"Degenerate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for I do not wish my honest memorial to degenerate into panegyric.—Among her latest known acts were her gifts to the Sicilian cause, and her manifestations on behalf of the antislavery cause in the United States. Her kindness to William and Ellen Craft must be well known there; and it is also related in the newspapers ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... found settled on the Lower Mississippi may have been a degenerate remnant of the Mound-Builders. They differed in language, customs, and condition from all other Indians in the country; and their own traditions connected them with Mexico. Like the Mexicans, they had temples or sacred buildings in which the "perpetual ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... follow. Why, who that had seen you both as youths, notwithstanding Audley had the advantage of being some years your senior—who could have thought that he was the one to become distinguished and eminent, and you to degenerate into the luxurious idler, averse to all trouble and careless of all fame? You, with such advantages, not only of higher fortunes, but, as every one said, of superior talents; you, who had then so much ambition, so keen a desire for glory, sleeping with Plutarch's Lives under your pillow, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... am well aware that this custom of adorning graves with flowers prevails in other countries besides England. Indeed, in some it is much more general, and is observed even by the rich and fashionable; but it is then apt to lose its simplicity and to degenerate into affectation. Bright, in his travels in Lower Hungary, tells of monuments of marble and recesses formed for retirement, with seats placed among bowers of greenhouse plants, and that the graves generally are covered with the gayest flowers of the season. He gives a casual picture of filial ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... mistress in The Fisher, and in a case where he is in fact judge as well as party, has no difficulty in getting his claim established. He is for ever reminding us that he loves philosophy and only satirizes the degenerate philosophers of his day. But it will occur to us after reading him through that he has dissembled his love, then, very well. There is not a passage from beginning to end of his works that indicates any real comprehension of any philosophic system. The external characteristics of the philosophers, ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... and the habit of centuries had been more than confirmed by the colossal raids, victories, and annexations of Napoleon I. A Germany which should escape from French control and reverse, by its own energetic action, the policy of Henry IV., Richelieu, Louis XIV., his degenerate grandson, Louis XV., and of the great Napoleon himself, was an affront to French pride, and could not be patiently endured. The opposing forces which had grown up were so strong that the wit of man was unable to keep them asunder; and all the control ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... cabbage patch where the arena had been; and various tumble-down farmsheds built into the shattered masonry —this was the Circus of Romulus. However, it was not the circus of the original Romulus, but of a degenerate successor of the same name who rose suddenly and fell abruptly after the Christian era was well begun. Old John J. Romulus would not have stood for that circus ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... for he was composed and calculating now. A few minutes ago he had sent a jar of oxygen to keep Luke Claridge alive! But for it one enemy to his career, to his future, would be gone. He did not shrink from the thought. Born a gentleman, there were in him some degenerate characteristics which heart could not drown or temperament refine. Selfishness was inwoven with ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... but his orders were totally disregarded; many of the unhappy English settlers fled from the country and returned to England; the barons supplied their places with native retainers. Thus the Ersefication of the degenerate Normans became complete; they "donned the saffron"—that is, they adopted the yellow dress of the Celts—abandoned their original language, and gave themselves up to a life of constant ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... very degenerate representative of the ancient Arian stock. Slight and supple in person, with quick, glancing eyes, delicate features, and a vivacious manner, he lacks the dignity and strength, the calm repose and simple grace of ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... of basing our psychology on reactions is that it keeps us "close to the ground", and prevents our discussions from sailing off into the clouds of picturesque but fanciful interpretation. Psychology is very apt to degenerate into a game of blowing bubbles, unless we pin ourselves down to hard-headed ways of thinking. The notion of a reaction is of great value here, just because it is so hard-headed and concrete. Whenever we have any human action before ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... manner in which the victim surveyed his tormentors only exasperated them still further. By the threat of the bayonet he was compelled to stand up in front of these degenerate members of the human race and the girl behind the counter, whose laughter could now be heard ringing above the frantic ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... old man who has suffered cruelly. Exile is hard to bear. But if sorrows and deceptions have embittered his character, they have not changed his heart. His apparent imperiousness and arrogance conceal a kindness of heart which I have often seen degenerate into positive weakness. And—why should I not confess it?—the Duc de Sairmeuse, with his white hair, still retains the illusions of a child. He refuses to believe that the world has progressed during the past twenty years. Moreover, people had ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... village, and get home again unmolested. Its action would have no sort of influence on the course of the campaign, and would, therefore, be useless. It would also most likely lead to reprisals; and, if this process were repeated, the war would probably degenerate into the antiquated system of 'cross-raiding,' discarded centuries ago, not at all for reasons of humanity, but because it became certain that war could be more effectually waged in other ways. The nation ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... Nay, each degenerate race hath fled Its shameful rites and orgies dread: Grim Baal in glowing furnace cast Sinks to the earth, forsook ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... according to our original intention, has now been brought down to the creation of man. Completeness seems to require that something should be briefly said about other animals: first of women, who are probably degenerate and cowardly men. And when they degenerated, the gods implanted in men the desire of union with them, creating in man one animate substance and in woman another in the following manner:—The outlet for liquids they connected with the living principle of the spinal marrow, which the ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... all experience shows, that any college independent of all inspection, control, or competition in wealth—all its officers securely paid by the state, independent of exertion or success—will in a short time, as a general rule, degenerate into inactivity, indifference, and extravagance. In collegiate institutions, as well as in the higher and elementary schools, and in other public and private affairs of life, competition is an important element of efficiency and success. The best system ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... that seems to discharge the mighty river, whose source is far distant among the mountains of Tibet. His return was along the skirts of the northern hills; nor could this rapid campaign of one year justify the strange foresight of his emirs, that their children in a warm climate would degenerate into ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... my child will grow out of her little heretic prejudices, and learn to love her mother's staunch friends, the champions of Holy Church, and the representatives of true knighthood in these degenerate days. Ah, child! couldst thou but see a true Spanish caballero, or again, could I but show thee my noble cousin of Guise, then wouldst thou know how to rate these gross clownish English mastiffs who now turn thy ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the fine perverse conception of the decorated pyjama, this garment had enjoyed the fullest correctness. Now, after perhaps forty years in the cupboards of Mrs. Maldon, it seemed to recall the more excellent attributes of an already forgotten past, and to rebuke what was degenerate ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... that thine owne sonne should be put to death before thy face?" "Yea truly (quoth the father,) for at home in my garden, when the yong Lactuse begin to growe, I cutte of the bitter and sower stalkes from them: for pitie it were the mother Lactuse should sustaine sorow, for those bastard and degenerate shrubbes: which beinge taken awaye, she prospereth and encreaseth to great sweetenesse and bignes. Euen so (O kinge) if he be hanged that hurteth my whole familie, and offendeth the honest conuersation of his brethren, ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... instead of making your absurd will, ought to have apprized you of our sentiments, which exactly coincide with those of the world, or how could the tale affect a stranger? Why did not some generous friend guide your crazy vessel, and save a sinking family? Degenerate son, he who destroys the peace of another, should forfeit his own—we leave you to remorse, may she quickly ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... atmosphere of squalor and destitution that pervaded our household when the carpets had been stripped up and we were stumbling about among half-packed barrels upon bare, resounding floors. I do not seek to retrace in detail the process of packing, which began with some buoyancy and system, to degenerate at last in its endlessness into dropping things mechanically and hopelessly into whatever receptacle came first to hand. I do not wish to renew the moments of vehemence and exasperation when our Precious Ones, who really seemed to enjoy it all, clattered about among the debris, ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Aphis, plant louse, puceron^; vinefretter^, vinegrub^. wreck, mere wreck, honeycomb, magni nominis umbra [Lat.]; jade, plug, rackabones [U.S.], skate [U.S.]; tackey^, tacky [U.S.]. V. be worse, be deteriorated, become worse, become deteriorated &c Adj.; have seen better days, deteriorate, degenerate, fall off; wane &c (decrease) 36; ebb; retrograde &c 283, decline, droop; go down &c (sink) 306; go downhill, go from bad to worse, go farther and fare worse; jump out of the frying pan into the fire. run to seed, go to seed, run to waste swale^, sweal^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... abdication. The huntress-queen communicated her tastes to her youthful niece, and Margaret soon outrivalled her instructress. The ardor with which she pursued the stag, and the courageous horsemanship which she always displayed, proved her, too, no degenerate descendant of Mary of Burgundy. Her education for the distinguished position in which she had somewhat surreptitiously been placed was at least not neglected in this particular. When, soon after the memorable sack of Rome, the Pope and the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... on the nipples of the Cows in the form of irregular pustules. At their first appearance they are commonly of a palish blue, or rather of a colour somewhat approaching to livid, and are surrounded by an erysipelatous inflammation. These pustules, unless a timely remedy be applied, frequently degenerate into phagedenic ulcers, which prove extremely troublesome[2]. The animals become indisposed, and the secretion of milk is much lessened. Inflamed spots now begin to appear on different parts of the hands of the domestics employed in milking, and sometimes ...
— An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae • Edward Jenner
... require to be replanted in the same way every autumn, as the plants, if they grow well, spread too wide; if the summer prove dry, many of the roots fail, and if they remain undisturbed in the same spot, they will degenerate and become single, notwithstanding Mr. MILLER informs us, that he never observed ...
— The Botanical Magazine Vol. 7 - or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... ghastly visages of their victims in their huts.39 The Caribs have a sort of sensual paradise for the "brave and virtuous," where, it is promised, they shall enjoy the sublimated experience of all their earthly satisfactions; but the "degenerate and cowardly" are threatened with eternal banishment beyond the mountains, where they shall be tasked and driven as slaves by their enemies.40 The Hispaniolians locate their elysium in a pleasant valley abounding with guava, delicious fruits, cool shades, and murmuring rivulets, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... fallit aut nulla unquam respublica nec major, nec sanctior, nec bonis exemplis ditior fuit; nec in quam tam sero avaritia luxuriaque immigraverint; nec ubi tantus ac tam diu paupertati ac parsimoniae honos fuerit. We see likewise, after that the state of Rome was not itself, but did degenerate, how that person that took upon him to be counsellor to Julius Caesar after his victory where to begin his restoration of the state, maketh it of all points the most summary to take away the estimation of wealth: Verum haec et omnia mala pariter cum honore pecuniae ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... is one of those lowering fellows, the kind that seems to be at outs with mankind. Just the material to become sulky in any but the most skillful hands, the sort to degenerate into a positive brute, in such blundering hands as Mrs. ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... the claret being in ancient days served from the tap, and had the figure of a hen upon the lid. In later times, the name was given to a glass bottle of the same dimensions. These are rare apparitions among the degenerate topers of ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... depravity with the mantle of the philosopher, he placed another canvas before her—something so unrefined, so animal, so destructive of womanly modesty and of all reserve, that any one looking upon it would instantly know that the man who had painted it was a degenerate demon—an associate of dissolute models, an anarchist in the world of women. It was fit only for the banquet-halls of ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... Their comparisons must be exclusively amongst what they have opportunities of seeing; that is, between the various pieces presented to them by the managers of theatres. Further than this, it is impossible for them to extend their office of judging and collating; and the degenerate taste which substituted the caprices of Davenant, the rants of Dryden, or the filth of Tate, for the jewellery of Shakspeare, cannot with any justice be charged upon the public, not one in a thousand of whom ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... spoke with love and pride, and the father was a gentleman, like Falstaff, a pure gentleman. The daughter-in-law also peered out to look at Il Giovann', who was evidently a figure of repute, in his sordid, degenerate American respectability. Meanwhile, this figure of repute blew himself red in the face, producing staccato strains on his cornet. And the crowd stood desolate and forsaken in ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... as this, limited, practical, tentative as it always was, had little of grandeur and originality about it; it was apt indeed to degenerate into mere trickery and finesse. But it was a policy suited to the England of her day, to its small resources and the transitional character of its religious and political belief, and it was eminently suited to ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... brooding eyes—eyes that saw everything except the small modicum of good which is in all human things, and to this they were persistently blind. Taking into consideration the small, set mouth, it was eminently a pugnacious face—a face that might easily degenerate to the coarseness of passion in the trough of a losing fight. But, fortunately, Luke's lines were cast upon the great waters, and he who fights the sea must learn to conquer, not by passionate effort, but by consistent, cool resolve. Those who ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... trouble, when these two interests came into ill-tempered controversy, was the conduct of the coureurs de bois. These roving traders taught the savages all the vices of French civilization in its most degenerate days. They debauched the Indian with brandy, swindled him out of his furs, and entered into illicit relations with the women of the tribes. They managed in general to convince the aborigines that all Frenchmen were dishonest and licentious. ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... Your lordship well knows what obligations Virgil had to the latter of them. He saw, beside, that the commonwealth was lost without resource; the heads of it destroyed; the senate, new moulded, grown degenerate, and either bought off or thrusting their own necks into the yoke out of fear of being forced. Yet I may safely affirm for our great author (as men of good sense are generally honest) that he was still of republican ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... no doubt, had lived a life too retired for the learning of such useful forbearance, but Frank Greystock was quite a proficient. He still considered himself to be true to Lucy Morris, with a truth seldom found in this degenerate age,—with a truth to which he intended to sacrifice some of the brightest hopes of his life,—with a truth which, after much thought, he had generously preferred to his ambition. Perhaps there was found some shade of regret to tinge the merit ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... therefore, claim from us no further consideration; it is mere naked rudeness and selfishness, ill-disguised by the gaudy rays of outward decency; a mere cherishing of the sensual nature which, left to itself, would soon degenerate into monstrous barbarism, of which ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... female, who has cultivated the art of draping nudity with suggestiveness and singing immoral songs, all tend to give youth a false impression of the reality of life and to make the path of the degenerate easy and profitable. The rich are growing richer, and their children are pampered and overfed and underrestrained. Time hangs heavily on their hands and their only mental effort is to devise new methods and new ways of satisfying the lust of liberty and overstimulated ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... her. I should like also to omit all reference to the conversation which ensued between them, but for the sake of true art I am constrained to state that Lucifer descended to commonplace. M. Renan tells us that since he left Saint Sulpice he did nothing but degenerate, and the inference is obvious, that he ought to have gone back to Saint Sulpice, despite the literary splendours of the Vie de Jesus. Since he last broke a lance with Michael, the devil has debilitated mentally, and the substance of his causerie ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... disgraceful. "What is he?" murmurs one gray shadow of my forefathers to the other. "A writer of story-books! What kind of a business in life—what mode of glorifying God, or being serviceable to mankind in his day and generation—may that be? Why, the degenerate fellow might as well have been a fiddler!" Such are the compliments bandied between my great-grandsires and myself, across the gulf of time! And yet, let them scorn me as they will, strong traits of their nature have ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... they not discover new applications for old principles? Are we to be daunted, therefore, because the conditions are new? Will not old principles be adaptable to new conditions, and is it not our business to adapt them to new conditions? Have we lost the old principle and the old spirit? Are we a degenerate people? We certainly must admit ourselves to be so if we do not follow the old principles in the new world, for that is what ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... are those in which we contemplate an oppressed, yet sublime spirit, agitated by the conflict of two terrific passions: implacable hatred attempting a resolute vengeance, while that vengeance, though impotent, with dignified and silent horror, sinks into the last expression of despair. In a degenerate nation, we may, on such rare occasions, discover among them a spirit superior to its ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... have a heavy hand!" exclaimed one of the least important of beards, one of those that degenerate into side-whiskers as they become conservative. "One ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... falsest of women, When Breffni's good sword would have sought That man, thro' a million of foe-men, Who dared but to wrong thee in thought! While now—oh degenerate daughter Of Erin, how fallen is thy fame! And thro' ages of bondage and slaughter, Our country shall bleed for ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... Bibbiena, his Chancellor, the conduct of public affairs, he listened to the proud persuasions of his mother, to whom anything like commercial pursuits were abhorrent. Clarice d'Orsini's forbears had all been soldiers, Lorenzo's merchants, that made all the difference in Rome's degenerate days. ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... "infamous and audacious! By Heaven, I will have thy tongue torn out with hot pincers, for mentioning the very name of a noble Christian damsel! Know, degenerate traitor, that I was already aware to what height thou hadst dared to raise thine eyes, and endured it, though it were insolence, even when thou hadst cheated us—for thou art all a deceit—into holding ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... so much of such a common thing as a wheel. Idiots! Solomon's court fool would have scoffed at the thought of the young Galilean who dared compare the lilies of the field to his august master. Nil admirari is very well for a North American Indian and his degenerate successor, who has grown too grand to admire anything but himself, and takes a cynical pride in his stolid indifference to everything ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... immigrants. But this is by no means enough. Not merely the Anarchist, but every man of Anarchistic tendencies, all violent and disorderly people, all people of bad character, the incompetent, the lazy, the vicious, the physically unfit, defective, or degenerate should be kept out. The stocks out of which American citizenship is to be built should be strong and healthy, sound in body, mind, and character. If it be objected that the Government agents would not always ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... in order that my leisure might not degenerate into idleness and aimlessness, I must set up a claim for due work to do. Nothing to my mind is more important than this demand, and I must ask your leave to say something about it. I have mentioned that ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... sinful, but also the fact that they have fallen from a higher. In such cases, however, there is some danger lest the beauty and appropriateness of the conception should entice us to receive it on insufficient evidence. The fact that some plants in certain adverse circumstances tend to degenerate, and in certain favourable circumstances to attain a higher type, is well known in natural history; but it seems questionable whether these changes ever take place to such an extent, and in such a uniform method, as must be assumed if we take darnel for degenerated wheat. Agriculturists ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... poet of the eighth century, but one whose sentiments indicate a Saxon origin, thus laments the degenerate state ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... it—firmly, because she had to be firm in keeping him within those bounds the invasion of which would have killed her. And after the first struggle with his unchangeable brutality it had been easier: for into his degenerate brain there had come a faint understanding of the real situation and of her. He had kept his side of the gulf, but gloating on this touch between the old luxurious, indulgent life, with its refined vices, and this present coarse, hard life, where pleasures ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... me, forcing that herd of calves on old Dave at that scandalous price—after all, that's what really gaffed me the worst! My stars! If I could have seen that degenerate old crook again that night—but of course a trade's a trade, and I'd said it. Ain't ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... latter is in degree the greater and the worthier, because it tendeth to the conservation of a more general form.... This double nature of good, and the comparison thereof, is much more engraven upon MAN, if he degenerate not, unto whom the conservation of duty to the public ought to be much more precious than the conservation of life and being;' and, by way of illustration, he mentions first the case of Pompey the Great, 'who being in commission of purveyance ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... the place, and went on to ruin Reggio beyond the straits. When it was told to his father Ibrahim that Tabermina, as the Saracens called it, had again been passed by, he cried out upon his son, "He is degenerate, degenerate! He took his nature from his mother and not from his father; for, had he been born from me, surely his sword would not have spared the Christians!" Therefore he recalled him to the home government, and came himself ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... representations of the historical facts related in the Bible, in order that those believers who were unable to read might in this way instruct themselves in sacred history, but that great care must be taken that such a practice might not degenerate into idolatry. ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... O degenerate Italy! exclaims Dante; land without affections, without principle, without faith in any one good thing! here was a man who could not hear the sweet sound of a fellow-citizen's voice without feeling his heart gush towards him, and there are no people now in any one of thy towns that do ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... Modern physiology has already to a great extent demonstrated the localisation of the various activities of mind, and their connection with definite parts of the brain; psychiatry has shown that those psychical processes are disturbed or destroyed if these parts of the brain become diseased or degenerate. Histology has revealed to us the extremely complicated structure and arrangement of the ganglion-cells. But, for the settlement of this momentous question, the discoveries of the last ten years with regard to the more minute occurrences in the process of fertilisation are of decisive importance. ...
— Monism as Connecting Religion and Science • Ernst Haeckel
... as with the comparative results of it measured with some other player. A defeated player should be led to recognize and do honor to the prowess of his adversary, and so to congratulate him honestly. A sense of superior power should never degenerate into gloating over a defeated adversary or into contempt for his weaker ability. Many thrilling examples of honest mutual admiration between victor and vanquished may be gleaned from the history of warfare, as when Grant handed back the sword ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... D'you think I've done much laughing over being smashed for good? It's rid you of a drunken degenerate. It's you who ought to laugh. How about me? I've lost ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... four degenerate looking dirty East Indians slunk about, very crafty, very insinuating, very ready and skilful to take what advantages they could. I felt a strong desire to kick every one of them out from these joyful concourses ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... wrath of O'Iwa San brought this Cho[u]bei. Does not Iemon, the one-time neighbour Kazuma, recognize Cho[u]bei? And yet all comes through Iemon. Child, wife, means of life, all these have failed Cho[u]bei. In the jail robbed of everything, degenerate in mind and body, Cho[u]bei has found refuge at nights in the booths of street vendors; on cold wet nights, even in the mouths of the filthy drains. Fortunate is he when fine weather sends him to rest on ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... the money I have lost that makes me mad," sez Locals. "It's finding out that a man can become so degenerate that he will impose upon the very ones who save his life—deceive them, lie ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... service, commingled in just proportion with that of paid troops, would prevent absorption of the national element. To reform the abuses of the law, to suppress extraordinary commissions, to reduce to a powerful unity, with parliaments to crown all, that multitude of jurisdictions which were degenerate and corrupt products of the feudal system in its decay, such was the constant aim of the states-general of 1484. They saw that a judicial hierarchy would be vain without fixity of laws; and they ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... We have engraven it there, on the blue table of the cold vault, in letters tall enough for the reading of the nations. And why has the far South not read and believed before this? Because a steam has gone up—a fog—from New England's pulpit and her degenerate press, and hidden the beaming revelation from its vision. The Northern hierarchy and aristocracy have cheated ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... of the rustic. Here she accumulated a thousand various gratifications; here she wantoned in all the secret and licentious desires of her heart. But her castle was not merely a scene of thoughtless pleasure. Within its circle she held crouds of degenerate shepherds, groveling through the omnipotence of her incantations in every brutal form. Even the spectres and the elves that disobeyed her authority, she held in the severest durance. She compressed their tender forms in the narrowest prison, or gave them to the ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... have never seen them. The vilest inclinations, the basest actions, succeeded my amiable amusements and even obliterated the very remembrance of them. I must have had, in spite of my good education, a great propensity to degenerate, else the declension could not have followed with such ease and rapidity, for never did so promising a Caesar so ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... prodigious admirer of quality, grew in a short time to be very intimate, and imagining that she may one day make her market of the girls, has much ingratiated herself with them. She introduced me—I drank, and abused this degenerate age with the father—promised wonders to the mother for all her brats—praised her gooseberry wine, and ogled the daughters, by which means in three days I made the progress ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... to medicine and the physical sciences. He was also considered eminent as a philologist and philosopher. Physiology, however, with its various branches and degenerate offshoots, was the idol of the scholars of that age, and of Faustus among the rest. A passionate desire to fathom the mysteries of Nature, to dive into the most hidden recesses of moral and physical creation, had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... we degenerate, the contrast between us and our house is more evident. We are as much strangers in nature as we are aliens from God. We do not understand the notes of birds. The fox and the deer run away from us; the bear and the ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... burnished mirror, wrought about With cunning imagery of twisted vines. He scarcely knew those sunken, red-rimmed eyes, For his who in the flush of manhood rode Among the cliffs, and followed up the crags The flying temptress; and there fell on him A horror of her beauty, a disgust For his degenerate and corrupted life, With irresistible, intense desire, To feel the breath of heaven on his face. Then as Fate willed, who rules above the gods, He saw, within the glass, behind him glide The form of Venus. ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... erection of a permanent Temple. The time for the next step appeared to David to have come when he had no longer to fight for his throne. Rest from enemies should lead to larger work for God, else repose will be our worst enemy, and peace will degenerate into self-indulgent sloth. A devout heart will not be content with personal comfort and dwelling in a house of cedar, while the ark has but a tent for its abode. There should be a proportion between expenditure ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... all easy, we should degenerate into weaklings—into human mush. It is the fighting spirit that makes us strong. Nor do any of us lack for a chance to exercise this spirit. Struggle is everywhere; as Kearny said at Fair Oaks, "There is lovely ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... imagination, or at least to avoid all that may distract it. A worship, dazzling and majestic in its external forms, is certainly calculated to fill the soul with the most elevated sentiments; but care must be taken that the ceremonies do not degenerate into a spectacle in which each one plays his part—in which each one studies what he must do at such a moment; when he is to pray, when he is to finish his prayer; when to kneel down, and when to get up. The regulated ceremonies of a court introduced into a temple of devotion, confine the ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... change that then Upon our hapless nature fell, When the degenerate hearts of men Bore sin and all the ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... concluding with a generous deed For Dunlap, Cooper, Woodworth, Knowles, Placide! 'Twas nobly done, ye patriots and scholars! Besides—they netted twenty thousand dollars! "A good round sum," in these degenerate times— "This bank-note world," so called in Halleck's rhymes; And proof conclusive, you will frankly own, In liberal ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... degenerate and base art thou To make such means for her as thou hast done, And leave her on such slight conditions. Now, by the honour of my ancestry, I do applaud thy spirit, Valentine, And think thee worthy of an empress' ...
— The Two Gentlemen of Verona • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... were lost, and their productions literally buried in the wreck. The minds of the composite nations that arose in Europe had no guide. Men were left to their own instincts, only faintly aided by the ruins and traditions of degenerate Rome; and each series of countries had its own style of art, framed or adopted by the genius of the people. During the middle ages, the style most general in Northern Europe was the Gothic; and by that term the whole system of art during the period is popularly ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... influence on the Jesuit teachers in Rome, Ingolstadt, and Prague, was the Dominican, Francis of Vittoria (1480-1546). Realising the necessities of the age better than most of his contemporaries he put to an end the useless discussions and degenerate style of his immediate predecessors, re-introduced the /Summa/ of St. Thomas, insisted on supplementing it by a close study of the Scriptures and the writings of the Fathers, and inaugurated a new style of theological Latinity freed both from the barbarisms of ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... nothing. Like all sound legislation, it built of materials already prepared. It organized the chaotic past, and gave concrete forms to Indian nature itself. The people have dwindled and decayed; but, banded by its ties of clan and kin, the league, in feeble miniature, still subsists, and the degenerate Iroquois looks back with a mournful pride to the glory of ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... question was clearly due to the fear that such objects might degenerate amongst Christians, as they afterwards did, into little better than idols. And if the sign or figure of the cross did not mainly remind the early Christians of the death of Jesus, it must have mainly reminded ...
— The Non-Christian Cross - An Enquiry Into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion • John Denham Parsons
... to be wondered at that he, the warm-feeling artist, offspring of a school which affected richness and baroque, was no friend of a new tendency, the stateliness and broadness of which were bound to degenerate into coldness and stiffness? Looking through his drawings and etchings (his pictures leave us no town-views taken from nature), we occasionally meet views of town-gates, old houses alone or crowded together, mills, all obviously ...
— Rembrandt's Amsterdam • Frits Lugt
... as thus related by descent or cognation, do not always agree in sense; for it is incident to words, as to their authours, to degenerate from their ancestors, and to change their manners when they change their country. It is sufficient, in etymological enquiries, if the senses of kindred words be found such as may easily pass into each other, or such as may both be ...
— Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language • Samuel Johnson
... ascertains the exorbitant price of volunteers, and the reluctance with which the government admitted of this alterative. [137] Such was the horror for the profession of a soldier, which had affected the minds of the degenerate Romans, that many of the youth of Italy and the provinces chose to cut off the fingers of their right hand, to escape from being pressed into the service; and this strange expedient was so commonly practised, as to deserve the severe animadversion ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... states, republics, and kingdoms; the annihilation of the religion of Greece and Rome; the birth and the progress of the two new religions which have shared the most beautiful regions of the earth; the decrepitude of the ancient world, the spectacle of its expiring glory and degenerate manners; the infancy of the modern world, the picture of its first progress, of the new direction given to the mind and character of man—such a subject must necessarily fix the attention and excite the interest of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... run cold at the calm pride of this degenerate fiend, had it not been boiling at the reference to Helene. He crept nearer to them, along the wall. He lay down on the floor, below the level of the first bullet paths. Then he drew his automatic and the bulb light, ready ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... control. The Mexican leads a shiftless, thriftless life and seems satisfied merely to exist. He has, unfortunately, inherited more of the baser than the better qualities of his ancestors, and, to all appearance, is destined to further degenerate. The American is the last comer and has already pushed civilization and commerce into the remotest corners and, as ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... younger days. I doubt, however, whether it is more dishonest, and whether struggles were not made quite as disgraceful to the strugglers as anything that is done now. You can't alter the men, and you must use them." The younger Duke sat down and sighed over the degenerate patriotism of the age. ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... is no other human love like this, which follows the child from the cradle to the grave, never once abandons, never once forsakes him, no matter how unfortunate or degenerate he ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... clematis, and year after year the green night of its leaves will hold its purple stars. But we never get back our youth. The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty, becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to. Youth! Youth! There is absolutely nothing in ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... two sides of a question is usually a virtue, but it may degenerate into a vice. Thus, a visitor found his bachelor friend glumly studying an evening waistcoat. When inquiry was made, ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... deprived of their jurisdiction, have already lost much of their influence; and as they gradually degenerate from patriarchal rulers to rapacious landlords, they will divest themselves of the ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... easily shown that Germany alone among nations has the power and the will to expand and to rule; that expansion and rule must be accomplished by war, which, far from being a misfortune, is a noble object to be aimed at and not avoided by statesmen; that all other nations are degenerate and must for their own good be crushed by Germany; and that any nation which resists Germany is through that very act an enemy of the human race. I also believed that German culture is something different from and superior to such culture (if it be worthy of the name) as is possessed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 4, 1914 • Various
... the mystic feast ended, scarcely heeded amid the slow, half-crippled groping for financial readjustment in the teeth of a snarling and vindictive Congress, mean in its envy, meaner in revenge—a domestic brand of sectional Bolsheviki as dirty and degenerate as any anarchist ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... those arts (as if one should learn to weigh or to measure or to paint the wind) doth work but this effect, that the wisdom of those arts, which is great and universal, is almost made contemptible, and is degenerate into childish sophistry and ridiculous affectation. And further, the untimely learning of them hath drawn on by consequence the superficial and unprofitable teaching and writing of them, as fitteth indeed to the capacity of children. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... princess of as many and great virtues as ever filled a throne: How would it brighten her character to the present and after ages, if she would exert her utmost authority to instil some share of those virtues into her people, which they are too degenerate to learn only from her example! And, be it spoke with all the veneration possible for so excellent a sovereign, her best endeavours in this weighty affair are a most important part of her duty, as well as of her interest and ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... only with a few specks scarcely visible on the map of Europe, you are engaged in solving a problem as delicate and difficult as if it arose on a far more conspicuous stage. The people he found to be eminently gifted by nature with that subtlety which is apt to degenerate into sophistry, and prone to be both rather light-minded and extremely suspicious. The permanent officials in Downing Street, with less polite analysis, had been accustomed to regard the islanders more bluntly as a 'pack of scamps.' This was what had done the mischief. ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... the last two things, you know," said the young girl; "for I am sure that the flag that braved a thousand years was not half so strong as your brocade; and as to buying another, there are none to be bought in these degenerate days." ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... velvet of knavery;" and in his Father Hubburd's Tales, we find "like an old cunning bowler to fetch in a young ketling gamester:" see Middleton's Works, v. 543, 589, ed. Dyce. Keistrels are hawks of a worthless and degenerate breed. ...
— Kemps Nine Daies Wonder - Performed in a Daunce from London to Norwich • William Kemp
... said, did not take the higher title; it was first assumed by his son Okkodai. But there are doubts about this. (See Quatremere's Rashid, pp. 10 seqq. and Pavet de Courteille, Dict. Turk-Oriental.) The tendency of swelling titles is always to degenerate, and when the value of Khan had sunk, a new form, Khan-khanan, was devised at the Court of Delhi, and applied to one of the high officers ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... sanctuary steps. I breathe more freely when I reach a book-lined library where a mere handful of men do not overflow the Persian rug before the fire. One of them is Raffles, who is talking to a large man with the brow of a demi-god and the eyes and jowl of a degenerate bulldog. And this is our ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... these various degenerate and illiterate attempts at book-work we have only to watch the last expiring gleams of classic art beneath the ruthless footsteps of the barbarian invaders of ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... of a rough, ignorant and poverty toiling type, but of late years have greatly improved with the introduction of organized labor and education. Previous bad conditions, however, have left their mark in a stunted and physically degenerate type of descendants from the mining population of those times. In contrast to later comers they resemble a race of dwarfs. The men seldom exceed four feet eight inches in height, the women and children appear ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... known to the nations, exhausting, bloody, cruel, sweeping every thing before it; a moral conflagration, bringing every kind of suffering and sorrow in its train, yet made to result as a retribution to worn-out and degenerate races, and a means of vast development of resources among those peoples which have life and energy,—we see the providence of God in the Roman Conquests. The gradual growth of Rome as a warlike state is a most impressive example of the ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... John Enderby, he said: "Troublous and degenerate man, get gone from this country, and no more set foot in it on peril of your life. We recalled you from outlawry, believing you to be a true lover of your country, but we find you malignant, seditious ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... often find a race thus degenerating and still oftener a family. You may see poor little feeble washed-out rags, children of a noble stock, suffering morally and physically, throughout their useless, degenerate lives, and yet people who are going to marry and to bring more such into the world, will consult nothing but their own convenience as to where they are to live, or how they ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... feeling to join the Guard, and it is a real sacrifice for an artist to spend time on the exercises; but it well becomes the sculptor of Orpheus. In reference to what I have said of many Americans in Italy, I will only add that they talk about the corrupt and degenerate state of Italy as they do about that of our slaves at home. They come ready trained to that mode of reasoning which affirms, that, because men are degraded by bad institutions, they are not fit for better. I will only add some words upon the happy augury I draw from ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... within narrow limits, and always require careful watching; for they may easily become excessive or even betray an animus; and in either case they pass at once into quite a different category. From cases of excusable oscitancy they degenerate, either into instances of inexcusable licentiousness, or else into cases of ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... his sister and her husband. But I must not distress you with sordid details. Suffice it to say, I turned at last like the proverbial worm. I applied for a divorce ten months ago. It was granted, provisionally as I say. He is a degenerate. He was unfaithful to me in every sense of the word. But in spite of all that, the court in granting me the separation, took occasion to placate national honour by giving him the child during the year, pending the ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... Vane's he had taken much council with himself as to whether he ought not to get a new suit with his first money instead of sending it home. Now he had solved the question, after sending the money home, by the discovery of a place on a degenerate street, in a neighbourhood of Chinese laundries, with the polite name of Misfit Parlours, where they professed to sell the failures of the leading tailors of Boston, New York, and Chicago. After long study of the window of the Parlours, Lemuel ventured within one day, ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... they were anything but part of a machine defending France. These officers, of course, were from the invaded district, and in addition to their isolation, were haunted by fears for their women now in the power of men who were as cruel as they were sensual and degenerate. ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... can be of no possible advantage to us. Do you expect us to settle down here? Do you suppose I have the least inclination to degenerate ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... enough to be so classed. He could read with fluency, and had plenty of cunning intelligence. But he could not keep still. And he had a kind of sickness very repulsive to a sensitive girl, something cunning and etiolated and degenerate. Once he had thrown an ink-well at her, in one of his mad little rages. Twice he had run home out of class. He was a ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... which grew up along the shores of America. So far it belongs to the Spanish Main and to the Isthmus of Panama. The romance remained when the Elizabethans passed away—they were followed by the buccaneers, privateers, marooners and pirates—a degenerate company, but not without their picturesque side. Pierre le Grand, Francois l'Olonnois, Henry Morgan, are captains only one degree more piratical than Drake and Raleigh. Edward Teach, Kidd, Avery, Bartholomew Roberts were pirates only because they plundered ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... distress being attributed more or less to these causes. It is now generally agreed, however, that in most cases these causes may be resolved into more remote causes, laziness being oftentimes attributable to a degenerate or at least ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... current theory therefore fall back on the hypothesis that the Australians are sadly degenerate.(1) Chiefs, it is argued, or kings, they once had, and the gods are surviving ghosts of these wholly forgotten potentates. To this we reply that we know not the very faintest trace of Australian degeneration. Sir John Lubbock ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... that fill them, therefore, with envy and perplexity—such things as pleasure, beauty, delicacy, leisure. In the cant of modern talk you will find them call everything that is not crude and forcible in life "degenerate." But back to the very earliest writings, in the most bloodthirsty outpourings of the Hebrew prophets, for example, you will find that at the base of the warrior spirit is hate for more complicated, for more refined, for more beautiful and ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... anxiety which might have been occasioned by my earlier letters from hence, I hope will be removed, and that I shall be thought not to be totally destitute of political prudence. When that letter was written, I was rather apprehensive I might be censured by some as suffering prudence to degenerate into pusillanimity, for not taking advantage of the impression made by so important an event as the surrender of Lord Cornwallis and his army, and thought it expedient to assign any reasons for not doing it, knowing that we are apt to think events, which so immediately ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... a weak voice, his eyes starting from his head. "Life cannot be unchequered by the frowns of fate, but death must bring dumbness to my lips. Caution, when besmeared in blood, is no longer virtue, or wisdom, but wretched and degenerate cowardice; no, never let him that was born to execute judgment secure his honours by cruelty and oppression. Hath not thy Koran told thee that fear and submission is a subject's tribute, yet mercy is the attribute of Allah, and the most pleasing endowment ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... Development is equable and orderly, but as in other forms of life the contents of certain capsules seem to start into being with a more vigorous initial impulse than others, and these mature the more speedily. A sturdy infant may be screwing its way out of its cradle, while in a weakly and degenerate brother alongside the thrills of life may be ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... truth about the young blackleg who, having boarded and upset her daughter's boat, turned coward and scuttled off, ignoring her frightened cries. Nor would she fail to express her sincere sympathy for Colonel Dalhousie, whose heart (she understood) the behavior of his degenerate ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... reverence! Turn, turn, my country, and behold That noble band of heroes old, And weep, and on thyself thy anger vent, For without anger, grief is impotent: Oh, turn, and rouse thyself for shame, Blush at the thought of sires so great, Of children so degenerate! ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... of human nature! Oh! you degenerate girl! As if I cared for Clem in that way! Have I not from the first set my heart on this real-life romance ending in the only way it could ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... one— toward the Richardsonian method of laying bare the inner natures of ordinary people. She has here pursued the analysis of character as an end in itself, for in "The Fatal Secret" there is no hint of disguised scandal, nor any appeal to the pruriency of degenerate readers. Sensational in the extreme the story is, but nevertheless the progress of the narrative is delayed while the sentiments of the heroine are examined in the minutest detail. While better known romancers ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... of them waste time in laboriously endeavouring to assimilate the shells of knowledge along with the oysters, others instinctively use their powers of secretion to better purpose. Remember also that in Elizabethan times school-boy study was a far more strenuous matter than it is in these degenerate days, and that it was not chiefly ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... blind as to think that good can come of it? Nothing but evil upon evil can accrue from such a system,—and those who have prophetic eyes to see through the veil of events can perceive, even now, the not far distant end—namely, the ruin of the country that has permitted itself to degenerate into a mere nation of shopkeepers, —and ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... the "Queen of the South[107]," or of Abyssinia, who was a Jew, and converted by Philip to Christianity. There is therefore no manner of difficulty in accounting for the presence of these corrupt degenerate black Jews, amongst the ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... and wife cease to feel that they must exert themselves for each other in little matters. Knowing themselves accepted, they lounge—mentally, mannerly, and physically—when at home or elsewhere alone together. Some of this relaxation is a good thing, but it is a mistake to let home and spouse degenerate into nothing more than an ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... a few other instances, the polemical zeal natural to men who had sacrificed their worldly all for the sake of religion, was observed to degenerate among the refugees into personal quarrels disgraceful to themselves and injurious to their noble cause, it ought on the other hand to be observed, that some of the firmest and most affectionate friendships of the age were formed amongst ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin |
