"Undermine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... night in repairing the breach. The enemy renewed their attacks every day, but with no better success, trusting to their vast superiority in numbers, that they would at last wear out and destroy the garrison. Rumi Khan began again to undermine the works, even piercing through rocks that were in the way; but Mascarenhas by means of a countermine disappointed his expectations, as the mine exploded back upon the enemy and killed many of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... I think if you were to speak boldly to her, you might do some good. You might begin to undermine this unlucky infatuation of her's; and I am sure, if her eyes were once opened, that the more she saw him, the less she ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... to make a little circuit because the water was coming up further in some of the town streets all the tune, with a rather swift current that threatened to undermine the foundations of numerous flimsy buildings, if ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie
... more diffidently than a whining harlot upon virtue, and yet be so stubborn upon trial! Dastard that I am, too, as well as fool: I felt sunk into the dust by his voice. But pooh, I must have him yet; your worst villains make the most noise about the first step. True that I cannot storm, but I will undermine. But, wretch that I am, I must win him or another soon, or I perish on ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that although you allow to such effects, being non-sublatcd as it were, a kind of existence called 'empirical' (or 'conventional'—vyavaharika), you yourself acknowledge that fundamentally they are nothing but products of avidya; you thus undermine your own position. We have, on the other hand, already disposed of this your view above, when proving that in all cases effects are originated by real causes only. Nor may you plead that what perception ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... attack was abandoned, and the army commenced its preparations for a regular siege. Mangonels, moveable towers, and battering-rams, together with a machine called a sow, made of wood, and covered with raw hides, inside of which miners worked to undermine the walls, were forthwith constructed; and to restore the courage and discipline of the army, which had suffered from the unworthy dissensions of the chiefs, the latter held out the hand of friendship to each other, and Tancred and the Count of Toulouse embraced in sight ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... and her friends probably have been at work with pick and shovel, for months, trying to undermine his foundations. They are an insidious crew, Reed, totally insidious. If a man is the least bit nervous, their absent-treatment methods get in their work with a fatal effect sometimes. I've been watching them for years. They mine and countermine, ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... kept their malign scheme entirely secret," said Quimbleton. "You, as a newspaper man, should know it. Does the (so-called) cause of prohibition require publicity? Nonsense! Prohibition is already in effect. The purpose of the parade is to undermine the splendid work our Corporation has been doing for the past two years. As soon as the fatal amendment was passed we set to work to teach people how to brew beverages of their own, in their own homes. As you know, very delicious wine may be made ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... what I'll do," he resumed, "I'll take that skate of yours down to the barn and throw some hay into him. He looks like it would do him good in case the shock don't undermine ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... As ocean billows undermine The haughty shores each hour, Time's sea has brought its waves of thought To crumble thrones of power; And one by one shall kingdoms fall Like leaves before the blast, As man with man combines to plan Republics ...
— Poems of Sentiment • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... of physical violence. Even where no single act or number of acts can be shown which might cause reasonable apprehension of harm to life, if the ill treatment as an entirety is of a nature to affect the mind and undermine health to such a degree that the life will be ultimately endangered, it will entitle the injured party to a divorce. Ungovernable outbursts of rage, the use of profane and obscene language, applying insulting epithets to the wife in the presence ...
— Legal Status Of Women In Iowa • Jennie Lansley Wilson
... edges of the bed every two or three weeks for the purpose of cutting off any grass roots that may have run into the bed. If beds are made in the turf, see that they are 3 ft. or more wide, so that the grass roots will not undermine them. Against the shrub borders, this precaution may not be necessary. In fact, it is desirable that the flowers fill all the space between the ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... any president, vice-president, professor, or office-bearer, in any of the new colleges shall be convicted before the board of trustees of attempting to undermine the faith or injure the morals of any student in those institutions, he shall be immediately removed from his office by ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... man, Mandeville could without serious risk of civil or ecclesiastical penalties make rigorism of any degree seem ridiculous and thus provide abundant amusement for himself and for like-minded readers; he could then proceed to undermine all the really important systems of morality of his time by applying more exacting standards than they could meet. Against a naturalistic and sentimental system, like Shaftesbury's, he could argue that it rested on an appraisal of human nature too optimistic to be realistic. ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville
... so high I'll tell you what you were: Your Father was our General 'tis true, That Title justly to his Sword was due; 'Twas nobly gain'd, and worth his Blood and Toils, Had he been satisfied with noble Spoils: But with that single honour not content, He needs must undermine the Government; And 'cause h'ad gain'd the Army to his side, Believ'd his Treason must be justify'd. For this (and justly) he was banished; Where whilst a low and unknown life he led, Far from the hope and glory of a Throne, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... shook hopelessly; but he repeated the verdict with additional emphasis. "I tell you, craft is our only hope; some artfulness that shall undermine their strength even as their tricks crept, snake-like, under our guard." Turning in his seat, he set his face toward the darkness, clutching his head ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... divine title as that by which he has tenure of his kingdom; to degrade an aristocracy which is the first step of his throne; to throw down social hierarchies of which he is the head and crown; to undermine laws of which he is the highest,—is to ask of the vaults of an edifice to sap the foundation. The king could not do so, and would not. In thus overthrowing all that serves him for support, he feels that he would be rendered wholly destitute. He ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... sultan was, as well as myself, that I should present him with an heir, that happiness was denied me, and eventually was the cause of my ruin. The queen mother, and the kislar aga, both of whom I had affronted, were indefatigable in their attempts to undermine my power. The whole universe, I may say, was ransacked for a new introduction into the seraglio, whose novelty and beauty might seduce the sultan from my arms. Instead of counterplotting, as I might have done, I was pleased at their frustrated efforts. Had ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... admonitions, concerning the relative duties of life; amongst which are set forth the duties of women in general, and of wives in particular. Some part of his second Epistle is prophetical; warning the church of false teachers and false doctrines, which undermine morality, and disgrace ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... sacrificing public interests to private ones,—the substitution of intellectual for moral excitement, and the repression of enthusiasm by fastidiousness and ridicule,—these are among the causes that undermine a people,—that corrupt in the very act of enlightening them; till they become, what a French writer calls "esprits exigeans et caracteres complaisans," and the period in which their rights are best understood may be that in which they most easily surrender them. It is, indeed, with the advanced ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... walls; or else to drive engines against the defenses, battering-rams which struck them with heavy beams, mangonels which launched stones, sows whose arched wooden backs protected troops of workmen who tried to undermine the wall, and moving towers consisting of a succession of stages or shelves, filled with soldiers, and with a bridge with iron hooks, capable of being launched from the highest story to the top ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... in that design, to shift his ground, and change his artillery and manner of assault. He affected a show of great moderation, and in words disclaimed open persecution; but he sought by every foul and indirect means to undermine the faith, and sap the foundations of the Christian religion. For this purpose he had recourse to every base art of falsehood and dissimulation, in which he was the most complete master. He had played off the round of his machines to no ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... the banks of a river which Burke named the Cloncurry. A few hundred yards below the camp Billy got bogged in a quicksand bank so deeply as to be unable to stir, and they had to undermine him on the creek side and pull him into the water. About five miles farther on he bogged again, and afterwards was so weak ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... whose fleets ruled the European seas, who lent her aid to his enemies, and instigated their opposition, was his most dangerous foe. By a gigantic measure, known as the continental system, he sought to undermine her power. The whole of the continent of Europe, as far as his influence was felt, was, by an edict, published at Berlin on the 21st of November, 1806, closed against British trade; nay, he went so ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... tricks and certain mild "conceits" (his lady's smile, for instance, makes him happier than the smile of four hundred angels could do), the chief characteristic of his poetry is his constant complaints of slanderers who attempt to undermine his credit with his lady. But he seems to have aroused a passion in the heart of a poetess, who expressed her feelings in words which contrast ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor
... may be the first steps in that insensible process by which the unpretending but subtle and powerful engine of interpretation has been applied by the courts to give a certain turn to law and policy; applied, in this instance, to undermine the definiteness and certainty of doctrine, and in the end, the understanding itself which has hitherto existed between the Church and the State, and has kept alive the idea of her distinct basis, ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... England. For my main theme, your ingratitude, you have in part acknowledged it, by your laughing at our easy delivery of your cautionary towns: The best is, we are used by you as well as your own princes of the house of Orange: We and they have set you up, and you undermine their power, and circumvent ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... stood by the brazier, the bowab apathetically rolling cigarettes at his feet, whether, in the flow of circumstance, the fact that he could not make open restitution, or take punishment for his unlawful act, would undermine the structure of his character. He was on the threshold of his career: action had not yet begun; he was standing like a swimmer on a high shore, looking into depths beneath which have never been plumbed by mortal man, wondering what currents, what rocks, lay beneath ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... conversation, he certainly contributed interest to it. For his views on honeymoon etiquette being strong within him, and an audience made to his hand, he went on to amplify some of the theories with which he had been trying to undermine ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... eyes with a little smile as the charges were read: "—breach of contract, malicious mischief, sabotage of the company's machines, conspiring to destroy the livelihood of ten thousand workers. Your Honor, we are preparing briefs to prove further that these men have formed a conspiracy to undermine the economy of the entire nation. We appeal to the spirit ...
— Meeting of the Board • Alan Edward Nourse
... only on the Jewish merchant class but also on the many millions of the non-Jewish population.... To isolate the village from the town, the towns of the West and South from the towns and villages of the Centre and the East, is to disturb intentionally the economic life of the country, to undermine credit ...
— The Shield • Various
... great an Influence over our Actions, and is in many Cases so impregnable a Fence to Virtue; what can more undermine Morality than that Politeness which reigns among the unthinking Part of Mankind, and treats as unfashionable the most ingenuous Part of our Behaviour; which recommends Impudence as good Breeding, and keeps a Man always in Countenance, not because ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... sated life, with having nothing sated, In the motion of moving poised aye, Within its dreams from its own dreams abated— This life let the Gods change or take away. For this endless succession of empty hours, Like deserts after deserts, voidly one, Doth undermine the very dreaming powers And dull even thought's active inaction, Tainting with fore-unwilled will the dreamed act Twice thus removed ...
— 35 Sonnets • Fernando Pessoa
... Amiens and not on the Marne, and an Italian prince has declared that it was Italy who won the war on 24 October; while Ludendorff has maintained that American troops counted for little, and that the crucial factor was the revolutionary propaganda which had begun to undermine the moral of German troops as early as 1916. None of these partial explanations contain more than an element of truth, and a more comprehensive view is suggested by the likeness of Germany to the "one-hoss shay" of Oliver Wendell Holmes' ballad, a vehicle ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... reaction. Jefferson, now in retirement, had long since nursed his antipathy for the Federal Judiciary to the point of monomania. It was in his eyes "a subtle corps of sappers and miners constantly working underground to undermine our confederated fabric"; and this latest assault upon the rights of the States seemed to him, though perpetrated in the usual way, the most outrageous of all: "An opinion is huddled up in conclave, perhaps by a majority of one, delivered as if unanimous, and with the ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... him, had long been endeavouring to undermine the authority which was the only safeguard to the morality of the school, felt themselves distinctly baffled. Mackworth had been put to utter rout by Bliss, and though he was almost bursting with dark spite, would not venture to do ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... less evident; and the bright, warm hue of the complexion, and the pearly sparkle of the teeth, still gave a fallacious freshness to the aspect. But as yet the poisoners had forborne those ingredients which invade the springs of life, resorting only to such as undermine the health and prepare the way to unsuspected graves. Out of the infernal variety of the materials at their command, they had selected a mixture which works by sustaining perpetual fever; which gives little pain, little suffering, beyond that of lassitude and thirst; which ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... notoriously ineffective in insuring* truth and fidelity. So far as their educational influence is concerned, they tend, as we have seen, to undermine the reverence for truth in itself considered, which is the surest safeguard of individual veracity. Then too, so far as reliance is placed upon an oath, the attention of those concerned is directed with the less careful scrutiny to the character for veracity borne by him to whom it is administered. ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... is true that they have not yet worked out any elaborate policy of social reform or government ownership. None but the most powerful are yet able, even in their minds, to make the necessary sacrifices of the capitalism of the present for that of the future. The majority (as he says) still "undermine the law" instead of more firmly intrenching themselves in the government, and "corrupt the State" instead of installing friendly reform administrations; they still "employ little children, and so exhaust them that they are poor ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... away the accumulations which they have themselves heaped up—the swift flow of their currents, aided by the abrasion of the rolling rocks and gravel, scoops their beds constantly deeper, and they consequently not only undermine their banks, but frequently sap the most solid foundations which the art of man can build for the support of bridges and hydraulic structures. [Footnote: In some cases where the bed of rapid Alpine streams is composed of very hard rock—as is the case in many of the valleys ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... done, to drive the fiend from his bright home in this little star. Again, we hear of it at a later period, when Sir Robert Walpole bestowed the ring, among far richer jewels, on the lady of a British legislator, whose political honor he wished to undermine. Many a dismal and unhappy tale might be wrought out of its other adventures. All this while, its ominous tinge of dusky red had been deepening and darkening, until, if laid upon white paper, it cast the mingled hue of night and blood, strangely illuminated with scintillating ...
— Other Tales and Sketches - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Order became in England an instrument of the designs of Lewis, and laboured, with a success which the Roman Catholics afterwards long and bitterly deplored, to widen the breach between the King and the Parliament, to thwart the Nuncio, to undermine the power of the Lord Treasurer, and to support the most desperate ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... ridiculous. If he should shun mention of it to-day, I would take this as a plain sign that he did not look forward to it with the enthusiasm which a lover ought to feel for his approaching bliss; and on such silence from him I would begin, if I could, to undermine his intention of keeping an engagement of the heart when the heart no longer entered ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... anybody else. He was taken ill in the night—quite prostrate he was—in consequence of Crab; and after being drugged with black draughts and blue pills, to an extent which Demple (whose father was a doctor) said was enough to undermine a horse's constitution, received a caning and six chapters of Greek Testament for refusing ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... believe, without any personal enmity, as I am unconscious of my having any owed me; but merely from a cruel malice with which many seize every opportunity, almost involuntarily, to do mischief and most especially to undermine at Court any one presumed to be in any favour. And, still further, I thought her words conveyed a confirmation of what her conduct towards me in my new capacity always led me to conjecture, namely, that my guardian star ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... the disastrous consequences which might accrue to the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, if these voracious creatures were suddenly deprived of their usual sustenance. It is well known, that the mischief which they occasion is not confined to what they eat; but they undermine houses, burrow through dams, destroy drains, and commit incalculable havoc, in every place and in ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... could induce me to become concerned in any business venture with Mr. Jerome as a partner, for I would be in constant expectation that in some underhand method he would undermine and defraud me." ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... patriotic youth in whose breast there yet remains a single principle of honour, to come forward calmly, boldly, and rationally to defend his country. When we behold, Sir, a great and powerful nation exerting all its energy to undermine the vast fabrics of Religion and Government, when we behold them inculcating the disbelief of a Deity, of future rewards and punishments; when we behold them discarding every moral principle and dissolving every tie which connects ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... Or set their throne up on this temporal shore, As flatterers bade that wiser king Canute, Thence to command the advancing tides of battle Till one ensanguined sea whelm throne and king And kingdom, friend, I take my woman's way, Smile in mine enemies' faces with a heart All hell, and undermine them hour by hour! This island scarce can fend herself from France, And now Spain holds the keys of all the world, How should we fight her, save that my poor wit Hath won the key to Philip? Oh, I know His treacherous ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... for establishing an oligarchical constitution with their concurrence. That is why we do our best to rid us of every one whom we perceive to be opposed to the oligarchy; and, in our opinion, if one of ourselves should elect to undermine this constitution of ours, he would deserve punishment. Do you not agree? And the case," he continued, "is no imaginary one. The offender is here present—Theramenes. And what we say of him is, that he is bent upon destroying ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... minced and mouthed by affectation, especially in the attempt to deal with words of which only half the meaning is understood or half the sound heard. Mrs. Gamp's "aperiently so"—and the "underminded" with primal sense of undermine, of—I forget which gossip, in the "Mill on the Floss," are master-and mistress-pieces in this latter kind. Mrs. Malaprop's "allegories on the banks of the Nile" are in somewhat higher order of mistake: Mrs. Tabitha Bramble's ignorance is vulgarized by her ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... for that other conceit that learning should undermine the reverence of laws and government, it is assuredly a mere depravation and calumny, without all shadow of truth. For to say that a blind custom of obedience should be a surer obligation than duty taught and understood, it is to affirm that a blind man may tread surer by ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... just about this time that our Tabernacle in Brooklyn became the storm centre of a law-suit which threatened to undermine us. It was based upon a theory, a technicality of law, which declared that the subscriptions of married women were not legal subscriptions. Our attorneys were Mr. Freeman and Judge Tenney. Theirs was a battle for God and the Church. There were only two sides to the case. ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... course I would not speak flippantly of it; but though towards Heaven we look with reverence and humble hope, I do not know that Tom, Dick and Harry's notions of it have any special claim to our respect.) Such publicity would destroy all individuality, and undermine the foundations of society. Clairvoyance—if there be any such thing—always seemed to me a stupid impertinence. When people pay visits to me, I wish them to come to the front door, and ring the bell, and send up their names. I don't wish them to climb in at the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... race stands in juxtaposition with overwhelming millions of darker people throughout the earth, and we must cling to the caste idea if we would prevent a lapse that would taint our blood and eventually undermine our greatness. It is hard, but it is civilization. We cannot find this girl guilty. It would be declaring that marriage between a white man and a ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... stupid, dull, lazy, a "blockhead" and good-for-nothing; that he will never amount to anything; that it is foolish for him to try to be much, because he has not the ability or physical stamina to enable him to accomplish what many others do. Such teaching would undermine ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... contained so much nutrition that a port-manteau full of it would furnish the daily rations of any army. Luckily even her iron constitution could not stand the strain of such ideal living for long, and her growing anaemia threatened to undermine a constitution seriously impaired by the precepts of perfect health. A course of beef-steaks and other substantial viands loaded with uric acid restored ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... thee with my praise, E'en as a bird, conceal'd in sylvan ways, May laud the rose, and wish, from hour to hour, That he had petals like the empress-flower, And there could grow, unwing'd, and be a bud, With all his warblings ta'en at singing-flood And turned to vagaries of the wildest scent To undermine the meekness ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay
... these evolutionists undermine the faith of students let me give you an illustration that recently came to my attention: A student in one of the largest State universities of the nation recently gave me a printed speech delivered by the president of the university, a year ago this month, to 3,500 students, and printed and ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... appropriating to their own use the provisions and supplies of the colonists.[87] It is also known that a commercial company of Baltimore, whose business it was to prosecute the African slave trade, was jealous of the Society and tried to undermine it. In addition, the trials and hardships incidental to founding the colony had reduced many of the settlers to want.[88] The most ignorant could thus fathom their condition: "We suffer: if the Society have means and does ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... which it is pursued are odious. The intention is to poison the sources of public opinion and of individual fame—to pervert literature, from being the natural ally of freedom and humanity, into an engine of priestcraft and despotism, and to undermine the spirit of the English Constitution and the independence of the English character. The Editor and his friends systematically explode every principle of liberty, laugh patriotism and public spirit to ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... sxmirajxo. Uncious grasa. Uncultivated senkultura. Undaunted neintimigita. Under (prep.) sub. Under (adv.) sube. Underbred (rude) vulgara. Undergo suferi. Underground subtera. Underhand sekreta, kasxema. Underlie subtavoli, subteni. Underline substreki. Undermaster submajstro. Undermine (to dig) subfosi. Undermost (adv.) la plej sube. Underneath (prep.) sub. Underneath (adv.) sube. Underrate malestimi. Underscore substreki. Understand kompreni. Understanding intelekto. Understanding, to have an interkonsenti pri. Undertake ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... been so assured of your own conduct I would not. But 'tis but reasonable that since I consent to like a man without the vile consideration of money, he should give me a very evident demonstration of his wit: therefore let me see you undermine my Lady Touchwood, as you boasted, and force her to give her ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... Johnson of the Duke of Argyle's invitation, with which he was much pleased, and readily accepted of it. We talked of a violent contest which was then carrying on, with a view to the next general election for Ayrshire; where one of the candidates, in order to undermine the old and established interest, had artfully held himself out as a champion for the independency of the county against aristocratick influence, and had persuaded several gentlemen into a resolution to oppose ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... predicted, the assertion that Joel had prophesied only after the captivity. No one, of course, has been willing to agree with him in this; but as long as the devastation by the locusts is understood literally, it will not be possible to undermine the grounds upon which he supports his views. It is altogether in vain that people spend their labour in disputing the fact, so obvious and evident, that the discourse here concerns the total occupation of the land by the heathen, the total ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... organizations offering 'do-it-yourself' courses which pretend to instruct the public in the intricacies of foreign policy, but which actually mask clever propaganda operations designed to sell 'co-existence' to Americans. There are many of these propaganda outfits working to undermine Americans' faith in America, but none, in our opinion, is as slick or as smooth or as dangerous as the Foreign Policy Association ...
— The Invisible Government • Dan Smoot
... OBJECTION, FROM NATURAL PHILOSOPHY.—ANSWER.—Sixthly, you will say there have been a great many things explained by matter and motion; take away these and you destroy the whole corpuscular philosophy, and undermine those mechanical principles which have been applied with so much success to account for the PHENOMENA. In short, whatever advances have been made, either by ancient or modern philosophers, in the study of nature do all proceed on the supposition that corporeal substance or Matter doth really exist. ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley
... easier to understand if one recalls the sinister designs of Russian statecraft in the days when India and "warm sea-water" was the great objective. The oldest, and surely the easiest, means of a perplexed diplomacy has been to send a woman to undermine the policy of courts or steal the very consciences of kings. Delilah is a case in point. And in India, where the veil and the rustling curtain and religion hide woman's hand without in the least suppressing her, that was a plan too easy of contrivance ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... feature in the situation that gave him concern and that was the radical element in the unions. Simmons and his gang had from the very first assumed an attitude of hostility to himself, had sought to undermine his influence and had fought his plans for the promotion of clean sport among the Mill men. None knew better than Simmons that an active interest in clean and vigorous outdoor sports tended to produce contentment of mind, ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... second in command. Almagro and Luque were very much chagrined at the meagre reward that had fallen to them, and Almagro looked with deep antagonism upon the advent of the Pizarros, who, he realized instinctively, would undermine his influence with his partner. This hatred the new Pizarros repaid in kind. Some sort of peace, however, was patched up between them, and in January, 1531, with three small ships and one hundred and eighty-three men, ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... no class in society who can so ill afford to undermine the conscience of the community, or to set it loose from its moorings in the eternal sphere, as merchants who live upon confidence and credit. Anything which weakens or paralyzes this is taking beams from the foundations of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... measures, and that the only course Germany could take to obtain a resumption of negotiations was the absolute withdrawal of her order revoking the Sussex pledge. The Administration resented the pacifists' activities as an attempt to undermine the uncompromising position it had taken. Their dealings with a foreign government were actually unlawful; but ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... originate there. They are the mortal enemies of the House of Commons, who would persuade them to think or to act as if they were a self-originated magistracy, independent of the people and unconnected with their opinions and feelings. Under a pretence of exalting the dignity, they undermine the very foundations of this House. When the question is asked here, what disturbs the people, whence all this clamour, we apply to the treasury-bench, and they tell us it is from the efforts of libellers and the wickedness of the ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... at His dispensations? Tell me not of grief, nor of the intolerable nature of your calamity; rather consider how in the midst of bitter sorrow you may yet rise superior to it. That which was commanded to Abraham was enough to stagger his reason, to throw him into perplexity, and to undermine his faith in the past. For who would not have then thought that the promise which had been made him of a numerous posterity was all a deception? But not so Abraham. And not less ought we to admire Job's wisdom in ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... that they discoursed among themselves), and one of the main recommendations of the evening club for her fatigued, underpaid sisters, which it had long been her dream to establish, was that it would in some degree undermine his position—distinct as her prevision might be that he would be in waiting at the door. She hardly knew what to say to Mrs. Farrinder when this momentarily misdirected woman, still preoccupied with the ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... nostrils of the godly and a synonym for atheism and blasphemy. His book was denounced from a hundred pulpits, and copies of it were carefully locked away from the sight of "the young," whose religious beliefs it might undermine. It was, in effect, a crude and popular statement of the deistic argument against Christianity. What the cutting logic and persiflage—the sourire hideux—of Voltaire had done in France, Paine, with coarser materials, essayed to do for the English-speaking populations. Deism was in the ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... was concerned. Representation was secured for the Chamber of Mines upon one of the licensing bodies, and here, too, a very appreciable result followed. During Mr. Esselen's term of office all went well as far as the public were concerned, but influences were soon at work to undermine the two reforming officials. It was represented to the President that Mr. Trimble had once been in the British army; that he was even then a subject of the Queen, and entitled to a pension from the Cape Government. The canteen interest on the goldfields, ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... of Judah Halevi, Crescas had this in common with the medival national poet that he resented the domination of Jewish belief and thought by the alien Greek speculation. In a style free from rhetoric, and characterized rather by a severe brevity and precision, he undertakes to undermine the Aristotelian position by using the Stagirite's own weapons, logical analysis and proof. His chief work is the "Or Adonai," ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... were now old and prudent men, whose wars were fought with words and craft, not with swords. The wives of the two great earls were as different as their lords. The Lady Gytha, Godwin's wife, of the royal Danish race, was fierce and haughty, a fit helpmeet for the ambitious earl who was to undermine the strength of England by his efforts to win kingly power for his children. But the Lady Godiva, Leofric's beloved wife, was a gentle, pious, loving woman, who had already won an almost saintly reputation for sympathy and pity by her sacrifice to save her ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... Protestantism. The people demanded that the Bible should be read in the church in Turkish or Arabic, instead of the ancient Armenian and Syriac, which were, to most of them, dead languages; and the Jacobite bishop was forced to yield. Finding, at length, that this must rapidly undermine the priestly influence, he secretly removed the Scriptures from the church. But the word of the Lord was not bound, for the deacons or readers carried ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... own lives, they evidently despise. The restrictions which all honest work brings, along with its compensations, are annoying to ornamental parasites; and the contempt for restrictions is apt subtly to undermine the mind ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... all the typical movements of our time are upon this road towards simplification. Each system seeks to be more fundamental than the other; each seeks, in the literal sense, to undermine the other. In art, for example, the old conception of man, classic as the Apollo Belvedere, has first been attacked by the realist, who asserts that man, as a fact of natural history, is a creature with colourless hair and a freckled face. Then comes the ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... were perfect in information and method, and the affections faultless in their impulse, then organic unity of character would be the final consummation of all human improvement, and it would be criminal, even if it were possible, to undermine a structure of such priceless value. But short of this there can be no value in coherency and harmonious consistency as such. So long as error is an element in it, then for so long the whole product is vitiated. Undeniably and most fortunately, social ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... more effectual protection against a savage enemy, than this simple erection. Though the balls of the smallest dimensions of cannon would have swept them away with ease, they were proof against the Indian rifle, patience, and skill. The only expedient of the red men was to dig under them and undermine them, or destroy them by fire; and even this could not be done without exposing them to the rifles of the flankers. Of course, there are few recorded instances of their having been taken, when defended by a garrison, guided by such ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... aged prince ycleped Aladine, Ruled in care, new sovereign of this state, A tyrant erst, but now his fell engine His graver are did somewhat mitigate, He heard the western lords would undermine His city's wall, and lay his towers prostrate, To former fear he adds a new-come doubt, Treason he fears within, and ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... he had realized his power over these men; now he perceived that these men, some of them, realized it even better than he.... Realized it and resented it; resented it and fought with all the strength of their souls to undermine it and make it ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... the people were therefore sent out of it. But Providence ordered otherwise; about four o'clock the clouds appeared higher, the river began again to subside; by degrees a little sloping beach became visible towards the foot of the precipice; the flood ceased to undermine, and ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous
... President's chief adviser, "believed and argued that the revolution throughout the South had spent its force and was on the wane; and that the evacuation of Sumter and the manifestation of kindness and confidence to the Rebel and Border States would undermine the conspiracy, strengthen the Union sentiment and Union majorities, and restore allegiance and healthy political action ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... offices. She saw one of the younger Pembertons hide behind a bookcase while his father was talking to his brother. She knew that this Pemberton and Mr. Ross were plotting to oust the brother, and that the young, alert purchasing agent was trying to undermine them both. She knew that one of the girls in the private telephone exchange was the mistress and spy of old Pemberton. All of the chiefs tried to emulate the moyen-age Italians in the arts of ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... and to general deterioration of health through disturbed balance of the constitution. The brain, or rather particular parts of it, are often over-stimulated, while the body is neglected. In many ways education and civilization foster nervousness and weakness, and undermine the rude natural health and spirits of the human animal. Alcohol, tobacco, tea, coffee, extra brain work, late hours, dissipation, overwork, indoor life, division of labour, preservation of the weak, and many other causes, all help to injure the modern constitution; so that the ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... pleading, then another man has the same right to violate another Law; and thus any villainy on earth may be perpetrated under the sacred names of "conscience," and "the higher laws of God!" Nothing is safe in the hands of men of such principles. These principles undermine the foundations of all society among men! As I told you last Wednesday evening in my lecture, the question before the country is not, (as the deceivers pretend,) whether God's laws are not higher than man's, or whether God's laws are to be obeyed. Nobody ...
— The Religious Duty of Obedience to Law • Ichabod S. Spencer
... who think Revelation to be needless in this regard, how well soever they may, possibly, intend to Natural Religion, do herein entertain an Opinion that would undermine it: Experience shewing us that Natural Light, unassisted by Revelation, is insufficent to the Ends of Natural Religion: A Truth necessary to be acknowledg'd to the having a due value for the benefit that we receive by the Revelation of Jesus Christ; and many, who profess ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... being seen with you may compromise your respectability or undermine your nerve?" He sprawled imperturbably in his place, crossing again, in another sense, his long black legs and showing, above his low shoes, an absurd reach of parti-coloured sock. "I take your point well enough, but mayn't you be after all quite wrong? If you can't ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... last favourable date for attacking France would have been in 1887. Bismarck sinned beyond forgiveness in not provoking a war at that time. More than that, his manoeuvres to undermine the credit of Russia and his policy of intimidation towards France, by exciting the hatred of both countries against Germany, only served to ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... Pericles, who is giving advice to Alcibiades: "Every time we pronounce a word different from another, we show our disapprobation of his manner, and accuse him of rusticity. In all common things we must do as others do. It is more barbarous to undermine the stability of a language than of an edifice that hath stood as long. This is done by the introduction of changes. Write as others do, but only as the best of others; and, if one eloquent man forty or fifty years ago spoke and wrote differently from the generality of the present, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... intrigues. Since he had been a prisoner, there was no section of the victorious party which had not been the object both of his flatteries and of his machinations; but never was he more unfortunate than when he attempted at once to cajole and to undermine Cromwell. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... sake of justice to the women, but to the men with whom they compete; for, just so long as there is a degraded class of labor in the market, it always will be used by the capitalists to checkmate and undermine the superior classes. ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... his father that "he was religious with the consent of his whole faculties." It is faith's ability to engross a man's entire self, going down to the very roots of his being, that renders it indestructible. It can say of those who seek to undermine it, as Hamlet said of ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... disturbs you as much as it did, it must wear on your strength very much, and it seems in itself dangerous. However, it is good to think that your composure is such that disease can only do its legitimate work, and not undermine two ways,—the body with its pains, and the body through the mind with thoughts ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... but a nettle,' he will turn into a forgotten pageant of the rude, early, instinctive ages, the yet brutal ages of an undeveloped humanity, that triumphant reception at home, of the Conqueror of Foreign States. He will undermine, in all the states, the ethics and religion of brute force, till men shall grow sick, at last, of the old, rusty, bygone trumpery of its insignia, and ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... enjoy'd. Let the sage Doctor (think him one we know) With scraps of ancient learning overflow, In all the dignity of wig declare The fatal consequence of midnight air, 60 How damps and vapours, as it were by stealth, Undermine life, and sap the walls of health: For me let Galen moulder on the shelf, I'll live, and be physician to myself. Whilst soul is join'd to body, whether fate Allot a longer or a shorter date, I'll make them live, as brother should with brother, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... His method of safeguarding it was as follows: he gave orders that the pier should be kept always bound together with long double piles fixed below the water on every side, to the end that these might so protect it that the river should not be able to undermine it; for the place where it is built is in the main current of the river, the bed of which is so soft that no solid ground can be found on which to lay its foundations. And excellent, in truth, as is evident from the result, was the advice of Fra Giocondo, for the reason that ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... side late in the season. The snow of the closed side is composed of coarse granules compacted and frozen into a firm, faintly stratified mass, like the neve of a glacier. The lapping waves of the open portion gradually undermine and cause it to break off in large masses like icebergs, which gives rise to a precipitous front like the discharging wall of a glacier entering the sea. The play of the lights among the crystal angles of these snow-cliffs, the pearly white of the outswelling ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... boiled millet, eating only once a day because Mongols do, and in all things, except lying, stealing, and prurient talk, making himself a lama. As he could not ride, he rode for a month over six hundred miles of dangerous desert, where the rats undermine the grass, and at the end found that that difficulty has disappeared for ever. As he could not talk, he "boarded out" with a lama, listened and questioned, and questioned and listened, till he knew Mongolian as Mongols ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... can scarcely fail to sunder the family roof-tree, and to uproot the family hearth-stone. It is the avowed determination of many of its champions that it shall do so; while with another class of its leaders, to weaken and undermine the authority of the Christian faith in the household is an object if not frankly avowed yet scarcely concealed. The great majority of the women enlisted in this movement—many of them, it is needless to say, ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... these worms bissa, and quantities of them come into life in both the ports of Alexandria, in Egypt. These worms, which are a cubit long and sometimes more, and never thicker than your little finger, undermine the solidity of ships which lie too long at anchor. The Spanish sailors call this pest broma. It was therefore because he feared the bromas and was wearied out with struggling against the currents that the Admiral allowed ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... to stop him:—"Ah! you have no need to tell me that, and it tortures me. Do you think I am insensible to the pain of these poor souls whose faith I undermine? Respect the beliefs of others; offend not one of these little ones.... My God! what can I do? Help me to get out of this dilemma; shall I see wrong done, let men go to ruin,—or risk injuring them, wound their faith, draw hatred upon myself when ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... in town, like my friends of the Street Traction Company, and my papers have given you a lot of boosts. Well, you can't expect the decent citizens to go on aiding you if you intend to side with precisely the people who are trying to undermine us." ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... next chapter we need only say that the Blue Review (Adults Only) declares it to be the most daring and yet conscientious handling of the sex-problem ever attempted and done. The fact that the Congregational Times declares that this chapter will undermine the whole foundations of English Society and let it fall, we pass over: we hold certificates in writing from a great number of the Anglican clergy, to the effect that they have carefully read the entire novel and ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock
... feared the shock would be too great, and have chosen to tack about and support both treaty and government, rather than risk the government. Thus it is, that Hamilton, Jay, &c. in the boldest act they ever ventured on to undermine the government, have the address to screen themselves, and direct the hue and cry against those who wished to drag them into light. A bolder party-stroke was never struck. For it certainly is an attempt of a party, who find ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... would have renounced all the heiresses in the kingdom. Most fortunately for him, Mauleverer, whose health was easily deranged, had fallen ill the very day William Brandon left Bath; and his lordship was thus rendered unable to watch the movements of Lucy, and undermine or totally prevent the success of her lover. Miss Brandon, indeed, had at first, melted by the kindness of her uncle, and struck with the sense of his admonition (for she was no self-willed young lady, ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... nation; and even though, in view of other primitive decisions, what the higher German patriotism must desire was not invariably to be effected, yet at least there was no direct opposition to its interests; no effort was made to undermine that love, to eradicate it, and to replace it ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... continue his discoveries were futile, while he was engaged in the almost hopeless duty of reconciling various adventurers and conciliating people who had no interests but their own. In Spain, his enemies were doing everything in their power to undermine his reputation. His statements were read more and more coldly, and at last, on the twenty-first and twenty-sixth of May, 1499, letters were written to him instructing him to deliver into the hands of Bobadilla, a new commandant, all the fortresses ...
— The Life of Christopher Columbus from his own Letters and Journals • Edward Everett Hale
... Matthew. And, Jack, dear, you'd best get the hang of it before Cynthia comes. You might tell me all about your divorce. That's a sympathetic subject. Were you able to undermine it? ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell
... stumbled and fell down, and threw her off into the water: Edmund dismounted in a moment, and flew to her assistance; he took her out so quick, that the accident was not known to some part of the company. From this time Wenlock strove to undermine Edmund in her esteem, and she conceived herself obliged in justice and gratitude to defend him against the malicious insinuations of his enemies. She one day asked Wenlock, why he in particular should endeavour to ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve
... possess. "Not tombs but everlasting palaces "Within whose depths hid from the world above "Even now they wander with the few they love, "Thro' subterranean gardens, by a light "Unknown on earth which hath nor dawn nor night! "Else, why those deathless structures? why the grand "And hidden halls that undermine this land? "Why else hath none of earth e'er dared to go "Thro' the dark windings of that realm below, "Nor aught from heaven itself except the God "Of Silence thro' those endless labyrinths trod?" ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... cheapening of steel rails, the boundless prairie farms of the West are now brought into competition with the fields of Great Britain in supplying the Englishman's table, and seem not unlikely, within this generation, to break down the aristocratic holding of land, and so perhaps to undermine aristocracy itself." ...
— The New Minister's Great Opportunity - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin
... times when the classical perfection of our graceful tongue is strangely inadequate to express emotion," confessed Kai Lung, colouring deeply, as Hwa-mei stood revealed before him. "It is truly said: 'The ingenuity of a guileless woman will undermine nine mountains.' You have cut off all the ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... my Church. Even were I out of the Church, I should still regard marriage as a sacrament—indissoluble except by death. The very words—'Whom God hath joined'"—he became almost oratorical in his warmth—"Surely you would not expect me to use my influence in this parish to undermine the sanctity of the home—to attack our emblem of Christ's union with ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... is that Glanvill's theories were much more firmly grounded on the bedrock of seventeenth-century theology than those of his opponents. His opponents were attempting to use common sense, but it was a sort of common sense which, however little they saw it, must undermine the current religious convictions. ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... during the first weeks after the wedding, while they were visiting her friends, and outwardly on good terms. He seemed resolved to shake and combat both her religious principles and her views of the family state. He tried to undermine her faith in Christianity as a rule of life by argument and by ridicule. He set before her the Continental idea of the liberty of marriage; it being a simple partnership of friendship and property, the parties to which ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... are but another name for those exercises of prayer, fasting, meditation, communion with God, without which, as He tells His followers in the text I have read to you, it is not possible to eradicate from the soul those influences of sin which destroy its harmony and undermine ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... which she spoke my name smote me. "How can you say that? How can you doubt their loyalty, and mine? Do you think they would undermine you, and to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... long as attempts at explaining the different forms of existence in the world wholly from one another keep within their own limits, and do not of themselves undermine theism; and so long as there are men who on the one hand favor such a mode of explanation and on the other hand still adhere firmly to a faith in God, whether it be the deeper theism or the more shallow and superficial deism—so long religion has ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... and whose weight must ever lean heaviest on the subordinate orders. It is the interest of the great, therefore, to diminish kingly power as much as possible; because whatever they take from that is naturally restored to themselves; and all they have to do in the state, is to undermine the single tyrant, by which they resume their primaeval authority. Now, the state may be so circumstanced, or its laws may be so disposed, or its men of opulence so minded, as all to conspire in carrying on this ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... Shortly after the death of Captain Evans and my accession to the command I found that this boy was trying to undermine my influence with the men, from what motives I cannot guess. I remonstrated with him mildly but firmly, but only received insolence in return. Nevertheless I continued to treat him well on account of the interest you felt in him. So things ...
— Brave and Bold • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... at once enforce the full rigour of Hildebrand's decrees. Marriage was forbidden for the future; the capitular clergy had to part from their wives; but the vested interest of the parish priest was respected. In another point William directly helped to undermine his own authority and the independence of his kingdom. He exempted his abbey of the Battle from the authority of the diocesan bishop. With this began a crowd of such exemptions, which, by weakening local authority, strengthened the ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman
... do is, for the moment, negative: in my view, at least. We can undermine the power of the Capitalist Press. We can expose it as we have exposed the Politicians. It is very powerful but very vulnerable—as are all human things that repose on a lie. We may expect, in a delay perhaps as brief as that which was required to pillory, and, ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc
... surely do itself by foul. The continual struggle of competition, not only in the tailors' trade, but in every one which is not, like the navigator's or engineer's, at a premium from its novel and extraordinary demand, will weaken and undermine more and more the masters, who are already many of them speculating on borrowed capital, while it will depress the workmen to a point at which life will become utterly intolerable; increasing education will serve only to make ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... Granville. The Vendeans at once obtained possession of one of the suburbs. Twenty pieces of cannon opened fire upon it from the walls, while from the houses the Vendeans replied with a musketry fire. During the night a number of men laboured to undermine the wall by one of the gates, and partially succeeded. But day broke before the work was completed, and the defenders planted several cannon to bear ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... Francis had voluntarily allowed his wife to rival him. Phillips smiled at this. Some actors might be capable of such generosity, but hardly Irving Francis. He recalled the man's insistent demands during rehearsals that the 'script be changed to build up his own part and undermine that of his wife; the many heated arguments which had even threatened to prevent the final performance of the piece. Irving's egotism had blinded him to the true result of these quarrels, for although he had been given more ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... It suits my purpose better, and is in every way more convenient, to rent a small house on a yearly agreement. But if I were a landlord, I would not allow any tenant of mine to do anything that tended to undermine and honeycomb the gentility of the district. I should take a very short method with such a tenant. I should say to him or her: "Now, then, either this stops, or you go out this instant." That would settle it. However, I am not ...
— Eliza • Barry Pain
... then encourage the seamen to be most vigilant abroad; for, said he, 'tis not our duty to mind State-affairs, but to keep foreigners from fooling us." The idea among the ultra-Republicans of using Blake's popularity to undermine Cromwell had ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... liberty, and fraternity are included under the democratic principles which assume the same names, the Bible is the most democratic book in the world. As such it began, through the heretical sects, to undermine the clerico-political despotism of the middle ages, almost as soon as it was formed, in the eleventh century; Pope and King had as much as they could do to put down the Albigenses and the Waldenses in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; the Lollards and ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... with a very painful concern I mention to your Excellency this attempt of Mr Lee to undermine me in this manner; when I thought he had enough ado to fulfil his commissions through Germany, and therefore was very open and unaware in my letters to him. It is with the same concern, I learn just now by a letter of a very worthy servant of the United States, ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... reassert imperial rights over the Italian cities, acting not so much in the interest of the Empire as for the aggrandizement of the Spanish monarchy. At the same time the Papacy, which had done so much to undermine the authority of the Empire, exercised a power at once anomalous and ill-recognized except in the immediate States of the Church. By the extinction of the House of Hohenstauffen and by the assumed right to grant ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... undoubted service he had rendered to his country, if it was a service to extend her rule by questionable means to the farthermost limits of the globe. I need not speak of the obloquy which Burke incurred from the press, which teemed with pamphlets and books and articles to undermine his great authority, all in the interests of venal and powerful monopolists. Nor did he escape the wrath of the electors of Bristol,—a narrow-minded town of India traders and Negro dealers,—who withdrew from him their support. He had been solicited, in the midst of his ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... death of the great John Sobieski, King of Poland, the father of his people, there arose a deep-rooted conspiracy in certain neighboring states, jealous of his late power and glorious name, determining to undermine the accession of his family to the throne; and they found an apt soil to work on in a corresponding feeling ready to break out amongst some of the most influential nobles of the realm. Foreign and domestic revolutionists ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... Romans were bravely repelled until, on the night of the 22d of September, two soldiers of the Fifteenth Legion contrived to creep, unobserved, to the foot of one of the highest towers of the wall; and began, silently, to undermine its foundations. Before morning broke, they had got in so far that they could not be perceived from the walls. Still they worked in, leaving a few stones in their place, to support the tower until the last moment. Then they struck these ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... trying than his own difficulties, were the perplexities and sorrows which he foresaw for those whom he loved. Very illogical and inconsecutive, doubtless; if only he had had the hard heart of a proselytiser, he would have seen that it was his duty to undermine and shatter their old convictions. But he cared more for the tempers and beliefs in which he was at one with his Anglican friends, than for those in which they could not follow him. But the struggle came on gradually. What he feared at first was not the triumph of Rome, but the break-up of the ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... 'I have long since laid it down as a principle (which in my judgment no Governor of this Province ought to lose sight of for a moment),' wrote Ryland in 1804, 'by every possible means which prudence can suggest, gradually to undermine the authority and influence of the Roman Catholic Priest.' 'The Province must be converted into an English Colony,' declared Sewell, 'or it will ultimately be lost to England.' The opinion these men held of the French Canadians was most uncomplimentary. 'In the ...
— The 'Patriotes' of '37 - A Chronicle of the Lower Canada Rebellion • Alfred D. Decelles
... pitched on an eminence near the gardens east of Jaffa. Orders were given directly to undermine the fortifications and, blow them up; and on the 27th of May, upon the signaling given, the town was in a moment laid bare. An hour afterwards the General-in-Chief left his tent and repaired to the town, accompanied ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... was he taken away, lest that wickedness should alter his understanding, or deceit beguile his soul. For the bewitching of naughtiness doth obscure things that are honest; and the wandering of concupiscence doth undermine the simple mind (O how constantly true is this!). He, being made perfect in a short time, fulfilled a long time; for his soul pleased the Lord: therefore hasted He to take him away from the wicked." ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... did much to undermine feudalism; and it almost regenerated the spirit of Christianity in the thirteenth century. "Man of the people," writes R. F. O'Connor, "he did more for the people than ever yet had been done by any one; whose vocation was to revive in the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... lynching such offenders. Every time a big moneyed offender, who naturally excites interest and sympathy, and who has many friends, is excused from serving a sentence which a man of less prominence and fewer friends would have to serve, justice is discredited in the eyes of plain people—and to undermine faith in justice is to strike at the foundation of the Republic. As for ill health, it must be remembered that few people are as healthy in prison as they would be outside; and there should be no discrimination among criminals ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... from matter, this cannot be. Do the billiard-balls when so grouped as to represent consciousness generate some second motive power distinct from, at variance with, and often stronger than, the original impetus? Clearly no scientific thinker can admit this. To do so would be to undermine the entire fabric of science, to contradict what is its first axiom and its last conclusion. If then the motion of our six billiard balls has anything, when it corresponds to consciousness, distinct in kind from what it always had, ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... perused a number of his letters he quietly signalled to Mrs Ross, and immediately they both left the room. He had received a letter from Liverpool which informed him that a very serious disease had begun to undermine the constitution of Frank's father, and while no immediate fatal results were expected, it was thought best that Frank should return by the speediest route possible. In Frank's own letters from home all that had been mentioned in reference ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young |
