognised basis of American citizenship. This debasement and degradation is "corruption of blood"; politically understood—a legal acknowledgement of inferiority ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany
... commonplace which we only remember for others, how time wears hard and ugly lines into the face that recollection at each new energy makes lovelier with an added sweetness. "I saw her," he says, "but in what a state, O God, in what debasement! Was this the same Madame de Warens, in those days so brilliant, to whom the priest of Pontverre had sent me! How my heart was torn by the sight!" Alas, as has been said with a truth that daily experience proves ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley |
