"Corrupt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... debt, with a much smaller population, was what it is now; everything was taxed, and wages were very low. But what was most galling was the fact that the misery, the taxes, and the debt had been accumulated, not by the will of the people, but by a corrupt House of Commons, the property of borough-mongers, for the sake of supporting the Bourbons directly, but indirectly and chiefly the House of Hanover and the hated aristocracy. There was also a scandalous list of jobs and pensions. Years afterwards, when ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... revenue, he would most loyally cheat the public, as every reputable tradesman must. How could any man serve his time more notably, toward shop-keeping, and pave fairer way into the corporation of a grandly corrupt old English town, than by long graduation of free trade? And Robin was yet too young and careless to know that he could not endure dull work. "How pleasant, how comfortable, how secure," he was saying to himself, "it ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... 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 producers when they grow up," instead of making them strong and healthy ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... diligence to empty it of that which it may possess of these. It will always have for us all enough of dull and prosaic and commonplace. What profit can there be in seeking to extend the region of these? Profit there will be none, but on the contrary infinite loss. It is stagnant waters which corrupt themselves; not those in agitation and on which the winds are freely blowing. Words of passion and imagination are, as one so grandly called them of old, 'winds of the soul' ([Greek: psyches anemoi]), to keep it in healthful ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... a sacred tradition in certain country districts, far removed from the corrupt animation of large cities, and Maurice's family was noted among all the families of Belair for uprightness, and fidelity to the truth. Germain was going in search of a wife; Marie was too young and too pure for him to think of her in that light, and, unless ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... magnates welcomed us under protest. I thought all this very natural. Those who are accustomed to calculate everything at so much per cent, are not likely to be reassured by the sight of a few desperadoes, who wish to ameliorate a corrupt society by eradicating from it the cancer of privilege and falsehood, especially when these desperadoes, few as they are, and with neither three-hundred-pounders nor ironclads, fling themselves against a power believed to be gigantic, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... over the side, and there I saw the old man standing up reverently, with his hat in one hand, and a bag, apparently full of money in the other. Undoubtedly, the simple yeoman had supposed that money could either corrupt the captain, or buy off the servitude of his guilty son. It was a fine old countenance, down the sides of which that silver hair hung so patriarchally and gracefully; and there that poor old man stood, bowing in his wretchedness ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... the popular assembly, can shield one from the force of that primary law of human action—thou shalt not sin against thine own soul. Purity of purpose and sincerity of conduct must preserve the citizen from the taint of evil, or he will become corrupt, and if he do not ...
— The Religion of Politics • Ezra S. Gannett
... the reaper of the ripened harvest,— The fruits are garnered in Eternity, To be, or good or bad, the spirit's food! If then our thoughts, and words, and deeds have been Of corrupt tendency, or evil nature,— What marvel if we feed on bitterness?— What ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... Manget, with whom I was confronted, and bribed the Auditor with a hundred ducats. By this means Reitz only suffered a year's imprisonment, and the loss of his commission. I was afterwards closely confined in a chamber, for having endeavoured to corrupt the King's officers, and was ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... come to us, they would wonder at our lenience to their faults. The question of an anonymous press has been brought up. If you will glance over the files of the newspapers throughout the world, you will find in that country where the articles are signed the press is most corrupt, weakest, most venal, and has the least influence of any press in the world. To tell me that a reporter who writes an article is of more consequence than the editor, is to tell me a thing I believe you do ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... the welfare of the Church; it is only in periods of sharp, skilful hostility that the Church becomes pure. In the Middle Ages, when it ran riot with power, there were plenty of churchmen as corrupt as our dying man. His love for a Greek manuscript is as sensual as his love for his mistress; and having lived a life of physical delight, it is natural that his last thoughts should concern themselves with the abode ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... selfish, corrupt; it only defended in the king's person the sources of its vanities,—profitable exactions. The clergy, with Christian virtues, had no public virtues: a state within a state, its life was apart from ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... good repute, as not only the whole village, but even my servants bore witness; ergo, she could not be a witch, inasmuch as the Saviour hath said, "A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... Stahl, after taking an oath before a competent officer to truly depose and testify, did willfully, knowingly and feloniously and contrary to his said oath, depose and state material matters which were not true and which he did not then believe to be true, and thereby did commit willful and corrupt perjury against the peace of the United States and their dignity and contrary to the form of the statute of the United States in such cases ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... pain, After all my restless endeavor, The youngest, fairest soul of the twain, The most ethereal, most divine, Will escape from my hands for ever and ever. But the other is already mine! Let him live to corrupt his race, Breathing among them, with every breath, Weakness, selfishness, and the base And pusillanimous fear of death. I know his nature, and I know That of all who in my ministry Wander the great earth to and fro, And on my errands ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... are no simple children at Green Fancy. They are men with the brains of foxes and the hearts of wolves. To deceive you was child's play. You are an honest man. It is always the honest man who is the victim; he is never the culprit. If honest men were as smart as the corrupt ones, Mr. Barnes, there would be no such thing as crime. If the honest man kept one hand on his purse and the other on his revolver, he would be more than a match for the thief. You were no match for Chester Naismith. Do not look so glum. ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... only in name; they have renounced the religion of Rome, and become Lutherans: Neither have they the least communication with the country of their forefathers, or even knowledge of it: They speak indeed a corrupt dialect of the Portuguese language, but much more frequently use the Malay: They are never suffered to employ themselves in any but mean occupations: Many of them live by hunting, many by washing linen, and some are handicraftsmen and artificers. They have adopted all ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... was a good paper, although I couldn't half pay attention to it; it gave me several new notions. All my decorations, then—you think them corrupt and degraded?" ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... personal integrity is impugned and derided; his methods of administration are alleged to be wilfully directed to the impoverishment, and even to the depopulation, of India; his social customs are traduced as depraved and corrupt; even his women-folk are accused of common wantonness. This systematized form of personal calumny is a scarcely less significant feature of the literature of Indian unrest than its appeals to the Hindu ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... adorned with all the luxuriance of plenty, would be converted into barren heaths, or impenetrable thickets; these meadows, now the support of a thousand herds of cattle, would be covered with stagnated waters, that would not only render them uninhabitable by beasts, but corrupt the air with pestilential vapours; and even these innumerable flocks of sheep that feed along the hills, would disappear immediately on the cessation of that cultivation, which can alone support them, and secure ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... the fighting, and we find a band of the white mantles defeated and slain at Jaffa. With a second division of Crusaders the Templars quarrelled, and were then deserted by them. Soon after the Templars and Hospitallers, now grown corrupt and rich, quarrelled about lands and fortresses; but they were still favoured by the Pope, and helped to maintain the Latin throne. In 1209 they were strong enough to resist the interdict of Pope Innocent; and in the Crusade of 1217 they invaded Egypt, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... men of integrity would not become corrupt in the political grinding mill. Perhaps not; but such men would be absolutely helpless to exert the slightest influence in behalf of labor, as indeed has been shown in numerous instances. The State is the economic master of its servants. Good ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... was not wanted, but he must needs begin setting a bad example to the donkey, telling him as plainly as one animal could tell another that he did not mean to be caught, and, as "evil communications corrupt good manners," the donkey took the same whim into his great rough ash-grey head, and galloped after the pony as hard as he could. It was of no use to say, "come then," or "coop—coop—coop," for both of the four-footed beasts seemed to ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... his opponents will be better understood if we notice the position of the Church in England at the time. The meridian of her power had been already passed. Her clergy as a class were ignorant and corrupt. Her people were neglected, except for the money to be extorted by masses and pardons, "as if," to quote the words of an old writer, "God had given his sheep, not to be pastured, but to be shaven and shorn." This state of things had gone on for centuries, and the people ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... doing work we have enjoyed and shrinking from the disagreeable duties that belong to the life of the citizen. I confess with shame that I have purposely avoided the responsibility that I owe to this city personally. I understand that our city officials are a corrupt, unprincipled set of men, controlled in large part by the whiskey element and thoroughly selfish so far as the affairs of city government are concerned. Yet all these years I, with nearly every teacher in the college, have been satisfied to let other men run the municipality and have lived in ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... citizens are either asleep to their duties or else fail to see that the remedy is in their own hands. In many instances a few persons are allowed to undermine the morals of the community. In one town of our state a single individual was permitted for 25 years to corrupt the morals of many young men of the community through ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... subject, and in his replies showed such depth of thought, such a thorough acquaintance with history, and such precise and definite views, that once more the baronet changed his opinion, and said to himself, "This is a fine and noble intellect indeed, nearly spoiled by the infection of a corrupt and frivolous world, but which might be reclaimed, if fortune would throw him in the way of those whose principles have been ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... impressions,—these were the unworthy aims of Wieland; and though a good-natured critic would not refuse to make some allowance for a youthful poet's aberrations in this respect, yet the indulgence cannot extend itself to mature years. An old man corrupting his readers, attempting to corrupt them, or relying for his effect upon corruptions already effected, in the purity of their affections, is a hideous object; and that must be a precarious influence indeed which depends for its durability upon the licentiousness of men. Wieland, therefore, except in parts, will not ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... of the old Navigation System, limiting the coasting trade to British ships, was repealed, and a Bill also passed for preventing corrupt practices at elections. Owing to the war, the Reform Bill was withdrawn, Lord John Russell, on announcing the fact in Parliament, being overcome, and giving way to tears. In the short session, which took place during the latter half of December, a Foreign Enlistment Act was passed, providing ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... was an old woman,—very old, for a period wherein few lived to old age; she had long outlived her husband, and had seen the funerals of nearly all her children. The greater part even of her earthly treasures were already safe where moth and rust corrupt not, and her own feeling of earnest longing to rejoin them grew daily stronger. It was for the daughter's sake alone that she cared to live now; the daughter to whom men had left only God and that mother. A new ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... New Light, being by their said Parents perswaded, desired, or ordered to go." The statement, however, is contradicted in a subsequent number by the President of the College, the Rev. Thomas Clapp, D.D., who states "that they were expelled for being Followers of the Paines, two Lay Exhorters, whose corrupt Principles and pernicious Practices are set forth in the Declaration of the Ministers of the County of Windham." In all probability the outcasts had "corrupt Principles and pernicious Practices" charged ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... offering the White girls anything for the information. Glass alleys, paint cards or even popcorn rings were powerless to corrupt them. Once Jimmy Watson became the hero of an hour by circulating the report that he had smelled it cooking when he took the milk to Miss Barner's; but ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... improvements have been introduced. The same hindrance is, however, experienced by the Bergheims which has paralyzed all other efforts for the improvement of the land. The difficulties raised by the venal and corrupt under-officials of the Government have been vexatious and incessant, being due to the determination to extort money by some means or other, or else to ruin the enterprise from which they could gain nothing. The Turkish Government recognizes the right ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... That fatal coalition which is emphatically called "The Coalition" was formed. Not three quarters of a year had elapsed since Fox and Burke had threatened North with impeachment, and had described him, night after night, as the most arbitrary, the most corrupt, the most incapable of ministers. They now allied themselves with him for the purpose of driving from office a statesman with whom they cannot be said to have differed as to any important question. Nor had they even the prudence and the ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... up his hand, took hold of an ear, and turned his head the right way round. He was then able to open his eyes, when he saw the Ancient Immortal of the South Pole. The latter arraigned him in a loud voice saying: "You as-good-as-dead charlatan, who by means of corrupt tricks try to deceive Tzu-ya and make him burn the List of Immortals and help Chou Wang against Chou, what do you mean by all this? You should be taken to the Jade Palace ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... little adjustment—a squeeze here and a pull there—the Christianity of the first three or four centuries might be made to fit, or seem to fit, pretty well into the Anglican scheme. So the miracles, from Justin say to Jerome, might be recognised; while, in later times, the Church having become "corrupt"—that is to say, having pursued one and the same line of development further than was pleasing to Anglicans—its alleged miracles must ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... of charity, and to do good to him fills the second place.... That a man cannot do good which in itself is good before evil has been removed, the Lord teaches in many places: "Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Neither can a corrupt tree bring ...
— The Gist of Swedenborg • Emanuel Swedenborg
... the worthiness and integrity of officials and representatives of government, all along the line. Aldermen, commissioners, mayors of cities—even senators of the United States—are frequent objects of mistrust, of sneering disrespect. Political scandals and corrupt deals in high places are commonplace topics in ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... professed themselves converts. The multitude followed their example. The Brahminical church was promptly disestablished and disendowed, and more injustice was committed in the name of the new and purified religion in one day than the old corrupt one had occasioned in ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... -umph—chunk," some rascal of a boy would shout, while poor old Bullfrog's yellow spectacles would be bedewed with tears of honest indignation. In time, the jeers of these little savages began to tell on the society in the forest, and to corrupt their simple manners; and it was whispered among the younger and more heavy birds and squirrels that old Bullfrog was a bore, and that it was time to get up a new style of music in the parish, and to give the charge of it to some ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... knowledge and wisdom on literary subjects. There is an immense human ardor, power, and pathos in Stoddard; better than any other American poet does he realize the conception of his great English brother—the love of love, the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn. The world has proved impotent to corrupt his heroic simplicity; he loved fame much, but truth more. He is a boy in his heart still, and he has sung songs which touch whatever is sweetest, tenderest, and manliest in the ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... European towns, unless during the driest seasons—seasons actually blighted by drought, when hot withering land winds have destroyed surface vegetation, and as in the locality of Gibraltar, have left the low-lying becalmed, and leeward town to corrupt without perflation or ventilation amidst its own accumulated exhalations. I know not how I can better illustrate the situation of Gibraltar in these pestiferous seasons, than by a quotation from a report of my own on the Island of Guadaloupe, in the year 1816, which, though written without any possible ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... base of a rock crumbling to dust, at the foot of a tree that is splitting asunder?... You may command what is opposed to nature, but you will not be obeyed. You will multiply evil-doers and the unhappy by fear, by punishment, and by remorse; you will deprave men's consciences; you will corrupt their minds; they will have lost the polar ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... offered for my head, or for my ruin; and one never feels very comfortable under such offers, at any time or in any country. The reckless lies which this man gets adventurers at Cawnpore to write for him, and careless or corrupt editors to publish, are apt to stagger those who do not know the vile character of the individual, or the true nature of the ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... Lettice, that everything is prepared as you know he would like to have it. Going into Parliament, is he? Yes, I have always told you that he would. He is a born orator, child; he will serve his country brilliantly—not for place, nor for corrupt motives of any kind, but as a patriot and a Christian, to whom duty is the ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... bottom of the affair. So easy to make out afterwards that it was an accident! So easy to spirit Brown away! So easy to explain everything! Why, Ravengar, you intended to murder me! I saw the whole scheme in a flash. You have corrupted many of my servants to-day. But you didn't corrupt all of them. And because you didn't, because you couldn't, I am alive. You would like to know how I got out. But you will never know, Ravengar. You will die ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... "deceived," referring to the deceptions practiced on the Spaniards,—which is defended by Orozco y Berra[6-3]; and I should accept that which I find suggested by Dr. Berendt in his manuscript work on Mayan geographical names. He reads Tabasco as a slightly corrupt form of the Maya T'ah-uaxac-coh, "our (or the) master of the eight lions," referring to the eight districts or gentes of the tribe. This is significant and appropriate, the jaguar, the American lion, being a very common emblem in the ruins ...
— The Battle and the Ruins of Cintla • Daniel G. Brinton
... crammed, with ornaments of apparently all ages: concluding with the Grecian mixture introduced in the reign of Francis I. The buttresses are, however, generally, lofty and airy. In the midst of this complicated and corrupt style of architecture, the tower and spire rise like a structure built by preternatural hands; and I am not sure that, at this moment, I can recollect any thing of equal beauty and effect in the whole range of ecclesiastical edifices in our own country. Look at this building, ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... delaying for a time the further consideration of Roebling's ideas. This war accustomed the nation to expenditures on a scale of which it had no previous conception. It did more than expend large sums of money. Officials became corrupt and organized themselves for plunder. In the city of New York, especially, the government fell into the hands of a band of thieves, who engaged in a series of great and beneficial public works, not for the good they ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley
... Queen-mother had caused several copies to be made, and that she could not ultimately fail to secure its transmission, he endeavoured to weaken the effect of her remonstrances by accusing her of an attempt to corrupt the loyalty of the Duc de Rohan, and to induce him to adopt ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... insisted upon coming, had the time of his life that night; he danced about and waved his arms in his excitement—and at the very climax he broke loose from his friends, and got out into the aisle, and proceeded to make a speech himself! The senator had been denying that the Democratic party was corrupt; it was always the Republicans who bought the votes, he said—and here was Jurgis shouting furiously, "It's a lie! It's a lie!" After which he went on to tell them how he knew it—that he knew it because he had bought them himself! And he ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... throughout Greece as the wonder of her age. That all the tributes of her contemporaries show reverence not less for her personality than for her genius is sufficient answer to the calumnies with which the ribald jesters of that later period, the corrupt and shameless writers of Athenian comedy, strove to defile her fame. It is sufficient, also, to warrant our regarding the picturesque but scarcely dignified story of her vain pursuit of Phaon and her frenzied leap from the Cliff of Leucas as nothing more than a poetic myth, reminiscent, perhaps, ...
— Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics • Bliss Carman
... run be dragged up. In the order of nature, the collective character of a nation will as surely find its befitting results in its law and government, as water finds its own level. The noble people will be nobly ruled, and the ignorant and corrupt ignobly. Indeed all experience serves to prove that the worth and strength of a State depend far less upon the form of its institutions than upon the character of its men. For the nation is only an aggregate of individual conditions, and civilization itself is but a question ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... prolixity that fatigues the attention, but by a quick succession of new ideas, equally brilliant and apposite, often expressed in antitheses. Void of obscenity in expression, but lascivious in sentiment, he may be said rather to stimulate immorally the natural passions, than to corrupt the imagination. No poet is more guided in versification by the nature of his subject than Ovid. In common narrative, his ideas are expressed with almost colloquial simplicity; but when his fancy glows with sentiment, or is animated by objects of grandeur, his style is proportionably ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... was the hereditary name of a long and illustrious line of Dakota chiefs. Wabashaw is a corrupt pronunciation. The name is a contraction of Wa-pa-ha-sa, which is from Wa-ha-pa, the standard or pole used in the Dakota dances and upon which feathers of various colors are tied, and not from Wa-pa—leaf, as has been generally supposed. ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... ancestor before his transgression, clear and perfect, unruffled by passions, unclouded by prejudice, unimpaired by disease or intemperance, the task would be pleasant and easy; we should need no other guide but this. But every man now finds the contrary in his own experience; that his reason is corrupt, and his understanding ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... founts of national well-being at their sources; the devil of petty-princedom, wallowing in sloth and cruelty upon a pinchbeck throne; the devil of effeminate hidalgoism, ruinous in expenditure, mean and grasping, corrupt in private life, in public ostentatious, vain of titles, cringing to its masters, arrogant to its inferiors. In their train these brought with them seven other devils, their pernicious offspring: idleness, disease, brigandage, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... English. In England, throughout the war, no unnecessary bloodshed took place, and up to that time the only persons executed in cold blood had been the two gentlemen convicted of endeavoring to corrupt the Parliament in favor of the king. But in Scotland, where civil broils were constant, blood was ever shed recklessly on both sides; houses were given to the flames; men, women, and children slaughtered; lands laid waste; and all ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... his fidelity.[138] 5. In consequence, it was thought right by the generals to pass a resolution that the war should be such as to admit of no intercourse by heralds;[139] for those that came tried to corrupt the soldiers, and succeeded in seducing one of the captains, Nicarchus an Arcadian, and he deserted in the night with about ...
— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon
... of the atmosphere, this whole world of infinity which laps you round, and which God has made so various, will recall to you the infinite sameness of your soul's life. But at least I shall be there, my Renee, and in me you will find a heart which no social pettiness shall ever corrupt, a heart all ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... had not till long after learned the wisdom of "making a note:" but I had occasion to remark that dignitaries, &c. frequently wore wider scarfs than other clergymen (not however that the narrower one was ever that slender strip so improperly and servilely adopted of late from the corrupt custom of Rome, which has curtailed all ecclesiastical vestments); so that when the discussion upon this subject was revived by others some years ago, it was one to which my mind had been long familiar, independently ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 179. Saturday, April 2, 1853. • Various
... presidencies, and I believe back to the time of Jackson, there has been an organized system of dishonesty in the management of all beneficial places under the control of the government. I doubt whether any despotic court of Europe has been so corrupt in the distribution of places—that is, in the selection of public officers—as has been the assemblage of statesmen at Washington. And this is the evil which the country is now expiating with its blood and treasure. ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... without religion is not spiritual, but remains natural; and if the natural man renounces whoredoms, still his spirit does not renounce them; and thus, although it seems to himself that he is chaste by such renunciation, yet nevertheless unchastity lies inwardly concealed like corrupt matter in a wound only outwardly healed. That conjugial love is according to the state of the church with man, may be seen above n. 130. More on this subject may be seen in the exposition ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... pull together to effect any purpose may, as Lord Webb Seymour asserts, have swayed Horner, or biased him a little from his original theoretic course, still it never was from any selfish or in the slightest degree corrupt or unworthy motive. I much admire Lord Webb Seymour's letter to Horner, and not less Horner's candid, honest, and temperate answer. What friends he made for himself of the best and most able of the land, not only admired but trusted and consulted by them all, ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... he laughed faintly. But his commanding officer was in revolt against the murderous stealthiness of methods and the atrocious callousness of complicities that seemed to taint the very source of men's deep emotions and noblest activities; to corrupt their imagination which builds up the final conceptions of ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... not resented much in your letters which would otherwise call for earnest protest. I feel sure, for example, your assertion that I and my fellow-countrymen derive our opinions of German conduct wholly from corrupt and venal newspapers, or usually from a single newspaper which doles out mental poison in subservience to a single political party, was not intended to be as insulting as it really sounded. Your ...
— Plain Words From America • Douglas W. Johnson
... life and death was in their hands, and in many instances they used it in the most unjust and arbitrary manner. They were themselves, of course, natives of Old Spain—often the pampered favourites of that corrupt court. ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... is nearly the same. And the 'poor-house' was used, as in other towns in New-England, as a house of correction, and at this time contained several professors of vice of each sex. Alas! of that sex which when corrupt is more dangerous than the other in a like condition, as the most rich and grateful things are in their decay ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... Bible say about the condition of natural man after the fall? It says: "That which is born of the flesh is flesh," that is, corrupt (John 3, 6); "The imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth" (Gen. 8, 21); "They are all gone aside, they are altogether become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one" (Ps. 14, 3); "Who can bring ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... Beauty, "there are many that deserve that name more than you, and I prefer you, just as you are, to those who, under a human form, hide a treacherous, corrupt, and ungrateful heart." ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... wicked, immoral, iniquitous, arrant, corrupt, depraved, sinful, base, demoralized, sinister, licentious, unprincipled, abandoned, graceless, vicious, incorrigible, unscrupulous, miscreant, reprobate, disreputable, rascal, scoundrel, profligate, knavish, naughty, malevolent, malicious, unrighteous, degrading, dissolute, libertine, hardened, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... are those who prate of national honor and of war as insuring prosperity. From the leader of a newborn national party we hear that without a periodic war America would become effeminate and weak, her aggressive commercial life timid and corrupt, and within a few brief years the great Republic would sink to a fourth-rate power. Up, brave Americans, and man the guns! Awake, sons of freedom, and sweep the seas! Fourteen years without a war; our beloved land is ruined. You men ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... communications, rather than with the sense of reality. But there are precise falsehoods as well as precise facts. Discipline may only mean a hundred men making the same mistake at the same minute. And good communications may in practice be very like those evil communications which are said to corrupt good manners. Broadly, we have reached a "scientific age," which wants to know whether the train is in the timetable, but not whether the train is in the station. I take one instance in our police inquiries that I happen to have come across: ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... exquisite part of the inner man. It is to the rest of our nature what the flower is to the plant or what the pearl is to the shell. It is that within us which is specially allied to God and eternity. It is also, however, that which sin seeks to corrupt and our spiritual enemies seek to destroy. No doubt these are specially active in the article of death; it is their last chance; and fain would they seize the spirit as it parts from the body and, dragging it down, ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... obstacle to the cultivated life of the whites. Ignorance and the absence of taste and self-respect in servants result in badly kept homes and yards, destruction of furniture and ware, ill-prepared food, poor table service, and a general lowering of the standard of living. Furthermore, the corrupt, coarse, and vulgar language of the Negroes is largely responsible for the jumbled and distorted English spoken by ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... For, as soon as the faintest trace of anything subjective is present, whether dislike or favor, or fear or hope, or even the thought of the impression we ourselves are making upon the object of our attention the characters we are trying to decipher become confused and corrupt. The sound of a language is really appreciated only by one who does not understand it, and that because, in thinking of the signification of a word, we pay no regard to the sign itself. So, in the same way, a physiognomy is correctly gauged only by one to whom it is still strange, ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... the Hindoo dialects and the Gypsy tongue—if the Gypsies were Bohemians—should closely resemble one another. They were from the same parent stem. The learned Buesching said, "The Gypsy language is a mixture of corrupt words from the Wallachian, Slavonian, Hungarian, and other nations." These are the cognate languages of the Slavic race, all descended from the same source, and that also the source of the Cech. The first list of Gypsy words ever made was cited to prove an Egyptian origin, and they were Slavic. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... eaves and interior. A sluice and some wells provide them with water, which though sweet is not particularly wholesome or appetizing, owing to the large quantities of decayed matter which is washed into it by the rains, and is then left to corrupt in it. A weak effort has been made to clear the neighbourhood for providing a place for cultivation, but to the dire task of wood-chopping and jungle-clearing the settlers prefer occupying an open glade, which they clear of grass, so as to be able to hoe up two or three inches of soil, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... little man assumes a bolder tone, when he quotes from the fathers of the church; such as St. Jerome, who gives it as the opinion of all the doctors, that the air is filled with powers opposed to each other; and Lactantius, who says that corrupt and dangerous spirits wander over the earth, and seek to console themselves for their own fall by effecting the ruin of the human race; and Clemens Alexandrinus, who is of opinion that the souls of the blessed have ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... paragraph altogether is unfavorable to the character of so great a man, and fully proves the laxity of opinion, in those days of monkish supremacy, on judicial matters; but we must be generous, and allow something for the corrupt usages of the age, but I cannot omit a circumstance clearly illustrative of this point, which occurred between the bibliomanical Chancellor and the abbot of St. Alban's, the affair is recorded in the chronicle of the abbey, and transpired during the time ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... the fierce resistance of the native Caribs. France ceded possession to Great Britain in 1763, which made the island a colony in 1805. In 1980, two years after independence, Dominica's fortunes improved when a corrupt and tyrannical administration was replaced by that of Mary Eugenia CHARLES, the first female prime minister in the Caribbean, who remained in office for 15 years. Some 3,000 Carib Indians still living on Dominica ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... to my office, and anon we met upon finishing the Treasurer's accounts. At noon dined at home and am vexed to hear my wife tell me how our maid Mary do endeavour to corrupt our cook maid, which did please me very well, but I am resolved to rid the house of her as soon as I can. To the office and sat all the afternoon till 9 at night, and an hour after home to supper and bed. My father lying at Tom's to-night, he dining ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... what he exceedingly longed for whilst he lived.' But here he continues thus, 'I have, indeed, in my time known some, who, by a knack of writing, have got both title and fortune, yet disown their apprenticeship, purposely corrupt their style, and affect ignorance of so vulgar a quality (which also our nation observes, rarely to be seen in very learned hands), carefully seeking a ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... "waps" is considered a vulgar way of pronouncing the word; but it was correct English at the time of which I am writing. "Wasp" is really the corrupt pronunciation. In the same way, they said ...
— Our Little Lady - Six Hundred Years Ago • Emily Sarah Holt
... been some carelessness in his connection with various speculations, and at times an absence of an adequate sense of his responsibility as a public man, there is no evidence that he was ever personally corrupt or dishonest. He devoted the close of his life to the writing of his "Reminiscences," and of several essays on questions which were great public issues when he was so prominent in Canadian politics, and although none of his most ardent admirers can praise them as literary efforts of a high ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot
... mouth was added, so that "the mouth of Port," i.e. of the place called Portus by the Romans, became at last Portsmouth. But this does not satisfy the early historians, and, as happens so frequently when there is anything corrupt in language, a legend springs up almost spontaneously to remove all doubts and difficulties. Thus we read in the venerable Saxon Chronicle under the year 501, "that Port came to Britain with his two sons, Bieda and Maegla, with two ships, and their place was called Portsmouth; ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... customs, but they observed these carefully—not so much for fear of punishment, as because they believed that he who violated them would be instantly killed, or at least become afflicted with the disease of leprosy, and that another part also of his body would become corrupt. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... we were at the place, and I ran eagerly to point it; but behold, where the nugget had been, there was nothing except the white bed of the river! The blue water flowed very softly on its way, without a gleam of gold to corrupt it. ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... elevated him to the front rank of statesmanship in the opinion of the House. His impartiality as a presiding officer was recognized by all parties, and his firmness of purpose could not be moved by corrupt intriguers or brawling sycophants. He was also fortunate in having a devoted wife, tall and graceful, whose attractive personal appearance was equaled by her well-balanced mind and her practical common sense. As Mrs. Edmunds was at that time absent from Washington, ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... and the director-general of public instruction were present to introduce me; but all the court had been dismissed lest the two bottles aforesaid should corrupt their morals. The king cast a wreath of heavy, scented flowers round my neck as I bowed, and inquired how my honored presence had the felicity to be. I said that through seeing his auspicious countenance the mists of the night had turned into sunshine, ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... another, he saw no reason why he should tell her. Upon occasion he could be as ruthless as a stone; if he were so now he knew it not, but in deceiving her deceived himself. Man of a world that was corrupt enough, he was of course quietly assured that he could bend this woodland creature—half child, half dryad—to the form of his bidding. To do so was in his power, but not his pleasure. He meant to leave her as she was; to accept the adoration of the child, but to attempt no awakening ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... The other nature, full of the false pride of blood, set itself to reproduce in a new world the institutions and the spirit of the old, to build anew the structure of the feudalism which had been corrupt in its own day, and which had been left far behind by the advancing conscience and needs of the progressing race. The one nature magnified labor, the other nature depreciated and despised it. The one honored the laborer, and the other scorned him. The one was simple and direct; the other, ...
— Addresses • Phillips Brooks
... of disaffection to the king's person, which was so loudly trumpeted by former ministers and their adherents against those who had honesty and courage to oppose the measures of a weak and corrupt administration, was entirely false and without foundation, appeared at this juncture, when in the midst of a cruel, oppressive, and continental war, maintained by the blood and treasure of Great Britain, all ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... the persecution were convincing proof of the progress of the reformation. A corrupt priesthood dreaded its tendency to deprive them of their sinful gains. Certain persons no longer enjoyed a monopoly of Armenian printing. Education ceased to be exclusively in the hands of a few bankers. And the popularity of Hohannes and Boghos Fizika ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... Christian mothers there are many who pretend they have the fire of faith and divine love like the brave Machabean woman; but when the sore hour of real separation comes, the soft, loving heart bends and weeps. Nature, corrupt nature, resists the arrangements of God, and nature triumphs in the maternal tie. The spirit of Madeleine had made the sacrifice of her son, but the rude hand of nature swept the fibres of her heart and ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... fool of a Firkked to start this business; of those who gave shelter to the false prophet, Rakkeed, when he was here; of the faithless priests who gave ear to his abominable heresies and allowed him to spew out his blasphemies in the temples; of those who sent spies to Krink, to corrupt and pervert my soldiers and nobles; of ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... horror in a thieves' kitchen, who can rid themselves of those elementary instincts of the man and the gentleman which cling to the very bones of our civilisation, cannot rid themselves of the influence of two or three remote Oriental anecdotes written in corrupt Greek. The fact, when realised, has about it something stunning and hypnotic. The most convinced rationalist is in its presence suddenly stricken with a strange and ancient vision, sees the immense sceptical cosmogonies ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... art the fool!" she said, "who hast made all this coil, to wall up a poor cat in a cupboard, as it is thou who art the base knave and shameless pandar, who hast attempted to do murther, and all to sell thine own wife to a corrupt ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... alderman, and he'll be elected. He's rich; and all your say-so temperance men will vote for him, and when elected he'll go hand-in-hand with some lone star, who deems it advisable that men should be licensed to corrupt the morals of the community, in order to make it ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... show that the greatest makers of heretics and masters of that craft were just these wise men, from whom the Father hid his secrets, that is, the hypocrites, the Pharisees, and lawyers, men utterly godless and perverted (Question 20-21)? And in the corrupt times of Christianity were not these very men cast out, denounced by the hypocrites and envious, who were endowed by God with great gifts and who would in the days of pure Christianity have been held in high honor? And, on the other hand, would not the ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... Hood, a traytour, and a theif, to put out a preacher; to have his office lesse esteemed; to preferre Robin Hood before the ministration of God's word; and all this hath come of unpreaching prelates. This realme hath been ill provided for, that it hath had such corrupt judgments in it, to prefer Robin Hood to God's word."—Bishop Latimer's sixth ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott |
