"Degradation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... scene. He was not inclined to conversation, but sat moody and silent, with an expression of countenance strongly indicative of wounded pride and disappointed ambition. He seemed to feel deeply the degradation of his situation. Shorn of power among his people, compelled to acknowledge the authority of his rival, and bending beneath the infirmities of age, it is not singular that he should shrink from the prying gaze of curiosity, ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... from which we have derived inestimable benefits, we are more discontented than the slaves of the Dey of Tripoli. Sir, if we had been slaves of the Dey of Tripoli, we should have been too much sunk in intellectual and moral degradation to be capable of the rational and manly discontent of freemen. It is precisely because our institutions are so good that we are not perfectly contended with them; for they have educated us into a capacity for enjoying still better ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... water resources; inadequate supplies of potable water; soil degradation; overgrazing; deforestation (much of the remaining forests are being cut down for fuel and building materials); desertification; ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... dominions, but endeavouring to extend its Colossean empire across the Atlantic, every passion is roused; our souls are fired with indignation. We see that their object is universal domination; we see that nothing less than the whole world, nothing less than the universal degradation of man, will satisfy these merciless destroyers. But be assured, Sir, we will oppose them with all our youthful energy and risk our lives in defence ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... other heir. Why had he not thought of that before? In that instant he knew that barely a year ago the treacherous thought would have been for him impossible, that slowly, insistently he had been sliding deeper and deeper into the dark abyss of degradation where all ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... the melancholy spectacle of human nature in a state of degradation would be at a loss which exhibition to prefer—an ugly old maid in a rage, or an ugly old maid in tears. Miss Jillgall presented herself in both characters when she heard what had happened. To my mind, Mrs. Tenbruggen's bosom-friend is a creature not ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... notion that has obtained for many years, that the Negro in Africa is physically the most loathsome of all mankind. True, the Negro has been deformed by degradation and abuse; but this is not his normal condition. We have seen native Africans who were jet black, woolly-haired, and yet possessing fine teeth, beautiful features, ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... soil degradation - damage to the land's productive capacity because of poor agricultural practices such as the excessive use of pesticides or fertilizers, soil compaction from heavy equipment, or erosion of topsoil, eventually resulting in reduced ability to ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... in Paris when the Emperor received Bernadotte's letter on the occupation of Swedish Pomerania. When Bonaparte read it I was informed that he flew into a violent rage, and even exclaimed, "You shall submit to your degradation, or die sword in hand!" But his rage was impotent. The unexpected occupation of Swedish Pomerania obliged the King of Sweden to come to a decided rupture with France, and to seek other allies, for Sweden was not strong enough ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... a thoughtful man, such as would have been a philosopher in ancient Greece or Rome. He took the missionary into his hut, and conversed long and earnestly with him. He had revolted in spirit from the degradation of his countrymen, and had gone to live apart in the woods, where he had worked out a system of natural religion for himself, which he believed the Great Spirit had taught him, and which had at last led him to return ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... for inadequate objects are very rare, and are rather designated as foolish than wrong. With regard to all the failings and offences which fall under this head, it may be remarked that, from their false show of generosity, society is apt to treat them too venially, except where they entail degradation or disgrace. If it be asked how actions of this kind, seeing that they are done out of some regard to others, can be described as involving self-indulgence, or the resistance to them can be looked on in the light of sacrifice, it may be replied that the conflict is ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... "a man who feels that he is wrong, is always angry with somebody else. Dr. Johnson, is not so much to be admired for the independence that dictated that letter, as condemned for the meanness and servility of seven years of voluntary degradation. It is no wonder he spoke with bitterness; for, while he censured his Lordship, he must have despised himself. There is a great difference between a literary and a political patron. The former is not needed, and a man does better without one; the latter is essential. A good book, ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... political and social reform. For several years after 1820 she resided here and strove to make men and women think anew on old traditional beliefs—more particularly on theology, slavery, and the social degradation of women. The venomous denunciations of press and pulpit attested the success of her efforts. In 1832 Lydia Maria Child published her History of Woman, a resume of the status of women; and this was followed by numerous works and articles, such as Margaret Fuller's, The Great Lawsuit, or Man ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... we want to accomplish as good citizens and patriots? Do we mean only to inflict upon the late rebels pain, degradation, mortification, annoyance, for its own sake; to torture their feelings without any ulterior purpose? Certainly such a purpose could not by any possibility animate high-minded men. I presume, therefore, that those who still favor the continuance of some ...
— Elements of Debating • Leverett S. Lyon
... world, nor accept the specious proffer of ecclesiastical preferment in exchange for his honest convictions. Honor, however bigoted the sense, bound him to his oath, or at least to a compromising observance of it harmless to the Church. Pride contributed to hold him from the degradation of a renegade and apostate priest. And both rested primarily on an unshaken basis of maternal affection, which fell little short of obsession, leaving him without the strength to say, "Woman, what have ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... prosperity of a pardon still Secure thy railing rhymes, infamous Gill, At libelling? shall no star chamber peers, Pillory, nor whip, nor want of ears, All which thou hast incurred deservedly, Nor degradation from the ministry To be the Denis of thy father's school, Keep in thy bawling wit, thou bawling fool. Thinking to stir me, thou hast lost thy end, I'll laugh at thee, poor wretched Tyke, go send Thy boltant muse abroad, and teach it rather A tune to drown the ballads of thy ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... new treaty. The venerable church had witnessed many changes in the relations and destinies of the kingdom proclaimed in her vaulted halls, with the history of which it had, so to speak, grown up; but never had it been the theatre for such a degradation of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... the following year he produced 'Piramo e Tisbe,' a pasticcio, which failed completely. Its production, however, was by no means labour lost, if it be true, as the story goes, that it was by its means that Gluck's eyes were opened to the degradation to which opera had been reduced. It was about this time that Gluck first heard Rameau's music, and the power and simplicity of it compared with the empty sensuousness of Italian opera, must have materially strengthened ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... only the tenth part of what it had done for him, but the old shame held his tongue. He did not want to bring up the old story. The fact that it had existed, and had written itself out in human passion, remained with him still as a personal and humiliating degradation. It was like a scar on his own body, a repulsive sore which he wished to keep out of sight, even from the eyes of the man who had been his salvation. The growth of this revulsion within him had kept pace with his physical improvement, and if at the ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... its essence it is the same thing as the examination of a work of art merely for the sake of the pleasure it affords to the senses, the offence is here aggravated because personality is involved. This degradation of the higher values, whether of nature, art, beauty, knowledge, kindness, religion or the human soul, to serve the ends of sensual pleasure is the expression of a perversity which is possibly the most radical and characteristic of our age. To-day ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... equal and on a level with them. I go where I will, I come when and how I will." He is at last made free, and presently having nowhere to eat he seeks whom he may flatter, with whom he may sup. He then either submits to the basest and most infamous degradation, and if he can obtain admission to some great man's table, falls into a slavery much worse than the former; or perhaps, if the ignorant fellow should grow rich, he dotes upon some girl, laments, and is unhappy, and wishes for slavery again. "For what harm did ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... degradation fell upon me with intolerable weight. That our household was a mark for slander—a subject of discussion, a blot on the neighborhood, I understood quite well; that my father was blamed and my mother pitied I knew also, and that Miss Reinhart was detested seemed equally clear. She was ...
— My Mother's Rival - Everyday Life Library No. 4 • Charlotte M. Braeme
... them embody themselves in societies, and send petitions up to their different legislatures, entreating their husbands, fathers, brothers and sons, to abolish the institution of slavery; no longer to subject woman to the scourge and the chain, to mental darkness and moral degradation; no longer to tear husbands from their wives, and children from their parents; no longer to make men, women, and children, work without wages; no longer to make their lives bitter in hard bondage; no longer to reduce American citizens to the abject condition of slaves, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... in Ireland, I am convinced that if an anti-clerical movement similar to that which other Roman Catholic countries have witnessed, were to succeed in discrediting the priesthood and lowering them in public estimation, it would be followed by a moral, social, and political degradation which would blight, or at least postpone, our hopes of a national regeneration. From this point of view I hold that those clergymen who are predominantly politicians endanger the moral influence which it is their solemn duty to uphold. I believe however, that ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... unprejudiced witness, who has an opportunity of forming an opinion of Africans who have never been debased by slavery, will rank them very much higher in the scale of intelligence, industry, and manhood, than others who know them only in a state of degradation. ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... a few of the points which, when focused together, show how the Germans have degraded warfare—a degradation which affects not only the Allies at present, but the whole future of the world, since if such examples were followed the entire human race would, each in turn, become the sufferers. Take the very first incident of the war, the mine laying by ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... his words; but he may have said something to convince her that he had taken too much champagne, and for her even to think anything of the kind about him would have seemed to him eternal and utter degradation in her eyes. Very much like this were the feelings of Helena Langley about the words which she might have spoken, the looks which she might have given, to the Dictator. All she knew was that she was not quite herself at the time: the rest was mere doubt and misery. And Helena Langley passed in society ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... from casks that once had held oil or fish, its stinking salt-meat barrels, the hideous stench of the bilge-water—all this could in one sense be no worse than his sufferings in jail. In spite of self-control, jail had been to him the degradation of his hopes, the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... appeared in the leading feminine roles. Splendid material was at hand and Wagner went zealously to work. He was obliged however to produce here also the works of Adam, Auber, and Bellini, which gave him a still deeper insight into the degradation of the modern stage, with its frivolous comedy, of which he had a perfect horror. About this time he became familiar with the legend of the "Flying Dutchman," as Heine relates it, with the new version that love can release the Ahasuerus of the sea. The "fabulous home sickness," of which Heine ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... abandoned women. One of them was observed, desperate with rage, tearing the caps from the heads of the other women, and yelling like a savage beast. By so much nearer as woman is to the angels, must be measured her descent into ruin when she is degraded. She falls deeper than a man; her degradation is more complete, her nature more demoralized. Whether Mrs. Fry felt unequal just then to the task, or whether family affliction pressed too sorely upon her, we do not know; her journal affords ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... assume that dementia praecox is a disease of a steadily progressive nature, where the first symptom of dementia is a signal for relentless degradation of the patient's mental capacity except in the sphere of the more mechanical, intellectual functions. Yet the experience of every institutional physician denies the universality of this deterioration, and the statistics in any good text book demonstrate that many cases are "chronic" rather than ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... surface of the earth, where they were, became tilted, and these strata therefore "dipped" or "tilted" away from the perpendicular. As they emerged, weathering and erosion began. It is most probable that this process of degradation began and continued while the topmost strata were at or near sea level, so that it was a simultaneous process with ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... the lighter, where half-naked negroes and mulattos were at work amid a cloud of nauseating dust, understood the social degradation the other felt. ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... accounts to the East that might induce philanthropic individuals to contribute to their support. In fact, the whole experience of his intercourse with them seemed to have convinced him of the irremediable degradation of the race. Their fortitude under suffering he considered the result of physical and mental insensibility; their courage, a mere animal excitement, which they found it necessary to inflame, before daring to meet a foe. They have no ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... walking along a crowded London street with his face turned westward. A few moments ago and he was scarcely conscious of where he was or where he meant to go: he was walking on mechanically in a heavy stupor, through which there stole a haunting sense of degradation and despair that tortured him dully. And suddenly, as if by magic, this has vanished: he seems to himself to have waked from a miserable day dream to the buoyant consciousness of youth and hope. ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... appearance of a flourishing City man, and presented no sinister physiognomy; one augured in him a disposition to high-feeding and a masculine self-assertiveness. Faces such as his may be observed by the thousand round about the Royal Exchange; they almost invariably suggest degradation, more or less advanced, of a frank and hopeful type of English visage; one perceives the honest, hearty schoolboy, dimmed beneath self-indulgence, soul-hardening calculation, debasing excitement and vulgar routine. Mr. Wrybolt was a widower, without children; his wife, a strenuous sportswoman, ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... definitorio, which, as they said, had by right jurisdiction in the matter. The definitorio, which was composed of nine of the most prominent friars of their order, advised with the other orders as to whether, without consulting the pope, it could condemn the criminals to actual degradation and deliver them over to the secular arm. The Society [of Jesus] avoided, as far as it could, giving its opinion upon an affair that was of such moment, and that must create such a sensation. In the decision of the affair, whether wise or unwise, it was best for ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various
... for years, but which I had not seen him carry before since I came home. "And that's how you help him fight to come back," I arraigned myself with bitter scorn. "You have no faith nor spiritual sources yourself, and you throw him back into degradation when something is helping him crawl out. What's helping him? No matter what it is, you are a coward to ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... victories she has lost none of her old-time charms, the wonderful refinement of sentiment, the delicacy of thought, the rich soul life, the deep emotional nature, the strong moral character, pure as the glistening snow-clad peaks in the midst of the moral degradation which taints manhood. These have remained in their pristine beauty since she has emerged from her age-long retirement into a more influential sphere; in truth they have been strengthened and made more impressive by the fuller development ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... people and especially the boys, belonging to well-to-do families residing in the other islands go to Manila to study the arts and learn a profession. Among the natives to be ignorant and uneducated, is a shameful condition of degradation." ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... of Nature, too, all manner of Ideals have their fatal limits and lot; their appointed periods, of youth, of maturity or perfection, of decline, degradation, and final death and disappearance. There is nothing born but has to die. Ideal monasteries, once grown real, do seek bed and board in this world; do find it more and more successfully; do get at length too intent on finding it, exclusively intent on that. They are then like diseased ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... Lords, repealing a number of penal acts affecting the Roman Catholics, which, though they had long been practically obsolete, still encumbered, and it may be said disgraced, the statute book, and were, so to say, a standing degradation of and insult to the Roman Catholic body. One of them, passed in the reign of William and Mary, still forbade any Roman Catholic to come within ten miles of London, to have either sword or pistol in his house, or to possess a horse worth more than five pounds. Another, enacted under Elizabeth, ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... acknowledged it no social degradation for a man to work in a shoe-factory, regarded a woman who worked therein as having hopelessly forfeited her caste. Eva Loud had worked in a shop ever since she was fourteen, and had tagged the grimy and leathery procession of Louds, who worked in shoe-factories ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... arrange this agreeable scene for me?" cried the Gascon furiously, "and you dare say it to my face? But this is the last degree of degradation and shame, madame. And for what purpose, if you please, did you wish to prove to me the abominable intimacy which ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... the lawyer, as he walked away. And this justice we will do him—for to whom should justice be done unless to a Judge?—he loved Dinah too sincerely to regard her degradation as a means of triumph one day; he was all pity and devotion; he ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... seem exaggerated, had the effect of greatly increasing the state of neglect and degradation which reigned in the hotel de Rochefide. Arthur now transported his whole existence and his pleasures to Madame Schontz, and found himself well off; for at the end of three years he had four hundred ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... that sickening distribution of venom on the garlands. In fact, Virgil has missed both of truth and impressiveness every way—the "morsu depascitur" is unnatural butchery—the "perfusus veneno" gratuitous foulness—the "clamores horrendos," impossible degradation; compare carefully the remarks on this statue in Sir Charles Bell's Essay on Expression, (third edition, p. 192) where he has most wisely and uncontrovertibly deprived the statue of all claim to expression of energy and fortitude of mind, and shown its common and coarse intent ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... analysis of those elements which go to make up the strength and weakness of a man, which are at fierce warfare within the same breast: contending against each other, as it were, the one to raise him to fame and power, the other to drag him down to degradation and shame. Never in the whole range of literature have we seen the struggle between these forces for supremacy over the man more powerfully, more realistically delineated, than Mr. Caine pictures it."—Boston ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... to us a picture of a people's moral degradation and mental gloom caused by slavery. A people absolutely sunk in the lowest depth of a poverty which reduced them to objects of charity and surrounded them with difficulties which have ever stood as impregnable barriers in their way to speedy advancement in ...
— Memories of Childhood's Slavery Days • Annie L. Burton
... had greatly changed the condition of the people. It had rescued vast multitudes from ignorance and barbarism, and raised them from almost the degradation of beasts to the condition of men and the fellowship of saints. The habits of thrift and industry which it fostered led to the accumulation, if not of wealth, at least to that of a substantial competence; and built up that ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... and surrounded by the protecting influence of a father's or husband's care, cannot fully appreciate the perils and degradation consequent upon a life of bondage, and I sincerely trust that it may never be their misfortune ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... prey to the same fever which sprang from the surroundings, from the excitement of the day, from the customs of the age. And he no longer took the Beauchenes, the Moranges, the Seguins as isolated types; it was all Paris that symbolized vice, all Paris that yielded to debauchery and sank into degradation. There were the folks of high culture, the folks suffering from literary neurosis; there were the merchant princes; there were the men of liberal professions, the lawyers, the doctors, the engineers; there were the people of the lower middle-class, the petty ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... month of the war it had been shelled and many of the houses destroyed. The buildings that remained seemed to have given up the struggle and abandoned themselves to inevitable degradation. Moreover, down the principal street, at every other door there hung the sinister black flag, a piece of dirty black cloth fastened to a stick, and upon the filthy wall was scrawled in Russian "cholera." ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... consent, into the arms of men they disliked or had never seen, or were placed in conventual houses against their wills. Of the lower-grade women, I need only offer one example—and that is sufficient to show their awful degradation; the French and German feudal lord had the right of cuissage, or, in plain English, the embraces of his serf-retainer's ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... believe he will come," said Polly. "We are all very well as a diversion, but as a constancy we should pall upon him. I never could keep up to the level I have been maintaining for the last twenty-four hours, that is certain. It is nothing short of degradation to struggle as hard to amuse a boy as I have struggled to amuse Edgar. I don't believe he could endure such exhilaration week after week, and I am very sure it would kill me. Besides, he will fancy he is going to ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... have slipped away; or, if that were impossible without discovery, she would have put her fingers in her ears, and would have been in a terrible state of agitation lest she should hear something not intended for her. I did not come there with a view to eavesdropping. It is a degradation to which I never stoop. I thought they were aware of my presence on the veranda; but it appears they were not, as they began to discuss me (wonderfully interesting subject to myself), and I stayed there, without ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... economical Louisian and Mississippi gentlemen, who do not wish to incur the expense of rearing legitimate families, they are, nevertheless, on account of their attractions, exposed to the most shameful degradation, by the young masters in the families where it is claimed they are so well off. My master once owned a beautiful girl about twenty-four. She had been raised in a family where her mother was a great favourite. She was her mother's ...
— The Fugitive Blacksmith - or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington • James W. C. Pennington
... urban population expanding; deforestation results from logging and the clearing of land for agricultural purposes; further land degradation and soil erosion hastened by uncontrolled development and improper land use practices such as farming of marginal lands; mining activities polluting Lago de Yojoa (the country's largest source of freshwater) with heavy metals as well as several rivers and ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... one whose good sense could see no grave inconsistency between temporary poverty and the first efforts of struggling genius. Nor is poverty so fatal to the efforts of genius as a superficial thinker would suppose it to be. To a noble nature it presents no feature of degradation or terror. Its supposed evils are, for the most part, begotten of the pride of those ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... eyes flashed and then softened for a moment, while his lips quivered; but his hard, cynical, bitter aspect and tones came back—the manner born of years of misery and degradation, ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... for instance, Henry Clay, then Secretary of State, speaking in the hall of the House of Representatives at the annual meeting of the Society, said: "Of all classes of our population, the most vicious is that of the free colored. It is the inevitable result of their moral, political, and civil degradation. Contaminated themselves, they extend their vices to all around them, to the slaves and to the whites." Just a moment later he said: "Every emigrant to Africa is a missionary carrying with him credentials in the holy cause of civilization, religion, and free institutions." How persons contaminated ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... Although several works of some merit have appeared in connexion with the subject, the Hudson's Bay territory is yet, comparatively speaking, but little known; no faithful representation has yet been given of the situation of the Company's servants—the Indian traders; the degradation and misery of the many Indian tribes, or rather remnants of tribes, scattered throughout this vast territory, is in a great measure unknown; erroneous statements have gone abroad in regard to the Company's treatment of these Indians; as also in regard to the government, policy, ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... line of vendors, dressed in costumes like those from the Cabanal, but more miserable in appearance, if anything, and with more repulsive faces still. They were the women of Albufera, a strange concentration of poverty and degradation, housing in wretched shanties a people that lives among the reeds and mud of the lake marshes, fishing in the murky, shallow waters from black, bluff-bowed boats that look like coffins. On these ashen, weather-beaten features indigence was drawn in its most ghastly ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... may have lost a relation, so that the embers of hostility are thus incessantly fanned; and this lamentable revenge pervades whole clans, to the utter destruction of every humane and philanthropic propensity, converting the human race to a degradation below the ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... of solitary imprisonment, a martyrdom of physical degradation quite unspeakable, and sickening even to think of for a moment, darkness, torture, utter despair, and then freedom and human tears, and this astounding roar of triumph, sympathy, and welcome! It was no wonder the scene unmanned him. The wonder was that he had ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... felt that he had got into trouble for nothing; that the satisfaction of drinking the firewater was very unsatisfactory in the end. He had sense enough left to see that disgrace and degradation awaited him, and he dreaded the prompt action of Captain Kendall, as exhibited in the case of McDougal. While still suffering from the effects of the tipple, he resolved to drink no more; but pledges made in the heat of intoxication are not ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... rectangular space is felt as satisfactorily filled only by a symmetrical figure.[6] Moreover, and still more confirmatory of this theory, even these row-pattern profiles are immensely distorted toward symmetry, and every 'degradation' of form, to use Professor Haddon's term, is in the direction of symmetry. (See ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... the eager subscription of antiquated formularies, constitute the essence of religion. That is built on the moral law, and unless it come as the crown and glory of a life of duty, then that religion is a shameful thing, the sacrilegious degradation of the highest and holiest thing on earth. It has come, this ethical Church, to reinforce the wholly forgotten teaching of the Hebrew prophets of the utter emptiness of all religion devoid of moral life, the vanity of sacrifices, oblations and rites, the hollowness ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... obligations to God. In the words of the late Dr. Robert Patterson, such a theory tends to 'obliterate a belief in the divine origin and sanction of morality, and in the existence of a future life of rewards and punishments, and to promote the disorganization of society, and the degradation of man to the level of the brutes, living only under the laws of their brutal instincts.' Such a theory is dishonoring to man ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... France. By the side of the three absolute monarchs of Central and Eastern Europe there would have remained, upon Napoleon's downfall, at least one people in possession of the tradition of liberty: and from the example of Poland, raised from the deep but not incurable degradation of its social life, the rulers of Russia might have gained courage to emancipate the serf, without waiting for the lapse of another half-century and the occurrence of a second ruinous war. To compare a possible sequence ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... directors of the Royal Theatre, Jonas Collin, who was ever afterward his best friend. Through the influence of this kindly man, Anderson was sent to school at Slagelse, and as he said later, the days of his degradation were ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... received no farther authentick information of his fatigues and perils before he escaped to France. Kings and subjects may both take a lesson of moderation from the melancholy fate of the House of Stuart; that Kings may not suffer degradation and exile, and subjects may not be harassed by the evils of a ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... whose sister was in the world. She was young and vain, and the world was gay and seductive. Without a hand to guide and guard her, what evils might not befall? She was sunk already in shame and degradation, and he had put it out of his power to save her. Whatever had happened in the past, whatever might happen in the future, he was lost to her forever. The captured eagle with the broken wing was now chained to the wall as well. But prayer! Prayer was the bulwark of chastity, and God ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... broke the spirit of a man in him to see his young wife's despair. Poverty frightened and quelled her. The deep-rooted security of her old home was something she missed every day of her makeshift existence. It was degradation to live in "rooms," or a room; to move for want of means to pay the rent. She pined for the good food she had been used to. Her health suffered through anxiety and hard work. She was too proud to complain, but the sight of her dumb unacceptance of what had come to her through ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... self-government." Stephen Simpson, in his A Manual for Workingmen, published in 1831, declared that "it is to education, therefore, that we must mainly look for redress of that perverted system of society, which dooms the producer to ignorance, to toil, and to penury, to moral degradation, physical want, and social barbarism." Many resolutions were adopted by these organizations demanding free ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... stupid, ignorant young women, who make themselves conspicuous at the afternoon promenade in the Bois de Boulogne; and he found himself in the presence of an evidently cultivated and imperious woman, who, even in her degradation, retained all her pride of race, and awed him, despite all his coolness and assurance. "I do, indeed, madame, wish to confer with you respecting ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... faintest suspicion, as she carried water and wood, or stood at the edge of the ice beating linen, or did any drudgery she could find to do, in order to earn a little money to pay for herself and her baby at the tinsmith's, that, from her deepest degradation, she had risen at one step to the rank of an exceptionally sought-after and esteemed person ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... execution of Jeanne D'Arc, the report became current that she was alive, and playing a conspicuous part in society at a considerable distance from the scene of her triumphs and degradation. Some would have it that she escaped punishment through the interference of her admirers; but the general belief remained, that she really suffered in terms of her sentence. Another report represents the Maid's persecutors as being overtaken by more ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... earlier period than the beginning of authentic history. It is the fate of all institutions to become corrupt, and this is particularly true of religious systems. The reason of this is not difficult to explain. The Bible and human experience fully exhibit the course of this degradation. Hence, before Abraham's visit to Egypt the religion of that land had degenerated into a gross and complicated polytheism, which it was apparently for the interest of the priesthood ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... arisen to the head of their profession, the modern degradation which mendicity has undergone was often the subject of Andrew's lamentations. As a trade, he said, it was forty pounds a year worse since he had first practised it. On another occasion he observed, begging was in modern times scarcely ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 397, Saturday, November 7, 1829. • Various
... a great victory for the United Nations—but it was also a great victory for the Italian people. After years of war and suffering and degradation, the Italian people are at last coming to the day of liberation from ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... practically all the qualifications necessary for a good practitioner of our art. He had, eminently, that gift which the Romans called facundia and the French can translate, if with a slight degradation of meaning, by faconde; but for which we, though the adjective "facund" has, one believes, been tried, possess no noun, "Eloquence" being too much specified to "fine" writing or speaking. "Facility of expression" ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... he said, "deserves degradation, the disloyal subject death; but, oh! let the son crave from the father pardon for the servant who did not lead him into guilt, but who reluctantly plunged himself into it at his command. Let me bear the weight of my ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... greatness may even have tended to hasten. The distance between the king and the people had widened from a mere step to a gulf. When the Saxon kings began to be clothed with a mysterious dignity as "the Lord's anointed," the people were correspondingly degraded; and the degradation of this class, in which the true strength of England consisted, ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... and caught now a snore, now a gasp, now a half-formed word, it gave me a measure of the worthlessness of rest in that unresting vehicle. Although it was chill, I was obliged to open my window, for the degradation of the air soon became intolerable to one who was awake and using the full supply of life. Outside, in a glimmering night, I saw the black, amorphous hills shoot by unweariedly into our wake. They that long for morning have never longed for it more earnestly ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... experienced than Vera, and therefore he was responsible for the domestic peace, and for her happiness, and for his own, and for appearances, and for various other things. He perceived the moral degradation which would be involved in an open quarrel during the honeymoon. He perceived the difficulties of a battle in the street, in such a select and prim street as the Strand, Torquay, where the very backbone of England's respectability goes shopping. He perceived Vera's vast ignorance ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... splendour of it all, he had only raged and stormed, hating his fellowman, waiting, however hopelessly, for the day when he should see Marcile and the man who had taken her from him. And yet now, under the degradation of his crime and its penalty, and the unmanning influence of being the helpless victim of the iron power of the law, rigid, ugly and demoralising—now with the solution of his life's great problem here before him in the hills, with the man for whom he had waited ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and was used there with very little variation all through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and indeed into the eighteenth. Most of Caxton's own types are of an earlier character, though they also much resemble Flemish or Cologne letter. After the end of the fifteenth century the degradation of printing, especially in Germany and Italy, went on apace; and by the end of the sixteenth century there was no really beautiful printing done: the best, mostly French or Low-Country, was neat and clear, but without any distinction; the worst, which perhaps was the English, was a terrible ...
— The Art and Craft of Printing • William Morris
... in the general Canons for degradation from the office of the Ministry, as the penalty for offenses therein enumerated. Deposition can only be performed by a Bishop after sufficient evidence. When a Bishop thus deposes any one, he is required to send "notice of such deposition from the Ministry to the Ecclesiastical Authority ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller
... to heaven when they die, and if heaven is a place in which everybody will be made perfectly happy, then there is no need to struggle against poverty in this world, because a few years of trouble, or even degradation, in this world are of no consequence when compared with an eternity of happiness that must be ours by simply following the directions of the clergy. But if there be no such heaven, then it becomes a matter of first importance that we make our condition ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... this reason that we lament, as a serious social and national evil, the long interregnum in dramatic excellence in our writers, and the woful degradation in the direction of dramatic representations at our metropolitan theatres. Immense is the influence of lofty and ennobling dramatic pieces when supported by able and impassioned actors. As deleterious is the sway of questionable or immoral pieces when decked out in the meretricious ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... of this self-degradation lay in the fact that he had grievously wronged the only one in the world he had found worth loving,—the one sweet being for whom he would have willingly sacrificed life. The fact that this wrong was by and in thought alone did not lessen ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... Cornelius O'Sullivan definitely proved that the sugar produced was maltose. When starch-paste, the jelly formed by treating starch with boiling water, is mixed with iodine solution, a deep blue coloration results. The first product of starch degradation by either acids or diastase, namely soluble starch, also exhibits the same coloration when treated with iodine. As degradation proceeds, and the products become more and more soluble and diffusible, the blue reaction with iodine gives place first to a purple, then ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... again, I found that I was looking almost straight down into the upturned face of Larrabee Harman, and I cannot better express what this man had come to be, and what the degradation of his life had written upon him, than by saying that the dreadful thing I looked upon now was no more horrible a sight than the face I had seen, fresh from the valet and smiling in ugly pride at the starers, as he passed the terrace ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... put the boy to work, father?" she finally said, and her tone unintentionally made Hiram feel more than ever as if he had sentenced "the boy" to hard labor in the degradation and disgrace ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... of the Italians is proverbial. To earn and save money they will live in conditions unsanitary, unhealthy, and degrading. It is not because they love dirt and degradation, but that they want money so much that they will put up with anything to get it. They can live and save a bit where an American family would starve. They have fairly monopolized for a time certain lines into which they entered—as the small fruit trade, ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... receive condign punishment from the magistrate [m]. Becket insisted on the privileges of the church; confined the criminal in the bishop's prison, lest he should be seized by the king's officers; maintained that no greater punishment could be inflicted on him than degradation; and when the king demanded, that, immediately after he was degraded, he should be tried by the civil power, the primate asserted, that it was iniquitous to try a man twice upon the same accusation, and for the same offence [n]. [FN [l] Neubr. p. ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... banish fear and unbelief! The Lord, the One seated there in the Holiest, knows us personally. He knew us before we ever were in existence. He saw us before the foundation of the world. He knew all our vileness and the depths of degradation. He knew us as we wandered in our sins. His loving eyes followed us then. He sought us in His love and brought us to Himself. He gave us His life and dwells in us. Each believing sinner, saved by grace, is one Spirit with the Lord. "I know my sheep." He calleth each by name, like a Shepherd ...
— The Work Of Christ - Past, Present and Future • A. C. Gaebelein
... because they offered the whitest marble within reach; and parts of the modern fortification, and the miserable houses where this mortar had been so applied, are easily traced. In addition to these causes of degradation, the Turks will frequently climb up the ruined walls and amuse themselves in defacing any sculpture they can reach; or in breaking columns, statues, or other remains of antiquity, in the fond expectation of finding within them some ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... upon could be settled, and the principles applied to this object by the Roman lawyers were eminently characteristic of the time. They refused, as I have said before, to decide the new cases by pure Roman Civil Law. They refused, no doubt because it seemed to involve some kind of degradation, to apply the law of the particular State from which the foreign litigant came. The expedient to which they resorted was that of selecting the rules of law common to Rome and to the different Italian communities in which the immigrants were born. In other words, they ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... Nick been a pale- face, of the class of those with whom he usually associated, his discovery would have gone through the settlement, with scoffings and exaggerations; but this forest gentleman, for such was Wyandotte, in spite of his degradation and numerous failings, had too much consideration to make a woman's affections the subject of his coarseness and merriment. The secrets of Maud would not have been more sacred with her own brother, had such a relative ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... judgment on the man and woman. He had called the woman wanton and the man a villain, but here the verdict was less easy to render. He liked Mrs. Burke, and he loved his friend. He had looked into their faces many times during the last six months without detecting any signs of degradation; on the contrary, Blanche had apparently grown in womanly qualities; and as for Jim, he had never been more manly, more generous and kind. If their acts were crimes, why could they remain so ...
— The Moccasin Ranch - A Story of Dakota • Hamlin Garland
... than love of gain; yet let us hope that there are still among them some who know, and also willingly perform, their duty. My own opinion is that this Bertram holds himself as one who has not shared in the degradation of his brethren, nor bent the knee to the mammon of the times; it must remain with you, sir, to judge whether such a person, honourably and morally disposed, can cause any danger to the Castle of Douglas. But believing, from the sentiments he has manifested to me, that he ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... than ever they killed in their bloodiest battle. Let us think of that, and mend that, ere we blame the old German heroes. No, there are more pitiful tragedies than any battlefield can shew; and first among them, surely, is the disappointment of young hopes, the degradation of young souls. ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... distinction. The Earl of Sussex, moreover, was of more ancient and honourable descent than his rival, uniting in his person the representation of the Fitz-Walters, as well as of the Ratcliffes; while the scutcheon of Leicester was stained by the degradation of his grandfather, the oppressive minister of Henry VII., and scarce improved by that of his father, the unhappy Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, executed on Tower Hill, August 22, 1553. But in person, features, and address, weapons ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... he will hardly like me to live by my hands!" answered Richard, laughing. "He would count it a degradation! There I shall never be able to think ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... the lower animals. Such might perhaps feel a certain involuntary movement of pitifulness at the fate of a woman first awaking to the consciousness that she can no more hold up her head amongst her kind: but that a youth should experience a similar sense of degradation and loss, they would regard as a degree of silliness and effeminacy below contempt, if not beyond belief. But there is a sense of personal purity belonging to the man as well as to the woman; and although I dare not say that in the most refined of masculine ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... at Beren's River among the Saulteaux Indians who lived there, and in little bands scattered along the eastern shores of that great lake, and in the interior, most of them in extreme poverty and superstitious degradation. A few of them, as the result of acquaintance with our Christian Indians of other places, were groping after the great Light, and trying to lift themselves up ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... traces and memory of my degradation. Was not I struck by two vile slaves, who will babble through the city? Was not I held down by an executioner? These arms, which have wound round the master of the world, and no ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... formed by the Montserrat, Tamana, and Manzanilla hills; far lower now than the northern range, Tamana only being over a thousand feet, but doubtless, in past ages, far higher than now. No one can doubt this who has seen the extraordinary degradation going on still about the summits, or who remembers that the strata, whether tertiary or lower chalk, have been, over the greater part of the island, upheaved, faulted, set on end, by the convulsions seemingly so common during the Miocene epoch, and since then sawn ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... had no relations here, and was tossed about from place to place till she found her way to a brothel. Thank God, she has been rescued. Our relief fund has been the means of relieving her from that degradation; but cannot those who read my letter see how strong are the temptations which their want places in the ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... to drink and degradation, he had been the butt-end of riot and revolt at the Foundry. He had had his own way with Whiffler. He did not like to abdicate and give in to this ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... which the idea, as spiritual and individual, clothes itself when revealed as a temporal phenomenon, is the human form. To be sure, personification and anthropomorphism have frequently been decried as a degradation of the spiritual; but art, in so far as its task is to bring before direct contemplation the spiritual in sensuous form, must advance to such anthropomorphism, for only in its body can mind appear ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... from his childhood, and see what it has brought him to. He has been in the habit of lounging about the streets unemployed, or perhaps watching for opportunities for mischief; step by step he descends in his moral degradation; vice succeeds folly, till a dark catalogue of crimes brings him to a drunkard's grave. State prison, or the gallows. While, on the other hand, take a man who has been accustomed to labor and toil for his daily food, and see how much more he is respected, and what a difference there is in the ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... spared—that of Zamore's conversion to Christianity. What need is there to say that the noble Peruvians did not hesitate for a moment? 'Death, rather than dishonour!' exclaimed Zamore, while Alzire added some elegant couplets upon the moral degradation entailed by hypocritical conversion. Don Alvarez was in complete despair, and was just beginning to make another speech, when Don Gusman, with the pallor of death upon his features, was carried into the room. ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... that they too may sink into the same abyss of agonies, and that their sun may also go down in darkness and hopeless gloom. Even although they know that the next cup may send them, with all their sins upon their heads, to the dread tribunal of their God, that cup of bitter sorrows and untold degradation, they will drain even ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... every man above the rank of an artizan or a huckster as "Esquire," seems now to be settled as a matter of ordinary politeness and courtesy; whilst the degradation of the gentleman into the "Gent," has caused this term, as the title of a social class, to have fallen into total disuse. Originally, they were terms that had their respective meanings as much as Duke, Knight, Yeoman, or Hind; but now they simply mean courtesy ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 27. Saturday, May 4, 1850 • Various
... some mythical Brunhilde, some Valkyrie of the legends, born out of season, lost and unfamiliar in this end-of-the-century time. Her purity was the purity of primeval glaciers. He could easily see how to such a girl the love of a man would appear only in the light of a humiliation—a degradation. And yet she COULD love, else how had HE been able to love her? Wilbur found himself—even at that moment—wondering how the thing could be done—wondering to just what note the untouched cords would vibrate. Just how she should be awakened one morning ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... behalf. Their very blindness and maniac disposition should call forth the deep commiseration of our souls. Such was the spirit of Christ. Such is the true spirit of missions. It is but a small measure of compassion to aid those who supplicate our assistance. The very blindness, guilt, madness and vile degradation of a people, should be to us a sufficient voice of entreaty. They were so to the heart of the precious Saviour, or he never would have undertaken the work of our redemption. O, when shall it be, that Christians and ministers of the Gospel shall arise self-moved, or rather ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... midshipmen thought (for Mr W—- had kept his secret), for his disobedient conduct. The poor boy, who thought all his prospects blighted, was sent on shore, the tears running down his cheeks, as much from the applause and kind farewells of his shipmates, as from the idea of the degradation which he underwent. Now, the real culprit was young Malcolm, who, to oblige the captain, had taken his station at the foretop-gallant mast-head, because the dog "Ponto" thought proper to cut off his own tail. The first-lieutenant, in his own woe, ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... works I scattered that bilious humour which had occasioned this very occupation." Our author's character in his works was the very opposite to the one in which he appeared to these low people. Feeling his degradation among them, for they treated his simplicity as utter silliness, his personal timidity assumed a tone of boldness and originality in his writings, while a strong personal sense of shame heightened his causticity, and he delighted to contemn that urbanity ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... perfect life. He lays his hand upon the mourner whose soul is bowed down to the earth and says, "Look up," and points into eternity and heaven. All these things Christ can do not merely, but Christ is doing. He is the inspiring power of this life, that keeps it from rotting in its corruption and degradation. We dwell too much, I think, upon some of these things; we cannot dwell too much, perhaps, but we dwell out of proportion, it may be, to the thought of Jesus Christ, the comforter of sorrow. He is the comforter of sorrow, for he knew and he knows what sorrow is. In His own crucifixion, ...
— Addresses • Phillips Brooks
... we have now no means of knowing, but certain it is that his information was correct, for some of the principal nations did, at that time, submit to the degradation of this tax, and they did not unite their fleets for the extinction of ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... truth, according to the understanding of truth which then prevailed. To do that which they deemed right, no sacrifice was too great, no labor too arduous, no suffering too severe. The deep, abiding, earnest, controlling spirit of the time, shone bright and glorious through all its ignorance, degradation, and superstition, a warning to our later and more cultured age, that the triumphs of the intellect are not all that is requisite for the final achievements ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... danger. It is proof of criminal incapacity and heartlessness. But the fury that has been spent upon General Dyer is, I am sure, largely misdirected. No doubt the shooting was 'frightful,' the loss of innocent life deplorable. But the slow torture, degradation and emasculation that followed was much worse, more calculated, malicious and soul-killing, and the actors who performed the deeds deserve greater condemnation that General Dyer for the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre. The latter merely ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi |
