"Degradation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... weaknesses, the weaknesses to which every fool feels himself superior, and of some grave vices of a sort to which wise men feel little temptation. And, unfortunately, he conquered neither. Rather they conquered {49} him, and made his last years a degradation, and his memory one which his friends were glad to forget. After the death of Johnson in 1784, followed in 1789 by that of Mrs. Boswell, whom Johnson once justly and generously described as the prop and stay of her husband's life, he ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... gloominess of Zola, over whom he claims one great advantage, that of possessing a rich sense of humor, and a large share of the old Gallic wit. His pessimism, indeed, is inexorable, and he pushes the misfortune, or more often the degradation, of his characters to its extreme logical conclusion. Yet, even in his saddest stories, the general design is rarely sordid. For a long while he was almost exclusively concerned with impressions of Normandy; a little later he became one of the ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... is my husband's reputation as an artist to be considered. I would not be talked about for worlds. I acted against my husband's advice in this matter—in taking Mr. Turold and his son. My husband said it was a degradation to take in lodgers. I pointed out that they were gentlefolk. There is a difference. I wish now that I had listened ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... music and his wife appeared in the leading feminine roles. Splendid material was at hand and Wagner went zealously to work. He was obliged however to produce here also the works of Adam, Auber, and Bellini, which gave him a still deeper insight into the degradation of the modern stage, with its frivolous comedy, of which he had a perfect horror. About this time he became familiar with the legend of the "Flying Dutchman," as Heine relates it, with the new version ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... last degree. The owl flew by on his errand to King Kapchack; the bats fluttered overhead; the wind blew and the trees creaked; but the fox neither saw, nor heard, nor thought of anything except his own degradation. He had been cast forth as unworthy—even the very mouse had received some instructions, but he, the descendant of illustrious ancestors, was pointedly told that the wit for which they had been famous ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... I was trained for the work by a medical man—my friend Mr. James Hinton—first in his own branch of the London profession, and a most original thinker. To him the degradation of women, which most men accept with such blank indifference, was a source of unspeakable distress. He used to wander about the Haymarket and Piccadilly in London at night, and break his heart over the sights he saw and the tales he heard. The ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... because he wished to gratify the Pope, and knew that Florence remained staunch in her devotion to the French crown. The old proverb, 'Lilies with lilies,' the white lily of Florence united with the golden fleur-de-lys of France, had still political significance in this day of Italian degradation. Meanwhile Francis I. treated his faithful allies with lukewarm tolerance. The smaller fry of Italian potentates, worshipers of the rising sun of Spain, curried favor with their masters by insulting the republic's representatives. On their return to Florence, the ambassadors had to report ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... the receipt of a salary for the performance of certain prescribed duties. Such remuneration was, she thought, as honourable as the Doctor's income; but to her American intelligence, the acceptance of a present of money from a Marchioness would have been a degradation. ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... des Barres, Monsieur de Bourmont, the Messieurs d'Ombre, and other men more or less suspected of conspiring against the Empire. Even if this, perhaps deserved, had been all! but the Prefect knew very well that an enemy such as Ratoneau would not be satisfied without his own degradation. ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... or High Court and Council of the Monarchy. These "Woonghys" or "Menghyis," as they were more commonly called—"Menghyi," meaning "Great Prince"—were of equal rank; but the senior Minister, the Yenangyoung Menghyi, who had precedence, was then in confinement, and, indeed, a decree of degradation had gone forth against him. Obviously he was of no use; but a more influential man than he ever was, and having the additional advantages of being at liberty, in power and in favour, was the "Kingwoon ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... becomes so by the voluntary adoption of the lower forces as the guide of life. Nature has her own decalogue. There is a law written upon our hearts. The wasting of power by anger, jealousy, envy, covetousness and the like, and the degradation following their expression in acts of revenge, concupiscence, and mere rapacity, are known without revelation by all races which have not suffered the downward evolution. The literatures prove this back even to the days ...
— The Things Which Remain - An Address To Young Ministers • Daniel A. Goodsell
... a state of degradation had the selfish philosophy reduced one of the greatest geniuses; a philosophy true only for the wretched and the criminal.[370] But those who feel moving within themselves the benevolent principle, and who delight in acts of social sympathy, are conscious of passions and motives, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... powers that Cedercrantz let go by disuse the new C. J. is stealthily and boldly taking back again; perhaps some others also. He has shamed the chiefs in Mulinuu into a law against taking heads, with a punishment of six years' imprisonment and, for a chief, degradation. To him has been left the sole conduct of this anxious and decisive inquiry. If the natives stand it, why, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... epicureanism is only safe for those whose tastes lie in the direction of the simple life. Montaigne has wisely said that it is pernicious to those who have a natural tendency to vice. But vice is not a thing which any man loves for its own sake, until his nature has suffered a long process of degradation. It is simply the last result of a habit of luxurious self-indulgence; and the temptation to the self-indulgent, the present world in one form or another, comes upon everybody at times. There are moods when all of us want to break away from the simple ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... to a contamination which they have had no hand in producing. We expose them and ourselves for a time in order to elevate those sad captives of sin and Satan, who are the victims of the degradation of ages. None of those who complain about missionaries sending their children home ever descend to this. And again, as Mr. James in his Young Man from Home forcibly shows, a greater misfortune cannot befall a youth than to be cast into the world without ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... precedence. As to the rest, the general rules of precedence are by marriage, age, and profession. Lastly, in placing your guests, regard is rather to be had to birth than fortune; for, though purse-pride is forward enough to exalt itself, it bears a degradation with more secret comfort and ease than the former, as being more inwardly satisfied with itself, and less apprehensive of neglect ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... soil degradation - damage to the land's productive capacity because of poor agricultural practices such as the excessive use of pesticides or fertilizers, soil compaction from heavy equipment, or erosion of topsoil, eventually resulting in reduced ability to ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... or rather, I ought to say, he would be like the tailless fox in the fable; only you would never catch a Chinaman trying to persuade his friends that it was creditable to have no tail! For I must tell you that pigtails are sometimes cut off—as a degradation—when a man has committed some crime. But as soon as he can, he gets the barber to put him on a false pigtail, as a closely-cropped convict might wear a wig. They roll them up when they are at work if they are in the way, but if a servant came ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the Government document to which this cutting relates lies before me. It is bravely and clearly worded, and its intention is evident. The high-minded Hindu—and there are such, let it not be forgotten—revolts from the degradation and pollution of this travesty of religion, and will abolish it where he can. But let it be remembered that, good as this law is, it does not and it cannot touch the great Secret Traffic itself. That will go on behind the law, and behind the next that is made, and the next, unless measures ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... the neighbor boys, and felt so; but this feeling was curiously mingled with a sense of degradation. By every test of common life, he was a failure. His family history was a badge of failure. People despised a man who was so incontestably smarter than they, and yet could do no better with himself ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... maintain their purity of descent by marrying only with the women of their own or of kindred tribes. Curious as is the picture Burckhardt draws of the character and manners of this tribe, it is not at all edifying. It would be difficult to convey an idea of the corruption and degradation of the Berbers. The little town of Wady-Berber, a commercial centre, the rendezvous for caravans, and a depot for slaves, is a regular resort ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... grain. Altogether it is very evident that the cliff houses have been used in comparatively modern times; at any rate, since the people owned asses, goats, and sheep. The rock is of such a friable nature that it will not stand atmospheric degradation very long, and there is abundant evidence of this character testifying to the recent ...
— Aboriginal Remains in Verde Valley, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff
... proceeding on the old. Its central law is that of destroying any value, however great, for the sake of any gratification, however small. Accustomed to battening on the hopes of humanity,—accustomed to taking stock in human degradation, and declaring dividends upon enforced ignorance and crime,—existing only while every canon of the common law is annulled, and every precept of morals and civilization set at nought,—could it be expected to pause just when, or rather just because, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... House of Representatives tends to decline in prestige and authority. The original expectation was that the House of Representatives would take a dominant position like that of the House of Commons, but its degradation began so soon that Fisher Ames noted it as early as 1797. Writing to Hamilton ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... themselves into slavery. Upon the whole, they were well disposed to one another; the bond of intelligence united them against the rich "roughs" with whom they had to deal; they tilted together, side by side, against the canaille; yet each, from the bitter consciousness of his own degradation, took pleasure in the humiliation or discomfiture of the other, at the rude hands of ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... 1714, ensued the downfal of the tories, and the degradation of Prior. He was recalled; but was not able to return, being detained by the debts which he had found it necessary to contract, and which were not discharged before March, though his old friend Montague was now at the head ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... its life passing through the ground into the oak tree. With Cercyon, but first named, (Plato, Laws, book VII., 796), Antaus is the master of contest without use;—[GREEK: philoneikias achrestou]—and is generally the power of pure selfishness and its various inflation to insolence and degradation to cowardice;—finding its strength only in fall back to its Earth,—he is the master, in a word, of all such kind of persons as have been writing lately about the "interests of England." He is, therefore, the Power invoked by Dante to place Virgil and him in the lowest ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... same time flowed from his lips in finished state, perfect in all useful knowledge. From his arms next issued the Kshatriya, or warriors; from his breast, the seat of life, came the Vaisya, or producers—shepherds, farmers, merchants; from his foot, in sign of degradation, sprang the Sudra, or serviles, doomed to menial duties for the other classes—serfs, domestics, laborers, artisans. Take notice, further, that the law, so born with them, forbade a man of one caste becoming a member of another; the ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... this feeling in Curran. The man's degradation seemed so complete to him that not even sacrilege could intensify it; yet clearly the hardened sinner saw some depths below his own which excited his horror ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... from the privileges of their birthright. All that they have is in succession taken away from them—their amusements, their enjoyments, their possessions, their freedom—and all that they receive in return is obloquy, and contempt, and degradation, and oppression. [Note 44 appears after note ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... another disturbing element in the negro population, a large portion of which is unfitted for a republican government by ignorance and social debasement, but fortunately free from the violence and turbulence of the lower class of immigrants. This degradation is fast being removed by education and the ambition inspired by freedom. The latter is shown by the formation of the Afro-American League for the protection of the blacks, especially in the Southern States, and the advancement ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1887 - Volume 1, Number 10 • Various
... is a bad service to the national honour to assume that the ill-treatment and degradation that the Prussians suffered from a foreign ruler were not enough to make our blood boil, and to deaden all other feelings but that of hatred ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... woman wanton and the man a villain, but here the verdict was less easy to render. He liked Mrs. Burke, and he loved his friend. He had looked into their faces many times during the last six months without detecting any signs of degradation; on the contrary, Blanche had apparently grown in womanly qualities; and as for Jim, he had never been more manly, more generous and kind. If their acts were crimes, why could they remain ...
— The Moccasin Ranch - A Story of Dakota • Hamlin Garland
... may be the strongest opponents to the dissolution of the family, Socialists addressing themselves to women try to persuade them that they are forced into matrimony by necessity, that marriage is a degradation to them and to their children, and that Socialism will elevate them and make them free and happy. "The average young woman of the working class, who is not herself employed in some well-paid occupation, ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... the cautious, restrictive, limiting nature of this advice! Observe the lack of largeness, freedom and generosity in it. Dr. Wayland, I am sure, has never specialized just such a regimen for the poor Italians, Hungarians or Irish, who swarm, in lowly degradation, in immigrant ships to our shores. No! for them he wants, all Americans want, the widest, largest culture of the land; the instant opening, not simply of the common schools; and then an easy passage to the bar, the legislature, and ...
— Civilization the Primal Need of the Race - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Paper No. 3 • Alexander Crummell
... in front of our old friend, and observed these signs of poverty, which are not to be mistaken, we thought as we turned away, that the house had attained its lowest pitch of degradation. We were wrong. When we last passed it, a 'dairy' was established in the area, and a party of melancholy-looking fowls were amusing themselves by running in at the front door, and out at the ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... these pleasures pertain to receiving. There is a certain humiliation about it always, a childish sense of dependence and inferiority. Only children can continuously receive without degradation; and as soon as they begin to realize life at all they delight to give as we all do. "Let me help!" says the child, and plans birthday presents for mama as eagerly as he ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... had been born to a higher culture, therefore was his degradation the deeper. His poverty was due to his weakness. Virginia was especially drawn toward him by reason of his inalienable politeness and his well-chosen words. He was always the gentleman—no matter ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... Church, perhaps?' I suggest. 'The Church? Are you not the heir, and will you not be the head of the family some day? You must be mad.' 'Then give me a sum of money and let me try my luck with my cousin San Giacinto.' 'Business? If you make money it is a degradation, and with these new laws you cannot afford to lose it. Besides, you will have enough of business when you have to manage your estates.' So all my questions are answered, and I am condemned at twenty to be a ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... the man of labor to the monopolizer of the means of labor, that is, the sources of life, lies at the bottom of servitude in all its forms, of all social misery, mental degradation, and political dependence; ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... cause of a future and more successful one, "if they are not checked;" and, while he fears rebellion, he dreads that, in case of a war, his countrymen, "the Scotch, could not, on their principles, defend the British government, which suffers their degradation in the colony." ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... of man, the white people of Apia lay in the worst squalor of degradation. They are now unspeakably improved, both men and women. To-day they must be called a more than fairly respectable population, and a much more than fairly intelligent. The whole would probably not fill the ranks of even an English half-battalion, yet there are a surprising ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... however rescued from the last degree of actual crime in each case by the good taste of the author, feeling that such chapters had better not be written voluntarily in fiction, or perchance by his love for his proud maidens, whom he cannot taint with degradation in act, even if the sin upon their souls be wellnigh as black in the eyes of a strict judge, arbiter alike of the seen and the unseen. Such are hardly the conceptions wherewith the brain of a cultivated woman would teem. It were too glaring treason to her sex and to her ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... for submission but a bare necessity. The improvement of understanding by which we are wishing to raise them in this humble allotment, without carrying them from the ground where it is placed, will explain to them the best compensations of their condition, will show them it is no essential degradation, and point them to the true respectability which may be obtained in it. And even if they should be a little too much elated with the supposed attainments, (while the flattering possession is yet ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... the institution of the family, which is the parent of the state; it is closely allied to religion; and in our individual lives it lifts us to the heights of self-realization and happiness, or plunges us down to the depths of degradation ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... the hour of its deepest political degradation could give birth to men like Fichte, Scharnhorst, Stein, Schiller, and Goethe, to say nothing about the great soldier-figures of the wars of Liberation, must be called to ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... many make the wretchedness of earth. And yet your own heart, Leoni, and that of my gentle cousin, may witness for my words, there are such things as truth, and tenderness, and devotion in the world; and such redeem the darkness and degradation of its lot. Nay, more, if ever the mystery of our destiny be unravelled, and happiness be wrought out of wisdom, it will be the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various
... eyes began to twinkle. "My boy," said he, "that club patient, as you call him, is the richest man in Merton, and worth a hundred a year to me." I have no doubt that he appeased him by some tale of my disgrace and degradation; but I have not heard ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... this language. I was prepared to give my Pendulous a tender meeting. To assure him, that however, in the eyes of the superficial and the censorious, he may have incurred a partial degradation, in the esteem of one, at least, he stood as high as ever. That it was not in the power of a ridiculous accident, involving no guilt, no shadow of imputation, to separate two hearts, cemented by holiest vows, as ours have been. This ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... assumption of the regal carriage, but her mind seemed instantly illuminated with knowledge. Now she understood the presence of the fool in her palace. This was Robert's ugliest revenge. He had sent this hideous thing to prey upon Perpetua, and Lycabetta applauded. What degradation more cruel could be ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... killing, the treasures of money and blood, the time, the brain and the activities that have been employed in carrying out plans of aggression, large and small, of neighbor against neighbor—when these have all been turned toward the betterment of your condition and the salvation of men from degradation and sin, then will the arts of peace flourish and your day begin. Then will nature herself come to your assistance, molding her laws to your convenience and comfort. It will doubtless be a long time before a man can love and consider ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... rare, and are rather designated as foolish than wrong. With regard to all the failings and offences which fall under this head, it may be remarked that, from their false show of generosity, society is apt to treat them too venially, except where they entail degradation or disgrace. If it be asked how actions of this kind, seeing that they are done out of some regard to others, can be described as involving self-indulgence, or the resistance to them can be looked on in the ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... of the wretched man's degradation. In this manner they continued to live for three or four months, when, new quarrels breaking out, they separated once more. This time their separation was final. Kelly, taking the elixir which he had found in Glastonbury Abbey, proceeded to Prague, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... was not in any degree occasioned by a discovery of the degradation in which Rebecca had lived. There was no question of that between mother and son. There was no question of anything but the fearfully-exact resemblance between the living, breathing woman and the ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... with which her unmerited degradation was supported by the lady Anne, has in it something at once extraordinary and amusing. There is indeed a tradition that she fainted on first receiving the information that her marriage was likely to be set aside; ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... assured, for the moral plague that eats up a people whose independence is lost is more calamitous than any physical rending of limb from limb. The body is a passing phase; the spirit is immortal; and the degradation of that immortal part of man is the great tragedy of life. Consider all the mean things and debasing tendencies that wither up a people in a state of slavery. There are the bribes of those in power ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... of the question. In the best possible case I cannot really be known in the concert room, and that best possible case- -I mean performances fully realising my intentions—could not be achieved, owing principally to want of time. In consequence, I always retained a bitter feeling of degradation, increased by the fact that I was compelled to conduct whole programmes of monstrous length, and put together in the most tasteless and senseless manner. That I did conduct these concerts to the end was done entirely out of regard for my wife and a few friends, who would have been grieved ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... while, as far as profane history goes back, we cannot fail to see proofs of the existence of slavery. "No legislator of history," says Voltaire, "attempted to abrogate slavery. Society was so accustomed to this degradation of the species, that Epictetus, who was assuredly worth more than his master, never expresses any surprise at his being a slave." Egypt, Sparta, Athens, Carthage, and Rome had their thousands of slaves. In the Bible, the best and chosen ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... Argus, December 16) informs us that observation and the remarks he has heard made by factory girls have led him to think that there are three serious objections which the seamstresses have to domestic service. One of these is—"The idea of degradation, attached to the position of a 'slavey' in the minds of the lower classes themselves." As we have seen that there is nothing degrading in the work itself which servants are called upon to do, how comes ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... the doctors were able to set my broken bones. The operation suggested new delusions. Shortly before the adjustment of the plaster casts, my legs, for obvious reasons, were shaved from shin to calf. This unusual tonsorial operation I read for a sign of degradation—associating it with what I had heard of the treatment of murderers and with similar customs in barbarous countries. It was about this time also that strips of court-plaster, in the form of a cross, were placed on my forehead, which had been slightly scratched ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... the hands we have sparkling rills, and for the degradation of the mind, I, like Mr. ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... temptation; he did not love her, and his infamy was deliberate, coldly premeditated. Between her and him a chain more solid than mutual attraction was riveted; their common hatred of Sauvresy. They owed too much to him. His hand had held both from degradation. ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... the course of his life falls away more and more from the specifically HUMAN type of his early years, but the Ape in the course of his short life goes very much farther along the road of degradation and premature senility." (Man and Woman, by Havelock ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... team. The bystanders did not seem to look upon the moving group as if it were an unusual spectacle. The donkey appeared to be the most intelligent and refined of the three. The sight symbolized the physical force and infamous degradation of the lower classes of women in Europe. The urgent problem of modern civilization is how to retain this force, and get rid of the degradation. Physiology declares that the solution of it will only be possible when the education of girls is made appropriate ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... share it. I used to wonder what this love was," he goes on, as if to himself, "that seizes upon men and holds them fast and changes them so. I think I understand it now, and the beauty of it and the degradation, too. I love you so that, if by some stroke of fate I could be changed into a prince or a duke, like your Monsieur de Grammont or Monsieur de Noailles, and you would give me your love, as to some such exalted personage, I would be base enough to accept it, though I ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... of this sentence practically and literally enforced—was a mere chimera. A few hours probably of the experiment would have settled that question by dismissing her to the death she longed for; but because the suffering would be short, was I to stand by and to witness the degradation—the pollution—attempted to be fastened upon her. What! to know that her beautiful tresses would be shorn ignominiously—a felon's dress forced upon her—a vile taskmaster with authority to——; blistered be the tongue that could go on to utter, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... with subdued dignity, and a demeanour that delicately indicated a knowledge on his part of her superiority and his own degradation. He knew how a lady should be treated even if he was a drunkard, as he told his cronies afterwards. Joe was perfectly willing to be reclaimed. Heretofore in his life, no one had ever extended the hand of fellowship to him. Human sympathy ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... me, papa, but, it did seem to me a sort of degradation to have to ask pardon of a—a woman who has to work for her living like Alma," she said with some hesitation, blushing and hanging her head ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley
... the new staple required no large capital and involved no exposure to disease. Rice and indigo, said he, had offered the poorer whites, except the few employed as overseers, no livelihood "without the degradation of working with slaves"; but cotton, stimulating and elevating these people into the rank of substantial farmers, tended "to fill the country with an independent industrious yeomanry."[31] True as this was, it did not mean that producers on a plantation scale were at a disadvantage. Settlers ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... consent to hurl them back into the hell of slavery, either by word, or vote, or sword? Slaves have sought shelter in the Northern Army and have tasted the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Liberty. Will they return quietly to the plantation and patiently endure the old life of bondage with all its degradation, its cruelties, and wrong? No, No, there can be no reconstruction on the old basis...." Far less degrading and ruinous, she earnestly added, would be the recognition of the independence of ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... me afresh that all this soil, all the fertile fields, all these leagues on leagues of sloping valleys and rolling hills came from the decay of the rocks, and that the chief agent in bringing about this decay and degradation was the gentle rain from heaven—that without the rain through the past geologic ages, the scene I looked upon would have been only one wild welter of broken or crumpled rocky strata, not a green thing, not a living thing, should ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... what the man required. The which having discovered, Saint Patrick, afflicting the presumer with the affliction of penance sufficiently severe, foretold that through all his life he should suffer the want of bread. And he declared that the bishop so consecrated was worthy of degradation and contempt, and that his church should be exceeding poor, so that it should not be able to defend itself even from two men. And that which the saint foretold unfailingly came to pass—whereby a prudent man may take heed, lest misled by ambition he should ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... with infinite anger and scorn—"it was only love, honest and true, however mistaken, which could make what has been between us endurable in my eyes! What I have thought was true love, and its true passion, helped me to forget the degradation and the secret shame—only the absolute honesty of that love could make me forget. But suppose I find it only imitation; suppose I see that it is only selfishness, only horrible, ugly self-indulgence; suppose you are a man who plays with a human soul! If I find that to be ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... assiduous cultivation was necessary to procure a return, into what a situation was I thrown? In a ship crowded with three hundred men, each of them, or nearly so, cohabiting with an unfortunate female, in the lowest state of degradation; where oaths and blasphemy interlarded every sentence; where religion was wholly neglected, and the only honour paid to the Almighty was a clean shirt on a Sunday; where implicit obedience to the will of an officer, was considered of more importance than the observance of the Decalogue; ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Idolatry. The nation was continually falling away from the worship of the true God to idols, or at least the worship of other deities was incorporated with that of Jehovah. This was always both a symptom of advanced degradation and the head and fountain of other evils of the worst kind. All the prophets attack it with all the weapons in their armoury—with hot indignation and close argument and scalding tears. Isaiah is remarkable ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... of humanity, each person in the scale of morality where his life had placed him. I saw the Christian on God's plane of holiness and truth. Far below him stood the moral though unchristian man, and down, down, step by step, my mental eye beheld man to the lowest depth of moral degradation. ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... earth, thrown by the populace into the Arno, whose waters were then very high. It was an awful instance of the instability of fortune, to see so wealthy a man, possessing the utmost earthly felicity, brought down to such a depth of misery, such utter ruin and extreme degradation. It is said he had vices, among which were gaming and profane swearing, to which he was very much addicted; but these seem more than balanced by his numerous charities, for he relieved many in distress, ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... italics the words indicated, evidently to call attention to the poverty and degradation of some of "His Majesty's Justices." He had a high-sounding title to his name, ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... felt that he had got into trouble for nothing; that the satisfaction of drinking the firewater was very unsatisfactory in the end. He had sense enough left to see that disgrace and degradation awaited him, and he dreaded the prompt action of Captain Kendall, as exhibited in the case of McDougal. While still suffering from the effects of the tipple, he resolved to drink no more; but pledges made in the heat of intoxication are not ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... end, he prevailed upon her to say what she purposed doing, she informed him that to mark her sense of the degradation that would be involved in the acceptance of the aid offered by her rival, she had preferred to borrow five pounds of her maid, who was at least an old and faithful servant—she had taken her with her from Hampstead—and who stood by her loyally. Out of these five pounds she intended ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... high to the girl's white brow, and her proud mouth quivered. Never had she so felt the degradation of her poverty! Now it seemed more than she could bear. But she looked straight into her uncle's unlovely countenance, and made answer, with a calmness ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... "Work is no degradation," he answered hastily, "or my days in the Nantucket whaler might easily rise up in judgment against me; for I am certain there can be no more filthy or disgusting work on the face of the earth than I did ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... rapidity? Assuredly it is; and yet it is that vast market that our authors desire to barter for one in which Hood was permitted almost to starve, in which Leigh Hunt, Lady Morgan, Miss Mitford, Tennyson, and Sir Francis Head even now submit to the degradation of receiving the public charity to the extent of a hundred pounds a year! The law as it now exists, invites foreign authors to come and live among us, and participate in our advantages. The treaty offers to tax ourselves for the purpose of offering them a bounty upon staying ...
— Letters on International Copyright; Second Edition • Henry C. Carey
... we face today as Americans respect no nation's borders. Think of them: terrorism, the spread of weapons of mass destruction, organized crime, drug trafficking, ethnic and religious hatred, aggression by rogue states, environmental degradation. If we fail to address these threats today, we will suffer the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William J. Clinton • William J. Clinton
... Saint Germain. He was arrested by the police on the ninth of June, disguised as an employe of the Northern Railway. He was first interrogated at the Petit Luxembourg, and afterwards conducted handcuffed to Versailles, where three mouths after he was tried by court-martial and sentenced to military degradation and death.] ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... customs, its own mythology and its own history. The effect of scenery must be considered, if we are to understand the peculiarities which mark the different tribes. Some imagine that the Indians are all alike, that they are all cruel savages, all given to drunkenness and degradation and only waiting their opportunity to wreak their vengeance upon helpless women and children. Those who know them, however, are impressed with the great variety which is manifest among them, and are especially convinced ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... twenty years old, I had buried both my parents, and was left to shift for myself. I had been for some time in the employ of a Jewish wine-merchant, and I continued there for three years after my father's death, when a circumstance occurred which led to my subsequent prosperity and present degradation. ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... of self, her proud indifference to delicacy and shame, her splendid acceptance of the degradation, her instant and fearless execution of the only plan which could save the land from war with a united confederacy, had left us stunned with ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... the former lord of the manor lost the right of governing this community, but he had brought himself to consider it a sort of degradation to take any part in the government of it. The central power of the state alone took any care of the matter, and as that power was very remote, and had as yet nothing to fear from the inhabitants of the villages, the only care it took of them was to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... intoxication. To suppress for a time the ordinary work-a-day consciousness, with its tedium, its checks, its balancing of pros and cons, to escape into the directness and simplicity of mere animal life, and yet to feel in this no degradation but rather a submission to the divine power, an actual identification with the deity-such, it would seem, was the intention of those extraordinary revels of which we have in the "Bacchae" of Euripides so vivid a description. ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... of all, is the loss or degradation of one's talent. This should count, I think, with an artist. For observe that at this moment, I am not speaking of the ordinary conditions of life. I grant you, that in general marriage is an excellent thing, and that the majority of men only begin to be of some account ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... character, the last rag of that goes when the first sign of indolence is seen; the watchers have eyes like cats, and the self-restrained men among them have usually seen so many fellows depart to perdition that every stage in the process of degradation is known to them. No! there is not a friend, and dry, clever gentlemen say, "Yes. Good chap enough once on a day, but can't afford to be seen with him now." The soaker is amazed to find that women are afraid of him a little, and shrink from him—in fact, the ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... us.... In her present ignorance, woman's religion, instead of making her noble and free, by the wrong application of great principles of right and justice, has made her bondage but more certain and lasting, her degradation more ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... begun the process of self-degradation by writing secretly to Winterfield. It was only to warn him of the danger of trusting Father Benwell—but it was a letter, claiming him as her accomplice in an act of deception. That morning she had received Penrose with the outward cordialities of welcome which are offered to an old and dear ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... degradation was not yet full. After making a tour of the house, and thinking, for the first time, that the poor-laws really were too hard on people; and that men who ran away from their wives, leaving them chargeable to the parish, ought, in ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... this sacrifice. I know the impatience with which your poverty has formerly been borne; how much your early education is at war with that degradation and obscurity to which your youth has been condemned; how earnestly your wishes panted after a state which might exempt you from dependence upon daily labour and on the caprices of others, and might secure to you leisure to cultivate and indulge your love of knowledge ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... RITES. Let us pause here a moment, and see, in anticipation, to what a depth of intellectual degradation this policy of paganization eventually led. Heathen rites were adopted, a pompous and splendid ritual, gorgeous robes, mitres, tiaras, wax-tapers, processional services, lustrations, gold and silver vases, were introduced. The Roman lituus, the chief ensign of the ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... and almost a stranger to the people of his charge, for he had been scarce a twelvemonth among them. Of a proud and somewhat haughty family, and prejudiced by education, he had in early youth looked upon labor of the hands as a kind of degradation; but the meek and humble faith which he taught, and which had chastened his spirit, made him now fully appreciate the loving and faithful heart, which Mary in every act exhibited, and he looked upon her with renewed interest ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... for the last twelve months—almost as long as Sir John Meredith had known—that Millicent loved Jack. Upon this knowledge came the humiliation—the degradation—of one flirtation after another; and not even after, but interlaced. Guy Oscard in particular, and others in a minor degree, had passed that way. It was a shameless record of that which might have been good in a man prostituted and trampled under foot ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... with beautiful volumes, mostly Christmas and birthday gifts. She rejoiced in their soft leather bindings or fine illustrations with a true book-lover's enthusiasm. It was her pride to keep them in daintiest condition. Dog-ears or thumb-marks were in her opinion the depths of degradation. Ulyth had ambitions also, ambitions which she would not reveal to anybody. Some day she planned to write a book of her own. She had not yet fixed on a subject, but she had decided just what the cover was to be like, with her name on it ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... knew—seemed to realize—all this in an instant, and as swiftly decided to risk life if need be in her defense. There was at that moment no thought in my mind of her stain of negro blood; she was not a slave to me, but merely a woman helpless and alone, fronting dishonor and degradation. ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... his command. His head, too, throbbed almost to bursting; and the whirl of his brain at every movement promised little accuracy in the aim of his pistol, when he should meet the angler. These feelings, together with the deep degradation of his mind, made him resolve that no circumstances should again draw him into an excess of wine. In the mean time, his head was, perhaps, still too much confused to allow him fully to realize his ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... mental organization, health gliding through his veins, strength and symmetry clothing his form, intelligence beaming from his countenance, and immortality stamped on his brow, man is indeed the noblest work of God. In the degradation and corruption to which he can descend, he is the most odious and loathsome object in the creation. The human mind, when all its faculties are fully developed and in proper proportions, reason seated on its rightful throne and shedding abroad its light, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... a few months! It was incredible, terrible, heart rending! And what of the future? What was to be done to save her father from this impeachment which she knew well would hurry him to his grave? He could not survive that humiliation, that degradation. He must be saved in the Senate, ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... to take care of as one of the chores assigned her about the house. For myself, I would not set my foot in it, except on the occasions referred to; but the rent, and the care of it, he had free. Such was the moral degradation of the man, through his own acts, that after all that had passed, he actually cried, and begged of me the privilege to remain in that room, and be taken care of, as he had been ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... the machine, ground up body, mind and soul in this "world-wide mill of economic might". And he showed how this man dragged down with him all society; how the chain that bound the slave was fastened also to the master—so that from the poverty and oppression and degradation of this "downmost man" came all the ulcers that festered in the social body. He saw the great economic machine grinding on day and night, the mighty forces rushing to their culmination. He saw the toiling millions pressed deeper and deeper into the ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... is proof of criminal incapacity and heartlessness. But the fury that has been spent upon General Dyer is, I am sure, largely misdirected. No doubt the shooting was 'frightful,' the loss of innocent life deplorable. But the slow torture, degradation and emasculation that followed was much worse, more calculated, malicious and soul-killing, and the actors who performed the deeds deserve greater condemnation that General Dyer for the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre. The latter merely destroyed a few bodies but the others ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... fugitives had no need of them. It was a sad sight to see these men advancing from the ranks one by one, and casting in the flames what they valued more than their lives, and I have never seen dejection more profound, or shame more keenly felt; for this seemed much like a general degradation to the brave soldiers of the battle of La Moskwa. The Emperor had made these eagles talismans, and this showed only too plainly he had lost faith in them. And although the soldiers realized that the situation of affairs must be desperate to have come to this, it was at least some consolation ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... to association with the Africans upon a footing of social equality, they yielded to the temptations of the situations in which they were placed. The offence, whether committed by a native or an imported white woman, was an act of personal degradation that was condemned by public sentiment with as much severity in the seventeenth century as ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... render the illusion complete, so that the little man found himself caught in a very distressing confusion of the present and the past; yet he was sufficiently sensitive to recognise that it was true, and to fight against the degradation of returning, even in memory, to a former and lower state ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... universe," interrupted I, "I would not be accessary to the degradation you mention; but surely, Madam, I ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... repeat themselves; for he who never repeats himself will not produce an inordinate number of pictures, and he who limits himself in number gives himself at least the opportunity of completion. Besides, all repetition is degradation of the art; it reduces it from headwork to handwork; and indicates something like a persuasion on the part of the artist that nature is exhaustible or art perfectible; perhaps, even, by him exhausted and perfected. All copyists ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... His sister Janet had fortunately entertained so strong a persuasion that her brother would one day return, that she had refused to accompany her kinsfolk upon their emigration. Nay, she had consented, though not without a feeling of degradation, to take service with the intruding Lowlander, who, though a Saxon, she said, had proved a kind man to her. This unexpected meeting with his sister seemed a cure for all the disappointments which it had been Sergeant More's lot to encounter, although it was not without a reluctant ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... old inquiries again:—who was right—who was wrong—who had got hold of the true secret? But the Cress made no inquiry at all, only shook with fright under the rain; for, thought she, the hour of my shame and degradation is come: poor useless creature that I am, I shall never more hold ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... in all its aspects. He was older and much more experienced than Vera, and therefore he was responsible for the domestic peace, and for her happiness, and for his own, and for appearances, and for various other things. He perceived the moral degradation which would be involved in an open quarrel during the honeymoon. He perceived the difficulties of a battle in the street, in such a select and prim street as the Strand, Torquay, where the very backbone of England's respectability goes shopping. He perceived Vera's vast ignorance of life. He perceived ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... disappeared, and the blue stream and swelling hills, and green plains, and intrusive industry and increasing villages of the whites, but reminded them of present weakness and former power. But, the sensibility to degradation was blunted. They had, gradually, become assimilated to their condition; the river abounded in shell and other fish; they could maintain existence, scanty and mean though it was, and they preferred this certainty to the nobler, but more precarious ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... sense could see no grave inconsistency between temporary poverty and the first efforts of struggling genius. Nor is poverty so fatal to the efforts of genius as a superficial thinker would suppose it to be. To a noble nature it presents no feature of degradation or terror. Its supposed evils are, for the most part, begotten of the pride of those who ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... in our present state of degradation the intellect comprehends nothing without an image.' Language is in reality the association of material facts to facts of the will, heart, and intellect. Apparently insufficient to give a full idea of material things alone, it would seem almost impossible ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... was the "big man," a wizard—ugly, old, and villainously dirty. Here was the camp's husband for the coloured girl with the white heart. The idea was revolting, and then and there I resolved at whatever cost to save the girl from such degradation. ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... had already been passed by the Lords, repealing a number of penal acts affecting the Roman Catholics, which, though they had long been practically obsolete, still encumbered, and it may be said disgraced, the statute book, and were, so to say, a standing degradation of and insult to the Roman Catholic body. One of them, passed in the reign of William and Mary, still forbade any Roman Catholic to come within ten miles of London, to have either sword or pistol in his house, or to possess ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... Charles Julius Francis stood at the bar of justice convicted of perjury. His degradation had wrought no change in the dignity of his bearing or the impassiveness of his general appearance, and he received the sentence of the Court without a tremor, and with shoulders thrown back and head erect as befitted a scion ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... royal city. "There might the Winchester folk behold an insolent host and fearless wend past their gate to sea." The king himself had fled into Shropshire. The tone of utter despair with which the Chronicle narrates all these events is the best measure of the national degradation. "There was so muckle awe of the host," says the annalist, "that no man could think how man could drive them from this earth or hold this earth against them; for that they had cruelly marked each shire of Wessex with burning and with harrying." The English had ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... wholly to cleanse themselves from the foul desires associated in their minds with sex. These desires make young men impotent in the face of temptation. Under their evil dominance, even men of kind disposition will, by seduction, inflict on an innocent girl agony, misery, degradation, and premature death. They will indulge In the most degrading of all vices with prostitutes on the street. They will defile the atmosphere of social life with filthy talk and ribald jest. Even a clean and ennobling passion can do little to redeem them. The pure ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... are that this woman—that this woman's first step on her way to degradation—" Nekhludoff got angry with himself, and was unable to find the right expression. "My motives are that I am the guilty one, and ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... pain is symbolised the infinite possibility of perfection, the eternal unfolding of joy; and the man who loses all pleasure in accepting pain sinks down and down to the lowest depth of penury and degradation. It is only when we invoke the aid of pain for our self-gratification that she becomes evil and takes her vengeance for the insult done to her by hurling us into misery. For she is the vestal virgin ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... man. In the "purer Faith," which he was commissioned to abrogate and to quicken, he found two vital defects equally fatal to its energy and to its longevity. These were (and are) its egoism and its degradation of humanity. Thus it cannot be a "pleroma": it needs a Higher Law.[FN322] As Judaism promised the good Jew all manner of temporal blessings, issue, riches, wealth, honour, power, length of days, so Christianity offered the good Christian, as a bribe to lead a godly life, personal salvation and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... colonising those parts of our Empire which are at present sparsely populated, and thus relieving the tension of social problems in the larger cities of Great Britain, and that congestion of population which is a fruitful source of individual and of social degradation. ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... by Froude which could throw light upon the splendid and illustrious Queen who raised England from the depths of degradation to the height of renown. It was at the zenith of Elizabeth's career that Froude stopped. His original intention had been to continue till her death. But the ample scale on which he had planned his book was so much enlarged by his copious quotations ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... N. deterioration, debasement; wane, ebb; recession &c 287; retrogradation &c 283 [Obs.]; decrease &c 36. degeneracy, degeneration, degenerateness; degradation; depravation, depravement; devolution; depravity &c 945; demoralization, retrogression; masochism. impairment, inquination^, injury, damage, loss, detriment, delaceration^, outrage, havoc, inroad, ravage, scath^; perversion, prostitution, vitiation, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the two systems diverge. Buddhism is generous, benevolent, humane; it seeks to help others. Tao-ism seeks its own. Hence the selfish morality which pervades the Book of Rewards and Punishments. Every good action has its reward attached to it. Hence also the degradation of the system into pure magic and spiritism. Buddhism, though its course runs so nearly parallel, always retains in its scheme of ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... could dawn for us! Command the sun of that day to rise and to shine into all Prussian hearts, and to fire them with patriotism so as to shrink back no longer from death and wounds, but only from dishonor and degradation! Oh, my blood burns like fire in my veins; it would like to burst forth in a fiery torrent and drown and burn every Frenchman. Queen, have mercy on me—let the solemn day when I may shed my blood for the fatherland dawn ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... act of revolt, unwitting as it was, had fired the imaginations of the Earth people, who in their degradation and despair had come to believe the Mercutian overlords invulnerable. It had been the little spark that touched off a far-reaching train of events. In the few days that had elapsed Hilary had ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... art, but especially the young, this unassuming poem is most worthy of being committed to memory. It is a striking detection of the devil's sophistry. Strive, as you value your peace and happiness, to escape the depths of moral degradation and misery, by avoiding the FIRST overtures ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... will own that, in spite of the praiseworthy labours of both Church and Dissent,—in spite of the progress of Temperance Societies and Savings' Banks,—a crowd of children are daily growing up in a state of ignorance, dirt, and degradation fearful to contemplate. To active philanthropists, not to seekers of the picturesque, archaeologists, and antiquarians, do we address ourselves. Still we ought to add that, in the iron works and rolling mills, there are ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... importance in the eyes of the men than before upon the value of these ratings. I therefore instantly called out to the clerk to stop his pen; and then addressing the man, in a voice loud enough to be heard by all the crew, said, I was quite sure any one who felt so sensibly the degradation implied in the loss of rank which he had just incurred was never likely to expose himself again to such a risk. I should therefore not only give him back his former rating, and replace him in his station as captain of the top, but assure him that all trace both of his ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... Wychecombe positively knew the history of Dutton's professional degradation. He had never risen higher than to be a lieutenant; and from this station he had fallen by the sentence of a court-martial. His restoration to the service, in the humbler and almost hopeless rank of a master, was believed to have been brought about by Mrs. Dutton's influence with ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... slaves of custom, and they become proud of their slavery. At first they might have considered custom as a tyrant; but when they have obeyed her for a certain time, they do her voluntary homage ever after, as to a sovereign by divine right. To prevent this species of intellectual degradation, we must in education be careful to rank mere mechanical talents below the exercise of the mental powers. Thus the ambition of young people will be directed to high objects, and all inferiour qualifications may be ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... that I was holding her hands, and as instantly releasing them. "Why, do you begin to understand what this actually means to me? It means the retention of manhood, of self-respect. It will save me the degradation which I dreaded most of all—the toiling in the fields beside negro slaves, and the sting of the lash. ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... and rapidly-increasing population; where there was a numerous peasantry, a trading middle class struggling into existence; the system of Dutch finance, pursued more or less for nearly a century and a half, has ended in the degradation of a fettered and burthened multitude. Nor have the demoralizing consequences of the funding system on the more favoured classes been less decided. It has made debt a national habit; it has made credit the ruling power, not the exceptional auxiliary, of all transactions; it has introduced ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... often marriages turn out hopeless—impossible; mere prisons of degradation. But that is when the sacred tie is entered into for other than the essential reasons of a perfect love and mutual need; or without due consideration, 'unadvisedly, lightly, wantonly,' notwithstanding ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... Through the evil consequence of what acts cloth a Vaisya become a Sudra? Through what acts doth a Kshatriya become a Vaisya and a regenerate person (Brahmana) becomes a Kshatriya? By what means may such degradation of castes be prevented? Through what acts does a Brahmana take birth in his next life, in the Sudra order? Through what acts, O puissant deity, does a Kshatriya also descend to the status of Sudra? O sinless one, O lord of all created beings, do thou, O illustrious one, dispel ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... annoyance. Matters had now come to such a pass, that a little upstart captain of forty men could set at naught the authority of the commander-in-chief of the forces of a whole province, merely because he could boast a bit of paper embellished with the king's name. This was a degradation too grievous to be longer borne by a manly, independent spirit. Though sorely vexed and annoyed, Washington had too much self-respect and prudence to make a noise about the matter; but he inwardly resolved, that, as soon as the coming-on of winter would ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... maidens, the daughters of the nobles and other persons of distinction belonging to his court, all going down to the river, with heavy jugs, to draw water. The fathers of all these hapless maidens had been brought out with Psammenitus to witness the degradation and misery of their children. The maidens cried and sobbed aloud as they went along, overwhelmed with shame and terror. Their fathers manifested the utmost agitation and distress. Cambyses stood smiling by, highly enjoying the spectacle. ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... help them. I will never ask God to help my children unless I am doing my level best in that same wretched line. I will tell you what I say to my girls: "Go where you will; do what crime you may; fall to what depth of degradation you may; in all the storms and winds and earthquakes of life, no matter what you do, you never can commit any crime that will shut my door, my arms or my heart to you. As long as I live you have one sincere friend." Call me an atheist; call me an infidel because ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... her aged and widowed grandfather, who had no other daughter or granddaughter, or any other woman relative to keep house for him? And yet how could she associate daily with a woman whose presence she felt to be a degradation? ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... considerably less ill-will than she had shown at the beginning, but even now there were occasional lamentations when the day was especially enticing, and her spirits rose and soared above the pettiness of bed-making and the degradation of dusting. It took her about twice as long to get through with her share of the work as it took Miss Blake, and she could never console herself with the thought that it was because the governess shirked. Occasionally she let her own tasks go ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... would be utterly lost. And still almost blindly he held on to certain things in the blackness which encompassed him. He still wished to play the man, and though in bitterness he had tried sometimes to sink down in degradation, his body—or so it had seemed to him—had resisted the will of the injured soul, which had said to it, "Go down into the dirt; seek satisfaction there. Your sanity and your purity of life have availed you nothing. From them you have had no reward. Then ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... a little more on the same subject, and then Clavering went out with unpleasantly confused sensations through which a feeling of degradation came uppermost. He had not led an exemplary life, but pride had kept him clear of certain offences, and he had as yet held his word sacred when put upon his honour. It was some minutes before he ventured to join Hetty and Miss Schuyler, ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... such a burden that several times I was on the point of destroying myself; but I thought of my father, my mother, my brothers and sisters, whom I helped to support. I resigned myself; in the midst of my degradation I found a consolation—at least my father was saved from prison. A new misfortune overwhelmed me—I was enceinte; I saw myself altogether lost. I do not know why, I had a presentiment that M. Ferrand, in learning an event which should have rendered him less cruel ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... "And indeed, Cousin Rupert, I know more of this—of him than you do, and very sure am I he is no murderer—nor ever will be!" Here for a moment her glance rested on me, and meeting that look I forgot my wounded vanity and degradation awhile. ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... the last of those above suggested. And truly bitter it must have been to both, when the hand that had been only too kind was now forced to the infliction even of stripes; so that one hardly knows which to pity most: though, if the essence of punishment be degradation, certainly the legal slave suffered less of it than the moral one who had fallen so low beneath the dominion of a termagant wife. But let it be ever remembered to the honor of this wretched daughter of bondage, that, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... that poor man who loses his liberty! What can the wide world give him in exchange? No degree of material comfort, no consciousness of correct behaviour, can balance the hateful degradation of imprisonment. Before I had been an hour in captivity, as the previous pages evidence, I resolved to escape. Many plans suggested themselves, were examined, and rejected. For a month I thought of nothing else. But the peril and difficulty restrained action. I think ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... bookworm, a devourer of knowledge without purpose or without meditation of his own, he thought with a student's soul well and deeply upon what he read, and drew from his books those principles of philanthropy, and those high resolves, which did such honor to the Saxon monarch. He viewed with sorrow the degradation of his country, and the intellectual barrenness of his time; the warmest aspiration of his soul was to diffuse among his people a love for literature and science, to raise them above their Saxon sloth, and lead them to think of loftier matters than war and carnage. To effect this noble aim, the ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... that whether he were in the number of the choicest favorites of his prince, or whether he were offensive and odious to him, he demeaned himself in neither condition with moderation; but if he was advanced he was intolerably insolent, and in his degradation not submissive and peaceable in his ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... him, and the last glimpse I caught of him, at a bend over which the track rose a little, showed Ted seated sideways on the horse's hindquarters, one hand resting on the pack-saddle, the other waving overhead to me. A precarious perch I thought it, but as it saved him from the final degradation of walking, I have no doubt it suited Ted ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... degradation; deforestation; desertification; destruction of coral reefs threatens marine habitats; recent droughts affected marginal agriculture natural hazards: the tsetse fly and lack of water limit agriculture; flooding on the central plateau during the rainy season international agreements: ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency |
