"Corrupt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Christianity which knows no self-denial, which is perfectly at home in an irreligious atmosphere, and which resents the exhortation to separation, because it would fain keep the things that it is bidden to drop. God's reiteration of the text through Paul to the Church in luxurious, corrupt, wealthy Corinth is a gospel for this day for English Christians, 'Come out from among them, and I will ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... 'True,' the Celestial replied, 'we still wear the badge of our former slavery. But you emancipated Americans, do you not wear the badge of a present and much worse form of slavery in your domination by Tammany Hall, by your corrupt politicians, and your organizers and ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... indemnities. Moreover, the industrial organization of the country had been utterly demoralized. The manufacture of army supplies had fallen off more than 60 per cent., with the result that the state of affairs was worse than in the most corrupt period ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... ruining the world—as they always have. They're making it impossible for anyone to get good service or good food or good furniture or good clothing or good anything. They don't know good things, and they pay exorbitant prices for showy trash, for crude vulgar luxury. They corrupt taste. They make everyone round them or near them sycophants and cheats. They substitute money for intelligence and discrimination. They degrade every fine thing in life. Civilization is built up by brains and hard work, and along come the rich and ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... well known that on reading the will, in which he was nominated co-heir [144] with the excellent wife and most dutiful daughter of Agricola, he expressed great satisfaction, as if it had been a voluntary testimony of honor and esteem: so blind and corrupt had his mind been rendered by continual adulation, that he was ignorant none but a bad prince could be nominated ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... which his friend Lafayette was engaged as a chief actor, was exhibiting a most alarming and disappointing aspect to the friends of genuine liberty; and the dreams of the marquis, that his country was speedily to be redeemed from disorder and corrupt rule, were disturbed by dismal visions of reality. "Whatever expectations I had conceived of a speedy termination to our revolutionary troubles," he wrote to Washington as early as the previous March, "I still am tossed about in the ocean of factions and commotions of every kind; for it is my fate ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... watering-places or elsewhere, seeking pleasure instead of doing God service. It is not considered disreputable to take fee after fee to uphold injustice, to plead against innocence, to pervert truth, and to aid the devil. It is not considered disreputable to gamble on the Stock Exchange, or to corrupt the honesty of electors by bribes, for doing which the penalty attached is equal to that decreed to the offence of which I am guilty. All these, and much more, are not considered disreputable; yet by all these are the moral bonds of society loosened, while ...
— The Three Cutters • Captain Frederick Marryat
... son," I hiccoughed, with an assumption of drunken gravity, uplifting my disengaged arm as if in priestly benediction of the impious crew. "Tempt me not to turn aside from the solemn path of duty by offerings of that foul fiend which doth so corrupt and despoil men. Know you, I am now on my way to perform the sweet offices of our most holy religion, and need greatly to permit my mind to dwell in peace upon more soulful things than that which lieth in the wine pot. You are mere beasts of the field, sons ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... to the younger sons of leading houses, often to their bastards: they were given or sold in commendam, and then served only for pleasure and gain: the Scotch Church fell into an exceedingly scandalous and corrupt state. ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... to argue against these strict laws of duty and to question their validity, or at least their purity and strictness; and, if possible, to make them more accordant with our wishes and inclinations, that is to say, to corrupt them at their very source, and entirely to destroy their worth—a thing which even common practical reason ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... not bear any position of any kind for more than a few minutes at a time. Bed was a place of torture; but if he got up, he cried for it again, at least for a change of suffering. At the end of three months he died. His stomach, duodenum, and liver were all in the same corrupt state as his brother's, and more than that, the surface of his body was burnt away. This, said the doctors; was no dubious sign of poisoning; although, they added, it sometimes happened that a 'cacochyme' produced the same effect. Lachaussee was so far ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... behind Anubis is a monster, part crocodile, part lion, part hippopotamus. This terror will eat the heart of Ani if it is found corrupt. At last he is declared justified. Thoth, the ibis-headed God of Writing, records the verdict on his tablet. The justified Ani moves on past the baffled devourer, with the mystic presence of his little wife rejoicing at his side. They go to the awful court of Osiris. She makes sacrifice ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... that seems half living and half dead; not without stupefaction in the Apostles and in other figures, who, with attitudes varied and beautiful, and with their draperies to their noses in order not to feel the stench of that corrupt body, are no less afraid and awestruck at such a marvellous miracle than Mary and Martha are joyful and content to see life returning to the dead body of their brother. This work was judged so excellent that many deemed the talent of Agnolo ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... all for Christ. That they should belong to Christ—as the bride to the bridegroom—was his jealous anxiety. But others had come in betwixt them and him—nay, betwixt them and Christ, as he believed—and sought to seduce and corrupt their minds by divers doctrines. "I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the ...
— Religion and Theology: A Sermon for the Times • John Tulloch
... which the burglar is unsuccessful in misleading the jury. The true moral influence must come from the positive spirit of the play itself. Even the photodramatic lessons in temperance and piety will not rebuild a frivolous or corrupt or perverse community. The truly upbuilding play is not a dramatized sermon on morality and religion. There must be a moral wholesomeness in the whole setting, a moral atmosphere which is taken as a matter ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... of scientific apprenticeship, and who sees the laurels and honors of the world within his reach. The world? The very thought of its possible homage repelled me, for I knew that its best successes and its loudest praise are accorded to men whose hearts are of steel and whose lives are corrupt. I knew that still, as of old, it slays the innocent and the ingenuous and stones the pure of spirit. Escaping somewhat impatiently from the congratulations of the friends and colleagues whom I chanced to encounter in the ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... may be considered one of the earliest defenders of the religious orthodoxy of the Travels. He extracts passages from Swift's work, such as the Lilliputian quarrel over breaking eggs, the satire on corrupt bishops, and the affirmation of the principle of limited toleration for religious dissent in Brobdingnag as evidences of his belief, presented ironically, that "the Reverend Dean" could not possibly have fathered ...
— A Letter From a Clergyman to his Friend, - with an Account of the Travels of Captain Lemuel Gulliver • Anonymous
... that hung o'er Arcady, Some roving inebriate Daimon Begat him fair children On nymphs of the vineyard, On nymphs of the rock:— And in the heart of the forest Lay bound in white arms, In action creative a father Without a thought for his child:— A purposeless god, The forbear of men To corrupt, ape, inherit and spoil That fine race ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... the Skene MS., but I have omitted the three final lines, which do not make a complete stanza, and, when compared with Scott's 'Old Lady's' version, are obviously corrupt. The last verse should signify that the mothers of Willie and Meggie went up and down the bank saying, 'Clyde's water has ...
— Ballads of Scottish Tradition and Romance - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Third Series • Various
... animals killed is in no way injured by the poison, nor does it appear to corrupt sooner than that killed by the ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... hypocrisy and secret evasion are the only results obtained. It would be better by far if steps were taken to enlighten the masses on the questions of sexual heredity and degeneration. Wisdom of this kind does not corrupt. It is rather the unrestricted power of capital and wealth that brings the rot into the community. Healthy people should be made to know that a large number of sound, industrious children is a blessing, in fact, riches to the family, but on the one condition only, viz.: that they are not ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... of those who understood the case was that Mr. Wright had attempted to play a desperate game, and failed because it was impossible to corrupt certain parties in the Recorder of Deeds' office. In fact, a very ugly rumor gained circulation immediately after the trial, to the effect that a large sum of money had been offered a clerk, if he would change a number of figures ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis
... wise policy to strengthen Kudara against the growing might of Shiragi, Yamato's perennial foe. The two officials by whose advice the throne made this sacrifice were the o-muraji, Kanamura, and the governor of Mimana, an omi called Oshiyama. They went down in the pages of history as corrupt statesmen who, in consideration of bribes from the Kudara Court, surrendered territory which Japan had won by force of arms and ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... house, he walked moodily back to the end of the line. The Vice-Consul was a merchant and thought first of his business, which might suffer if he gained the ill-will of corrupt officials. He would, no doubt, move if he were forced, but he would demand incontestable proof, which Dick feared he could not find. Well, he had done his best and been rebuffed, and now the temptation to ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... assumed, and which were carried into effect, were the immediate reimbursement and extinction of the state paper-money, the immediate payment in specie of all the current expenses, or warrants on the treasury (the postponement and uncertainty of which had given rise to shameful and corrupt speculations), and provision for discharging without defalcation every debt and engagement previously recognized by the State. In conformity with this, the State paid to its creditors the difference between ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... development became too exclusively one of intellect, at the expense of character, at the expense of the fundamental qualities which fit men to govern both themselves and others. When the Greek lost the sterner virtues, when his soldiers lost the fighting edge, and his statesmen grew corrupt, while the people became a faction-torn and pleasure-loving rabble, then the doom of Greece was at hand, and not all their cultivation, their intellectual brilliancy, their artistic development, their adroitness in speculative science, ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... a private brow, When I am pleased t'unmask a public vice. I fear no strumpet's drugs, nor ruffian's stab, Should I detect their hateful luxuries: No broker's usurer's, or lawyer's gripe, Were I disposed to say, they are all corrupt. I fear no courtier's frown, should I applaud The easy flexure of his supple hams. Tut, these are so innate and popular, That drunken custom would not shame to laugh, In scorn, at him, that should but dare to tax 'em: And yet, not one of these, but knows his works, Knows what damnation is, the devil, ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... the liberty of those days went somewhat beyond even that. In the early part of the eighteenth century, many of the habits of the Continent were introduced into England at a time that continental society was so corrupt as to require licence instead of liberty, and so far from attending to propriety, to give way to indecency itself. It became common in the highest circles of society for ladies, married and single alike, to dispense almost entirely with a female attendant, ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... propaganda always fails. It is like paying money to blackmailers. The blackmailer who has once received money becomes so insatiable that even the Bank of England will not satisfy him in the end. Sometimes the newspapers which are not bought, but are equally corrupt, become vehement in their denunciation of the country making the propaganda in the hope of being bought and in the hope that their bribe money will be in proportion to their hostility. Corrupted public men who are not bribed often become ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... the dawn of time, with his dark-eyed little son, to make me his willing captive at something above the tariff rates, but destined by the same fate to serve me well, and to part with me friends at the close of the day for a franc more than the excess agreed upon. It costs so small a sum to corrupt the common carrier in Italy that I hold it wrong to fail of any chance, and this driver had not only a horse of uncommon qualities, but he spoke a beautiful Tuscan, and he had his Pisa at ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... the text is corrupt, I am sure; and I think Dr. Farmer's substitution of mimicking malhecco, a most unlucky attempt at emendation. In the old copies it is munching malicho, in which we find traces of the true reading, mucho malhecho, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 52, October 26, 1850 • Various
... and third in order were given the titles of vice-admiral and rear-admiral. To this tribunal were committed fishing disputes in general, and the maintenance of peace among sailors and fishermen. It may be supposed that these rough sailors were both corrupt and inefficient. "I must be a pretty sort of a judge if I could not do justice to myself," said one west country sailor, when charged with delivering an interested judgment. At the close of the season the judges disappeared, together ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... Church. If private judgment can be exercised on any point, it is on a matter of the senses; now our eyes and our ears are filled with the abuse poured out by members of our Church on her sister Churches in foreign lands. It is not that their corrupt practices are gravely and tenderly pointed out, as may be done by men who feel themselves also to be sinful and ignorant, and know that they have their own great imperfections, which their brethren abroad have ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... history of mankind, we are told, swearing was unknown. Men were honest, could trust each other and take each other's word. But when duplicity, fraud and deception rose out of the corrupt heart of man, when sincerity disappeared, then confidence disappeared also, no man's word was any longer good. Then it was that, in order to put an end to their differences, they called upon God by name to witness the truth of what they affirmed. They substituted God's unquestioned veracity for their ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... sailed this week for Sierra Leone. Among other supernumeraries sent in her, were a serjeant and two privates of the Royal African Corps. The conduct of these men was so notoriously bad, that Captain Owen apprehended their example would corrupt the black soldiers with whom they were associated. I cannot avoid again calling in question the policy of our Government in sending out condemned soldiers to the Colonial African Corps; for nothing tends more to degrade the general character of our country, in ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... public good may seem to require, or whether the government itself shall be subordinated to party, and its functions prostituted for the perpetuation of party ascendency and the aggrandizement of corrupt and selfish individuals—the leader in whom the hopes of those who contend for the supremacy of the popular will, the surbordination of party-power to public welfare, and the administration of the government in the ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... was venal, selfish, corrupt; it only defended in the king's person the sources of its vanities,—profitable exactions. The clergy, with Christian virtues, had no public virtues: a state within a state, its life was apart from the life of the nation, its ecclesiastical ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... the suffrage has power to save us from those evils. During half a century we have been moving nearer and nearer to a suffrage all but universal, and we have, during the same period, been growing more corrupt. The undisguised frauds at elections, the open accusations of bribery in legislative assemblies, the accusations of corruption connected with still higher offices—of these we read daily in the public prints. And these accusations are not disproved. They are generally believed. It is clear, therefore, ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... duty of England is admitted to be a strict neutrality, but the feeling of the millions of her people is one of friendliness to the United States and its government. It would cause universal rejoicing, among all but a limited circle of aristocracy and commercially rich and corrupt, to hear that the Northern forces had taken Vicksburg on the great river, and Charleston on the Atlantic, and that the neck of the conspiracy ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... here is either corrupt, or so vaguely expressed as not to admit of any reasonable ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... spirit enough to tell the Pope in effect to mind his own business, and he was not devoid of shrewdness; but he seems to have been incapable of any sustained vigour in action. The party as a whole were probably as corrupt as their rivals, and less astute—"an evil and foolish company," as Dante afterwards called them by the mouth of Cacciaguida. Corso Donati, on the other hand, was a bold and reckless intriguer. He followed up the conspiracy of the Santa Trinita by hastening to the Papal Court, and ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... good reason why the Hindoo dialects and the Gypsy tongue—if the Gypsies were Bohemians—should closely resemble one another. They were from the same parent stem. The learned Buesching said, "The Gypsy language is a mixture of corrupt words from the Wallachian, Slavonian, Hungarian, and other nations." These are the cognate languages of the Slavic race, all descended from the same source, and that also the source of the Cech. The first list of Gypsy words ever made was cited ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... to a resolution of the Whig State convention, we have appointed you the Central Whig Committee of your county. The trust confided to you will be one of watchfulness and labor; but we hope the glory of having contributed to the overthrow of the corrupt powers that now control our beloved country will be a sufficient reward for the time and labor you will devote to it. Our Whig brethren throughout the Union have met in convention, and after due deliberation ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... lasted, with moments of mitigation, over many of the thirteen years of the connection. Of all the measures that Mr. Gladstone was destined in days to come to place upon the statute book, none was more salutary than the law that purified corrupt practices ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... planned with judgment and adjusted with skill; the length allotted to each incident is just enough; the speeches, though not omitted, are not inserted at the tyrannous length in which later mediaeval and even Renaissance historians indulged from corrupt following of the ancients. But no abstract could show—though the few scraps of actual phrase purposely inserted may convey glimpses of it—the vigour and picturesqueness of the recital. That Villehardouin ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... lose your jobs and your home; they sell you out, maybe, and go on to some other place to repeat the same trick.' And the workers think maybe that's true; they haven't the wit to see that if the union leaders are corrupt, it must be because the bosses are buying them. So you see, they're completely bedevilled; they don't know which ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... still remained a slender boy in appearance, felt his heart tremble as he looked upon her, and thought of the distance this earlier development had placed between them. And even a greater distance was beginning to exist—the distance that lies between a pure mind and one that is corrupt. As Andrew grew older, he grew worse, and the sphere of his spiritual quality began to be felt, oppressively, at times, by Emily, during the periods of their brief intercourse. Moreover, she was ...
— The Iron Rule - or, Tyranny in the Household • T. S. Arthur
... scene," said Newman; "that's all it is! It's a wretched theatrical affair. Why don't you take a band of music with you outright? It's d—d barbarous and it's d—d corrupt, both." ...
— The American • Henry James
... attempt to obey the command was, of course, a ludicrous failure. The Rebel officers standing near Barrett laughed openly at his stupidity in giving such an order, but he was furious. He hurled at us a torrent of the vilest abuse the corrupt imagination of man can conceive, and swore until he was fairly black in the face. He fired his revolver off over our heads, and shrieked and shouted until he had to stop from sheer exhaustion. Another officer took command then, and marched ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... readiness with which he participated in their social pleasures, and by the uniform severity with which he refused to apply his influence in any way which could disturb the pure administration of justice. The Roman juries (judices they were called), were very corrupt; and easily swayed to an unconscientious verdict, by the appearance in court of any great man on behalf of one of the parties interested: nor was such an interference with the course of private justice any ways injurious to the great man's character. The wrong which he promoted did but the more ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... present day, "waps" is considered a vulgar way of pronouncing the word; but it was correct English at the time of which I am writing. "Wasp" is really the corrupt pronunciation. In the same way, they said "claps" ...
— Our Little Lady - Six Hundred Years Ago • Emily Sarah Holt
... real cause of most of our municipal corruption," said Rodney. "A city administration, for instance, is corrupt exactly in ratio to its attempt to be moral. The more moral issues you import into politics—gambling, prostitution, Sunday closing, censored movies, and the rest—the more corrupt and helpless and inefficient your government will be." And, between them, for the ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... of the Caribbean islands to be colonized by Europeans, due chiefly to the fierce resistance of the native Caribs. France ceded possession to Great Britain in 1763, which made the island a colony in 1805. In 1980, two years after independence, Dominica's fortunes improved when a corrupt and tyrannical administration was replaced by that of Mary Eugenia CHARLES, the first female prime minister in the Caribbean, who remained in office for 15 years. Some 3,000 Carib Indians still living on Dominica are the only ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... manners prevailed to those which characterized the English. In England, throughout the war, no unnecessary bloodshed took place, and up to that time the only persons executed in cold blood had been the two gentlemen convicted of endeavoring to corrupt the Parliament in favor of the king. But in Scotland, where civil broils were constant, blood was ever shed recklessly on both sides; houses were given to the flames; men, women, and children slaughtered; lands laid waste; and all the atrocities which civil war, heightened by religious ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... none the less keenly, 'She had her idea of navigating, as the devil of mischief always has, in the direction where there's most to corrupt; and, my lad, she teaches the navigation that leads to the bottom ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... months of his marriage he exerted a sort of spell over his wife; he tried to corrupt her mind by his doctrines (if it can be said that atheism is a doctrine) and by the jesting tone in which he spoke of sacred principles. From the time of his return to the provinces this political manoeuvrer had an intimacy with a young ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... like to know about the Mohammedan Turks: what kind of men are they? In our country you can hardly call a man by a worse name than to call him a Turk." He replied that the Government officials and those who come much in contact with foreigners are apt to be corrupt enough. "But," he exclaimed with great emphasis, "the laboring Turk! the laboring Turk has a great future before him!! If I want a man to row me down the Golden Horn when the weather is rough, or to watch my mills ...
— Personal Experience of a Physician • John Ellis
... legislatures and the greatest respect for them. This has not always been the case. As one writer says, "it has become almost fashionable" to speak slightingly of legislatures and their members, and to talk of them as if they were wholly corrupt and dishonorable. If the very best men the community affords are not always chosen for the difficult and responsible work of lawmaking, the people have no one to blame but themselves. Moreover, the members of our legislatures average up very much like their neighbors, and most of ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... Invitation to Youth, the refrain of which, though partly undecipherable, seems to indicate an Italian origin. I have thought it well to omit this refrain; but it might be rendered thus, maintaining the strange and probably corrupt ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... in truth a wicked boy. In a little while more and he shall be such a one as you will on no account take under your roof, lest he corrupt your own children; and yet, father, mother, look at your son of twelve years, your bright, darling boy, and think of him shut up for a month with such a companion, in such a cell, and ask yourselves if ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... remarkable novel Flags are Flying in City and Harbor) selects a hero with vicious inherited tendencies, redeemed by wise education and favorable environment; the latter portrays in Elsie a heroine with no corrupt predisposition, destroyed by the corrupting environment which society forces upon those who are born in her circumstances. Elsie could not be good, because the world is so constituted that girls of her kind are not expected to ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... said to be unlucky in the field—but this was to be the beginning of an era of peace. The soldiers liked him for his humane temper, which was like a strange and precious flower unexpectedly blooming on the hotbed of corrupt revolutions; and when he rode slowly through the streets during some military display, the contemptuous good humour of his solitary eye roaming over the crowds extorted the acclamations of the populace. The women ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... who had not been admitted within the veil which hides the daily transactions of the great from the profane eyes of the vulgar; and who had not come into frequent personal contact with courts that were corrupt, and with princes, ministers and leading men of society who were ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... lies in the parlor just to show their visiting friends that they have a bible! Go into the nursery and other private apartments of that home, and you see no bible, while you behold piles of romance and filthy novels,—those exponents of a vitiated taste and a corrupt society, suited to destroy the young forever;—whose outward appearance indicates a studied perusal by both parents and children, and shows perhaps that they have been wept over; and whose inward substance must ever nauseate healthy reason, ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... she floated into the English seas, and was thrown by the waves on the Northumberland shore, near which stood a great castle. The constable of the castle came down in the morning to see the woful woman. She spoke a kind of corrupt Latin, and could neither tell her name nor the name of the country of which she was a native. She said she was so bewildered in the sea that she remembered nothing. The man could not help loving her, and so took her home to live with himself and his wife. ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... appears to have been written by Campion. "What epigrams are in poetry," it begins, "the same are airs in music: then in their chief perfection when they are short and well seasoned. But to clog a light song with a long preludium is to corrupt the nature of it. Many rests in music were invented either for necessity of the fugue, or granted as an harmonical licence in songs of many parts; but in airs I find no use they have, unless it be to make a vulgar and trivial ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... centuries might be made to fit, or seem to fit, pretty well into the Anglican scheme. So the miracles, from Justin say to Jerome, might be recognised; while, in later times, the Church having become "corrupt"—that is to say, having pursued one and the same line of development further than was pleasing to Anglicans—its alleged miracles must needs ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... sanitary knowledge in women belonging to the lower class; want of cleanliness, want of ventilation, want of whitewashing, are triple evils that lead to the most lamentable results. We cannot get people to understand the common laws of life; the air of their rooms may be musty, stagnant, and corrupt, and yet they are astonished if their children have an attack of ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... fringe, from Ma, and Pa gave me a pair of his old suspenders, and a calender with mottoes for every month, some quotations from scripture, such as 'honorthy father and mother,' and 'evil communications corrupt two in the bush,' and 'a bird in the hand beats two pair.' Such things don't help a boy to be good. What a boy wants is club skates, and seven shot revolvers, and such things. Well, I must go and help Pa roll over in bed, and put on a new porous ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck
... the darkest, and most unrelenting passions of the human heart! Yet so it proved in this instance. Their fierce, fanatical enthusiasm was a powerful element of strength to the Roundheads, which was lacking to the effeminate, corrupt, and godless Cavaliers. With such an auxiliary the struggle could not be doubtful; religious fanaticism carried ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... workers, sometimes only children not yet full-grown, twelve and fifteen hours a day; the unscrupulous exploiters on a large scale, who raise the price of the people's food, and in their eagerness for fabulous gain conspire by every corrupt means to crush their less crafty or less shameless competitors. As we hate wrong, must we not hate them? Shall we assail greed and exploitation merely in the abstract? What effect will that have? Which one of the oppressors will not hypocritically assent to such abstract ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... large class of our wealthy and cultivated people, that to go into public life is to descend to duties beneath them. They judge the men who occupy such positions with insulting severity, classing them in their minds as corrupt and self-seeking, than which nothing can be more childish or more imbecile. Any observer who has lived in the different grades of society will quickly renounce the puerile idea that sporting or intellectual pursuits are alone worthy of a gentleman's ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... work of Gustave Moreau, conceived on no Scriptural data, Des Esseintes saw at last the realisation of the strange, superhuman Salome that he had dreamed. She was no more the mere dancing-girl who, with the corrupt torsion of her limbs, tears a cry of desire from an old man; who, with her eddying breasts, her palpitating body, her quivering thighs, breaks the energy, melts the will, of a king; she has become the symbolic ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... very true. When I see the windbags, the carpet-baggers, the charlatans, the—the—the fools and ignoramuses who corrupt the multitude by their wealth, or seduce them by spouting balderdash to them, I cannot help thinking that an honest man with no humbug about him, who will talk straight common sense and take his stand on the ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... and love-messenger, and bearer of nosegays and billets doux, and singer of little French songs. He was only twenty, and thought of such things as jokes; he had lived among some of the pleasantest, best-bred, and most corrupt ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... never enter politics again. Next day he was back in the game to stay. But from the beginning to the end of the legislative session he was blocked in nearly every effort he made for clean, honest reform of old, corrupt and selfish party devices. In his soul he knew, and those who knew him knew, that he was heart and soul for the good of the people. The measures he wanted put into law had no possible self-seeking in them. He was clean and ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... harmless desk, sure that no thought concealed from him in life will rise accusing from the treasured papers. But that pale proud mourner, hurrying the eye over sweet-scented billets; compelled, in very justice to the dead, to convince himself that the mother of his children was corrupt only at heart,—that the Black Horses had come to the door in time,—and, wretchedly consoled by that niggardly conviction, flinging into the flames the last flimsy tatters on which his honour (rock-like in ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and cut out the tongues of the women, lest they should corrupt their speech. And because of the silence of the women from their own speech, the men of Armorica are called Britons. From that time there came frequently, and still comes, that language ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... leading Liberals, permitted to remain in the city on account of the importance of his industry, one of the great goldsmiths' works, told me that the Liberals never permitted the priests to frequent their houses, as they invariably conspired to corrupt the newly married women, unmarried girls being unmolested. In the lower circles of the bourgeoisie it was a matter of common knowledge that the husbands openly made a traffic of the virtue of their wives; and in my personal acquaintance amongst the artists, I knew ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... to the cross, and not only that, but kept in Him that gentle spirit that made Him pray for those who were putting Him to death—oh, friends, when we come to that and tell them of it—I know that a Chinaman is degraded, corrupt, sensual, material, but he has a human heart; and when you can get at the heart, it responds to the story of the Cross. We want to do something in drawing the net, and so, on this table in the corner, there is a pile of books, and as it gets towards ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... his enemies into submission, was resolved not to let his subjects grow corrupt through indolence. He therefore undertook and perfected several public works for the convenience and embellishment of ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... citizen becomes more and more servile, lazy and unambitious. Socialism is politically decadent and contains within itself the germ of self-destruction. During this process of self-destruction the people at large will offer a rich field for exploitation by the demagogue, the corrupt politician and ...
— Socialism and American ideals • William Starr Myers
... and altruistic scheme, this proposed regeneration at American expense of a corrupt and decadent empire, but in their enthusiasm its supporters seem to have overlooked several obvious objections. In the first place, though both England and France are perfectly willing to have the United States accept a mandate for European Turkey, Armenia and even Anatolia, I doubt ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... frightened, I cried, 'But, my God, what do you wish to become of me now? If you have no pity on me, have at least some pity on your child!' 'What a horror!' cried he, raising his hands toward heaven. 'How, wretch! You have the audacity to accuse me of being corrupt enough to descend to a girl of your class! you have effrontery enough to accuse me!—I, who have a hundred times repeated before the most respectable witnesses that you would be ruined, vile wanton. Leave my house this moment—I thrust you ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... still darkened and damp in the shadow of the Vatican, but where bright hopes gleam now amid the ashes! Never was a people who have had more to corrupt them,—bloody tyranny, and incubus of priestcraft, the invasions, first of Goths, then of trampling emperors and kings, then of sight-seeing foreigners,—everything to turn them from a sincere, hopeful, fruitful life; and they ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... and bungle over every reform because we are afraid of what may happen if we probe down to the real bottom of what needs to be done. We have neither the courage of our bodies or of our souls. This is why so often our attitude becomes false and our thoughts entangled, so that our moral life is corrupt with concealments and deceptions. Now, I am not content with the compromise which sanctions every form of sexual sin so long as the conventions are respected and the sin hidden—all the rottenness going on beneath the respectable structure of our society. I want ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... three of the principal emissaries of Mr. Burr whom the General had caused to be apprehended, one had been liberated by habeas corpus, and two others, being those particularly employed in the endeavor to corrupt the general and army of the United States, have been embarked by him for ports in the Atlantic States, probably on the consideration that an impartial trial could not be expected during the present agitations of New Orleans, and that that city was not as yet a safe place of confinement. As soon as ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 1: Thomas Jefferson • Edited by James D. Richardson
... months he returned and bought the good will of the journals by money and of the populace by buying up provisions and feeding them at public tables; he was nominated President of the National Assembly but refused the post; he attempted to corrupt the French guards, and so serious were the charges brought against him that La Fayette demanded of the King that he should be sent from the country. He went accordingly to England on a fictitious mission in October ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... of the Christian era, so wild, enthusiastic and corrupt were the sentiments of some Millenarians, that this book ceased in great measure to be read or studied; and even its divine authority came to be questioned by many learned and pious men. As the "Dark Ages" of Popery resulted from neglect of the ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... a sketch of cosmography, geography, mythology (chaps. i.-x.), and history (chap. x.-end). The historical portion, dealing mainly with the republican period, is untrustworthy, and the text in many places corrupt; the earlier chapters are more valuable, and contain some interesting information. In chap. viii. (Miracula Mundi) occurs the only reference in an ancient writer to the famous sculptures of Pergamum, discovered in 1871, excavated in 1878, and now at Berlin: "At Pergamum ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... deprived during quite recent years. His Grace took occasion to complain of the frequency of such bills, and, being a true patriot, charged the French Government with the despatch of agents to this country especially to corrupt our manners. "He considered it a consequence of the gross immoralities imported of late years into this country from France, the Directory of which country, finding that they were not able to subdue us by their arms, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... the King a memorial, deprecating "particularly the mischief and scandal of permitting men, who are at once in high office and subordinate military command, previous to their making recriminating accusations against their commander-in-chief, to attempt to corrupt the public judgment by the publication of libels on their officers in a common newspaper, thereby exciting mutiny in your Majesty's Navy," etc. The words italicized show that this was aimed at Palliser; and at Sandwich, who inferentially had "permitted" his action, and ultimately ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... infinite in it; and the pride and self-will of Coriolanus, though terrible in bulk, are scarcely so in quality; there is nothing base in them, and the huge creature whom they destroy is a noble, even a lovable, being. Nor does either of these dramas, though the earlier depicts a corrupt civilisation, include even among the minor characters anyone who can be called villainous or horrible. Consider, finally, the impression left on us at the close of each. It is remarkable that this impression, though very ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... very short time to be established. In that newfound prosperity of his Paul had grown absolutely careless about money, and he had not the faintest idea as to the extent of his wife's supplies. That she had enough, for the time being, to corrupt quite a small regiment was speedily made manifest, and a silent contest, in which the victor acknowledged victory no more than the vanquished admitted defeat, set in. How wide the ramifications of this strange war might be Paul could not guess, but on occasion some circumstance would ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... dwarf to represent the corrupt part of human nature,—that "law in our members which wars against the law of our minds,"—the work forms an ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... met any people from off Earth, even, you could hear people saying we were toughest, cruelest life-form in the Universe, unfit to mingle with the gentler wiser races in the stars, and a sure bet to steal their galaxy and corrupt it forever. Where these people got ...
— The Stoker and the Stars • Algirdas Jonas Budrys (AKA John A. Sentry)
... unchastity, 139. The love opposite to conjugial love is essential unchastity, 139. If the renunciations of whoredoms be not made from a principle of religion, unchastity lies inwardly concealed like corrupt matter in a wound ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... The matter finally got into Parliament where there was quite a row about it. Such were the auspices under which our good sovereign was educated to administer the affairs of the realm. His mother wanted to make him pious. She would not allow him to associate with other boys because they would corrupt his morals. Lord Bute advised the princess dowager to keep the prince tied to her apron ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... inscription in Latin, French, &c. Behind one wall the bodies of all who perished in the massacres in Paris were immured. They were brought in carts at night and thrown in, and there they rest, festering not in their shrouds but in clothes. Such a mass of corrupt flesh would soon have infested all the vaults, ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... generations out of virile foreign stock; but it is great enough to have brought deep disgrace upon us and to have made it necessary that we should promptly make use of processes of law by which we may be purged of their corrupt distempers. America never witnessed anything like this before. It never dreamed it possible that men sworn into its own citizenship, men drawn out of great free stocks such as supplied some of the best and strongest elements of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... domains. He made himself master of all the correspondence, conceived the plan to come here himself and intends to carry off the true lord's bride. Indeed, in private, he has acknowledged it all to me, and, failing to corrupt me to his service, last night set an assassin ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... clear. If a man—Negro or otherwise—is a criminal, he is an enemy of society, and society demands that he be placed where he will do the least harm. If execution is necessary, this should take place in private; and in no case should the criminal be so handled as to corrupt the morals or arouse the morbid sensibilities of the populace. At the same time simple patriotism would demand that by uplifting home surroundings, good schools, and wholesome recreation everything possible be done for Negro children as for other children of the Republic, ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... of the Tiber, Pontius was still the sculptor's friend. Balbilla and her husband gave their corrupt fellow-citizens the example of a worthy, faithful marriage on the old Roman pattern. The poetess's bust had been completed by Pollux in Alexandria, and with all its tresses and little curls, it found ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... when I have forbidden them, is doing nothing else but making friends of people whom I have turned into enemies against myself. I believe there will be a new conspiracy. Promises, fees, presents, corrupt justice. Therefore I beg you from this time forward, by the authority I hold from the Pope, not to accept anything which is not suitable, even though it comes to you from heaven. I must not be made to appear, ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... gauged his own capacity. They are either random discharges of superlatives or vigorous assertions of sound moral principles. He compliments some favourite author with an emphatic repetition of the ordinary eulogies, or shows conclusively that Montgomery was a sham poet, and Wycherley a corrupt ribald. Nobody can hit a haystack with more certainty, but he is not so good at a difficult mark. He never makes a fine suggestion as to the secrets of the art whose products he admires or describes. His mode, for ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... missionary society to build up waste places in Connecticut. His sermon "Reformation of Morals practicable and desirable" warned against "profane and profligate men of corrupt minds and ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... wages of all Government employees were fixed by law and could not be raised or lowered except by a two-thirds vote of the people, and only one bill from each department could be submitted by the Parliament to the people to vote on at each election, so that graft and corrupt practices could gain no footing by appealing ...
— Eurasia • Christopher Evans
... on the fate of a person implicated in a state crime; in a word, Rawleigh thought that Manoury was a spy over him, and probably over Stucley too. The first impression in these matters is usually the right one; but when Rawleigh found himself caught in the toils, he imagined that such corrupt agents were to be corrupted. The French empiric was sounded, and found very compliant; Rawleigh was desirous by his aid to counterfeit sickness, and for this purpose invented a series of the most humiliating stratagems. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... unvalued Wreath: I rejoice in the sense express'd not only of his Genius, but of his pure, benevolent, amiable Virtue, his affectionate Veneration to the DEITY, and his good Will to all.... Obscurity and Adversity have not broken; Fame and Prosperity, I am persuaded, will not corrupt him. ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... formulae which still shame the distorted religion of humanity, hateful to the Father in Heaven who made her. She had grown up in antagonism with all that surrounded her. She had been talked to about her corrupt nature and her sinful heart, until the words had become an offence and an insult. Bathsheba knew her father's fondness for young company too well to suppose that his intercourse with Myrtle had gone beyond the sentimental ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... decorum of her manners, that, though encompassed by false friends and open enemies, not the slightest reproach was breathed on her fair name in this corrupt and ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... The minister could have retained all had not his conscience been so tender. But the servant of the Lord may not be bribed. Offer the true minister of Jesus Christ money, comfort, pleasure, honor, houses, lands—all that the world can give to corrupt his conscience in his calling, and you will get a laugh of scorn that will ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... also the question, so often raised by Mr. Pelton, that under the Hamilton machine, the politics, and particularly the enforcement of the laws, in this state, are unbelievably corrupt, but I wonder—" ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... been a comparatively poor man. He saw a good investment and he put some of his savings into it. His opponents became aware of the matter, and in storms of virtuous passion held him up to execration as a corrupt politician who was using his position to make himself rich. There were bursts of unholy joy among the Conservatives. That innocent investment in Marconi shares was perhaps the most stupid thing in Lloyd George's public life. He gave ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... toward the ends they are intended to accomplish that to stifle and suppress them. But the thirst for intoxicating drink is unnatural. It creates abnormal cravings; it produces diseased conditions which corrupt and destroy the very powers of nerve and brain on which the faculties of reason and control depend. "Touch not, taste not, handle not," is the only rule that can insure one against the fearful ravages of this beastly ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... attention to what is called their religious duties. If a confessor obeys the injunctions of this high ecclesiastical authority, his fair penitents will have nothing to learn from a diligent perusal of Faublas or Casanova. It would, however, be unjust to the priesthood to consider them all as corrupt as royal chaplains. It requires a combination of convent and palace life to produce these finished specimens ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay |
