"Degenerate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and comes only occasionally to the Koldagi Heive mountains on the borders of Kordofan. This, it must be acknowledged, is a sad falling off from the rival of the lion, that we have honoured so long in the arms of England. But we sincerely hope, that by the next arrival, it will not degenerate into a cow, or worse, a goat. But he tells us, that to our knowledge of the giraffe he has added considerably. He obtained in Nubia and Kordofan five specimens, two of which were males and three females. He regards ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 387, August 28, 1829 • Various
... While damned Casca, like a cur behind,/Struck Caesar on the neck] Casca struck Caesar on the neck, coming like a degenerate cur ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... suddenly, "I will pronounce his panegyric. He was a man of a great gentleness, of an inevitable nobility, of an invariable courtesy. Where, in this degenerate age, shall we find the like!" He stopped to breathe ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... that he had no income "except errant sixpences." And printers' bills had to be paid. Moreover in the first number the editor Lucian Oldershaw confessed frankly that one reason for the paper's existence was "that the Society may not degenerate into the position of a mutual admiration Society by totally lacking the admiration of outsiders." The staff were able immediately to note, "Any apprehensions we may have felt on the morning of the publication ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... rank, without any straining, among the other processes of selection. It seems to me that, from the facts that sterile animal forms can adapt themselves to new vital functions, their superfluous parts degenerate, and the parts more used adapt themselves in an ascending direction, those less used in a descending direction, we must draw the conclusion that harmonious adaptation here comes about without the cooeperation of the Lamarckian principle. This conclusion once established, ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... field of pines that you see on our right, whose tops are so dense and even as to resemble at a distance growing grain, may have been an open spot over which Washington followed his hounds in ante-revolutionary days. The land abounds in memories. The very names of the degenerate families who eke out a scanty subsistence on some corner of what was once an extensive family seat, remind one of the old Colonial aristocracy. Reclamation of the soil, as well as deliverance of the enslaved, must result from this civil war. Both worth fighting for. ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... back with him to Norway, was one of this breed. But it was supposed by many to have become extinct soon after the disappearance of the last wolf in Ireland, and it was the endeavour of Captain Graham to demonstrate that specimens, although admittedly degenerate, were still to be found, and that they were capable of being restored to a semblance ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... in great abundance, and of superior quality, throughout the year; but lemons degenerate much in their growth, and in a few years are scarcely to be distinguished from the latter. Guavas, pumpkins, or pumpions, squash water mellons, musk mellons, and cucumbers, grow in the greatest perfection. The pumpkins grow in wild ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... sea then entered my mind, and its degenerate inhabitants, but that was across a wide channel that would be hard to cross even if I had infinite time, freedom, and materials to make a boat which would withstand the waves, and I had none of the three. What little hope I had, then, was ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... in vain to try to persuade him that seed-time and harvest were the same thing, and that he had nothing to do but to rest in what he had done; show his bright colours and flutter like a moth in the sunshine, or sit down like a degenerate bee in the summer time and eat his own honey. The power of action which he knew in himself could not rest without something to act upon. It longed ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... what we early read in the works of Mr. Burke, that it is the propensity of degenerate minds to admire or worship splendid wickedness; that, with too many persons, the ideas of justice and morality are fairly conquered and overpowered by guilt when it is grown gigantic, and happens to be associated ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... the race can rise no higher than its women. For a while the men absorbed and reflected the intellectual life, for there still ran in their veins the good red blood of their sturdy grandmothers. But the race was doomed by the indolent, self-indulgent and parasitic females. The women did not all degenerate. Here and there were found women on whom wealth had no power. There was a Sappho, and an Aspasia, who broke out into activity and stood beside their men-folk in intellectual attainment, but the other women did not follow; they were too comfortable, too well fed, too well housed, to be ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... been taken to speak the author's mind, and keep as close as possible to the meaning of the original. For the design, I think there is nothing need be said in vindication of that. Here is a dumb philosopher introduced to a wicked and degenerate generation, as a proper emblem of virtue and morality; and if the world could be persuaded to look upon him with candour and impartiality, and then to copy after him, the editor has gained his end, and would think himself ...
— Dickory Cronke - The Dumb Philosopher, or, Great Britain's Wonder • Daniel Defoe
... puceron[obs3]; vinefretter[obs3], vinegrub[obs3]. wreck, mere wreck, honeycomb, magni nominis umbra[Lat]; jade, plug, rackabones [obs3][U. S.], skate [U. S.]; tackey[obs3], tacky [U. S.]. V. be worse, be deteriorated, become worse, become deteriorated &c. Adj.; have seen better days, deteriorate, degenerate, fall off; wane &c. (decrease) 36; ebb; retrograde &c. 283- decline, droop; go down &c. (sink) 306; go downhill, go from bad to worse, go farther and fare worse; jump out of the frying pan into the fire. run to seed, go to seed, run to waste swale|, sweal|; lapse, be the worse for; sphacelate: ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... virtually admits that this was owing to the importation of foreign influences. It was not due to any natural process of evolution; and it was followed by hopeless corruption and decline. The last days of both Greece and Rome were degenerate and full of depression ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... the frantic celebration of the festival of St. John, A.D. 1374, only served to bring to a crisis a malady which had been long impending; and if we would further inquire how a hitherto harmless usage, which like many others had but served to keep up superstition, could degenerate into so serious a disease, we must take into account the unusual excitement of men's minds, and the consequences of wretchedness and want. The bowels, which in many were debilitated by hunger and bad food, were precisely the parts which in most cases were ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... when the celluloid stud was opened was that the inducive oxidised and became active. Then the surface of the Carolinum began to degenerate. This degeneration passed only slowly into the substance of the bomb. A moment or so after its explosion began it was still mainly an inert sphere exploding superficially, a big, inanimate nucleus wrapped in flame and thunder. Those that were thrown from aeroplanes fell in this state, they ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... statements which accord with themselves and with other statements; when we ask, which are the persons we trust? we answer, those persons whose feelings and actions are congruous with themselves and with the feelings and actions of others. And, on the contrary, it is in the worthless, in the degenerate creature, that we note moods which are destructive to one another's object, ideas which are in flagrant contradiction; and it is in the idiot, the maniac, the criminal, that we see thoughts disconnected among themselves, perceptions disconnected ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... degenerate stage. Never perhaps in the history of the world had men been so ruled by selfishness, greed, military power and domination, and the pomp and display of material wealth. Luxury, indulgence, over-indulgence, vice. The inevitable concomitant followed—a ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... made it the calling of the young, strong, and handsome men to look after the propagation of the human race; so that the species may not degenerate. This is the firm will of Nature, and it finds its expression in the passions of women. This law surpasses all others in both age and power. Woe then to the man who sets up rights and interests in such a way as ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... inherited a taste for music and literature, like many of the family of the Georges. He formed an intimate friendship with Voltaire, the French infidel writer, and interested himself in the French infidelity of the period, which was a reaction against the corrupt and degenerate French church. ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... tooke upon them farr viages by sea, and other some worse courses, tending to dissolutnes & the danger of their soules, to y^e great greefe of their parents and dishonour of God. So that they saw their posteritie would be in danger to degenerate ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... reputable name. The man was cold-blooded enough to see that her gentle weakness was of value because it could be bullied, her money was to be counted on because it could be spent on himself and his degenerate vices and on his racked and ruined name and estate, which must be rebuilt and restocked at an early date by someone or other, lest they tumbled into ignominious collapse which could not be concealed. Bettina of the accusing eyes did not know ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... possible for belief to degenerate into mere conventionality, while sincere doubters at least must have a realization of the mystery and the awe ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... would have amused a man whose mind was in a healthy condition. Just as soon as we were permitted to leave our cells in the morning and meet in the hall, the most animated discussions, upon all sorts of topics, would begin. These would occasionally degenerate into clamorous and angry debates. The disputants would become as earnest and excited over subjects in which perhaps they had never felt the least interest before, as if they had been considering matters of vital and immediate importance. A most heated, and ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... a very refreshing one," he says, in an interested and deeply amused tone, "more especially in these degenerate days when most young ladies can tell one to a turn the precise age, price, and retailer of one's wines. May I ask when was this ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... A lanky and degenerate youth (who before the war had been unlovingly known throughout Europe as the "White Rabbit" and who now was mentioned in dispatches as the "Crown Prince") had succeeded in leading some half-million fellow-Germans into a "pocket" that had lately ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... the other hand (Mantis superstitiosa. Fab.[1]), little justifies by its propensities the appearance of gentleness, and the attitudes of sanctity, which have obtained for it the title of the "praying mantis." Its habits are carnivorous, and degenerate into cannibalism, as it preys on the weaker individuals of its own species. Two which I enclosed in a box were both found dead a few hours after, literally severed limb from limb in their encounter. The formation of the foreleg enables the tibia to be so closed ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... present century the property or farm on the opposite side of the Almond, above Caerlowrie, was designated by a name, having apparently the Celtic "battle" noun as a prefix in its composition—viz., Cat-elbock. This fine old Celtic name has latterly been changed for the degenerate and unmeaning term Almond-hill.] ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... notwithstanding the denomination they assume. But these last cannot stand the touch-stone of truth; there are mean plebeians, who sweat and struggle to maintain the appearance of gentlemen; and, on the other hand, there are gentlemen of rank who seem industrious to appear mean and degenerate; the one sort raise themselves either by ambition or virtue, while the other abase themselves by viciousness or sloth; so that we must avail ourselves of our understanding and discernment in distinguishing those persons, who, though they bear the same appellation, are yet so different ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... corrupted through the rust of time, That doth all fairest things on earth deface, Or through unnoble sloth, or sinfull crime, 435 That doth degenerate the noble race, Have both desire of worthie deeds forlorne, And name ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... the countries in that district are fierce and warlike, and they are so fond of war and battle that he who is slain in battle is accounted the happiest of men, while those who die a natural death are reproached as degenerate and cowardly. ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... for loving as men are often as unfit themselves. Physically unfit for motherhood, mentally unfit to cherish the monogamic idea that once was sacred with our people, sexually unfit to rouse true sex-passion—such women are being bred by the million in crowded cities and by degenerate country life. They match well with the slaves who 'move on' at the bidding of a policeman, or with the knaves who only see in Woman the toy of a ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... a rude child as the woman slowly, with shapeless red fingers, untied her bonnet-strings and revealed herself as something at once agelessly primitive and most modernly degenerate. The frizzed thicket of coarse hair which broke into a line of tiny, quite circular curls round her low forehead made Ellen remember side-streets round Gorgie and Dalry, which the midday hooters filled with factory girls ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... welfare of the whole of which the thing is a part (bonum suitatis—bonum communionis). The second is not only the nobler but also the stronger; this holds of the lower creatures as well as of man, who, when not degenerate, prefers the general welfare to his individual interests. Love is the highest of the virtues, and is never, as other human endowments, exposed to the danger of excess; therefore the life of action is of more worth than the life of contemplation. By this principle ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... In this degenerate time there arose two men of the most diverse traits and descent, whose lives, running parallel for many years, furnish at once instructive studies and involve graphic pictures of public affairs. The elder of them was with Scipio when Numantia fell ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... died only a Viscount! But the house of Marney had risen to high rank; counted themselves ancient nobility; and turned up their noses at the Pratts and the Smiths, the Jenkinsons and the Robinsons of our degenerate days; and never had done anything for the nation or for their honours. And why should they now? It was unreasonable to expect it. Civil and religious liberty, that had given them a broad estate and a glittering coronet, to say nothing of half-a-dozen close seats in parliament, ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... righteous daring may not have been crowned with victory; and suspect that on such events were gradually built up the dragon-slaying legends which charmed all Europe, and grew in extravagances and absurdities, till they began to degenerate into the bombast of the "Seven Champions," and expired in the immortal ballad of the "Dragon of Wantley," in which More of More Hall, on the morning of his battle with the monster, invoked ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... find in this letter an outline of what Professor James would suggest as steps toward vivisection reform? In perfunctory inspection of laboratories or supervision by State inspectors, he has no confidence; such inspection would probably degenerate into a sham. A well-known experimentor once said to the rwiter: "Your inspectors of laboratories must be either well-educated and competent men, or else officials of the grade of the average policemen. If the belong to the first class, do you think they will become detectives and spies? ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... scarify them when bark-bound, brushing them over with the composition. It is also advised to plant quince trees at a proper distance from apple and pears, as bees and the wind may mix the farina, and occasion the apples and pears to degenerate. These trees may be raised from the kernels of the fruit sown in autumn; but there is no depending on having the same sort of good fruit from seedlings, nor will they soon become bearers. But the several varieties may be continued the same by cuttings ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... philosophic study. He claims Philosophy as his mistress in The Fisher, and in a case where he is in fact judge as well as party, has no difficulty in getting his claim established. He is for ever reminding us that he loves philosophy and only satirizes the degenerate philosophers of his day. But it will occur to us after reading him through that he has dissembled his love, then, very well. There is not a passage from beginning to end of his works that indicates any real comprehension of any philosophic system. The external ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... a man intent upon immediate physical enjoyment; an idle drifter without spiritual ideals. From his character and that of the Edomites, his descendants, there is taught the lesson that such an unambitious man or nation will always become degenerate and prove a failure. God himself cannot make a man ...
— The Bible Period by Period - A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... the beginning's of these various degenerate and illiterate attempts at book-work we have only to watch the last expiring gleams of classic art beneath the ruthless footsteps of the barbarian invaders of the old ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... for the most part, the sons of the bolder barbarians of the North; and, contaminated by the craft of Italy, rather than imbued with its national affections, they retained the disdain of their foreign ancestors for a conquered soil and a degenerate people. While the rest of Italy, especially in Florence, in Venice, and in Milan, was fast and far advancing beyond the other states of Europe in civilisation and in art, the Romans appeared rather to recede than to improve;—unblest by laws, unvisited ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... "chattel" (cattle, land, buildings, places of worship, or "stock") in common. All brothers took the oath of abandoning all feuds of old; and, without imposing upon each other the obligation of never quarrelling again, they agreed that no quarrel should degenerate into a feud, or into a law-suit before another court than the tribunal of the brothers themselves. And if a brother was involved in a quarrel with a stranger to the guild, they agreed to support him for bad and for ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... Doris seemed to perceive, the traditions of his birth and breeding had returned upon him; something instinctive and inherited had reappeared; and the gentlemanly, easy-going father, who yet, as Doris remembered, when matters were serious "always got his way," was there—strangely there—in the degenerate son. ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... start, "Why, I'm seeing and hearing all this!" It is such a book as an historian of the modern school would delight in, more engrossing than fiction of the most realistic type. There is incident in it too—as of the degenerate KUROLYESSOFF, a cousin-in-law of MIHAILOVITCH, who used to flog his serfs, sometimes to death, for the pleasure of seeing them suffer; while the opening pages, describing the trekking of the family out of far-eastern Orenburg into the adjoining province of Ufa, and the building of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 9, 1917 • Various
... of this same subject, that "the current opinion of Indian character is too apt to be formed from the miserable hordes which infest the frontiers, and hang on the shirts of settlements. These are too commonly composed of degenerate beings, corrupted and enfeebled by the voice of society, without being benefited by ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... dozen,—and in the doorway, with arms akimbo and hands on massive hips, gaped Jap's mulatto wife, for of such measure was the man. Graves crossed the alley, suppressing such of his five senses as he could shift without, and ascertained that the degenerate Jasper, true to prophecy, was fishing from the dock in ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... quarter of Cairo," Margaret said. "It seems to me so vulgar and degenerate. The native quarter is just what it sets out to be, no ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... himself, as we shall soon see, has specified one link large and strong enough to answer for a chain in holding together British sailors at least, and New Zealanders, or, indeed, any other savages, however degenerate and abominable, to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... open, as if to convey the idea that it was an office rather than a young lady's boudoir—a place of business and not a drawing-room. It was a very pretty room, as Sarrasin saw at a glance when he entered it with a grand and old-fashioned bow, such as men make no more in these degenerate days. It was very quietly decorated with delicate colours, and a few etchings and many flowers; and Dolores herself came from behind her writing desk, smiling and blushing, to meet her tall visitor. The old soldier scanned her as he would have scanned a new recruit, ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... improvement of the New Leicester sheep, effected by Bakewell and his successors, says, "It would seem as if they had first drawn a perfect form, and then given it life." Youatt[447] urges the necessity of annually drafting each flock, as many animals will certainly degenerate "from the standard of excellence, which the breeder has established in his own mind." Even with a bird of such little importance as the canary, long ago (1780-1790) rules were established, and a standard of perfection was fixed, according to which the London fanciers tried to breed ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... all the Indians, and their degenerate children no longer dwell in garrisoned houses nor hear any war-whoop in their path. It would be well, perchance, if many an "English Chaplin" in these days could exhibit as unquestionable trophies of his valor ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... against the bold highwaymen, the border moss-troopers or the ranting Highlandmen of song and story, but against a plain, Twentieth Century police trap which was being worked very successfully along this road. Such was our approach in these degenerate days to "Merrie Carlile," which figured so largely in the endless border warfare between the Scotch and English. But why the town should have been famed as "Merrie Carlile" would be hard to say, unless more than a thousand years of turmoil, bloodshed and almost ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... while I must differ from you? That is too disgracefully easy. Indeed, Adam, that riddle of yours brings back every doubt, for they say—scientists and ologists and learned people, you know—that there is hope for delinquents and defectives, but none for degenerates, and that is an awfully degenerate joke." ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... whose guest I was, have a gold mine (the clay being treated by the "cyanide" process), I collected specimens for some time in the beautiful forests at the foot of the limestone mountains of Poak. Here I saw something of the Land Dayaks, but they are a poor degenerate breed, and not to be compared to the Sea Dayaks, who are born fighters, and whose predatory head-hunting instincts give a great deal of trouble to the government. These latter were the Dayaks I was anxious to meet, ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... come over to see my father, according to the courtesy of the country, as Mr. Rowe's probable successor; but in the meantime I had gone to hear him preach the Sunday after his arrival. A poet and a philosopher getting up into a Unitarian pulpit to preach the Gospel, was a romance in these degenerate days, a sort of revival of the primitive spirit of Christianity, which was ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... vicious outlaw of wide and evil repute? The renegade thief? The persecutor of women? The pitiless butcher of defenseless men? Were those fine, clean-cut features but a mask that covered an abyss of black evil? Did that broad forehead actually conceal the crafty, degenerate brain that planned and executed the bloody and treacherous piracy upon ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... avoid their company, and from that time have never seen them. The vilest inclinations, the basest actions, succeeded my amiable amusements and even obliterated the very remembrance of them. I must have had, in spite of my good education, a great propensity to degenerate, else the declension could not have followed with such ease and rapidity, for never did so promising a Caesar ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... Samuel possessed a primordial talent that is rather rare in these physically degenerate days. He said nothing, but stood quietly in the middle of the road. The eyes of the crowd on either side of the road began to bulge, the lips of all opened with wonder, and a simultaneous burst of laughter rose around the Hon. Samuel Budd. A dozen men sprang to their feet ...
— A Knight of the Cumberland • John Fox Jr.
... astounding truth about the young blackleg who, having boarded and upset her daughter's boat, turned coward and scuttled off, ignoring her frightened cries. Nor would she fail to express her sincere sympathy for Colonel Dalhousie, whose heart (she understood) the behavior of his degenerate ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... the left nor to the right. His eyes were fixed and yet unseeing, his features were pale and bony. There was no gleam of life, not even in the stone-cold eyes. Like some machine-made man of a new and physically degenerate age, he took his exercise under the eye of his doctor, a ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... published an article about Spanish women, with particular reference to Basque women, in which I maintained that they sacrificed natural kindliness and sympathy on the altars of honour and religion, whereupon the Daughters of Mary of San Sebastian made answer, charging that I was a degenerate son of their city, who had robbed them of their honour, which was absolutely contrary to the fact. In passing, they suggested to the editor of the Nuevo Mundo that he should not permit me to write ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... President, a cripple, a degenerate, responsible for his actions, certainly, but a man in whom the doctors will find every form of wasting illness: disease of the spinal cord, tuberculosis, and all the rest ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... incomprehensible pair. Let me say at once that it was singularly successful. Perhaps the wisdom of the ages in which Oro flourished had overlooked so small a matter as electric torches, or perhaps he did not expect to meet with them in these degenerate days. At any rate for the first and last time in my intercourse with him I saw the god, or lord—the native word bears either meaning—Oro genuinely astonished. He started and stepped back, and for a moment or two seemed a little frightened. Then muttering something as to the cleverness ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... Pachyphyllum, Chonophyllum, Acervularia, Spongophyllum, Smithia, Endophyllum, and Cystiphyllum, have now disappeared; and the great masses of Favosites which are such a striking feature in the Devonian limestones, are represented but by one or two degenerate and puny successors. On the other hand, we meet in the Carboniferous rocks not only with entirely new genera—such as Axophyllum, Lophophyllum, and Londsdaleia—but we have an enormous expansion of certain types which ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... propriety of this order of things, yet we would not have you imagine that we underestimate the value of a respectable lineage, but it is better to be the originator of a great family than to be the degenerate descendant ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... power, the other typifies the sordid ignorance and fearful superstition of the credulous masses which maintains the power of the first. High in the streets of Moscow, where one may see the pallid, long-haired, degenerate-looking venders of holy lies and pious impositions shuffle along like spectres from a remoter age, there hangs a woven streamer of scarlet hue with huge white lettering, which defiantly proclaims that religion is the ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... at night upon the second of August—the most terrible August in the history of the world. One might have thought already that God's curse hung heavy over a degenerate world, for there was an awesome hush and a feeling of vague expectancy in the sultry and stagnant air. The sun had long set, but one blood-red gash like an open wound lay low in the distant west. Above, the stars were shining ...
— His Last Bow - An Epilogue of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... blast, Unfurls, in proud array, Its glittering width of splendour unsurpassed,— For England's sake, For our dear Sovereign's sake,— We cry all shame on traitors, high and low, Whose word let no man take, Whose love let no man seek throughout the land,— Traitors who strive, with most degenerate hand, To ...
— The Song of the Flag - A National Ode • Eric Mackay
... nevertheless, Rene Dumesnil has proved that his sudden decease was caused not by apoplexy but by hystero-neurasthenia. Eye strain played hob with the happiness of Carlyle, and an apostle of sweetness and light declared that Ibsen was a "degenerate"—Ibsen, who led the humdrum exterior life of a healthy bourgeois. Lombroso has demonstrated—to his own satisfaction—that Dante's mystic illumination was due to some brand of mental disorder. In fact, this self-styled psychologist mapped anew ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... certain set of men until the moment they lost their power, and who never agreed with them in a single instance afterwards? Would not such a coincidence of interest and opinion be rather fortunate? Would it not be an extraordinary cast upon the dice, that a man's connexions should degenerate into faction, precisely at the critical moment when they lose their power, or he accepts a place? When people desert their connexions, the desertion is a manifest FACT, upon which a direct simple issue lies, triable by plain men. Whether a MEASURE of government be right ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... been so, that what the chiefs of the Up-Swedes have resolved among them, to this the other men of the land have listened. Our fathers needed not to receive advice from the West Gauts about their ruling of the land. Now are we not so degenerate that Emund need teach us counsel; I would have us bind our counsel together, kinsmen ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... the distant hills, and the silent stars were slowly coming into view. Clean, health-giving Baden-Baden, in the Valley of the Oos, with its beauty and its pure air, was holding out her arms to all the disease and filth that degenerate riches produce. ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... effort of friendship as this of Fireblood's should too violently surprize the reader in this degenerate age, it may be proper to inform him that, beside the ties of engagement in the same employ, another nearer and stronger alliance subsisted between our hero and this youth, which latter was just departed from the arms of the lovely Laetitia when he received ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... equally heroic achievements in the drinking line, but, alas! I have only heard of one old man who was wont habitually to en-gulph twenty-two litres of wine a day; eight are spoken of as "almost too much" in these degenerate days. ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... fly of self must always poison this young man's ointment, and to-night there was some excuse from his degenerate point of view. He must give it up. Stingaree was right; it was only one man in thousands who could do unerringly what he had done that night. Oswald Melvin was not that man. He saw it for himself at last. But it was a bitter hour for him. Life in the music-shop would ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... moreover, in the language of Montaigne, of one substance with the author, being the author himself. And yet one could hardly say that this style breaks with tradition. He stops short just at the point at which his idiosyncrasies would degenerate into faults.—From PETIT DE JULLEVILLE, Histoire de la littrature ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... of the God's interference with the course of events—what does it mean? This is unquestionably the fundamental problem with the earnest student of Homer. Let us observe, then, first, that the poet's principle is not to allow a divine intervention to degenerate into a merely external mechanical act; himself full of the spirit of the God, he puts the divine influence inside the individual as well as outside, and thus preserves the latter's freedom in the providential order. ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... nipples of the Cows in the form of irregular pustules. At their first appearance they are commonly of a palish blue, or rather of a colour somewhat approaching to livid, and are surrounded by an erysipelatous inflammation. These pustules, unless a timely remedy be applied, frequently degenerate into phagedenic ulcers, which prove extremely troublesome[2]. The animals become indisposed, and the secretion of milk is much lessened. Inflamed spots now begin to appear on different parts of the hands of the domestics employed in milking, and sometimes on the wrists, which quickly run on to ...
— An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae • Edward Jenner
... of to-day is the degenerate son of the conquering warriors of a thousand years ago. Once his name carried terror to the shores of the Midland Sea. Now those who do not like him can say with some truth that he lives the life of an animal, mating rather ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... time Cornelio Felizardo had an American in his gang. This degenerate, Luis A. Unselt, was fortunately captured and sentenced, on April 6, 1904, to twenty-five years' imprisonment as a deserter ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... into his mouth and made him the arch-anarch of the show, transforming his reactionary individualism into the most lurid, red- shirt socialist utterance. The cub reporter was an artist, and it was a large brush with which he laid on the local color—wild-eyed long-haired men, neurasthenia and degenerate types of men, voices shaken with passion, clenched fists raised on high, and all projected against a background of oaths, yells, and the throaty rumbling of ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... indolence), dulls the edge of all industry, and is one of the most powerful ingredients in the Circean potion which transforms many of the most promising young men into the beastly forms which, in sluggish idleness, feed upon the labors of others. The degenerate sentiment, I hope, will never obtain admission in my mind; and, if my mind should be loitered away in stupid laziness, it will be under the full conviction of my conscience that I am basely bartering the greatest benefits with which human beings can be indulged, for the miserable gratifications ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... the stranger both in his outward seeming and his converse, melted by the warmth of a romantic devotion almost unknown in these degenerate days, though common enough of yore, Miss Almira paused a moment in the proud compliance of one about to gladly bestow an inestimable, but hardly hoped-for gift, and crying, "It can be done, it shall be done," threw herself ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... can, therefore, claim from us no further consideration; it is mere naked rudeness and selfishness, ill-disguised by the gaudy rays of outward decency; a mere cherishing of the sensual nature which, left to itself, would soon degenerate into monstrous barbarism, of which we already ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... such an education are not counteracted by the life of the battle-field or the laborious sport of hunting. And if the laws of etiquette and Court manners can act on the spinal marrow to such an extent as to affect the pelvis of kings, to soften their cerebral tissue, and so degenerate the race, what deep-seated mischief, physical and moral, must result in schoolboys from the constant lack of ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... feeling: wise, modest, unenvious, and unambitious. Meaner men, their contemporaries or successors, raved of high art with incoherent passion; arrogated to themselves an equality with the masters of elder time, and declaimed against the degenerate tastes of a public which acknowledged not the return of the Heraclidae. But the two great—the two only painters of their age—happy in a reputation founded as deeply in the heart as in the judgment of mankind, demanded no higher function ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... well as privilege to perfect our constitution, and see that it does not wear out too soon, that we are not prematurely called away from our duties. And I bring it as serious charge against modern systems of education, that they tend to degenerate mankind, to impair the constitution and to shorten life. That we should not submit to this, but should all aspire to live a century or longer, if we have a fair opportunity, I seriously maintain, and that my readers may be inspired with a like determination, I take ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various
... Serbia, and would-be murderers of Russia and Rumania, the murderers of tens of thousands of civilians and soldiers of our blood, and the accomplices in numberless unspeakable crimes committed in this war against humanity by the two degenerate and irresponsible dynasties. We will not remain a part of a State which has no justification ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... of beauty, but beauty which had power and much masculine strength; nowhere did it degenerate into flaccidity, nowhere lose strength in grace. His hair was long, and I wondered at it. My small experience in our delightful home and village circle had not acquainted me with that flowing style; the young ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... reduction of the wings during the many generations in the course of which it was being effected, and who can testify that all, or the overwhelming majority, of the beetles born with fairly well-developed wings got blown out to sea, while those alone survived whose wings were congenitally degenerate. Who saw them go, or can point to analogous cases so conclusive as to compel ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... of it, he does not continue the same through an whole sentence, if it happens to be of any sweep or compass. In the very womb of this last sentence, pregnant, as it should seem, with a Hercules, there is formed a little bantling of the mortal race, a degenerate, puny parenthesis, that totally frustrates our most sanguine views and expectations, and disgraces the whole gestation. Here is this destructive parenthesis: "Unless some adequate compensation be secured ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... supremer test of character. Eleven years of hotel housekeepership guarantees a knowledge of human nature that includes some things no living being ought to know about her fellow men. And inevitably one of two results must follow. You degenerate into a bitter, waspish, and fault-finding shrew; or you develop into a patient, tolerant, and infinitely understanding woman. Martha Foote dealt daily with Polack scrub girls, and Irish porters, and Swedish chambermaids, and Swiss waiters, and Halsted Street bell-boys. ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... temperate and equable of themselves; if otherwise, they degenerate into seditious and unlawful. This is it which makes me walk everywhere with my head erect, my face and my heart open. In truth, and I am not afraid to confess it, I should easily, in case of need, hold up one candle to St. Michael and another to his dragon, like the old woman; I will ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... himself to Colonel Morley, but finding that degenerate son of America indisposed to get cent. per cent. for his money when offered by a Parisian, he very soon took his leave. The other visitors followed his example, except Rameau, who was left alone with the Venosta ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Queen is a princess of as many and great virtues as ever filled a throne: How would it brighten her character to the present and after ages, if she would exert her utmost authority to instil some share of those virtues into her people, which they are too degenerate to learn only from her example! And, be it spoke with all the veneration possible for so excellent a sovereign, her best endeavours in this weighty affair are a most important part of her duty, as well as of ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... adds a steady current of what I may be allowed to call the rancid. That is exciting to the moralist; but what more particularly interests the artist is this tendency of the extreme of detail, when followed as a principle, to degenerate into mere feux-de-joie of literary tricking. The other day even M. Daudet was to be heard babbling of audible colours and ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... while in the region adjoining the Guianga they have intermarried with that people and have adopted many of their customs as well as dress. On the headwaters of the Lasan river we are told that they are known as Dugbatang or Dugbatung; that they are a timid degenerate branch having no fixed habitations and very little clothing; they are small, with crispy hair, and often decorate their bodies with tattooed designs. About twenty miles up the Tuganay river Governor Bolton encountered a similar group of Ata whom he describes as being very wild. ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... blasphemous toast will show the animus of the assembly, and of its orators. It was delivered by M. Saint Just:—"To the men strong, courageous, and valiant in the cause of humanity. To those whose names serve as a guide, a support, and an example to the degenerate beings—to all those whom history calls heroes!... To Brutus, to Catiline, to Jesus Christ, to Julian the Apostate, to Attila!... To all the thinkers of the middle age.... To unfortunate thinkers!... To Jean Jacques Rousseau, and his pupil, Maximilian ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... nay, we must resist unto death their malign influence and power. But alas, what are we doing to-day? Instead of looking up to the pure and lofty souls of Europe for guidance, we welter in the mud with the lowest and most degenerate. We are beginning to know and appreciate English whiskey, but not English freedom; we know the French grisettes, but not the French sages; we guzzle German beer, but of German wisdom we taste ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... imbecile, or tuberculous, everybody would cry out with horror, and she would become a social outcast. But if she inflicts these injuries on her granddaughter, by marrying her daughter to a drunkard, in the hope of reforming him, or to a wealthy degenerate, or an imbecile baron, no one says a word, provided the marriage law ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... an inverse ratio of excellence to their character at home. The best people in the mother-country will generally be the worst in the colonies; the worst at home will be the best abroad. Or, perhaps, I may state it less offensively thus:—The colonists of a well governed-country will degenerate; those of an ill-governed country will improve. I am now considering the natural tendency of such colonists if left to themselves; of course, a direct act of the legislature of the mother-country will break in ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... posture, dress, grimace, and affectation, 10 Though foes to sense, are harmless to the nation. Our last redress is dint of verse to try, And Satire is our Court of Chancery. This way took Horace to reform an age, Not bad enough to need an author's rage: But yours,[19] who lived in more degenerate times, Was forced to fasten deep, and worry crimes. Yet you, my friend, have temper'd him so well, You make him smile in spite of all his zeal: An art peculiar to yourself alone, 20 To join the virtues of ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... These latter have often been aware of such sexual manifestations in their children for a long time, but a false shame has prevented them from asking the advice of the physician. They have been afraid lest he should regard the child as intellectually or morally deficient, or as the offspring of a degenerate family. In addition, we have to take into account self-deception on the part of the parents, who, indeed, often deceive themselves willingly, saying to themselves that the matter is of no importance, and that the ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... and simplicity of his confession: A sinner: I am a sinner; "God be merciful to me a sinner." This indeed he was, and this indeed confesses; and this, I say, he doth of godly simplicity. For, for a man to confess himself a sinner, it is to speak all against himself that can be spoken. And man, as degenerate, is too much an hypocrite, and too much a self-flatterer, thus to confess against himself, unless made simple and honest about the thing through the power of conviction upon his heart. And it is yet worth your noting, that he doth not say he was, or had been, but that ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... means of violence of one against the other and of State against State, we shall, first, keep subjecting ourselves more and more, transferring the major portion of our productiveness to armaments; and, secondly, by killing in mutual wars the best physically developed men, we must become more and more degenerate and ...
— "Bethink Yourselves" • Leo Tolstoy
... over-emphasis upon competitive games. Play is necessary for the growing boy and play that engages many participants has the most value. America today is suffering from highly specialized, semi-professional athletics and games. "When athletics degenerate into a mere spectacle, then is the stability of the nation weakened. Greece led the world, while the youth of that great country deemed it an honor to struggle for the laurel leaf, and gymnasiums ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... mind, and fills a niche in our literary annals. The works of the scholastics, with the debates of these Quodlibetarians, at once show the greatness and the littleness of the human intellect; for though they often degenerate into incredible absurdities, those who have examined the works of Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus have confessed their admiration of the Herculean texture of brain which they exhausted in demolishing their ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... unwillingness to yield to each other's peculiarities, to a weakening of the family ties, to a lax morality. Carry it a trifle farther than it now is in some of the Western States, and marriage will lose all its sacredness, and degenerate into a physical union, not nobler than the crossing of flies in ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... King, most Holy Father, that this Lady, His spouse, sends her children whom you see here, who are not of a lower condition than those who came long before them. They do not degenerate; they have the comeliness both of their Father and their mother, since they make profession of the most perfect poverty. There is, therefore, no fear of their dying of poverty, being the children and heirs of the Immortal King, born of a poor mother, of the ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... no worse. Often many of our poor fellows had not the bare necessaries of life, and it was only by great exertion that I was able to procure them, as I have described, for myself and a few of my more intimate friends. I had not supposed that so degenerate a race of Frenchmen existed, for when they saw us all rapidly sickening and advancing towards the grave, instead of relaxing their system of tyranny, they only increased their ill-treatment, and made us believe that they really wished to put us to ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... emotion of his subject, but his emotion, his pathos, are invariably tempered and restrained by the calm moderation of the quattrocento. The golden mean still has command of Bellini, and never allows his feelings, however poignant, to degenerate into ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... further for victims. I believe that only a small proportion of the women who are in the houses of ill-fame—only a small proportion—make their way there of their own volition, and that small proportion are of the degenerate class who are born with a screw loose somewhere. From their babyhood they who are born with this taint—and we could, perhaps, trace that taint back—but born with that taint, they gradually go into that life—but they make a small proportion. The rest of them are either ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... eyes—eyes that saw everything except the small modicum of good which is in all human things, and to this they were persistently blind. Taking into consideration the small, set mouth, it was eminently a pugnacious face—a face that might easily degenerate to the coarseness of passion in the trough of a losing fight. But, fortunately, Luke's lines were cast upon the great waters, and he who fights the sea must learn to conquer, not by passionate effort, but by consistent, ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... making so much of such a common thing as a wheel. Idiots! Solomon's court fool would have scoffed at the thought of the young Galilean who dared compare the lilies of the field to his august master. Nil admirari is very well for a North American Indian and his degenerate successor, who has grown too grand to admire anything but himself, and takes a cynical pride in his stolid indifference to everything worth ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... was very agreeable, but spoke too lightly, I thought, of veal soup. I took him aside, and reasoned the matter with him, but in vain; to speak the truth, Luttrell is not steady in his judgments on dishes. Individual failures with him soon degenerate into generic objections, till, by some fortunate accident, he eats himself into better opinions. A person of more calm reflection thinks not only of what he is consuming at the moment, but of the soups of the same kind he has met with in a long course of dining, and which have gradually ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... only shake her head, and use her handkerchief, and moan over degenerate Dombeys, who are no Dombeys. But whether Florence has been inculpated in the flight of Edith, or has followed her, or has done too much, or too little, or anything, or nothing, she has not ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... Virtue, and Abhorrence of Vice, are carefully avoided by this Set of Shame-faced People, as what would disparage their Gayety of Temper, and infallibly bring them to Dishonour. This is such a Poorness of Spirit, such a despicable Cowardice, such a degenerate abject State of Mind, as one would think Human Nature incapable of, did we not meet with frequent Instances of it in ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele |
