"Degrading" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Philip's for the repose of Herbert's soul; and it was she who heard the letters which Colette wrote every evening to her absent husband, relating her life and the way she spent her days. All mourning, however rigid, involves attention to material details which are degrading to grief but demanded by society. Liveries must be ordered, trappings provided for horses and carriages, and the heartbroken mourner must face the hypocritical sympathy of the tradesman. All these duties were discharged ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... once will I pain you by alluding to that sorrowful and degrading hour. You found me—I will not shrink from uttering the word, though it will scorch my lips to speak it and burn your ears to hear it—you ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... Every famous murderer within the last ten years has desecrated his last moments by falsifying his confidences imparted specially to the London Correspondent of the Tattlesnivel Bleater; on every such occasion, Mr. Calcraft has followed the degrading example; and the reverend Ordinary, forgetful of his cloth, and mindful only (it would seem, alas!) of the conspiracy, has committed himself to some account or other of the criminal's demeanour and conversation, which has been diametrically opposed ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens
... which exhibit art in almost every form to the sight of the youths in our great cities, have a natural tendency to fill their imaginations with borrowed ideas, and their minds with imperfect science; the mere dislike of mechanical employments, either felt to be irksome, or believed to be degrading, urges numbers of young men to become painters, in the same temper in which they would enlist or go to sea; others, the sons of engravers or artists, taught the business of the art by their parents, and having no gift for it themselves, follow it as the means ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... affectionately or needlessly to his wife, when alone with her is involuntarily conscious of her superiority. His house and all his property, in fact the entire homestead, has been acquired and is kept together solely by her labour and care. Though firmly convinced that labour is degrading to a Cossack and is only proper for a Nogay labourer or a woman, he is vaguely aware of the fact that all he makes use of and calls his own is the result of that toil, and that it is in the power of the woman (his mother or his wife) whom he considers ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy
... sex. He believes in spirit. He is timid and womanly, his mind is pure and inexpressibly shocked at the carnal desires which disfigure the otherwise fair picture of humanity. Love, marriage, procreation, cannot these be purged from the base and degrading obsessions of sex? By abstinence, by concentration, we may eliminate them. Surely the story of the Fall makes it quite clear that we were never meant to perpetuate such gross mistakes.... Here is the woman who believes sex to be the source of all good, all life, all joy. She holds a medical degree ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... agree with you about the fun,' Borrodaile objected. 'That's why I'm glad they've had their lesson. I should say there was almost nothing more degrading than this public spectacle of——' Borrodaile lifted his high shoulders higher still, with an effect of intense discomfort. 'It never but once came my way that I remember, but I'm free to own,' he said, 'there's nothing that shakes my nerves like seeing ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... however, they still possess, for this is the only power that is inexhaustible; and they try to stimulate their will by passionate excitement, such as games of chance for high stakes—undoubtedly a most degrading form of vice. And one may say generally that if a man finds himself with nothing to do, he is sure to choose some amusement suited to the kind of power in which he excels,—bowls, it may be, or chess; hunting or painting; horse-racing or music; ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... being obliged to keep up an ineffectual chase after my Columbine through whole pantomimes; to see her carried off in the vigorous arms of the happy Harlequin; and to be obliged, instead of snatching her from him, to tumble sprawling with Pantaloon and the clown; and bear the infernal and degrading thwacks of my rival's weapon of lath; which, may heaven confound him! (excuse my passion) the villain laid on with a malicious good-will; nay, I could absolutely hear him chuckle and laugh beneath his accursed mask—I beg pardon for ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... the effects of which she had no experience; which, since her time, has changed the condition of the world; but which few modern statesmen have thoroughly understood, or wisely employed; which is no doubt connected with many ridiculous and degrading details; which has produced, and may again produce, terrible mischiefs; but of which the influence must after all be considered as the most certain effect of the most efficacious cause of civilization; ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... in the winter of 1077, was performed a most degrading act of penance by Emperor Henry IV. of Germany. He had been excommunicated by Pope Gregory VII., and had suffered much on that account. He resolved to see the Pope, and, if possible, obtain absolution. The Emperor made a long and toilsome journey in the ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... public. For farce, after all, is farcical, and the mood for its appreciation is not one which is sympathetic to any great or moving thing. And in the hands of interpreters less than intelligently fine, the play may still descend into the lower class; but this cannot be done without degrading it beyond any ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... view to prevent their having time to ponder on these miseries.[32] But all extra and useless duties to a soldier become odious, because they are always associated in his mind with the ideas of the odious and degrading punishment inflicted for the neglect of them. It is lamentable to think how much of misery is often wantonly inflicted upon the brave soldiers of our European regiments of India on the pretence of a desire to preserve ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... so strong, only cruelty could check them, and I would not use cruelty. What a pigmy intellect she had, and what giant propensities! How fearful were the curses those propensities entailed on me! Bertha Mason, the true daughter of an infamous mother, dragged me through all the hideous and degrading agonies which must attend a man bound to a wife at once intemperate ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... was sorrowful, notwithstanding the ills they had done me and mine, by the nefarious pillaging of our hen-house, to see two human creatures, of the same flesh and blood as myself, undergoing the righteous sentence of the law, in a manner so degrading to themselves, and so pitiful to all that beheld them. But, nevertheless, considering what they had done, they neither deserved, nor did they seem to care for commiseration, holding up their brazen faces as if they ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... and degrading situation! Wert thou ever at the mercy of a mob? Didst thou ever feel the littleness of thy own faculties, when exerted to make a confused multitude act rationally, at the very time that thou thyself wert apparently ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... corresponding improvement in their good qualities; third, and perhaps most important of all, the discontent very properly felt by the French Zouaves, who were compelled to work at the trenches, to dig, to plant, etc., while the Mussulmans utterly refused to take part in this, to their mind, degrading toil. The Gordian knot was cut, and all difficulty done away, by making the regiment, in effect, exclusively European. Thus reorganized and reinforced, the regiment, on receiving the standard sent it by the king, immediately separated,—one battalion marching for Oran, one for Constantine, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... more common than with well-bred slave-holders. They have meekly accepted it. "Want to go out to de nigger-houses, Sah," is the universal impulse of sociability, when they wish to cross the lines. "He hab twenty house-servants, an' two hundred head o' nigger," is a still more degrading form of phrase, in which the epithet is limited to the field-hands, and they estimated like so many cattle. This want of self-respect of course interferes with the authority of the non-commissioned officers, which is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... assumed that of Virulus. Dorat, a French poet, had for his real name Disnemandi, which, in the dialect of the Limousins, signifies one who dines in the morning; that is, who has no other dinner than his breakfast. This degrading name he changed to Dorat, or gilded, a nickname which one of his ancestors had borne for his fair tresses. But by changing his name, his feelings were not entirely quieted, for unfortunately ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... performance, and consequently have been obliged to use an indignant imagination to help out a very faulty recollection. This is my excuse for giving one more account of an entertainment which can in no way be defended. It is doubtless vicious and degrading; but with the constant danger, the skill displayed, the courage, the hair-breadth escapes, the catastrophes, it is foolish to deny that any pastime can be ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... tried to show in the preceding chapter that Socialism seeks to make life less squalid and cruel, less degrading and dwarfing for the children that are born into it, and I have tried also to make clear that realization of, and revolt against, the bad management and waste and muddle which result from our present economic system. I want now to point out that Socialism seeks to ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... prize-fighters of another metal, not to speak of Spartacus. Perhaps the objections to our making use of colored soldiers (hic niger est, hunc tu, Romane, caveto) will seem as absurd one of these days as the outcry that Caesar was degrading the service by enlisting Gauls; but we will not hazard a prophecy. In the alarm of the Pannonian revolt, his nephew recruited the army of Italy by a conscription of slaves, who thereby became free, and this measure seems to have been acquiesced in by the unwarlike citizens, who preferred that ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... contrast, that I could not but laugh immoderately. He was too proud to submit, even for a moment, to be the object of ridicule, and instantly retaliated with such keen sarcastick wit, and such a variety of degrading images, of every one of which I was the object, that, though I can bear such attacks as well as most men, I yet found myself so much the sport of all the company, that I would gladly expunge from my mind every trace ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... Afric wasted, Ere our necks received the chain; By the miseries, which we tasted Crossing, in your barks, the main; By our sufferings, since you brought us To the man-degrading mart, All sustain'd by patience, taught us Only by ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... children. So far, what could be more promising? But, alas! like everything else, Japanese life has a dark side, and in this case it consists of a repulsive custom, which permits indigent parents to sell their daughters for a term of years into a state of bondage, for purposes of the most degrading nature. This possibility more than counterbalances all the brighter features of their domestic economy. Generally speaking, when young girls find themselves a burden to their parents, they seek employment in the ...
— Sketches of Japanese Manners and Customs • J. M. W. Silver
... conquered. Her letter had brought him face to face with those realities which, during this week of madness, he had simply refused to see. He could pit himself against her no longer. When it came to the point he had not the nerve to enter upon a degrading and ignoble conflict, in which all that was to be won was her hatred or her fear. That, indeed, would be the last and worst ruin, for it would be the ruin, not of happiness or of hope, but of love itself, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... they have no clear conception the other way, either; they are confused and generally pliable; and so, when the challenging idea is introduced, if he is quick and clear with the vital points, he can tear the surface off the many nostrums of the hour and prove them mean, worthless, and degrading; and, doing so, he will be forming the minds about him. He must be ready; that is the great need. Understand how a conversation is often turned by a chance word, and how governed by one man who has passionate, well-defined views, while others are cold and undecided. Be that one man. You do ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... lost your reason as well as all sense of duty, Grace?" he stormed. "What is this beggarly farmer, the nephew of my bitterest enemy, that you should give up so much for him? Have you counted the cost—hardship, degrading drudgery, and your father's displeasure? And would you choose these instead of your natural ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... praise of that comfortable creature—wine. The prudery of many Americans about the juice of the grape is a thing very astonishing to a temperate Briton. An admirable author, who wrote an account of the old convivial days of an American city, found that reputable magazines could not accept such a degrading historical record. There was no nonsense about Dr. Holmes. His poems were mainly "occasional" verses for friendly meetings; or humorous, like the celebrated "One Horse Shay." Of his serious verses, the "Nautilus" ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... hand within reach she clung to it with pathetic tenacity. But if the young man's value had risen in the eyes of his employers it had deteriorated in his own. He was condemned to play a part he had not bargained for, and it seemed to him more degrading when paid in bank-notes than if his retribution had consisted merely in good dinners and luxurious lodgings. The first time the smiling aide-de-camp had caught his eye over a verbal slip of Mrs. Hicks's, Nick had flushed to the forehead and gone to bed swearing that he would chuck ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... sold offices, confiscated estates, and indulged in guilty loves. She ruled like a Madame de Pompadour, and degraded the throne which she ought to have exalted. The influence of women generally was bad in those corrupt times, but her influence was scandalous and degrading. ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... In their ravings against the tyranny of men they lose all historical sense, just as an American does when he describes a mediaeval crime as if it had been committed by a European with a twentieth-century conscience. They charge men with keeping half humanity in a degrading state of slavery, and attribute all the sins of civilisation to the enforced ignorance and helplessness of women. Their contempt for their masters is almost beyond the German language to express, eloquently as they use it. They demand equality of education and opportunity, but ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... passports to retire from the Court of St. James. Napoleon had done more than that. The disturber of mankind had subverted the government of Portugal, but that magnanimous Prince, Don Pedro, had emigrated with his Court to the Brazils, rather than submit to the degrading chains of such a master. His Majesty, the King of Great Britain, had offered the Americans reparation, immediately and spontaneously, for the unauthorised attack upon the Chesapeake, but the American government taking advantage of the ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... of their dialect and making friends with individuals. While he showed instinctive tact in knowing how far it was wise to go in opposing the native way of life, he was willing to face risks whenever real progress could be made. After he had been some days in Mota a special initiation in a degrading rite was held outside the village. Patteson exercised all his influence to prevent one of his converts from being drawn in; and when an old man came up and terrorized his pupils by planting a symbolic tree outside ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... of giving securities, or bail, to answer an accusation, is a custom (says Brewer) which appears to have been coeval with the Saxon nation. This system was, indeed, subsequently carried by the Saxons to a burthensome and degrading height—not being confined to those who were accused of crime, but extending to the whole community, who thus gave surety to answer anticipated criminality. This object was effected by the division of England into counties, hundreds, and tithings, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 472 - Vol. XVII. No. 472., Saturday, January 22, 1831 • Various
... which beset and waylay the life of man, this comes the nearest to our heart, and is that wherein the proudest of us all feels himself to be nothing more than he is: but I find myself unable to manage it with decorum; these details are of a species of horror so nauseous and disgusting, they are so degrading to the sufferers and to the hearers, they are so humiliating to human nature itself, that on better thoughts I find it more advisable to throw a pall over this hideous object, and to leave it ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... the positions of honor, and she, from weakness of sex, had been overborne. She, whose heart cried out for the distinction of train-boy, conductor, engineer, brakeman, or fireman, in the order named, had been forced into the only degrading post in the game—a mere passenger without voice or office in those delicate feats of administration. And she suffered—suffered with a pathetic loyalty, for she knew as well as they that some one ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... annum. Surely, if royalty, thus periodically and mercenarily eulogized, were content, the poet might well be so. And quite as certainly, the Laureate stipend never extracted from poet panegyric more fulsome, ill-placed, and degrading, than that which Laureate Dryden volunteered over ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... bounty of nature; artless, and apparently as much afraid of us, and as shy, as other animals of the forest. It seemed strange, that in a climate the most resembling that of Milton's paradise, the circumstances of man's existence should be the most degrading. Latitude of our camp, 29 deg. 19' 26" S. Thermometer, at sunrise, 55 deg.; at noon, 100 deg.; at 4 P. M., 101 deg.; at 9, 70 deg.;—with wet bulb, 65 deg.. The mean elevation above the sea of our camps thus far on the Narran, seven in number, was 477 feet; ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... exacting the performance of any menial or degrading task, as well as for hazing, was court-martial and possible dismissal, the yearling generally succeeded in getting the work done without giving orders or making demands, so the plebes could not say ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... beneath; and it is in the unity derived from this higher pervading, yet not too assertive "invisible reality," that Stevenson most often fails, and is, in his own words, "execrable"; the ending shaming, if not degrading, the beginning—"and without the true sense of pleasurableness; and therefore really imperfect in essence." Ah, it is to be feared that Stevenson, viewing it in retrospect, was a far truer critic of his own work, than many or most of his ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... is the robe of truth, I worship it for what it covers," replied Philothea; "but I love not the degrading fables which poets have made concerning divine beings. Such were not the gods of Solon; for such the wise and good can never be, in this world ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... been supposed, because women are scarcely ever expected to work in wet weather. The worst of the exposure is probably endured upon the arable fields in the bitter winds of spring; but this does not last very long. In what way field-labour is degrading to the women it is difficult to understand. The only work of a disgusting nature now performed by women is the beating of clots on pasture-land, and that is quickly over. After all, there is nothing so very dreadful in it. Stone-picking, couch-clearing, ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... world, of a new civilization But how, I may be asked, is it broken down? Do not men toil? it may be said. They do indeed toil; but they too generally do it because they must. Many submit to it as in some sort a degrading necessity; and they desire nothing so much on earth as escape from it. They fulfil the great law of labor in the letter, but break it in the spirit; fulfill it with the muscle, but break it with ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... energy which is devoted to free and generous pursuits, to the adornment of life and the culture of the imagination. For it is in the spontaneous play of his faculties that man finds himself and his happiness. Slavery is the most degrading condition of which he is capable, and he is as often a slave to the niggardness of the earth and the inclemency of heaven, as to a master or an institution. He is a slave when all his energy is spent in avoiding suffering and death, when all his action is imposed from without, ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... degrading were the disclosures in the torture-chambers; and many admitted that they had had children by the devil. The circumstances of the Sabbath, the various rites of the compact, the forms and method of bewitching, the manner of sexual intercourse with the ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... pure minds and all their young affections and sympathies clustering around their hearts. I never wish their minds to be under the influence of the god of this generation— fashion—nor their hearts to become callous to the sufferings of their fellows. I never wish them to regard labor as degrading, nor poverty as a crime. Situated as I am I cannot rear them in health and purity, and, therefore, I am anxious to remove them from the baneful influences that surround them. Again: I look upon labor as a blessing, and feel that ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... near Canterbury, one day received a severe thrashing from a famous member of the ring. This changed the editor's opinions as to the propriety of boxing—at any-rate pugilism was repudiated by the Dispatch about 1829; and boxing, from the Dispatch point of view, was henceforward treated as a degrading and brutal amusement, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... have often seen her; I have made plan after plan to meet her; I have—O degrading thought!—paid her to take me out in her canoe, under the pretence of fishing. I no longer looked forward; I lived only in the present, and thought only of when and where I could see her. Thus it has been until this morning, ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... of their nature will be coloring all their activities. It will beautify their arts, and erotically confuse their religions. It will lend a little interest to even their dull social functions. It will keep alive .degrading social evils in all their great towns. Through these latter evils, too, their politics will be corrupted; especially their best and most democratic attempts at self-government. Self-government works best among those who ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... the Territory, and men were galloping over the prairie to register their votes. The three in the wagon talked politics the whole time. They spoke openly and shamelessly of the prices given for votes; and apparently there was not a politician on either side who was not accused of degrading corruption. We saw a convoy of 5,000 head of Texas cattle traveling from southern Texas to Iowa. They had been nine months on the way! They were under the charge of twenty mounted vacheros, heavily armed, and a light wagon accompanied ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... Indolence is equally degrading to individuals as to nations. Sloth never made its mark in the world, and never will. Sloth never climbed a hill, nor overcame a difficulty that it could avoid. Indolence always failed in life, and always will. It is in the nature of things ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... "Wouldn't it have been degrading for Sir Wulfric de Talbot," said Jane dreamily, "if he could have known that half the besieged garrison ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... perfectly innocuous facts of nature to make them poisonously attractive to perverted palates. The wishy-washy literature and the wishy-washy morality on which it is based are not one stage more—or less—rotten than the libertine literature and the libertine morality on which it is based. So far as degrading effect is concerned, the "pure, sweet" story or play, false to nature, false to true morality, propagandist of indecent emotions disguised as idealism, need yield nothing to the so-called "strong" story. Both pander to different ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... Brooks at Edgefield Court House, and guarded the fatal notice during the day with a loaded pistol. A relative of Brooks, a feeble, retiring, and unassuming young man, braved the vengeance of Wigfall, and tore the degrading challenge from the court house door in spite of the warning and threats of the Knight of the Code. A pistol shot rang out, and the young champion of Brooks fell dead at his feet. Preston Brooks, hearing of the indignity placed upon his father, the death of his kinsman and defender ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... will come down promptly in the morning, I will cudgel my brains without ceasing, I will chastise my laziness without mercy. I will toil, suffer, even to the extent of making myself ill; but I will put a stop, once for all, to this languishing and tiresome life, which is degrading me and causing sorrow to others. Courage! to work! To work with all my soul, and all my nerves! To work, which will restore to me sweet repose, pleasing games, cheerful meals! To work, which will give me back again the kindly smile of my teacher, the ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... confidence men. To have a female confidence game played on a man would leave less of a sting than to be bilked by a male. But, as burglars, the idea seems revolting. To think of women going about nights with a jimmy and a dark lantern, and opening doors, or windows, and sneaking about rooms, is degrading. If a male burglar gets in your house, and he is discovered, you can shoot him, if you get the drop on him, or kick him down stairs; but who wants to shoot a female burglar, or kick her over the banisters? ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... vacuity. And then he once more falls from the heights of his eagerly-desired self-knowledge into an ironical scepticism. He divests his struggles of their real importance, and feels himself ready to undertake any class of useful work, however degrading. He now seeks consolation in hasty and incessant action so as to hide himself from himself. And thus his helplessness and the want of a leader towards culture drive him from one form of life into another: but doubt, elevation, worry, hope, despair—everything flings him hither and thither ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... much longer from the incompleteness of the conquest and the absence of the seat of supreme government, which kept the races longer separate and antagonistic. Perhaps the most humiliating notice of the degrading effects of conquest on the noble Saxon race to be found in history, is the language in which Giraldus Cambrensis, the reviler of the Irish Celt, contrasts them with his countrymen, the Welsh. 'Who dare,' he says, 'compare the English, ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... consideration of his youth. When the crowd at last halted, he flitted feverishly from point to point around its outer rim, hunting a place to get through; and at last, after a deal of difficulty and delay, succeeded. There sat his poor henchman in the degrading stocks, the sport and butt of a dirty mob—he, the body servant of the King of England! Edward had heard the sentence pronounced, but he had not realised the half that it meant. His anger began to rise ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... explanation of these words, and, when she did, her aunt absolutely refused to give it, though, by her severe looks, and half sentences, she appeared anxious to impress Emily with a belief, that she was well informed of some degrading circumstances of her conduct. Conscious innocence could not prevent a blush from stealing over Emily's cheek; she trembled, and looked confusedly under the bold eye of Madame Cheron, who blushed also; but hers was the blush of triumph, such as sometimes stains the countenance ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... terrible distinctness revealed to him the truth that he had lost his manhood. The vice was already stamped on his face and manner, so that an experienced eye could detect it at, once; soon all would see the degrading brand. He, who had once been the soul of honor and truth, had lied that day again and again, and the thought pierced ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... reverence as when we kneel at that altar, for we are coming to that which is part of God's image—made in His likeness. And as we speak to them, when they answer purely and simply, the Word of God speaks through them. This is not degrading the sacraments—nay, but raising all human life—nay, raising the sacraments as well, for it brings them into relation with real life, and transforms the poor magical ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... was, or not at all. Unless he could take her with all her faults, she would not care for his regard; "love" was too noble a word to call such cold, calculating feeling as his must be, who went about with a pattern idea in his mind, trying to find a wife to match. Besides, there was something degrading, Jemima thought, in trying to alter herself to gain the love of any human creature. And yet, if he did not care for her, if this late indifference were to last, what a great shroud was drawn over life! Could ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... painful circumstance stamped itself on my memory. I was obliged to be present at a flogging parade—the only one, I am glad to say, I have ever had to attend, although the barbarous and degrading custom of flogging in the army was not done away with until nearly thirty years later.[5] A few years before I joined the service, the number of lashes which might be given was limited to fifty, but even under this restriction the sight was a horrible one to witness. The parade to which I refer ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... saying; but that is the result of disputing with shoemakers. Besides, it is degrading to compare women to wine! He is a coarse fellow who sets his wife on the same level with ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... he did so, every eye, suddenly released from his imposing figure, flashed towards the immovable Clifford, to find him still absorbed by the action and attitude of the man who had just undergone what to him doubtless appeared a degrading ordeal. Pale before, he was absolutely livid now, though otherwise unchanged. To break the force of what appeared to be an open, if involuntary, self-betrayal, another guest stepped forward; but ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... about this? It ought to assert its rights in the church. It ought to protest and rebel against the debauching of mind and the degrading of religion (all for the sake of selling trashy books at $25 per hundred). A parent would do better to keep his child from church and Sunday school than to permit his mind to be filled with the sanguinary pictures of God, the mediaeval theology of the modern songbook, ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... decency forbids them to experience at first hand. I am a procurer for the purposes of mental prostitution. My books breed moral pestilence and spiritual disease. The unholy filth I write fouls the minds and pollutes the imaginations of my readers. I am an instigator of degrading immorality and unmentionable crimes. Work! No, young man, I don't work. Just now, I'm doing penance in this damned town. My rotten imaginings have proven too much—even for me—and the doctors sent me West ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... significantly told that at the supper "Isabella Wardle devoted herself exclusively to Mr. Trundle." Pointed enough, surely. We may be fortified in this view by finding that on the return of the party, all dead drunk, at one in the morning, on Trundle was specially cast the degrading menial duty of carrying Wardle to ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... public speakers whom I have ever heard, Fox appeared to me the most subtle—of course, not in the crafty and degrading sense of the word; but in the art of approaching an unexpected case, he was a master. He loitered, he lingered, he almost trifled by the way, until the observer began to believe that he had either no object in view, or had forgotten it altogether. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... that is not the name. Kind associates with kind in all nature; and love—humanizing, heart-softening love—cannot be the companion of whatever is low, mean, worthless, degrading—the associate of ruthless dishonour, cunning, treachery, and violent death. Even independent of its amount of evil as a crime, or the evils still greater than itself which necessarily accompany it, there is nothing that so petrifies the feeling as ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... discreditable to diplomacy at Washington. The attempt to prove that the fur-seals are domestic animals, and the property of the United States when a hundred miles out in the Pacific Ocean was a humiliating reflection on the intelligence of both parties to the dispute, and showed abject and degrading subserviency to the corporation controlling the seal monopoly. Added to this was the disgrace of forgery, detected, unfortunately, not at Washington, but in London, and indicating that, while Washington officials were doubtless innocent of complicity in the crime, ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... independence, whether for good or evil, so their reverence for their abbots was a voluntary loyalty to one who they fancied had a right to rule them, because he was wiser and better than they; a feeling which some have found not degrading, but ennobling; and the parent, not of servility, but of true freedom. And as for the obsolete virtue of humility, that still remains true which a voice said to Antony, when he saw the snares which were spread over the whole earth, and asked, sighing, "Who can pass safely over these?" ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... was obliged to admit with a gulp, as if he were swallowing his pride, and he knew that in saying the word he was degrading his sister—throwing her at this man's feet as the price of ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... South-Sea directors, who, by their fraudulent practices, had brought the nation to the brink of ruin. Nobody seemed to imagine that the nation itself was as culpable as the South-Sea company. Nobody blamed the credulity and avarice of the people,—the degrading lust of gain, which had swallowed up every nobler quality in the national character, or the infatuation which had made the multitude run their heads with such frantic eagerness into the net held out for them by scheming projectors. These things were never mentioned. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... forefinger. He could also fashion an interesting musical instrument in his desk by means of spools and catgut and bits of broken glass. The chief joy of his life was an old tuning-fork that the teacher of the singing school had given him, but, owing to the degrading and arbitrary censorship of pockets that prevailed, he never dared bring it into the schoolroom. There were ways, however, of evading inexorable law and circumventing base injustice. He hid the precious thing under a thistle just outside the window. The teacher had sometimes a brief season of apathy ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... air pollution from power plant emissions results in acid rain; acidification of lakes and reservoirs degrading water quality and threatening aquatic life; Japan's appetite for fish and tropical timber is contributing to the depletion of these resources in Asia and elsewhere natural hazards: many dormant and some active volcanoes; ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... bodily limbs and members, and also to the faculties of her mind. It was required too that she should be the daughter of free and freeborn parents, who had never been in slavery, and had never followed any menial or degrading occupation; and also that both her parents should be living. To be an orphan was considered, it seems, in ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... the moral courage of her son had developed. In her code of manhood there was no tolerance for infirmity of purpose, and mental fear was as degrading and as disintegrating as physical cowardice. He had been a man of the world in the miniature world that the miles of mountains had enclosed around him. He had lived every phase of the life of his people, and lived them openly. ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan
... burning face and blazing eyes. "It's disgraceful of you to say such things—it's degrading for me to have to hear them. I will get away from you, if I have ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... that this revolution should not have the same end, beware of abject Materialism, degrading Sensualism, gross Socialism, of besotted Communism; of all these doctrines of flesh and blood, of meat and drink, of hunger and thirst, of wages and traffic, which these corruptors of the soul of ...
— Atheism Among the People • Alphonse de Lamartine
... two strong men. In point of intellect and aspiration they were far beyond the people they governed—so far, indeed, that they were almost isolated. There was a multitude of slaves and consequently there was a feeling everywhere that useful work was degrading. The tendency of the slave-owner is always toward profligacy and conspicuous waste. To do away with slavery was out of the question—that was a matter of time and education—the ruler can never afford to get much in advance of his people. The court was infected with parasites in the way ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... honorably; where plain living is a religion, and where there is no insatiable longing for the unattainable. The worship of wealth, the feeling that there is no other good than money, is one of the most degrading features of our modern life. It is a falsehood, too. There is everything good in the world, and the most of the things which are best in life can be had with but a little money. No man is poor unless he feels poor. If a family ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... The fact remained, however, that I found myself in far closer sympathy with him than ever before. After all that he had said, I should have had a heart of stone if it had not been stirred to profound pity. I had seen an instance both of his spell-bound cowardice and of his almost degrading craft in extrication. That in itself repelled me. But it lost its value in the light that he had cast on the never-ceasing torment that consumed him. At any rate he was at death-grips with himself, strangling the devils of ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... of my mother," responded she hastily. "She was too pure and noble to be dishonored by your cruel laws. She would never have entered into any such base and degrading arrangement as you propose. She couldn't have lived under the perpetual shame of deceiving another wife. She couldn't have loved my father, if he had deceived her as you have deceived me. She trusted him entirely, and in return he gave her his ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... undervalue this energetic, melodious, and moral poet. The consequences of this want of due esteem for a writer whom the good sense of our predecessors had raised to his proper station have been NUMEROUS AND DEGRADING ENOUGH. This is not the place to enter into the subject, even as far as it affects our poetical numbers alone, and there is matter of more ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... must have money; no matter whence it comes, nor what it costs. If, at least, you had to justify your expenses, the excuse of some great passion, or of some object, were it absurd, ardently pursued! But I defy you to confess upon what degrading pleasures you lavish our humble economies. I defy you to tell us what you mean to do with the sum that you demand to-night,—that sum for which you would have our mother stoop to beg the assistance of a shop-keeper, to whom we would be compelled to reveal the secret ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do what he sees ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... were placed in that pew, upon the seat by their side, during the whole service. It may seem incredible, but it is true. Let us hope that the increased spirit of civilisation and humanity which abolished this frightful and degrading custom, may extend itself to other usages equally barbarous; usages which have not even the plea of utility in their defence, as every year's experience has shown them to be more and ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Seward had himself taught the nation that conflict on questions involving the rights of human nature is irrepressible. The slavery against which he had warred so long and so faithfully had been abolished in vain if another form of servitude, even more degrading in some of its aspects, was to take its place. To desert the colored man, and leave him to his fate, undefended, and defenseless against the wrongs already perpetrated and the greater wrongs foreshadowed, would do dishonor to the entire spirit of Mr. Seward's statesmanship, and ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... believe with you in the general existence of a moral instinct. I think it is the brightest gem with which the human character is studded, and the want of it as more degrading than the most hideous ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.
... said he, "having been guilty of degrading cowardice in not exterminating the seven hundred Pyrotists with their allies and defenders, as Saul exterminated the Philistines at Gibeah, has rendered himself unworthy of exercising the power that God delegated to him, and ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... Naya whom may Eblis smite with the fiery sword, give ear unto my words," he said, in a loud, harsh voice. "Thou hast defied me, and will not impart to me the secret of the Treasure-house, even though I offer thee thy freedom. I have spared thee the second torture in order that a fate more degrading and more terrible shall be thine. Hearken! Thou and thy friend are sold to these Arab slavers for this single ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... morbid or fantastic"; but we do assert that there is a true and a false Symbolism, of which the true is not merely a legitimate, but a necessary mode of intuition; while the latter is at best a frivolous amusement, and at worst a degrading superstition.[323] ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... [Footnote: Goldsmith, Essay xiii.] But a glance at the context will show that what Goldsmith had in mind was not "nature to advantage dressed", not nature with any adornments added by man; but nature stripped of all that to man has degrading associations; nature, to adopt the words used by Wordsworth on a kindred subject, "purified from all lasting or rational causes of dislike or disgust". It may well be that Goldsmith gave undue weight to this reservation. It may well be that he did not throw ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... Mrs. Siddons, and her great and affecting powers, she much surprised me by intelligence that she had bought the proprietorship of Sadler's-wells. I could not hear it without some amusement it seemed, I said, so extraordinary a combination—so degrading a one, indeed,-that of the first tragic actress, the living Melpomene, and something so burlesque as Sadler's-wells. She laughed, and said it offered her a very ludicrous image, for Mrs. Siddons and Sadler's-wells," said she, " seems to me as ill-fitted as the dish ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... stewards for transfer to general duty troubled the Marine Corps throughout the postwar period. Reviewing the problem in December 1948, the commanding general of Camp Lejeune saw three causes: (p. 261) "agitation from civilian sources," which labeled steward duty degrading servant's work; lack of rapid promotion; and badgering from black marines on regular duty.[10-29] But the commander's solution—a public relations campaign using black recruits to promote the attractions of steward duty along with a belated ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... that sometimes they could not answer, and to their chagrin they had to hear "the barbarian" answer for them. There were other questions, still more humiliating, which, when they answered, only served to show their religion as false and degrading. Their spokesman, the great learned man, became at last so entangled that there was nothing for him but flight. He arose and stalked angrily away, and in a little while they all left. Mackay looked wistfully at young ...
— The Black-Bearded Barbarian (George Leslie Mackay) • Mary Esther Miller MacGregor, AKA Marion Keith
... before Italy could take her place as a united nation gifted with constitutional self-government and independence. Except, therefore, for the sufferings and the humiliations inflicted on her people; except for their servitude beneath the most degrading forms of ecclesiastical and temporal tyranny; except for the annihilation of their beautiful Renaissance culture; except for the depression of arts, learning, science, and literature, together with the enfeeblement of political energy ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... free from the pernicious influence of the errors and corruption, which had already spread almost throughout the world; it was necessary that their minds should have remained unpolluted by the notions of the extravagant and degrading idolatries, which were in practice among almost all the ancient nations; and that their hearts should have remained untouched by the contagion of universal depravity. The soil to which any seed, however good, is to be committed, would never respond to the expectations ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... and shall be glad of the good wishes of R——when he can express them in person, which it seems will be at some very indefinite date. I shall perhaps essay a speech or two in the House when I return, but I am not ambitious of a parliamentary career, which is of all things the most degrading and unthankful. If I could by my own efforts inculcate the truth, that a man is not intended for a despot or a machine, but as an individual of a community, and fit for the society of kings, so long as he does not trespass on ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... his resolutions melted away before this discovery. There was nothing to be done but to save the poor girl from this miserable and degrading attachment, and its ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... round about. At the bank, he was held in high esteem by both the officers and directors, and Mr. Silby's affection for him amounted almost to the love of a father for a favorite child. From infancy to manhood his name had never been associated with aught that was injurious or degrading, and among all the young men of Geneva, Eugene Pearson stood highest in ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... in this apology the sweetness of Hamlet's nature. How few are alive enough, that is unselfish and true enough, to be capable of genuine apology! The low nature always feels, not the wrong, but the confession of it, degrading.] ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... has been uttered against the degrading views of some of those theorists, it afforded me pleasure to observe that Mr. Malthus has fully sanctioned its justness. On this head, at least, Mr. Malthus has amply confuted his stubborn and tasteless ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... I attempted to show that slighter causes than is commonly thought may change a nation from the stationary to the progressive state of civilisation, and from the stationary to the degrading. Commonly the effect of the agent is looked on in the wrong way. It is considered as operating on every individual in the nation, and it is assumed, or half assumed, that it is only the effect which ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... little seen on farms to-day. Threshing and winnowing machines have taken its place. The father of Robert Burns declared threshing with a flail to be the only degrading and stultifying work on a farm; but I never knew another farmer who deemed it so, though it was certainly hard work. Last autumn I visited the "Poor Farm" on Quonsett Point in old Narragansett. In the vast barn of that beautiful and sparsely occupied ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... to detect false sentiment or flashy sophisms. Again, some startling event would bring conventional customs and maxims to the judgment-bar of pure Christian ethics, when his moral indignation blazed forth with impartial equity against all degrading views of human nature, debasing prejudices, and distrust of national progress,—sparing no tyrant, however wealthy or high in station; pleading for the downcast, however lowly; hoping for the fallen, however scorned. Thanks to this clear-sighted moralist, he gave me, in his own example, ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... the degrading servility of what we have come to call the "Nonconformist Conscience" Byron must always have his place in the tragically slow emancipation of the human spirit. The reluctance of an ordinary sensitive modern person, genuinely devoted to poetry, ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... by the sacred bond of marriage to your virtuous and beloved mother, it was necessary that I should confess. This I did with extreme reluctance, feeling that nothing could be at once more absurd, more tyrannical, or more degrading, than to oblige a man to prostrate himself at the feet of a priest, a mortal, a sinner, a child of corruption like himself, and there to make confessions to him, which offended Deity alone could ...
— The Village in the Mountains; Conversion of Peter Bayssiere; and History of a Bible • Anonymous
... sons, that traits so dishonorable rendered odious the man manifesting them, and those of talent and education emigrating to the country soon caught this spirit as by inoculation. If there were any who were influenced by such base and degrading motives, and who felt these a part of their nature, they most generally could command policy enough ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... Sisters of the Rich. Their set was quite different from ours. But when mamma died nearly two years ago, and I was alone, they did call, and Cousin Emily offered me a home. I was to give up all my work, of course, which she considered degrading, and was simply to make myself useful to her as a daughter of the house might do. ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... is to be excused, it must be on the ground that a poet had to live by patronage and not by the public. In a pecuniary point of view his subservience to men in high position was often successful. An almost universal custom, it was not regarded as degrading; but the poet must have been peculiarly constituted who was not degraded ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... to the South American soils selected by other schemes. It was generally felt that the redemption of Judaism lay largely in a return to the land, after several centuries of less primitive and more degrading occupations. When South America was chosen, Strelitski was the first to counsel the League to co-operate in the experiment, on the principle that half a loaf is better than no bread. But, for the orthodox the difficulties of ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... this, although the Germans may not always have realized that they were doing so, they humiliated the people by degrading things looked upon by them as holy. For instance, the Kaiser had a statue of himself, upturned moustache and all, placed upon the cathedral of Metz. He wore a Biblical cowl and was pointing impressively to a parchment scroll. He was supposed to represent the prophet Daniel. This statue ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... pilgrimages, and fines nominally for pious uses,—such as a confessor might impose on his ordinary penitents." These were for offences of trifling import. "Next in grade are the poenae confusibiles,—the humiliating and degrading penances, of which the most important was the wearing of yellow crosses sewed upon the garments; and, finally, the severest punishment among those strictly within the competence of the Holy Office, ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... for his "masterly refutations of the vagaries of this man Darwin, wherein the Creator is left out of all things and man proclaims himself independent, his own king, his own priest, his own God—then degrading man to the level of the brute by declaring he had the same origin, and this origin was lifeless matter. Could folly and pride go further than to degrade Science into a vehicle for throwing contumely and disrespect ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... purpose; as will not seem too false to be credible!—I answer, once for all, that the fact is not so. Nature requires no man to make proclamation of his doings and hat-makings; Nature forbids all men to make such. There is not a man or hat-maker born into the world but feels, or has felt, that he is degrading himself if he speak of his excellencies and prowesses, and supremacy in his craft: his inmost heart says to him, "Leave thy friends to speak of these; if possible, thy enemies to speak of these; but at all events, ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... "must have been very different from those of the present day, to have tolerated a law authorizing so degrading a treatment of the members of such a society. It may easily be imagined what complaints and uneasiness its execution must frequently have occasioned among the friends and connections of those who were the subjects of it. In one instance, it even occasioned the ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... incapable of holding its own, or using it for the welfare of the state. Then it was subverted, as Napoleon rode into absolute dominion over the bridge which the Revolution had built. And the Roman constitution was remarkable, not only because it prevented a degrading subjection of the masses, even while it refused them the rights of government, but because it maintained a balance among the governing classes themselves, and restricted the usurpations of powerful families, as well as military heroes. For nearly five hundred years, not a man arose whom the Romans ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... see through him as plainly as can be: he wants me to find out gold, or tin and precious stones, and other things for his benefit. It is degrading to a scientific man." ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... shuffling the cards, some one casually remarked that it was a scandalous shame that an escaped Cossack like Pugasceff should be in a position to conquer a fourth of Russia in Europe, to disgrace the Russian troops time after time, to condemn the finest Russian officers to a degrading death, and now even to bombard Orenburg ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... comply with the dictates of his own reason, it was still more so to endure the harsh and superfluous restrictions of his teachers. He felt it hard enough to be driven from the enchantments of poetry by the dull realities of duty; but it was intolerable and degrading to be hemmed-in still farther by the caprices of severe and formal pedagogues. Schiller brooded gloomily over the constraints and hardships of his situation. Many plans he formed for deliverance. Sometimes he would escape in secret to catch a glimpse of the free and busy world to him forbidden: ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... hymns—with a kind of mad, ferocious joy. I spoke to all who approached my dungeon, jeering and bitter things; and I tried to look upon the whole creation through the medium of that commonplace wisdom, the wisdom of the cynics. This degrading period, on which I hate to reflect, lasted happily only for six or seven days, during which my Bible had become covered with dust. One of the jailer's boys, thinking to please me, as he cast his eye upon it, observed, "Since you left off reading that great, ugly book, you don't ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... as they like," replied His Grace. "I do not know, no more do you, what would happen if this degrading instrument were employed, but what I do know is that a true English physician should cure his patients only ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... declaring themselves our equals, demanded to be recognized as such. So preposterous was this demand, that we were at first disposed to treat it only as the suggestion of a disordered intellect, but, of course, could never comply with so degrading a request, for nothing we could do could invest them with strength, intellect, or form like ours. Soon after our refusal they too grew audacious, and forming a league with the savages, set up a king whom they said should make laws and govern the land. Then ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... encircling us with its intimate associations, and yet there also appears in it the longing for a return to our own individual identity, in which alone we can find the traces of our higher humanity, which a narrowing and degrading foreign influence had banished. Goethe's "Faust," Byron's "Manfred," and Heine's "Ratcliff," all give utterance to the same feeling, with more or less beauty and power; but the blissful repose of deliverance really secured, they could not express with the ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... the Spirit of Evil on one occasion entering into swine, but, if possible, a stranger sight is that of the Spirit of Poesy finding a similar incarnation. Certainly the connexion of genius in the Earl of Rochester with a life of the most degrading and desperate debauchery is one of the chief marvels ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... were not of God. But on the other hand, that they demanded what seemed to him unjust,—that these demands were founded on what seemed to him untruth attributed to God, on ways of thinking and feeling which are certainly degrading in a man,—these were reasons of the very highest nature for refusing to act upon them so long as, from whatever defects it might be in himself, they bore to him this aspect. He saw that while they appeared to be such, even though it might turn out that he mistook them, ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... is contented to look like a butterfly, father, she must be content to be taken for one, but I must say I think it is degrading that men should look upon it in that light. They don't dress themselves up in all sorts ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... cut, and how by my wheel I do away with the cause of crime, I think that a travelling tinker may be considered, as to his moral influence upon society, more important than any parson in his pulpit. You observe that I have not rendered the profession degrading by marriage, ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... disposition to wipe out the score of obligation, or efface the tinsel of external advantages—and where others have the opportunity of coming in contact with us, they generally find the means to establish a sufficiently marked degree of degrading equality. No man is a hero to his valet-de-chambre, is an old maxim. A new illustration of this principle occurred the other day. While Mrs. Siddons was giving her readings of Shakespear to a brilliant and admiring drawing-room, one of the servants in the hall below was saying, 'What, I ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... appendages to the theory, such as the assertion of the essential unity of the human and the brute intellect, the denial of the immaterial nature of mind, and the advocacy of the system of phrenology. These absurd and degrading doctrines are naturally connected with the atheistic hypothesis we have been considering. They are its legitimate children. But they have already been refuted so often and so conclusively, that any revival ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... pistol-shots, sticks shaped into swords, the playground disturbed to construct fortifications; how a slovenly stout boy enacted Cromwell; how he himself was elevated into Prince Rupert; and how, reversing all history, and infamously degrading Cromwell, Rupert would not consent to be beaten; and Cromwell at the last, disabled by an untoward blow across the knuckles, ignominiously yielded himself prisoner, was tried by a court-martial, and sentenced to be shot! To all this rubbish did Darrell ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... crisis in her life? Of the man whose words had found their way to her heart, whose influence had strengthened and comforted her, in the chapel of the Refuge. One of the finest passages in his sermon had been especially devoted by Julian Gray to warning the congregation whom he addressed against the degrading influences of falsehood and deceit. The terms in which he had appealed to the miserable women round him—terms of sympathy and encouragement never addressed to them before—came back to Mercy Merrick as if she had heard them an hour since. She turned deadly pale ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... Spiritual law would become operative. It would teach them that, as immortal beings, as cosmic units of the larger cosmos—The Great Over Soul—they could not become totally depraved, even under pressure of evil conditions of the most degrading character; no matter how much their spiritual natures had been ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... economic institution of feudalism. But alongside of the feudal estate with its serf labor, there were the free laborers, no longer regarding labor as shameful and degrading. These free laborers were the handicraftsmen and free peasants, the former soon organizing themselves into guilds. There was a specialization of labor, but, as yet, little division. Each man worked at a particular craft and exchanged his ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... society. Thus ritual tended to become the predominant element in worship, serving first the interests of unity and order in religion, and later always in danger of becoming a mechanical and religiously degrading influence. ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... costume. Not that! Only, Chief of Police Collins was so outraged over my gentle criticism of his dear little boys at one of the woodworkers' meetings, that he gave strict orders, "No officer should again appear at a public meeting in uniform where that awful Emma Goldman is humiliating and degrading the emblem of ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... in their smoking-rooms he heard certain practices, which he had always believed to be degrading and abominable, discussed with shouts of laughter. Those matters which until now he had regarded with an almost sacred veneration were subjects for immense jokes. A few years ago he would have been horrified ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... as he contemplated the motley mass of humanity that presented itself with such eagerness for the attainment of so degrading an office; and as he listened to their vulgar boastings and brutal language, he blushed to think that such men ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... are thankful for showing. To little Jim, showing was degrading. Suddenly his mother perceived this, and felt a relief ...
— The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys • Gulielma Zollinger
... was fretful in tone, and selfish in sentiment. It was not, I fear, even original in the story of its woes. It was the harsh recital of poverty, of suspicion, of mean makeshifts and compromises, of low pains and lower longings, of sorrows that were degrading, of a grief that was pitiable. Yet it was sincere in a certain kind of vague yearning for the presence of the degraded man to whom it was written,—an affection that was more like a confused instinct ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... thriftless women of agricultural villages can afford. Private charity is all-reaching: the "hall" is the dispensary and the general ark of refuge for all county ills, moral, physical and pecuniary, and its help is never thought degrading, like that of the "parish." Most families pay a doctor and a nurse by the year to attend the poor free of expense, and an order from the doctor for jellies, soup or wine, as well as for the ordinary sorts of medicine, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... press overflowed with that marvellous exuberance of diatribe of which they are the acknowledged masters—to all of which the complaisant North gave a ready and subservient concurrence, until the very name reeked in the public mind with infamous associations and degrading ideas. ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... was already bending to his yoke. The most extravagant lust, the meanest and the vilest cruelty, supplied Galeazzo Maria with daily recreation.[1] He it was who used to feed his victims on abominations or to bury them alive, and who found a pleasure in wounding or degrading those whom he had made his confidants and friends. The details of his assassination, in 1476, though well known, are so interesting that I may be excused for pausing to repeat them here; especially as they illustrate a moral characteristic of this period which is intimately ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... was not only in his own thoughts, but in the air; it was the spontaneous revulsion of white men against the rule of an inferior race. These were the very men, above all others in the town, to join him in a movement to change these degrading conditions. ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... that for the same purpose, messengers are dispatched by land, vpon swift post-horses, vnto diuers prouinces, almost twenty dayes iourney from the Kings Court. And, to be short, there is such district seuerity in degrading those that vniustly or negligently demeane themselues, from an honourable vnto an inferiour and base office, or altogether in depriuing them of the kings authority: that all Magistrates doe stand in feare of nothing in the world more then of that. [Sidenote: Martiall ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... paid for by Spreckels - another Moses, that has come to the succor of our beleaguered coast. The "Journal of Civilization" is a fit organ for the millionaire corruptionist and the civilization that he is degrading) - and although they have gone over the ground again and again since that report was made, the maximum estimate is still well inside $100,000,000. Yet they now want to issue $100,000,000 in stock; want the ...
— Confiscation, An Outline • William Greenwood
... because it was a cruelty to which she was accustomed. If the sport had been unknown in Dinwiddie, and she had read of it as the peculiar activity of the inhabitants of the British Islands, she would probably have condemned it as needlessly brutal and degrading. But with that universal faculty of the human mind to adjust its morality to fit its inherited physical habits, she regarded "the rights of the fox" to-day with something of the humorous scorn of sentimental rubbish with which her gentler ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... excitement of pleasure she could not entirely forget and lose herself. The image of mademoiselle always arose before her, with her stern, motherly face. Germinie did not become immodest in the same degree that she abandoned herself to her passions and sank lower and lower in vice. The degrading depths to which she descended did not fortify her against her disgust and horror of herself. Habit did not harden her. Her defiled conscience rejected its defilement, struggled fiercely in its shame, rent itself in its repentance and did not for one second ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... is moulded largely by reading and good minds were never more needed than to-day, to combat the effects of the mental poison, which is daily absorbed by young and old through the medium of degrading literature. True, there are issued good books and periodicals which are not strictly religious in tone, but which, nevertheless, have a salutary influence upon the reader's mind. Their number, ...
— The Life of Blessed John B. Marie Vianney, Cur of Ars • Anonymous
... has done for the last twelve or fourteen years, it must have exercised a barbarising influence upon public sentiments and public manners. There are some amongst us now, I know, who believe that the period has arrived when a great effort must be made to emancipate this country from the degrading thraldom of faction—to terminate, if possible, that extreme, that sectarian, and limited view, in which all human conduct is examined, observed, and criticized—to put an end to that exclusiveness, which, in its peculiar ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... the factories. It was, in fact, considered a disgrace to do so. The term "factory girl" was an insulting epithet, and it was impossible for a girl who had been employed in a factory to obtain other employment. She could not look forward to marriage with any but the very lowest of men, so degrading was factory employment considered to be. But the manufacturers had to get children somehow, and they got them. They got them from the workhouses. Pretending that they were going to apprentice them to a trade, they arranged with the overseers of the poor regular ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... of your commands would not stand at all in her way of procuring a new place. And although cleaning a lady's shoes, and bringing in a pail of water, or an armful of wood, is by no means such disgusting employment as scouring greasy pots and scrubbing the floors, she has been told that the former is degrading work not fit for a woman, and she is now in a free country, and will not ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie |
