"Debasement" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... forward. They do not understand the finer spiritual risks that such material benefits may involve. They are not as sensitive as the humble peasant, as simpler citizens, to the gradual sapping of the precious national roots, of the internal debasement that may be going on through the process of "infiltration." They are too prosperous, too cosmopolitan to feel losses in national individuality. They realize merely the better hotels, the better railways, the ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... the jockey. "How singular," said I, "is the fall and debasement of words; you talk of a gang, or set, of shorters; you are, perhaps, not aware that gang and set were, a thousand years ago, only connected with the great and Divine; they are ancient Norse words, which may be found in the heroic poems ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... style of art patronised by the Romans after the seat of empire was removed to the East; it has been described by Mr. Fairholt as "an engraftment of Oriental elaboration of detail upon classic forms, ending in their debasement." ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... EMANCIPATION, as a right which is unrighteously withheld, and the restoration of which is, in their opinion, the first and most indispensable step to all improvement, and absolutely essential to the application of the only remedy for that moral debasement, in which slavery ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... of his beaten enemies were resolute enough, accepting defeat with grim carelessness, or with sphinx-like indifference, or even with airy jocularity. But for the most part their alert, eager deference, their tame subservience, the abject humility and debasement of their bent shoulders drove Jadwin to the verge of self-control. He grew to detest the business; he regretted even the defiant brutality of Scannel, a rascal, but none the less keeping his head high. The more the fellows ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... of the authority of the Brahmans; and this it was which provoked the bitter hostility of the priestly order. It has been seen that Ghasi Das himself had been deeply impressed by the misery and debasement of the Chamar community; how his successor Balak Das was murdered for the assumption of the sacred thread; and how in other ways the Satnamis try to show their contempt for the social order which brands them as helot outcastes. A large proportion of the ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... soldiers, Bohemians, jesters, poets, monks, courtesans, swarmed and clustered here, and hustled one another in the streets. There was confusion of tongues, customs, and costumes, an inextricable mixture of splendour and rags, riches and misery, debasement and grandeur. The austere poets of the Middle Ages stigmatised the accursed city in their writings under the name of ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - JOAN OF NAPLES—1343-1382 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... the scrub a number of men were drinking sake with much uproar, and a superb-looking Aino came out, staggered a few yards, and then fell backwards among the weeds, a picture of debasement. I forgot to tell you that before I left Biratori, I inveighed to the assembled Ainos against the practice and consequences of sake-drinking, and was met with the reply, "We must drink to the gods, or we shall die;" but ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... Primaire: the development of the style finding its best example at Paris. The Secondaire: the Perfectionnement at Reims, and its Apogee at Amiens. The Tertiaire: practically the beginning of the decadence, in St. Ouen at Rouen, only a shade removed from the debasement which soon followed. As to the merits or demerits of the contemporary structures of other nations, that also would be obviously of comparative unimportance herein except so far as a comparison might once and again ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... DEGRADATION. Debasement and disgrace. The suspension of a petty officer from his station; and also the depriving an officer or soldier of his arms previous to his being delivered over to ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... though a thriving concern to its owners, becomes "a prime nursery of vice and sorrow." "Virtue perished utterly within its walls, and was dreamed of no more; or, if remembered at all, only in a deep and woful sense of self-debasement—a struggling to forget, where it was hopeless to obtain." But to us, almost the most interesting passage in his book, and certainly the one which bears most directly on the general purpose of this article, is one in which he speaks of the effects of song on ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... knowledge; thus, a man is said to suffer ecstasy, inasmuch as he is placed outside the connatural apprehension of his sense and reason, when he is raised up so as to comprehend things that surpass sense and reason: or it may be due to his being cast down into a state of debasement; thus a man may be said to suffer ecstasy, when he is overcome by violent passion or madness. As to the appetitive power, a man is said to suffer ecstasy, when that power is borne towards something else, so that it goes forth out ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... told to go and be hanged. The earl's conduct so roused the indignation of the butchers of the city—a class of men scarcely less powerful than their brethren the fishmongers—that they made no secret that the price of meat would be raised still more if the debasement of the currency was carried out as proposed.(1340) Yet, in spite of all remonstrances and threats, a proclamation went forth that after the 17th August the shilling should be current for six pence sterling and no more, the groat ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... Grimaldi, and all this under a burning tropical sun. These caboceers were dressed in robes of leopard skin, hung round with tassels and chains, and in a short time afterwards about twenty of them, in all their dirt and debasement, stretched at full length before the king, stripped to the waist, and vying with each other, which should have the most dust, and kiss the ground with the greatest fervour. When any one speaks to the king, it must ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... Immorality, depravity, excess in the use of alcoholic liquors, moral debasement. Second generation: Hereditary drunkenness, paroxysms of mania, general paralysis. Third generation: Sobriety, hypochondria, melancholy, systematic ideas of being persecuted, homicidal tendencies. Fourth generation: Intelligence slightly ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... Quebec or the Indian Mohammedan? The system of Protestant control, he said in the Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe (1792), was "well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment and degradation of a people, and the debasement in them of human nature itself." The Catholics paid their taxes; they served with glory in the army and navy. Yet they were denied a share in the commonwealth. "Common sense," he said, "and common justice dictate ... some sort of compensation to a people for ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... his—yea, and maybe saved you From a debasement that could madden or kill, For women thieves ere now have felt a knife Severing ear or nose. And yet the feud You sowed with Otkell's house shall murder Gunnar. Otkell was slain: then Gunnar's enviers, Who could not crush him under his own horse At the big horse-fight, stirred ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... of the Emperor, Hsien Feng; and what we do hear is not to his advantage. He had become a confirmed debauchee, in the hands of a degraded clique, whose only contribution to the crisis was a suggested issue of paper money and debasement of the popular coinage. Among his generals, however, there was now one, whose name is still a household word all over the empire, and who initiated the first checks which led to the ultimate suppression of the rebellion. ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... even by their own opinion of their personal interest. I do not speak of the influence of a sense of duty, or feelings of philanthropy, motives never to be mainly relied on, though (except in countries or during periods of great moral debasement) they influence almost all rulers in some degree, and some rulers in a very great degree. But I insist only on what is true of all rulers, viz., that the character and course of their actions is largely influenced ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... rather than the War Office. "At one of the most critical conjunctures of the Peninsular war, he drew up a most able paper on the true principles of Portuguese banking; and at Seringapatam, after very serious evils had been experienced from a long-standing debasement of the coinage, a memorandum was accidentally discovered in the treasury from the pen of Colonel Wellesley, every prediction and observation of which had been exactly verified by events." His desire to stand ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... well improved, may have produced some very elevated and accomplished characters, they can not, taken at the highest, be considered so respectable a class as their somewhat despised northern brethren; and the lower ranks are decidedly in a state of comparative moral debasement."—Murray, ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... gigantic power levelled with the dust by libels, but perished from the corruptions of the tyrannical government of the Emperors, which drained the nation of all its ancient virtue, and bred the slavery which produces an utter debasement of the mind (and which never could have been, if a free publication of political opinion had been suffered), and thus she fell an easy conquest and prey to the barbarians and Goths. Both these renowned states fell, because their governments ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... of, to relieve them from that bondage and ignorance in which they were kept before. Thee perhaps hast been surprised to see them at my table, but by elevating them to the rank of freemen, they necessarily acquire that emulation without which we ourselves should fall into debasement and profligate ways." Mr. Bertram, this is the most philosophical treatment of negroes that I have heard of; happy would it be for America would other denominations of Christians imbibe the same principles, and follow the same admirable rules. A great number of men would be ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... the immortality of the soul, constitute the philosophy of Freemasonry. When we wish to define it succinctly, we say that it is an ancient system of philosophy which teaches these two dogmas. And hence, if, amid the intellectual darkness and debasement of the old polytheistic religions, we find interspersed here and there, in all ages, certain institutions or associations which taught these truths, and that, in a particular way, allegorically and symbolically, then we have a right to say that ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... with the uncle, to the delight of the Elysee, but to the shame of France! The parodist assumes the airs of a stage manager. Alas! a splendour so infinite could not be tarnished save by this boundless debasement! Yes! worse than Hudson Lowe! Hudson Lowe was only a jailor, Hudson Lowe was only an executioner. The man who has really assassinated Napoleon is Louis Bonaparte; Hudson Lowe killed only his life, Louis Bonaparte is ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... N. lowness &c adj.; debasement, depression, prostration &c (horizontal) 213; depression &c (concave) 252. molehill; lowlands; basement floor, ground floor; rez de chaussee [Fr.]; cellar; hold, bilge; feet, heels. low water; low ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the taste challenges peremptorily, though it have the authority of Charles Cotton—who rhymes 'Indies' with 'cringes'—and four English lexicographers, beginning with Dr. Sheridan, bid us say invidgeous. Yet after all it is no worse than the debasement which all our terminations in tion and tience have undergone, which yet we hear with resignashun and payshunce, though it might have aroused both impat-i-ence and in-dig-na-ti-on in Shakespeare's time. When George Herbert tells us that if the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... arguments of Mr. Davis. "Suppose, instead of issuing paper money," said Mr. Bayard, "it had pleased Congress to order a debasement of our National coinage. Suppose twenty-five per cent more of alloy or worthless metal had been injected into our currency, and with that base coinage men had come forward to buy your bonds, what would be thought of the man ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... it, and forebore to whisk her tail in the presence of the man of genius. His large water-dog was acquainted with the fact, and upon the approach of his master, betrayed his sense of inferiority by a sanctity of deportment, a debasement of the ears, and a dropping of the lower jaw not altogether unworthy of a dog. It is, however, true that much of this habitual respect might have been attributed to the personal appearance of the metaphysician. A distinguished exterior will, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... cases of debasement she found more to admire than to contemn, and won the confidence of the fallen by manifesting her real respect. "There was in my family," writes a friend, "a very handsome young girl, who had been vicious in her habits, and so enamored of one of her lovers, that when ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... course, in a large measure taken from Scripture, and from the hymns heard at church; and for this reason these religious songs do not by any means illustrate the full extent of the debasement of the dialect." Of words funnily distorted through failure to understand their meaning there are, however, many examples. "Paul and Silas, bound in jail," was often sung "Bounden Cyrus born in jail;" "Ring Jerusalem" appeared ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... sentiment of the Divine—the supernatural—exists in every mind. It may be, it undoubtedly is, somewhat modified in its manifestations by the circumstances in which men are placed, and the degree of culture they have enjoyed. The African Fetichist, in his moral and intellectual debasement, conceives a supernatural power enshrined in every object of nature. The rude Fijian regards with dread, and even terror, the Being who darts the lightnings and wields the thunderbolts. The Indian "sees God in clouds, and hears him in the wind." The Scottish "herdsman" ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... it! I must go back to that dreadful wine shop, to the gaming tables; must continue to draw men there to be despoiled of their money, perhaps of their lives; must laugh and be gay, though my heart break at its own debasement. There have been many, ah, so many, I have lured to that place; and it came so near to costing you your life—you who were so kind ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... in practices "full of austerity and rigour," by the love of righteousness and the fear of evil, without seeking for other compensation than that which flows from the gratification of such love and the consciousness of escape from debasement, they are in a bad case. For they will assuredly find that virtue presents no very close likeness to the sportive leader of the joyous hours in Hume's rosy picture; but that she is an awful Goddess, whose ministers are the Furies, and whose ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... confess to a priest, a sin committed against the rules, because he would not require one of the penances I most disliked, viz.: those which exposed of me to the observation of the nuns, or which demanded self-debasement before them, like begging their pardon, kissing the floor, or the Superior's feet, &c., and, besides, he as a confessor was said to be bound to secrecy, and could not inform the Superior against me. My conscience being as effectually ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... and denounced, as thinking better of the wisdom and power of human legislation than in truth it deserved. He was uniformly consistent in his view of the remedies which the various sections of Opposition proposed against the existing debasement and servility of the Lower House. The Duke of Richmond wanted universal suffrage, equal electoral districts, and annual parliaments. Wilkes proposed to disfranchise the rotten boroughs, to increase the county constituencies, and to ...
— Burke • John Morley
... adjourned for centuries by the German Reformation. Just as this alone had made the expedition against Rome (1527) possible and successful, so did it compel the Papacy to become once more the expression of a world-wide spiritual power, to raise itself from the soulless debasement in which it lay, and to place itself at the head of all the enemies of this reformation. The institution thus developed during the latter years of Clement VII, and under Paul III, Paul IV, and their successors, in the face of the defection of half Europe, was a new, ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... could not occasion any scarcity of corn, nor, perhaps, any augmentation in the real quantity of silver which was usually paid for it, must necessarily have occasioned some augmentation in the nominal sum. This event was the great debasement of the silver coin, by clipping and wearing. This evil had begun in the reign of Charles II. and had gone on continually increasing till 1695; at which time, as we may learn from Mr Lowndes, the current silver coin was, at an average, near five-and-twenty ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... blends the heathen mythology with the Christian religion. One of the most admirable circumstances attending the establishment of Christianity, is the lowly estate of the apostles who have preached it, and the misery and debasement of the Jewish people, so long the depositaries of the promises that announced the coming of Christ. This contrast between the littleness of the means and the greatness of the result, is in a moral ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... this Islam has had sway within its walls. Not once since have its echoes been permitted to respond to a Christian prayer or a hymn to the Virgin. Nor was this the first instance when, to adequately punish a people for the debasement and perversions of his revelations, God, in righteous anger, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... in his deep debasement, really seemed to have changed sexes with his sister, and to have made over to her any spark of manliness he might have possessed. 'You think so, Sarah, you think so perhaps; but you would have acted quite different, my good ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... sought for glory in the paths of guile; And fawn'd and smiled, to plunder and betray, Myself betray'd and plunder'd all the while; So gnaw'd the viper the corroding file; But now with pangs of keen remorse, I rue Those years of trouble and debasement vile. Yet why should I this cruel theme pursue? Fly, fly, detested thoughts, for ever from ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... the respect of attention, marching with her fellows under common conventions, common orders. Here, alone, slipping in and out among the crowd, she looked abandoned; the sight of her in her bare white feet and the travesty of her dress was a wound. Her humility screamed its violation, its debasement of her race; she woke the impulse to screen her and hurry her away as if she were a woman walking in her sleep. She had on her arm a sheaf of the War Cry. This was another indignity; she offered them right and left, and ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... never happen!" cried Nugent. "No, Germany will never endure the disgrace and debasement of Poland; she will never sink to ruin and perish like Poland. It is true, a majority of the German princes bow to Napoleon's power, and we may charge them with infidelity and treason against Germany; but we can not prefer the same charge against the German people and the subjects of the traitorous ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... help it; but as he turned away from the sight which was yielding him harmless enjoyment, to the forgetfulness of misery for the moment, and perhaps to create in him desires for better things, and give him greater energy to work and labour for them; he was rudely branded, with a mark of debasement, and I could see in the poor fellow's eye and gait, though labourer he was, pride and degradation contending for the mastery; but the latter conquered, and he did "move on," almost admitting by the act that he was ...
— Facts for the Kind-Hearted of England! - As to the Wretchedness of the Irish Peasantry, and the Means for their Regeneration • Jasper W. Rogers
... not attempt to picture the utter desolation of mind and the despair which filled her heart, when this man arrived at her door, to convey herself, and oh! far worse, her innocent and intelligent child, to that scene of vice and debasement. Although her dislike to the measure was known, yet from her quiet and reserved manners, little opposition was anticipated. The evils of life had accumulated upon her in a regular gradation, and she had been enabled ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... This utter debasement of that precious heritage called "love" is the bitterest possible reflection upon our modern civilization. The sort of attraction these unchaste, nakedly adorned, women "of fashion" hold out can never inspire that precious, priceless thing which "passeth all understanding," which survives ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... had noticed ladies traveling in them, thundering into Saratoga on the Lord's Day. Women traveling in a public conveyance on the Sabbath. There is something in this peculiarly degrading and shameful. It ought to be only the lowest of the sex that would stoop to such debasement." And another paper said: "We are sorry to learn that the directors have established an accommodation train for Sunday morning between this city and Poughkeepsie, in addition to the mail train to ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... resulting from prosperous industry is to be spent upon the gratification of unworthy desires, if the increasing perfection of manufacturing processes is to be accompanied by an increasing debasement of those who carry them on, I do not see the good of industry ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... in the chair, roused, the lethargy gone, as if he had poured raw whisky down his throat. And he was glad, the closed door and the drawn curtains were not now things of debasement. Curious that he should care what this little Hindu maid was like, but he did. His hand now clasped the girl's wrist, it almost hurt in ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... through their gardens to an uncultivated hill, for the purpose of viewing the country. I feel glad that this happened in the land of the Brazilians, for I bear them no good will — a land also of slavery, and therefore of moral debasement. A Spaniard would have felt ashamed at the very thought of refusing such a request, or of behaving to a stranger with rudeness. The channel by which we went to and returned from Olinda, was bordered ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... the poor and needy. Barclay Fetters recovered the use of one eye, and embittered against the whole Negro race by his disfigurement, went into public life and devoted his talents and his education to their debasement. The colonel had relented sufficiently to contemplate making over to Miss Laura the old family residence in trust for use as a hospital, with a suitable fund for its maintenance, but it unfortunately caught fire and burned down—and he was hardly sorry. He sent Catherine, ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... passages, namely, 'in vera et substantiali potestate Jesu': that is, [Greek: en logo kai dia logou], the true 'noumenon' or 'ens intelligibile' of Christ. To bow at hearing the 'cognomen' may become a universal, but it is still only a non-essential, consequence of the former. But the debasement of the idea is not the worst evil of this false rendering;—it has afforded the pretext and authority ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... families, and their friends; when he saw the unhappy victims carried away by force; thrust into a dungeon in the hold of a ship, in which the interval of their passage from their native to a foreign land was filled up with misery, under every degree of debasement, and in chains; and when he saw them afterwards consigned to an eternal slavery; he could not but contemplate the whole system with horror. It was inhuman in its beginning, inhuman in its progress, and inhuman ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... enumerating the absence of the scriptural idea of family relation; the despotism exercised by the priesthood with the aid of an Inquisition, and the unnumbered toll-gates they have placed on the road to heaven; the effeminacy of the higher classes and debasement of the peasantry; the absorption of half the revenues of the country in superstitious and idolatrous purposes, and the uncleanly habits superinduced by mental and physical degradation for generations, so that the word leper is used to designate ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... whose industry is far below the value of his most self-accused idleness, who have no self-consolation, are plunged in entire darkness, and have not only to lament the years of omission, but those of commission, not only the opportunities neglected, but the positive mischief done by the debasement of the faculties, the deterioration of the understanding, the impairing of the power of exertion consequent upon a long devotion to low, despicable, unprofitable habits ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... exchange is commendable because it supplies a natural need: but the latter is justly deserving of blame, because, considered in itself, it satisfies the greed for gain, which knows no limit and tends to infinity. Hence trading, considered in itself, has a certain debasement attaching thereto, in so far as, by its very nature, it does not imply a virtuous or necessary end. Nevertheless gain which is the end of trading, though not implying, by its nature, anything virtuous ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... Volga and the Elbe. The Sclavonians of the Danube, however, successfully resisted them, and maintained their independence. Generations came and went as these hordes, wild, degraded and wretched, swept these northern wilds, in debasement and cruelty rivaling the wolves which howled in their forests. They have left no traces behind them, and the few records of their joyless lives which history has preserved, are merely the gleanings of uncertain tradition. The thinking mind pauses in ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... assumed the habits of a wanderer, and continued his absence for months together. He shared the danger of his allies, and confided in their affection: he encouraged their sports, and so far as could a white man, without debasement, he became one among them. Hitherto the English had dealt treacherously, and rarely approached their camps, but to oppress, to mock, or to destroy them. They now discovered, that all were not enemies, and kindness ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... restoration of the silver dollar at a rate which once was, but has ceased to be, its commercial value. Certainly the issue of our gold coinage, reduced in weight materially below its legal-tender value, would not be any the less a present debasement of the coinage by reason of its equaling, or even exceeding, in weight a gold coinage which at some past time had been commercially equal to the legal-tender value ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson
... heard her; his being was possessed by the pitiable image of Hannah dying alone and dog poor. He had always pictured her—except in the fleet vision of debasement—as young and graceful and disturbing. Without further speech he left the kitchen and crossed the house to the shut parlor. It was screened against the day, dim and musty and damp. The orange plush of the chairs and the narrow uncomfortable sofa, carefully dusted, was as bright as it had been ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... terrors, that his fellow-traveller, always a coward, shrunk from him in positive fear. Instead of Jonas being his tool and instrument, their places seemed to be reversed. But there was reason for this too, Montague thought; since the sense of his debasement might naturally inspire such a man with the wish to assert a noisy independence, and in that licence to forget his real condition. Being quick enough, in reference to such subjects of contemplation, he was not long ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... arts of mediaeval education carried the blending almost to the absorption of poetic by rhetoric, and the debasement of rhetoric itself to ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... system, and upon the lowest scale. To overreach, to deceive, to elude, to shuffle, to fawn, and to lie, were the arts that he confessed to with so naked and cold a grossness, that one perceived that in the long habits of debasement he was unconscious of what was not debased. Houseman seemed to draw him out: he told us anecdotes of his rascality, and the distresses to which it had brought him; and he finished by saying: 'Yet you see me now almost rich, ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... influence. We must awaken the spiritual consciousness, and lead a man too weak to stand in his own strength when appetite, held only in abeyance, springs back upon him to trust in God as his only hope of permanent reformation. First we must help him physically, we must take him out of his debasement, his foulness and his discomfort, and surround him with the influences of a home. Must get him clothed and in his right mind, and make him feel once more that he has sympathy—is regarded as a man full of the noblest possibilities—and so be stimulated to personal effort. But this is only ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... reached the Rectory; and now only Mr. Chantrey and Ann Holland watched beside him. They had laid him, as he was, on the little white-covered sofa in the parlor, never so soiled before. Mr. Chantrey sat gazing at the degraded, dying man. No deeper debasement could come to any human being; almost the likeness of a human being had been lost. The mire and slough of the ditch into which he had fallen still clung to him; for only his face had been hastily washed clean by his sister's hand; a face that had forfeited all intelligence and seemliness; a coarse, ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... that riches procure, nor the choice of viands which cover the board of the wealthy, that inflame the passions of the covetous and the mercenary. Nature is easily satisfied in all her enjoyments. It is an opinion of eminence, connected with fortune; it is a sense of debasement attending on poverty, which renders us blind to every advantage, but that of the rich; and insensible to every disgrace, but that of the poor. It is this unhappy apprehension, that occasionally ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... destruction, pressed close to the limits of human endurance, and seemed almost to threaten the extermination of the population. The prosperity of the cities was crushed by war contributions, even when they escaped being plundered like Magdeburg; and the debasement of the coinage practised by the emperor and the princes bore hardly upon all who bought or sold. [Footnote: Gindeley, History of the Thirty Years' War (English trans.), II., 390-395] During the later campaigns of the war military operations in many regions became almost ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... and mouldering to decay; the few roads and bridges formerly constructed rendered almost impassable; the population in general depressed by poverty; no public credit nor private confidence; the morals of the great mass of the population in the lowest state of debasement, and religious worship almost totally neglected.[128] Such was the state of New South Wales when I took charge of its administration on the 1st of January, 1810. I left it in February last, reaping incalculable advantages from ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... does this, another if he does that; so that the hero of the Empire has become weaker and more irresolute than a child. What more remains of this impious family? Jacques Rennepont? Ask Morok, to what a state of debasement intemperance has reduced him, and towards what an abyss he is rushing!—There is my occurrence-sheet; you see to what are reduced all the members of this family, who, six weeks ago, had each elements of strength and union! Behold these Renneponts, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... question, and here we give a diagram of it. Owing a stern and solemn duty to the public, PUNCH has indignantly spurned the offers of the British Association to join in their mummeries at Plymouth—to appear at their dinners for the debasement of science. No; here in his own pages, and in them only, doth he propound his invention. But he is not exclusive; having published his wonderful invention, he invites the makers to copy his plan. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various
... the heathen has been for a few of the most self-sacrificing men and women to give up country and home and all the comforts and benefits of a Christian community, and then commence the family state amid such vice and debasement that it was ruinous to children to be trained in its midst. And so the result has been, in multitudes of cases, that children were born only to be sent from parents to be trained by strangers, and the true "Christian ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... standard, so that in the eight hundred years preceding Gustavus Vasa the various monetary units all over Europe had declined to little more than an eighteenth part of their original value. In Denmark the debasement of the currency had been more rapid than in almost any other land, and the "klippings" of Christiern II. fell farther below their nominal value than any coin in Europe—till the "klippings" were issued ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... sovereign's power from such debasement! 270 Far rather, Sire, let it descend in vengeance On the base villain, on the faithless slave Who dared unbar the doors of these retirements! For whom? Has Casimir deserved this insult? O my misgiving heart! If—if—from Heaven 275 Yet not from ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... is what has actually taken place in modern Europe through the introduction of Christianity. This sublime and beneficent religion has regenerated the ancient world from its state of exhaustion and debasement; it is the guiding principle in the history of modern nations, and even at this day, when many suppose they have shaken off its authority, they still find themselves much more influenced by it in their views of human affairs than they ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... indignation began to kindle against Mejnour, who owned he had tempted, and who now abandoned him,—abandoned him to the presence of a spectre. The mystic's reproaches stung rather than humbled him. What crime had he committed to deserve language so harsh and disdainful? Was it so deep a debasement to feel pleasure in the smile and the eyes of Fillide? Had not Zanoni himself confessed love for Viola; had he not fled with her as his companion? Glyndon never paused to consider if there are no distinctions between one kind of love and another. Where, too, was the great offence of yielding ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... deserved that title posterity will decide. But my greatness appeared sufficiently in that very act which seemed to you a debasement. ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... outside railing of the temple which contains within it the great thunderer of some metropolitan periodical publication! The evil here is not only that done to the public when interested counsel is given to them, but extends to the debasement of those who have at any rate considered themselves fit to provide literature ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... and giving up the world at once, all the ambitions of youth became extinguished in his breast, since nothing was preserved in his country to sanctify their fires. Scotland seemed proud of her chains. Not to share in such debasement, appeared all that was now in his power; and within the shades of Ellerslie he found a retreat and a home, whose sweets beguiling him of every care, made him sometimes forget the wrongs of his country in the ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... their own well-being,—who are really unconcerned about their own elevation. The friends of the industrious should faithfully tell them that they must exercise prudence, economy, and self-denial, if they would really be raised from selfish debasement, and become elevated to the dignity of thinking beings. It is only by practising the principles of self-dependence that they can achieve dignity, stability, and consideration in society; or that they can acquire such influence and power as to raise ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... anthropocentric imagination" which leads him to look upon himself as the aim of earthly life and the centre of earthly nature; this, he says, is nothing but vanity and haughtiness. Several writers in the "Ausland" faithfully second him in this debasement of the value of man. Its editor ("Ausland," 1874, No. 48, p. 957), for instance, reproaches Ludwig Noire, although he otherwise sympathizes with him, that in his book "Die Welt als Entwicklung des Geistes" ("The World as Development of Mind"), Leipzig, Veit & Co., 1874, he still takes this ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... philosophy, seem to have caught the crowd. As to the poetry by itself, anything good in that repels rather. I am not as blind as Romney, not to perceive this. He had to be blinded, observe, to be made to see; just as Marian had to be dragged through the uttermost debasement of circumstances to arrive at the sentiment of personal dignity. I am sorry, but indeed ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... nearest relation to us, who is the "head of all principality and power," and who pervades all nature with his presence. The object of the Christian religion is to recover man from his degraded, miserable condition, elevate him above his debasement, and reinvest him with the character of Christ, that he may eventually dwell with the angels in the perfections ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 11, November, 1880 • Various
... equally serious charge that can be laid against the existing electoral system—it is in no small measure responsible for that increasing degradation in the methods of warfare which has characterised recent political and municipal contests. This debasement of elections cannot fail to contribute to that undermining of the authority of the House of Commons, upon which stress has already been laid. Indeed, there is abundant evidence to show that in conjunction with the imaginary ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... in which he is now indulging. He himself has told me what a mad and vicious act it would be to marry a husband in whom I could not confide, and I never can confide in him. My persuasion at this moment of his hypocrisy is such that, could I prevail on myself to the debasement of putting him to the trial, by pretending to accept his hand, I am convinced he would refuse. I read his heart. He seeks an opportunity to revenge imaginary injuries; for I never did, do not, nor ever can wish him any thing but good. I think I would ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... the eternal honour of AEgypt and Athens, they were the only places that we can find, where slaves were considered with any humanity at all. The rest of the world seemed to vie with each other, in the debasement and oppression of these unfortunate people. They used them with as much severity as they chose; they measured their treatment only by their own passion and caprice; and, by leaving them on every occasion, ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... be said that poetically, and in spirit, the Chorus was the source of its existence, and that without these persevering supporters and witnesses of the incident a totally different order of poetry would have grown out of the drama. The abolition of the Chorus, and the debasement of this sensibly powerful organ into the characterless substitute of a confidant, is, by no means, such an improvement in tragedy as the French, and their imitators, would have it ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... exploded long ago. We are made, dozens of times a day, to feel that this is no longer the case. It is, on the contrary, brought vividly home to us that such conveyances are money making machines in the possession of powerful corporations (to whom we, in our debasement, have handed over the freedom of our streets and rivers), and are run in the interest and at the discretion of ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... generations and for ever, thousands upon thousands of such men as came at the beginning. The effects that would have been thus produced in America and in England, in accelerating the progress of society here, and sinking it into debasement there; and thereby upon the fortunes of mankind the world over, is a subject on which a meditative and philosophical mind may ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... Rodney was happy amid such scenes? Ah! no; he was alarmed at himself. He felt degraded and guilty; he felt that he was taking sudden and rapid strides in the path of debasement and vice. He thought of his home and its sweet influences. He knew how deep would be the grief of those who loved him, should they hear of his course. His conscience condemned him, and he thought of what he was becoming with horror. But he seemed to be drawn on by his wild desires, ...
— The Runaway - The Adventures of Rodney Roverton • Unknown
... officer should be surrounded by circumstances calculated to impart a requisite dignity to his position, it is not the less certain that, by the excessive pomp he at present maintains, there is naturally and unavoidably generated a feeling of servility and debasement in the hearts of most of the seamen who continually behold a fellow-mortal flourishing over their heads like the archangel Michael with a thousand wings. And as, in degree, this same pomp is observed toward their inferiors by all the grades of commissioned ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... say, that every step in improvement has been so invariably accompanied by a step made in raising the social position of women, that historians and philosophers have been led to adopt their elevation or debasement as on the whole the surest test and most correct measure of the civilization of a people or an age. Through all the progressive period of human history, the condition of women has been approaching nearer to equality with men. This does not of itself prove that the assimilation ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... some whom a couple of glasses of wine made drunk for half a week; others seemed already besotted, without having had a sip, and their countenances constantly mirrored the most absolute debasement, whence they escaped only in a fleeting moment of anger ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... us, for the present omitting consideration of the debasement of the Greek types which took place when their cycle of achievement had been fulfilled, pass to the germination of Christian architecture, out of one of the least important elements of those fallen ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... following days:' the Police went on. (Lacretelle, iii. 175.) O ye poor naked wretches! and this, then, is your inarticulate cry to Heaven, as of a dumb tortured animal, crying from uttermost depths of pain and debasement? Do these azure skies, like a dead crystalline vault, only reverberate the echo of it on you? Respond to it only by 'hanging on the following days?'—Not so: not forever! Ye are heard in Heaven. And the answer too will come,—in a horror of great darkness, and shakings of ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... the rag shop of anachronisms and superstitions. In fact, he is now more Hamlet than Don Juan; for though the lines put into the actor's mouth to indicate to the pit that Hamlet is a philosopher are for the most part mere harmonious platitude which, with a little debasement of the word-music, would be properer to Pecksniff, yet if you separate the real hero, inarticulate and unintelligible to himself except in flashes of inspiration, from the performer who has to talk at any cost through five acts; and if you also do what you must always do in Shakespear's ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... the fortune of Lord Mar on this, as on many other occasions, to reap the ignominy of having accepted this pension, without ever receiving the profits of his debasement. ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... up the day with a round of calls upon the various families of the neighborhood, and came home to his lodgings at Mr. Dubois's with his heart overwhelmed by the ignorance and debasement he had witnessed. ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... of theology on the minds of earnest, truth-seeking men—the total prostration of manly dignity, the perversion of the mental faculties, and the debasement of human nature, is truly stated by Mr. Barker in ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... Carey—just in time to remind you of our little compact," said he. As she looked at him, he stood, smiling grossly, vulgar, sensual, mean. All the years of her debasement came to her memory with a new sting to her wounded pride, and she ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... drunkenness have left—which crouches beneath a window-ledge, to sleep where there is some shelter from the rain, have little to bind them to life, but what have they to look back upon, in death? What are the unwonted comforts of a roof and a bed, to them, when the recollections of a whole life of debasement stalk before them; when repentance seems a mockery, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... considered as little better than childish amusement; your soul, still rich in its primitive candor, and favored with an energy tempered in the love and habit of virtue, would revolt at the thought of such debasement. And, nevertheless, unless you apply your mind to acquire a love for serious matters you will not escape a disorder which you so justly deplore in others; you will be captured in those windings which have proved fatal fastnesses to women of other days. ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... finally—an argument which appears unanswerable and insuperable—Mr. John O'Connell and his immediate followers had so solemnly abjured, denounced and cursed the principles of the great majority with whom they were asked to league, that they could not comply without such a debasement of character as to compel the scorn of all men, not only to themselves, but all those with whom they were united. It could not fail to strike any ordinary observer that materials so incongruous and repulsive were incapable of cohesion; and the consequence must be the distrust of the ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... open offer an impassable front of wood, and ears once attentive are deaf. And the pity is that they have closed not to the evil alone, but to the good. This is the crime of those who distort and degrade speech: they shake confidence generally. We consider as a calamity the debasement of the currency, the lowering of interest, the abolition of credit:—there is a misfortune greater than these: the loss of confidence, of that moral credit which honest people give one another, and which makes ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... misdemeanours, crimes that would have sunk an unregenerated person to perdition; but as I knew it to be only a temporary falling off, a specimen of that liberty by which the chosen and elected ones are made free, I closed my eyes on the wilful debasement of our principles, knowing that the transgressions could never be accounted to your charge, and that in good time you would come to your senses, and throw the whole weight of your crimes on the shoulders that had voluntarily stooped ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... stooping, she lays off her womanhood to pander to the low aims of a sensual life. In every country and in all ages woman has been thus abased. The history of the world is all darkened by the awful shadow of woman's debasement. While man has admired and loved her, he has degraded her. Savage and civilized man are not very dissimilar in this respect. They both woo, cajole, and flatter woman to oppress and degrade her. They both load her with honeyed titles and flattering compliments, ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... agriculturists, who sent their children to schools, and at the same time, in the absence of circulating libraries, improved their own minds by the exchange of books, as we perceive in contemporary diaries and correspondence; and Macaulay doubtless overcolours the ignorance and debasement of the bulk of society about the period of the Revolution of 1688, apparently in order to maintain a cue with which he had started. The Diary of John Richards, a farmer at Warmwell in Dorsetshire, 1697-1702, is an unimpeachable ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... childishness of the cave pictures. And their new art develops at the expense of decoration; it becomes perfect and sterile. What is commonly called decay is merely stylistic development. The exquisite art of Byzantium was wrongly considered as the debasement of Greco-Roman art. It was really the decorative expansion of it; the conventionalising of exaggerated realism. The same might have happened in Europe after the Baroque and Rococo fashions had their day; politics and commerce interfered. The intensely artificial ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... such marked preference by the red race to express abstract ideas. In some cases, doubtless, the natives themselves came, in time, to confound the symbol with the idea, by that familiar process of personification and consequent debasement exemplified in the history of every religion; but I do not believe that a single example could be found where an Indian tribe had a tradition whose real purport was that man came by natural process of descent ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... and phrases have been made by commerce."—Bicknell's Gram., Part ii, p. 10. "The dialect of some nouns are taken notice of in the notes."—Milnes, Greek Gram., p. 255. "It has been said, that a discovery of the full resources of the arts, afford the means of debasement, or of perversion."—Rush, on the Voice, p. xxvii. "By which means the Order of the Words are disturbed."—Holmes's Rhet., B. i, p. 57. "The twofold influence of these and the others require the asserter to be in the plural form."—O. B. Peirce's Gram., ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... had no affections. There have been many Jezebels—but few Athaliahs. The affections compose so large a part of a woman's nature that we disown one who is without them. In her deepest guilt, in her lowest debasement, they still cling to her; and raised to the summit of power, they do not often ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... street names are equally curious, when one attempts to follow the connection, which, for a fact, mostly cannot be done. Thus they stand in their modified form, either as an improvement or debasement. Hog Lane, St. Giles, is now Crown Street; Grub Street is now gloriously named Milton Street, and Shoreditch Lane becomes ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... chose I could do it, and none but myself could gauge the depth of my debasement. No eye could discern the high level ground now on which I stood and the morass that swam before me. I should marry this girl and the world asks no more. This other lower life that lay in my power appealed to me in all its sweetness—this woman as she would be when mine. Those lips with ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... must have been aware that he was encouraging heathen idolatry and hero-worship in its grossest forms. It is not to be supposed that he was acquainted with the legend of Rono; but the conduct of the people must have shown him their utter debasement, and he can scarcely have failed to perceive that by submitting to their ceremonies, and taking a part in them, he was lowering himself to ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... kindred impulses in a character which she would have liked to feel completely alien to her. But what indeed was the girl really like? She seemed to have no scruples and a thousand delicacies. She had given herself to Darrow, and concealed the episode from Owen Leath, with no more apparent sense of debasement than the vulgarest of adventuresses; yet she had instantly obeyed the voice of her heart when it bade her part from the ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... Henceforth for me there's nothing left from all My kind but scorn and hate. For me hath life no charm to cheat my hope, Or make me wish to linger here; yet I While lives the child would shelter her, the one Sweet flower that lovely grows above the soil Of my most foul debasement. Although the blossom of iniquity, She takes no tinct from whence she springs, but rather Of the sky toward which she doth unfold. Believe me, sirs, But for my babe's dear love, I'd ask for death To rid me ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... achieved for the modern world was the liberation of the reason, the power of starting on a new career of progress. The false direction given to the art of sculpture at one moment of this intellectual revival may be deplored; and still more deplorable is the corresponding sensual debasement of the race who won for us the possibility of freedom. But the life of humanity is long and vigorous, and the philosopher of history knows well that the sum total of accomplishment at any time must be diminished by an unavoidable ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... mass now launched forth coarse and crude, but a new sentiment animates it, the force of which is incalculable, that of plebeian pride, that of the poor man, the subject, who, suddenly erect after ages of debasement, relishes, far beyond his hopes and unstintedly, the delights of equality, independence, and dominion. "Fifteen millions white Negroes," says Mallet du Pan,[2380] worse fed, more miserable than those of St. Domingo, like them rebelled and freed from all authority by their revolt, accustomed like ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... with the maxim, Like priest, like people. May we say, Like God, like worshipper? If so, we must regard the Hindus as in the very mire of moral debasement. Just think of a whole people acting like Shiva, Doorga, and Krishna! I think it cannot be doubted by any one who looks at the nature of the human mind, and the power exercised over it by its belief, that the worship of these and similar gods, along with the ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... an ever-present and awful reality. From the centre of that world, the Divine Trinity, surrounded by a hierarchy of angels and saints, contemplated and governed the insignificant sensible world in which the inferior spirits of men, burdened with the debasement of their material embodiment and continually solicited to their perdition by a no less numerous and almost as powerful hierarchy of devils, were constantly struggling on the edge of the ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... party interests: it was a plan that would make honest impartial public action at least possible. And the purer the government of Florence would become—the more secure from the designs of men who saw their own advantage in the moral debasement of their fellows—the nearer would the Florentine people approach the character of a pure community, worthy to lead the way in the renovation of the Church and the world. And Fra Girolamo's mind never stopped short of that sublimest end: the objects ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... interest, or the mercantile interest, or the manufacturing interest? Or, to speak in the fashionable language of the adversaries to the Constitution, will it court the elevation of "the wealthy and the well-born,'' to the exclusion and debasement of all the rest of the society? If this partiality is to be exerted in favor of those who are concerned in any particular description of industry or property, I presume it will readily be admitted, that the competition for it will lie between landed men and merchants. And I scruple not to affirm, ...
— The Federalist Papers
... citizen—of the rights of an elector, and of eligibility to the office of a representative, of the people; in a word, that no person nor their posterity, may ever be debased beneath the level of the recognised basis of American citizenship. This debasement and degradation is "corruption of blood"; politically understood—a legal acknowledgement of ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany
... the support they afforded was worth the dependence by which the emperors purchased it. The fate of Europe was decided behind the Pyrenees by ignorant monks or vindictive favourites. Yet, even in its debasement, a power must always be formidable, which yields to none in extent; which, from custom, if not from the steadfastness of its views, adhered faithfully to one system of policy; which possessed well-disciplined armies and consummate ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... against this debasement of his art disappeared when he saw his Josephina in the house whose ornamentation he was constantly improving, converting it into a jewel case worthy of his love. She was happy in her home, with a splendid carriage in which to drive every afternoon and perfect freedom to spend ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... many Disquiets, and the Sport of such various Passions; let them answer, as they can, if the Pains they undergo, do not outweigh their Enjoyments. The Infidelities on the one Part between the two Sexes, and the Caprices on the other, the Debasement of Reason, the Pangs of Expectation, the Disappointments in Possession, the Stings of Remorse, the Vanities and Vexations attending even the most refined Delights that make up this Business of Life, render it so silly and uncomfortable, that no Man is thought wise till he hath ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the servants, with their penetration of the tone of an establishment, knowing and insufferable; he lived over the increasing dissatisfaction with quick embraces in the automobile, and the final indignities of lying names and rooms of pandering and filthy debasement. The almost inevitable exposure followed, the furies and hysterical reproaches. That, indeed, would have involved them fatally: in such circumstances the world would be invincible, crushing; holding solidly its front against such dangerous ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... that temperance reformers appeal in vain on this question, and that their facts and arguments are viewed with plausible indifference, or insidious opposition, by persons whose appetites and instincts have been undergoing debasement, and perversion from the very dawn of their lives. My own deliberate conviction is that nothing but harm comes to nursing mothers, and to the infants who are dependent upon them, by the ordinary use of alcoholic beverages ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... occupied in comparing what we have done with what we ought to have done, then will the voice of conscience resume its force and its empire; then will the pure bliss which is born of self-content, and the bitter regret for self-debasement, distinguish by inexhaustible feelings the fate which each man will have prepared for himself. Ask me not, O my good friend, if there will be other sources of happiness and of misery; I do not ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... with relating this extraordinary transaction, but we cannot dissemble how much in its present form it appears to us inconsistent and incredible. The debasement of the coin is indeed well suited to the administration of Gallienus; nor is it unlikely that the instruments of the corruption might dread the inflexible justice of Aurelian. But the guilt, as well as the profit, must have been confined to a very few; nor is it easy to conceive by what ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... In the meantime, the debasement of all things connected with sex must be aired, discussed, and weeded out, until a sane and normal and reverential recognition of the universality and the eternality of Sex, is engendered in the minds of men and women and growing youths ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... Business will be treated of in boudoirs, and decided according to the caprice of abandoned women. They will dispose of administrations, lower politics to the level of their own minds, and even ecclesiastical dignities will depend on their patronage. As a consequence of that general debasement, an unmeasured disdain will arise in the inferior classes of all that is great in the state. Doubt will be applauded, and it will extend to the power of the king, the noblesse, and the clergy. The spirit of investigation and analysis will replace ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... suffering of the poor under this system, plunged into a state of debasement not more tolerable than that of the Gallic plebs—and the injustices of the rich, in whom all political power was then vested—are facts well attested by the poems of Solon himself, even in the short fragments preserved to us. It appears that immediately preceding the time of his ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... than in absolute monarchies. Not because men are naturally worse in these States than elsewhere, but the temptation is stronger, and of easier access at the same time. The result is a far more extensive debasement ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... have stated are for the awakening of parents and guardians of girls. If I were to presume to say anything to the possible victims of this awful scourge of white slavery it would be this: "Those who enter here leave hope behind." The depths of debasement and suffering disclosed by the investigation now in progress would make the flesh of a seasoned man of the world creep ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... Susan snatched him up. Then the mother smiled, gratified and reassured. She had no upper front teeth, and the wide toothless grin gave her a look of old age that had in it a curious suggestion of debasement. ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... hardly less monotonous than art. The religion of the Semitic nations, the Hebrews excepted, so far from containing in it a purifying element, tended to degrade its votaries by feeding the flame of sensual and revengeful passion. What but debasement could come from the worship of Astarte and ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... stood burning with the shame of Evelina's self-exposure. She was shocked that, even to her, Evelina should lay bare the nakedness of her emotion; and she tried to turn her thoughts from it as though its recollection made her a sharer in her sister's debasement. ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... war develops the combative qualities, the argument forgets a darker moral phase. It forgets the moral wrecks which are the sad products of war; it forgets the effect of the loss of the refining influence of womanhood upon the soldier; it forgets the debasement of sinking men to the physical type of life. And the argument assumes that peace has no "equivalent for war," declared by a famous educator to be the greatest need of the age. Courage and endurance are as necessary in social ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... Church, I mean Rome. Its system was once prevalent in England, and, during the period that it prevailed there, was more prolific of debasement and crime than all other causes united. The people and the government at last becoming enlightened by means of the Scripture spurned it from the island with disgust and horror, the land instantly after its disappearance becoming a fair field, in which arts, sciences, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... department. It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising the sovereignty. Usurpation is then an easy attainment, and an usurper soon found. The people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin. Let us, then, look to the great cause, and endeavor to preserve it in full force. Let us by all wise and constitutional measures promote intelligence among the people as the best means of preserving ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson
... clicking noise of disgust in his throat. It struck her as a mark of debasement that their bodies were moving more swiftly than their minds, and that each time they spoke they first gesticulated or made some wordless sound. He burst out, more loudly than she had ever heard him before: "Go and ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... life is worthy of an immortal being. We may become like the angels; what debasement, then, to let our lives, with all their glorious possibilities, be dragged down into the dust of shame and dishonor! Rather let us seek continually the glory for which we were made and redeemed. "Beloved, now are we children of God, and it is not ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... world, and her own compunction, the death of the fruit of her error and the witness of her shame, are not the worst. She is exposed to the temptations of the profligate; while she remains with Mrs. Villars, her infamy accumulates; her further debasement is facilitated; her return to reputation and to virtue ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... hide of a rhinoceros. Socialism must be attacked in the derived propositions about which popular discussion centers, and the assault must be, not to prove that the doctrines are scientifically unsound, but that they tend to the impoverishment and debasement of the masses. These propositions are three, and I lay down as my thesis—for ...
— The Inhumanity of Socialism • Edward F. Adams
... fact is proved by the multitude of men who have successfully battled with and overcome the adverse circumstances of life in which they have been placed; and who have risen from the lowest depths of poverty and social debasement, as if to prove what energetic man, resolute of purpose, can do for his own elevation, progress, and advancement in the world. Is it not a fact that the greatness of humanity, the glory of communities, the power of nations, are the result of trials ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... to any eminence that he himself may reach; but if a woman marry a man beneath her in society she always goes down to his level. That is a law inexorable, and there are no exceptions. Is any woman so high up that she can afford to plot for her own debasement? There is not a State in the American Union that has not for the last twenty years furnished an instance of the sudden departure of some intelligent woman from an affluent home to spend her life with some one who can make five dollars a day, provided ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... division between the East and the West could not be avoided. The pope was driven to revive the western empire in order to secure the gift of the exarchy, to eradicate the claims of the Greeks, and to restore the majesty of Rome from the debasement of a provincial town. The emperors of the West would receive their crown from the successor of St. Peter, and the Roman Church would require ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... account given of them except by writers in succeeding ages, who mention them, and describe the purity and integrity of their lives, and also the successive decrease of such purity and integrity, resembling the debasement of gold to iron: but an account of the last or iron age, which commenced from the time of those writers, may in some measure be gathered from the historical records of the lives of some of their kings, judges, and wise men, who were called sophi in Greece and other countries. ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... evils are with which kingdoms, principalities, and republics are troubled, there are four which in my opinion outweigh all others,—war, death, famine, and debasement of money. The three first are so evident that no one denies them, but it is not thus with ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... fatal empire is narrowing instead of enlarging. Especially is it the progress accomplished in the higher regions of intellect and of the feelings which here exerts its beneficent influence. On our moral greatness depends our material power. The elevation or debasement of character, the energy or debility of the will—such is the first source of good or evil. The world, a Chalmers rightly says, is so constituted that we should be materially happy if ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... is most wonderful, that in the grossest, most ridiculous, and most obscene of all idolatrous polytheism, the Portuguese should have fancied any resemblance to the pure religion of Christ! even under its idolatrous debasement of image worship, and the invocation of legions of saints. The monstrous superstitions of the bramins will be discussed in a future division of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... from the cold classicismo of the late sixteenth century showed itself in the following period, in the lawless and vulgar extravagances of the so-called Baroque style. The wealthy Jesuit order was a notorious contributor to the debasement of architectural taste. Most of the Jesuit churches and many others not belonging to the order, but following its pernicious example, are monuments of bad taste and pretentious sham. Broken and contorted ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... both in religion and in earthly things; all that was nothing to them. And now they would insult the great God Himself by believing that all He cared for was a little mass in a convent chapel. What desecration! What debasement! When I went to M. le Cure, he smiled at my vehemence. There was pain in his smile, and it might be indignation; but he was not ...
— A Beleaguered City • Mrs. Oliphant
... hand in his, but made no attempt to translate the meaning of the moment into language. He had worked against her country; while she plied her rounds of mercy, he had written on the debasement and the fallacy of it all. Lying in the wreck of his idealism, in the grip of physical pain, dreading the torture of his own thoughts, could he express what her coming had meant? He wanted to tell her of his heart-hunger, of his loneliness, his gratitude, understanding, reverence, ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... business. He meant to show Miss Bently that she had made a bad business speculation after all. Thus ambition became the controlling element in his character; and he might have had a worse one. Moreover, in all his moral debasement he never lost a decided tendency toward truthfulness and honesty. He would have starved rather than touch anything that did not belong to him, nor would he allow himself to deceive in matters of business, and it was upon these points that he specially ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe |
