"Demoralizing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the solution, so degrading to the nation, "that humanity is a secondary consideration to L s.d., and that justice goes for nothing." If such were not the principles on which we legislated, there never was a more complete failure. Not content with demoralizing the slave and ruining the owner, by our hasty and ill-matured plan of emancipation, we gave the latter a dirty kick when he was falling, by removing the little protection we had all put pledged our national faith that he should retain; ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... hundredth part of the necessary means. Failing to raise money directly, recourse was bad to the so-called loan-office certificates. These were issued to creditors of the government, and bore interest. The greater part of the military supplies were paid for in this extravagant and demoralizing fashion, and in 1789 they had to be settled, with accumulated interest amounting to nearly fifty per cent. Better success was had in Europe. No private banker would lend money to a set of rebels not recognized by any government as independent, ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... engage the mind of the masses are of a very different class. They are the wild legends of the Puranas, and inane dialogues and lying incantations of the Tantras—two classes of works which are both the most popular and are lowest in the range of their ideas and most demoralizing in the cults ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... old thing you are, Ken!" said Julia gratefully. And as Kennedy came over to stand near her, Julia gave her a little rub with her head, like an affectionate pony. "I think it's partly this hotel that's demoralizing me," Julia went on, a little shamed. "I feel so useless—getting up, eating, dressing, idling about, and going to bed again. Jim has his work, and I'll be glad ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... his great speech on the preceding day, wherein the grievous expensiveness and hideous immorality of Standing Armies were vividly portrayed. He did not hesitate to speak straight out on the subject of the demoralizing influence of Armies on the People among whom they were quartered or posted, and the broad track of moral desolation which an armed force everywhere leaves behind it. If the facts in this connection were but generally known, ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... of loss, and a rapacious love of gain, have become universal. Care for the means of daily existence, like creeping poison, unnerves the population. The anxious solicitude to which this gives rise has a deeply demoralizing effect. Even offices under government are less sought for from motives of ambition than as a means of subsistence; the arts and sciences have been degraded to mere sources of profit, envious trade decides ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... returned suddenly to us, and cast adrift, with no hope of finding immediate employment, and hankering for some excitements to replace those of the distant field. If little truth and little conscience have been at stake, these are the reasons which make wars so demoralizing: they leave society restored to peace, but still at war within itself, infested by those strange cravings, and tempted by a new ambition, that of waging successful wars. This will be the most dangerous country on the face of the earth, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... only of the ruthless command from the official higher up but also of the de-souling, materialistic influence of Socialism on the common people of Germany during the past twenty-five years? Is not the viciousness of Prussian militarism plus the demoralizing influence of Socialism a ...
— Socialism and American ideals • William Starr Myers
... Monarch, "if you're going to stay here at all, you must please to remember that this isn't a University. I simply won't have idlers loafing round wasting their own time and demoralizing society with their lazy habits. Pardon my abruptness" (he continued, more mildly), "but with all the exclusiveness in the world I can't prevent our getting a little mixed now and then, and if people come here with academic ideas I really couldn't be responsible for order and morality. ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... visible. They also refused, without preliminary "bakhshish," to show or even to tell where certain ruins, concerning which they spoke or romanced, are found in their hills. And yet there are theologians who would raise Poverty, the most demoralizing of all conditions, to the ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... off duty, she should not be allowed to remain with or to talk to the other employee or employees who are still on duty. When her work is finished, she ought to leave her employer's house. The non-observance of either of these two points produces a demoralizing effect. ...
— Wanted, a Young Woman to Do Housework • C. Helene Barker
... the American press, nine tenths of our journals abandoned many years ago the abominable practice of regularly publishing police cases; and that, making every allowance, English newspapers at present publish on an average ten times as much demoralizing matter as ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... rigid silence—I allude to the trade in opium; and I now unhesitatingly declare in this public manner that after the most unbiased and careful observations I have become convinced during my stay in China that the alleged demoralizing and debasing evils of opium have been and are vastly exaggerated. Like all other indulgences, excesses in its use are bad and reprehensible; but I have neither myself seen such vicious consequences as are frequently ascribed to it, nor have I been able to ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... deafening cracking of splitting iron everywhere—that is war. And accompanying it all the hopeless sensation that this will never, never stop, that it will go on like this forever, until one's thoughts are dulled by some terrible, cruel, incomprehensible, demoralizing force. Those bounding puffs of smoke everywhere on the ground, rifle shots which have been aimed too short and every one of which— That abominable sharp singing as of a swarm of mosquitoes, buzz, buzz, like ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... the most dangerous and demoralizing features of each legislature," he said to Bradley. "These girls come down here from every part of the State to cajole and flatter their way into a State House office. You see them down there buttonholing ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... for Abel Granitch. But no—he must have an outfit, complete even to a tooth-brush, which they would show him how to use. Having been done up neat and tight in khaki, with a motor-wheel on his sleeve to show his branch of the service, he stood and looked at himself in the glass, experiencing a demoralizing and unworthy excitement. He was every bit as handsome as Comrade Stankewitz! When he walked down the street would the girls giggle, and turn to look at him, as they did at the sedate and proper Comrade Emil? So the ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... after many other accusations, "I consider that Mr. Quarrier is setting the very worst, the most debasing, the most demoralizing example to these working folk, whose best interests he professes to have at heart. I am assured (and the witness of my own eyes in one instance warrants me in giving credit to the charge) that he constantly enters public-houses, taverns, even ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... be built, "to meet the increased population of the country, and to promote the religious and moral habits of the people." In the lords the address was voted nem. con.; in the commons it met with animadversion from Lord Althorp and Sir Samuel Romilly, who deprecated the demoralizing system of espionnage, as well as the arbitrary imprisonment and tyrannical persecutions which had lately been carried on by government; but the address ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... its associations. Remembering well his own heart up to the time when human interests and sympathies began to awaken kindred emotions within him, he understood that the resemblance between himself and his brother was as close on the moral side as it was on the physical, but with Ryder the demoralizing influences had worked their utmost. How like their sufferings had been! differing only in degree; but his own sufferings looked pale and fanciful now beside those of his brother. His afflictions were of ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... the practice, like all other illegal ones, was demoralizing to the community, and particularly fatal to the character of that class of bold, enterprising young men who would be most likely to be ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... position, the more wretched is her life. Married women are so afraid of resembling the professional dancing girls, that they cannot be persuaded to learn anything the latter are taught. If a Brahman woman is rich her life is spent in demoralizing idleness; if she is poor, so much the worse, her earthly existence is concentrated in monotonous performances of mechanical rites. There is no past, and no future for her; only a tedious present, from which there is no possible escape. And this only if everything be well, if her family ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... designing parties. When my son Cuthbert entered —— University, he was all that my fond heart desired, all that his sainted mother could have hoped, and no young gentleman on the wide Continent gave fairer promise of future usefulness and distinction; but one year of demoralizing association with dissipated and reckless youths undermined the fair moral and intellectual structure I had so laboriously raised, and in an unlucky hour he fell a victim to alluring vices. Intemperance gradually gained such supremacy that he was threatened with expulsion, and to crown all ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... the place where it was not expected. They raced around the bases. They made long runs from first to third. They were like flashes of light, slippery as eels. The bewildered infielders knew they were being played with. The taunting "boo-hoos" and screams of delight from the bleachers were as demoralizing as the illusively daring runners. Closer and closer the infielders edged in until they were right on top of the batters. Then Dale and his men began to bunt little infield flies over the heads of their opponents. ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... lotus-eating land of the kind should have produced inhabitants to match. A few only of the Paraguayans had had the advantage of travelling in Europe, and on their return to their native land its atmosphere very seldom permitted them to remain for long without the local and somewhat demoralizing influences. ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... work. To these disadvantages were added Caecina's inveterate self-seeking and his newly-acquired indolence. An overdose of success had made him slack and self-indulgent, or, if he was plotting treachery, this may have been one of his devices for demoralizing the army. It has often been believed that it was Flavius Sabinus[454] who, using Rubrius Gallus as his agent, tampered with Caecina's loyalty by promising that, if he came over, Vespasian would ratify any conditions. It may have occurred also to Caecina to remember his quarrels and rivalry ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... in elocution. Mr. G—— and myself have been trying to read Shakespeare a little; but some gentlemen here have had some qualms of conscience as to the propriety of it, and have condemned the reading of Shakespeare as demoralizing. What is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... truth, but only by the deadening of truth, as a butcher freezes meat in order to carry it across the sea. Orthodoxy discredits and discourages inquiry, and has made the name of free thinker, which ought to be a crown and glory, a stigma of disgrace. It puts men in the base and demoralizing position in which they apologize for seeking new truth. It is responsible for a large part of the defiant liberalism which not merely disbelieves the orthodox dogma, but disbelieves it with a sense of attempted wrong and of triumphant escape. It is orthodoxy and not truth which has done ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... human freedom made reasonable allowance for a man brought up under such demoralizing influences as Thomas Hughes had been, they of course felt less confidence in him, than they would have done had he sought to obtain liberty by some more commendable process. Being aware of this, he returned to his master, not long after he acknowledged ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... sternly, "this is hypocrisy, which is just next door to lying. It's the first step downward. I have a feeling that this boy is demoralizing us! We shall have to get rid ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... more confirmed" [he said, Jan, 3, 1882] "in my belief that there is something demoralizing in politics and parties. I, at any rate, shall never be able to join a party which has the majority on its side. Bjoernson says, 'The majority is always right'; and as a practical politician he is bound, I suppose, to say so. I, on the contrary, ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... earning of the motion picture men. What I object to is the demoralizing effect such a picture film would have. It would tend to make a hero out of this man, and I don't propose that the young shall be allowed to worship him ...
— The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt • Oliver Remey
... gunboats." The impression among Confederates there present was that the gunboats saved the army by saving the landing and transports, while during the night the shrieking of the VIII-inch shells through the woods, tearing down branches and trees in their flight, and then sharply exploding, was demoralizing to a degree. The nervous strain caused by watching for the repetition, at measured intervals, of a painful ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... the General Federation, or through local activity in their home towns. An immense group of women thus early became committed to an active opposition to the employment of children either in factories, or under the even more dangerous and demoralizing conditions which await mere babies in the street or ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... great pleasure. He saw that despite her constant association with such demoralizing influences, Mrs. McGee was still a true Southern gentlewoman. And as a morsel of yeast may leaven the entire lump of dough, so her presence here in the midst of such unruly elements might ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... upon the public as works of genius which, in order to maintain a reputation for intellect, it is essential to admire. I do not believe that all this is accidental; I do not believe that the public asks for the anti-patriotic or demoralizing books and plays placed before it; on the contrary, it invariably responds to an appeal to patriotism and simple healthy emotions. The heart of the people is still sound, but ceaseless efforts are made to ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... racially segregated blood banks. The Red Cross readily admitted that it had no scientific justification for the racial separation of blood and blamed the armed services for the decision. Despite the evidence of science and at risk of demoralizing the black community, the Army's Surgeon General defended the controversial practice as necessary to insure the acceptance of a potentially unpopular program. Ignoring constant criticism from the NAACP and elements ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... boarding can be the same as house-keeping," said March. "I want my little girl to have the run of a kitchen, and I want the whole family to have the moral effect of housekeeping. It's demoralizing to board, in every way; it isn't a home, if anybody else takes the care of it off ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... restless under the restraints imposed by a committee of incompetents; besides, the minister who was chairman of the Board, considered a Unitarian to be an infidel, demoralizing the religious life of the young. I grew tired of his malicious peccadillos, and accepted a "louder" call from that quaint town where the historic Lloyd Ireson "with his hord horrt was torrd and futhered und Korrid in a Kort by the ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... discipline and efficiency. So to keep the peace in a college means to remove the necessary causes of disturbance and disorder. If young Sardanapalus, by his extravagance and riotous profusion and dissipation, constantly thwarts the essential purpose of the college, demoralizing the students and obstructing the peaceful course of its instruction, he ought to be dismissed. The college must judge the conditions under which its work may be most properly and efficiently accomplished, and to achieve ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... backward pupil: Servitude was not the nurse of your childhood; you are getting on in years when she takes you in hand; accordingly, you will do her little credit, and give little satisfaction to your lord. Recollections of Freedom will exercise their demoralizing influence upon you, causing you to jib at times, and you will make villanous work of your new profession. Or will your aspirations after Freedom be satisfied, perhaps, with the thought, that you are no son ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... inherited a dread of the ultimate results of slavery. He wished—it had been accounted sensible in his family to wish—that slavery had never existed. Having existed, they never thought of favoring its extinction. They thought it corrupting and demoralizing to the white race. They felt that it was separating them, year by year, farther and farther from that independent self-relying manhood, which had built up American institutions and American prosperity. They feared the fruit of this demoralization. For ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... Kaiser and his war lords were determined to risk all in one mighty effort—an effort which should break through the French line at Verdun, thus bringing kudos to the armies of Prussia, and at the same time demoralizing the French soldiers. Who knows? They may have hoped to dash through the gap thus formed, and once more advance on Paris. In any case, they were well aware of the phenomenal rise in power of the British forces. Five million men had volunteered to fight for king and ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... her diary, "for a man and a woman to have a close sympathetic friendship without the tendrils of one soul becoming fastened around the other, with the result of infinite pain and anguish." Then again she wrote, "There is nothing more demoralizing than lying. The act itself is scarcely so base as the lie which ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... the wasteful and demoralizing spoils system, in vogue ever since the first administration of Jackson, Congress passed, January 16, 1883, "an act to regulate and improve the Civil Service of the United States." Under the provisions of this act, the President appoints three commissioners, only two of whom may be of ...
— Government and Administration of the United States • Westel W. Willoughby and William F. Willoughby
... Stratton," said Tarvrille as if he were expanding Philip's assertion, "there's been too many divorces in society. It's demoralizing people. It's discrediting us. It's setting class against class. Everybody is saying why don't these big people either set about respecting the law or altering it. Common people are getting too infernally clear-headed. Hitherto it's mattered so little.... But we can't ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... Tipping is demoralizing, but it is an accepted custom. On your departure after a short stay, at Newport or a very fashionable resort, the servant who attends you should have five dollars, the butler five dollars, the coachman five dollars, and the chambermaid ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... allied navies without enemies on the sea, worked in the same way. Furthermore, the efficiency of the English navy, which was double in numbers that of the Dutch, was at this time at a low pitch; the demoralizing effects of the reign of Charles II. could not be wholly overcome during the three years of his brother's rule, and there was a yet more serious cause of trouble growing out of the political state of England. ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... the wandering tribes of Asia and Africa. Therefore it is necessary—economic science and morality absolutely command it—for us to solve the problem of division: now, where are the economists? More than thirty years ago, Lemontey, developing a remark of Smith, exposed the demoralizing and homicidal influence of the division of labor. What has been the reply; what investigations have been made; what remedies proposed; has the question ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... little curiosity a healthy-minded girl may have, by reason of a natural coldness of temperament, to acquire such knowledge, it becomes, in spite of her, part of her daily surroundings and she cannot escape its contaminating, demoralizing influence. ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... and ungodly bargains; or, in other words, to turn her into a mass of bribes—a base appendage to the authority of the British minister, who used her as the successful medium of at once enslaving and demoralizing the country, instead of elevating and civilizing it. It is for this great neglect of national duty, and for permitting ourselves to be imbued with the carnal and secular spirit, which has led us so far from practical truth and piety, that the church is now suffering. We have betrayed our trust, ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... phases of evolution and considering only that part of the system which robs man of the dignity conferred upon him by separate creation, when God breathed into him the breath of life and he became the first man, I venture to call attention to the demoralizing influence exerted ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... all men are declared to be equal (which man never will permit his fellow to be if he can prevent it), the only source of distinction is wealth, and thus the desire of wealth becomes the ruling passion of the whole body, and there is no passion so demoralizing. The other is, that where the people, or, more properly speaking, the mob govern, they must be conciliated by flattery and servility on the part of those who would become their idols. Now flattery is lying, and a habit equally demoralizing to the party who gives and to the party ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... should be taken in payment of the rate. The Kells and Fore Committee add, with truth, that this labour, being carried on under the ordinary relations of employer and employed, would be free from the difficulties of superintendence, and the demoralizing effects which "charity works" are apt to ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... orders of the clergy. They were ignorant, debauched, and ambitious. The monks were exceedingly numerous; had ceased to be men of prayer and contemplation, as in the days of Benedict and Bernard; and might be seen frequenting places of demoralizing excitement, devoted to pleasure, and enriched by ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... general society and in individual life among the people. He must not hesitate to use constantly his voice as a protest against all forms of evil. This duty is the more incumbent upon him as there are none among the people to protest and to denounce the most flagrant, demoralizing and universal evils of the land. One of the most discouraging things concerning the situation in India is, not the universality of certain evils, but the utter absence of those who dare to withstand them and denounce them as sins before all the people. Missionaries have done more in ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... To further show how demoralizing the traffic was I will relate an instance: “Old Bull Tail,” a chief of the Sioux, had an only daughter, who was named Chint-zille. She was very handsome as savage beauty goes, and the old chief really loved her, for the North American Indian is possessed of as much devotion to his family as ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... and in the depths, of the Western wilderness an armed host was working and cheating for Astor, and, in turn, being cheated by their employer; while, for Astor's gain, they were violating all laws, debauching, demoralizing and beggaring entire tribes of Indians, slaying and often being themselves slain in retaliation, what was the beneficiary of this orgy of crime and ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... sent home, Many of these heroines declared that they entered the army because they could find no other employment. The incognito they had preserved was strongly confirmatory of their truthfulness. These are some of the minor effects of the war upon our sex. Many have been sadly demoralizing, while probably very few have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... his part of the plan; but when he had nearly reached Monmouth, he found, to his amazement, that Lee had gone there, but had done no fighting at all, and was now actually retreating, and coming in his direction. As it would be demoralizing in the highest degree to his own command, if Lee's armed forces in full retreat should come upon them, Washington hurried forward to prevent anything of the sort, and soon met Lee. When the latter was asked what was the meaning of this strange proceeding, he could give no good reason, except ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton
... cutting of rates and the sudden fluctuations that constantly take place are demoralizing to all business except that of a purely speculative character, and frequently occasion great ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... aggravated in her case. Men of the higher classes of society can, by entering a political or military life, make duties for themselves. Women in the same station are not allowed these channels of escape from the demoralizing idleness and luxury to which their social position confines them. On the other hand, women of the middle class, who are above menial service but who are forced to work, have the choice of a few despised employments. Milliners ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... serial form in Scribner's, Pearson's and other reliable periodicals (accounts which bear the impress of truth, and are hardly liable to the charge of having been written within too close range of time and space, or vice versa, to be strictly truthful), indicate the demoralizing and debasing effects of the "system" from its initial period, this followed up by the blighting influences of slave life, even under the most favorable conditions, for nearly two hundred and fifty years, left upon ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... importance and merits, it arouses latent brutality, it fosters grandiose thinking (that terribly harmful vice of nearly all our statesmen). Indeed, most of the cruelty and injustice in the world are due to the demoralizing influence of authority. And that is why there were some amongst us who would not have accepted promotion whatever material advantages it might ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... volley, which had been fired from a distance of barely a dozen yards. Seeing the effect of their fusillade, the buccaneers rose cheering and yelling from behind the bulwarks of the sloop in the evident belief that they had succeeded in demoralizing the attacking force. But the speed of the boat had hardly been checked. In another instant the rowers shipped their oars and the gunwale scraped along ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... generation. When a slave escapes from a Southern plantation, he at once takes a name as the first step in liberty—the first assertion of individual identity. A woman's dignity is equally involved in a life-long name, to mark her individuality. We can not overestimate the demoralizing effect on woman herself, to say nothing of society at large, for her to consent thus to merge her existence so wholly in that ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... him, however untrue and improbable his story may be;" and if, whilst the Anti-corn-law League can display such perseverance, determination, and system, its opponents obstinately remain supine and silent, can any one wonder if such progress be not made by the League, in their demoralizing and revolutionary enterprize, that it will soon be too late to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... imaginable pretext for distinguishing the case from its predecessor. Underlying all is a nervous terror of the abuse of freedom founded on the assumption that men will continue to act when free exactly as they acted under the demoralizing influence of coercion. The British Empire has grown, and continues to grow, in spite of this deeply rooted political doctrine. Ireland is peculiar only in that her proximity to the seat of power has exposed her for centuries ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... Intention been innocent" (p. 6 [note the suspicion of Swift's political and religious bias]), the author is mildly pleased with the first three voyages. But he finds intolerable the satire on human nature in the last, here echoing Addison's criticism of the demoralizing effect of a satire on mankind (Spectator ...
— A Letter From a Clergyman to his Friend, - with an Account of the Travels of Captain Lemuel Gulliver • Anonymous
... Captain Pike was demoralizing to the youthful mind. He didn't mention you. And Cap certainly did ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... whose brain may be dizzy with excess, whose limbs may be paralyzed, or if sound in body, may be without aim or ambition, without plans or projects, destitute of executive ability or good judgment in the business affairs of life. And such sentimentalists, after demoralizing women with their twaddle, discourage our demand for the right of suffrage by pointing us to the fact that the majority of women are indifferent to this movement in their behalf. Suppose they are; have not the masses of all oppressed ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... hand that could weld the warring elements into one, and push Russian trade far down from Alaska to New Spain, driving off the field those foreigners whose relentless methods—liquor, bludgeon, musket—were demoralizing the Indian ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... for the time being to Uncle Sam, I was a species of government property, which it was my duty to protect at all hazards. That settled the question, and conscience and honesty withdrew. Without going into the demoralizing details, suffice it to say that I stole a blanket from some hapless victim belonging to another company, and thus safeguarded the health and military efficiency of a chattel of the Nation. How the other fellow got along, I don't know. I made no impertinent inquiries, and, during ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... myself in the most profound darkness—that darkness, if I may use the paradox, of a peopled desolation that men of but little nerve or resolution find insupportable. To me, trained to a serenity of stoicism, it could make no demoralizing appeal. I had out my matchbox, opened it at leisure, and, while the whole vaulting blackness seemed to tick and rustle with secret movement, took a half-dozen vestas into my hand, struck one alight, and, ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... top of the rocks, behind which he had been concealed, Frank was sending a shower of bullets whistling. After the first two shots, he aimed high, counting on demoralizing the savages by terror, instead of taking chances of hitting ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... her acquaintance, as she understood it, was humiliating, and, in a certain sense, demoralizing. Her other suitors had imagined that she had good traits back of her beauty, and hitherto she had been carelessly content to believe that she could display such traits in abundance should the occasion require them. Here was one, however, ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... to hate Uncle George!" says Rylton. "You see how you are demoralizing me! But, surely, if you cannot live in peace with him, there must be others—other relations—who would be glad ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... educational, and literary, and thus had a most decided influence on the development of Grecian thought and enterprise. The exhibition of sculpture and painting alone made them attractive and intellectual, while the athletic exercises amused ordinary minds. They were not demoralizing, like the sports of the amphitheatre, or a modern bull-fight, or even fashionable races. They were more like tournaments in the martial ages of Europe, but superior to them vastly, since no woman was allowed to be present at the Olympic games ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... was to give voice to a growing sentiment against public hangings. The next issue of the Freeman's Journal protested against such spectacles as demoralizing, and suggested a movement in the State legislature to amend the law. Kelley's was in fact the last public hanging ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... The most demoralizing advertisements are those paid for by loan-sharks, clairvoyants, medical quacks, and the votaries of vice. The New York "Herald" has recently stopped printing its vicious personals. It also refuses ...
— Commercialism and Journalism • Hamilton Holt
... dreading us. In the language of a powerful journalist, (the Spectator,) opposed on most points to the present Government, "the late Ministers commenced a career, perilous in the extreme to all the best interests of the nation—demoralizing public opinion, wasting public resources, and entangling the country in quarrels alike endless and aimless; and all this with a labouring after melodramatic stage effect, and a regardlessness of consequences perfectly unprecedented." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... the South began to threaten the institution. Men felt that it was a curse to the slave, and poisoned the best white society of the slave-holding States. As early as 1781, Mr. Jefferson, with his keen, philosophical insight, beheld with alarm the demoralizing tendency of slavery. "The whole commerce," says Mr. Jefferson, "between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions; the most unrelenting despotism on the one part, and degrading submission on ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... purchasing power of every dollar that you have in your pay envelope, or in the bank, or included in your insurance policy or your pension, would be reduced to about eighty cents worth. I need not tell you that this would have a demoralizing effect on our people, soldiers and ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... mere physical torture, in gladiatorial combats, or in the bloody precincts of plaza de toros, as grossly demoralizing as the loathsome minutiae of heinous crimes upon which legal orators dilate; and which Argus reporters, with magnifying lenses at every eye, reproduce for countless newspapers, that serve as wings for transporting moral dynamite ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... had now assumed an important aspect, and I much regretted that when the time should arrive for our departure to the south it would be abandoned: however, I determined to keep all hands employed, as there is nothing so demoralizing to troops as inaction. At the same time there was a general dislike to the expedition, and all trusted that something might happen that would prevent another attempt to penetrate the marshes of the Bahr Giraffe. There was much allowance ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... open question whether the policeman is not demoralizing us; and that in proportion as he does his duty well; whether the perfection of justice and safety, the complete "preservation of body and goods," may not reduce the educated and comfortable classes into that lap-dog condition ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... consciousness. Scarcely a critic has been able to express what it is about his music that he likes or dislikes. They have either ridiculed him or written cordially about him without saying anything. There is nothing more demoralizing for the artist. At present they are even classing him with Prokofief. The virtuosi have shown a like timidity. Scarcely a one has dared perform his music. Many have refrained out of policy, unwilling to forfeit any applause. Others ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... to see them look at a fly, I'll put it over them," she said, good-naturedly, "but, you know, it is most demoralizing." ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... these soul-blasting and hope-killing exposures—so degrading to the criminal, so demoralizing to the community,—these foul, in-human blots on our fair and dearly loved Puritan Lord's Day, were never frequent, nor did the form of punishment obtain for a long time. In 1681 two women were sentenced to sit during service on a high stool in the middle ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... in America," said Phil. "We talk about the immorality of older countries. Did you ever notice that no class of men are so apt to take to drinking as highly cultivated Americans? It is a very demoralizing position, when one's tastes outgrow one's surroundings. Positively, I think a man is more excusable for coveting his neighbor's wife in America than in Europe, because there is so ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... artillery and cavalry, which had left McMinnville with Johnson, would be too much for us. Learning that he was no longer needed in Sumner county, he crossed the river without delay, and in a day or two we heard of his sweeping every thing clean around Nashville. So demoralizing was the effect of the system of immediately paroling prisoners, and sending them off by routes which prevented them from meeting troops of their own army, which had been instituted and practiced, for some time previously ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... demoralizing interruption to talk is poor table-service. There can be no good conversation at table where the talk is constantly interrupted by wordy instructions to servants. A hostess who takes pride in the table-talk of her guests assures herself in advance that the maid or the butler serving the table is ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... actors too humble and obscure not to have a gallery; that gallery which envenoms the play by stealthy jeers, counsels of anger, amused comments or words of perfidious compassion. However, the Anthonys were free from all demoralizing influences. At sea, you know, there is no gallery. You hear no tormenting echoes of your own littleness there, where either a great elemental voice roars defiantly under the sky or else an elemental silence seems ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... special view of the battle was built up. It was a view designed to neutralize the effects of German territorial advances and the impression of power which the persistence of the offensive was making. It was also a view that tended to make the public acquiesce in the demoralizing defensive strategy imposed upon the Allied armies. For the public, accustomed to the idea that war consists of great strategic movements, flank attacks, encirclements, and dramatic surrenders, had gradually ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... such a thing!" cried Pyotr Ilyitch. "I won't have it in my house, it's a bad, demoralizing habit. Put your money away. Here, put it here, why waste it? It would come in handy to-morrow, and I dare say you'll be coming to me to borrow ten roubles again. Why do you keep putting the notes in your ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... with equal justice, without fear or favor. I merely throw out this as a hint of what might be accomplished, because it has become fashionable for good but easy-going people to dismiss these matters with the remark that nothing practical can be done to meet the demoralizing and degrading power of ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... was right. They had a generally demoralizing effect on our household. I was growing irritable, Silvia careworn. Even Huldah showed their influence by acquiring the very latest in slang from them. Once in a while to my amusement I heard Silvia unconsciously ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... must admit that Unitarianism is a monumental failure in organizing churches, it is their boast that it has powerfully affected other religious bodies. This fact we admit; but as the effect is devitalizing, disorganizing and ultimately demoralizing, we consider the result the crowning shame rather than the crowning ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... heart, in another the reason becomes a consuming fire. God takes his own where he finds it. He does not limit himself to nice people. In these matters of evidence and argument, in his contempt for amiable, demoralizing compromise, Chasters served God as Scrope could never hope to serve him. Scrope's new faith had perhaps been altogether impossible if the Chasters controversy had not ploughed ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... object of worship will be no longer identified with Christianity; and when all persons, with any sense of moral good and evil, will look upon it with the same indignation with which my father regarded it. My father was as well aware as anyone that Christians do not, in general, undergo the demoralizing consequences which seem inherent in such a creed, in the manner or to the extent which might have been expected from it. The same slovenliness of thought, and subjection of the reason to fears, wishes, and affections, which enable them to accept a theory involving a contradiction ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... the entire place in such an uproar that we slept out in the veldt. In the morning we were awakened by the sound of the Vickar-Maxim or the "pom-pom" as the English call it, or "bomb-Maxim" as the Boers call it. By any name it was a remarkable gun and the most demoralizing of any of the smaller pieces which have been used in this campaign. One of its values is that its projectiles throw up sufficient dust to enable the gunner to tell exactly where they strike, and within a few seconds he is able to alter the ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... come down the short lane that ended at the gate of Holly Court, and joyous and chattering men and women to come in to tea. Nancy loved this, and to see a group of men standing about his blazing logs filled Bert's heart with pride. It was rather demoralizing in a domestic sense, dinner was delayed, and their bedtime consequently delayed, and Dora, the cook was disgruntled at seven o'clock, when it was still impossible to set the dinner table. But Nancy, rather than disturb her guests, ...
— Undertow • Kathleen Norris
... were flattering the dude, and flattery is always based on design and a selfish motive. Beware of the flatterer in the first place. Eschew gambling—if you are only playing for fun it costs as much as though you were playing to make money. It is demoralizing every time, and often leads to greater crime. Gambling is a very dangerous amusement. These men were working the dude, and it is, as we have intimated, an actual incident we are describing. The conversation we reproduce verbatim. They were alluring the young man to rob him, and if the stake ...
— Oscar the Detective - Or, Dudie Dunne, The Exquisite Detective • Harlan Page Halsey
... of the earth—better death. Not yet—not yet—he would argue. Heaven might send him a happy chance. So the weeks melted into months, and he kept the weary way hoping against reason, conspiring, betraying, demoralizing, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... increase burdens of taxation. Will receive in compensation no outlet for American labor in labor market already overcrowded and cheap; no area for homes for American citizens; climate and social conditions demoralizing to character of American youth; new and disturbing questions introduced into our politics; church question menacing. On whole, instead ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... to assume. To be inaccurate through thoughtless laziness in the use of words is extremely common, to exaggerate according to the mood of the moment, to say more than one means and cover one's retreat with "I didn't mean it," to pull facts into shape to suit particular ends, are demoralizing forms of untruthfulness, common, but often unrecognized. If a teacher could only excel in one high quality for training girls, probably the best in which she could excel would be a great sincerity, which would train ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... now took place which changed the whole current of David Crockett's life, leading him from his lonely cabin and the peaceful scenes of a hunter's life to the field of battle, and to all the cruel and demoralizing ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... Regarding the silly and degrading adulation which the Alexandrian court-poets were called upon to bestow on the kings and queens, and its demoralizing effect on literature, see also Christ's Griechische Litteraturgeschichte, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... that has less tendency to soften a man than long columns of figures. I think the figures you work at are quite as demoralizing as the minerals I have ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... sojourn in America has taught me the demoralizing tendency of the doctrine of 'equality of races and of sexes,' and you must admit, Miss Earl, that your countrywomen are growing dangerously learned," answered Sir ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... there may be on board. On the contrary, I should say that on voyages of this kind it is more than ever vitally necessary to keep one's surroundings as clean and sweet as possible. The important thing is to get rid of anything that may have a demoralizing and depressing effect. The influence of uncleanliness in this way is so well known that it is needless to preach ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... inclined to rob; for this reason, with proper precautions, it is not difficult to perform all the operations which are necessary on my plan of management, at the proper season, without any danger of demoralizing the bees. If however, they are attempted when honey cannot be obtained, they should be performed with extreme caution, and early in the morning, or late in the evening; or if possible, on a day when the bees are not flying out from their hives. I have ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... tabooed from this moment. You must not say, 'How tired you look!' or 'How pale you are!' It is not manners at the Friary, and it is demoralizing. I am ten times more tired this minute than I was before you ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... breakdown in the old arrangements for providing water, drainage, and fresh air; and made rents high, and consequently living in crowded rooms necessary. The factory towns in the early part of the century were filthy, crowded, and demoralizing, compared alike with their earlier and their ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... a strong affinity for truth. Hence there is nothing more demoralizing than any sustained attempt to believe that which does not commend itself to our most sacred convictions. Far better it is to be honest and sincere, even though that may involve temporary error. I believe that to the devout and enquiring soul the truth will be revealed ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... influence of women's sentiments on the moral cultivation of mankind: and if women are to remain in their subordinate situation, it were greatly to be lamented that the chivalrous standard should have passed away, for it is the only one at all capable of mitigating the demoralizing influences of that position. But the changes in the general state of the species rendered inevitable the substitution of a totally different ideal of morality for the chivalrous one. Chivalry was the attempt ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... not, as a rule, recommended for the D.S.O. To suggest that he was a counter-jumper was equally ridiculous. He was a most attractive gallant gentleman. This made his behaviour infinitely more discreditable. It was a sordid, demoralizing business.... ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... last from the garish horrors of dress, formal dinners, visits, and drives, the inevitable and demoralizing gossip and scandal; far away from hotel piazzas, with their tedious accompaniments of corpulent dowagers, exclusive or inquisitive, slowly dying from too much food and too little exercise; ennuied spinsters; gushing buds; athletic collegians, cigarettes in mouths and hands in pockets; ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... divers colors, fluttering on lines like a display of bunting on ship-board, and whose flapping in the breeze was like irregular discharges of musketry. It was evident also that the court exercised a demoralizing influence over the whole neighborhood. A sanguine property-owner once put up a handsome dwelling on the corner of our street, and lived therein; but although he appeared frequently on his balcony, clad in a bright crimson dressing-gown, ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... glossy green ivy leaves overhead, and the blue sky shining beyond them. We toss a pebble down into the subterranean passage where, they say, the monks were wont to pass out after provisions during a time of siege; which must have been somewhat demoralizing to the besiegers, whoever they were. I stoop to pick up something in the grass of the kitchen floor, which has a glitter of gold upon it, and my face flushes with eager anticipation as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... the stony-heartedness during the plague, were more than rivalled by these charnel realities. Already corruption was violating the "temples of the living God." The heat of the day and the general demoralizing influences of the climate, were making havoc with the shapely men of yesterday, and nature seemed hastening to reabsorb, and renew by her marvellous processes, what was now blistering and burdening her surface. Enough, however, of ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... patience was rewarded by his enemy's fore-paw finding its way into Aleck's powerful jaw, and remaining there till Snarleyow's attentions to the back of his neck forced him to shift his hold. From that time forward the sheep-dog had to fight on three legs, which he found demoralizing. But still he had the advantage, and it was not until any other dog of Aleck's size would have retreated half killed that the bull-dog's superior courage and stamina began to tell. Quite heedless of his injuries, and the blood that poured into his eyes, he slowly but surely drove the great ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... vessels employed wholly in the slave-trade, and it was through the persuasions of my poor mother, that my father was induced to give up that nefarious traffic. Since that, his capital has been chiefly employed in privateering, which, if not so brutal and disgraceful, is certainly nearly as demoralizing. I have been home but a short time, and I have already ventured to express my opinion, certainly not so forcibly and so well as you have, upon the subject; but I was laughed at as a tender-hearted girl, who could not be a fit judge of such matters. But now that you, a captain ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... reasons to be mentioned later, the flower-time of the towns was passing away, and their decline had set in, the narrow horizon of the time caused the impediments to settlement and independence to increase still more. Other circumstances also contributed their demoralizing effect. ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... English admit that, owing to the demoralizing influence of Edward VII., they are in a state of religious, social and economic decadence, but their illusion as to the incomparable superiority of England prevents them from tracing the evil to its true source, and as some one must be to blame for it, the fault must of course lie with ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... presented a formidable problem. As yet, their provisions had not run out, and they were living in their marquee as we had seen them three weeks earlier, just after their yacht went ashore. It could not be said that they were molestive in the same sense as the sailors, but they were even more demoralizing in the spectacle they offered the neighborhood of people dependent on hired service, and in their endeavors to supply themselves in perishable provisions, like milk and eggs, by means of money. Cyril had held several interviews with them, in which he had at first delicately ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... have dealt with the men precisely as the men had dealt with them. It was the system which permitted human beings to come into relations of superiority and inferiority to one another which was the cause of the whole evil. Power over others is necessarily demoralizing to the master and degrading to the subject. Equality is the only moral relation between human beings. Any reform which should result in remedying the abuse of women by men, or workingmen by capitalists, must therefore be addressed to equalizing their economic condition. Not till the women, as well ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... take to laying in supplies of whatever is within reach, and surrounding themselves with plates heaped with the substance of future courses, it is first unfair and next demoralizing. If one man hogs the available supply for merely later use, he teaches his neighbor to do the same in self-defense. And so you can watch the proof of the old copy-book ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... respect Sherman's campaign of the Carolinas was essential to this great result, or proved to be more important than his march through Georgia. Each was a great raid, inflicting immense damage upon the enemy's country and resources, demoralizing to the people at home and the army in Virginia, cutting off supplies necessary to the support of the latter, possibly expediting somewhat the final crisis at Richmond, and certainly making the subjugation more complete of those of the Southern people who were thus made ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... Jesuits exaggerated the amount of brandy used in the trade, they did not exaggerate its demoralizing effect upon both the Indian and the trader. They believed that brandy would wreck the Indian's body and ruin his soul. They were right; it did both. It made of every western post, in the words of Father ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... may harbour the design of using the troops which would be sent to Servia as the fittest instrument for giving practical effect to the territorial ambitions of the Bulgars in Macedonia. Well or ill founded, this fear exercises over people in Greece, and we have reason to believe in Servia also, a demoralizing effect and threatens to compromise the ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... possessed with a spirit of commercial greed, beyond those just and fair limits set by a due regard to a moderate and reasonable degree of general and individual prosperity, it is a nation possessed by the devil of commercial avarice, a passion as ignoble and demoralizing as avarice in the individual; and as this sordid passion is baser and more unscrupulous than ambition, so it is more hateful, and at last makes the infected nation to be regarded as the enemy of the human race. To grasp at the lion's share of commerce, has ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... was begun April 18, 1825.[110] By June, the number had increased to thirty-two, nineteen of whom came from Grand Cape Mount, some miles distant.[111] Cary was handicapped in this work by the lack of funds, by the demoralizing gin traffic of the Europeans, by Mohammedanism, by the deadly climate and by degraded fetichism,[112] yet, in the course of seven weeks, he taught several children to read the Bible intelligently, although ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... besides, we get to be such slaves to it that we'd gladly hurt our bodies for the sake of it. It's the most demoralizing, hard-to-break habit on earth. But glory to God! I'm saved and sanctified now, and I'll tell you ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... being a loving, indulgent husband, had come into the position, in some measure, of demoralizing the public conscience, of bringing in luxury and extravagance, and countenancing people who really ought not to be countenanced. He had a sort of uneasy perception of this fact; yet, at each particular step, he seemed to himself to be doing no more than was right or reasonable. ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... memorable words: 'I am not one of those who believe in the permanence of an Irish Party in the English Parliament. I feel convinced that sooner or later the influence which every English Government has at its command—the powerful and demoralizing influence—sooner or later will sap the best party you can return ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... corruption of the public morals. Mr. Freeman adduced the instance of a father having a right to disinherit one son and prefer the other. This is not a parallel case. The parallel would be a rich man leaving his fortune to found an Institution of demoralizing tendency—say to teach you the art of cheating! The laws would annul such a bequest. Society has an original, inherent right to defend itself from all evil—and that gaming is an evil, whether played with ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... which they had been actors; he saw the half-suffocated wretches brought up from their noisome and narrow prison, their squalid countenances and skeleton forms bearing fearful evidence of the suffering attendant upon the transportation from their native homes. The demoralizing effects of slaveholding everywhere forced themselves upon his attention, for the evil had struck its roots deeply in the community, and there were few families into which it had not penetrated. The right to deal in slaves, and use them as articles of property, was questioned by no one; men ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... into parties—Liberal or the reverse, Church or Dissent, but all of one mind as regards their views being correct; and as to the weakness or wickedness of persons who thought otherwise. The evil of this spirit knew no bounds, and the demoralizing effect it produced was especially apparent at election times. When Oldfield wrote his 'Origin of Parliaments,' the town, he tells us, was under the influence of the Earl of Leicester, and was for many years represented by ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... work for our daily bread, but, we were thankful to say, not in that way. We prided ourselves because there was no summer hotel with a demoralizing bowling-alley, and one of those dangerous chutes, in our village. We felt forbiddingly calm and superior when now and then some strange city people from Grover, the large summer resort six miles from us, ...
— The Jamesons • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... desolation everywhere. When I sin, I become the centre of demoralizing forces which influence the universe. And so let me ever pray, ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... last three centuries, millions of Africans have perished either on their way to slavery or in exhausting toil under a tropical sun; and the flag of England has been the most prominent in this demoralizing traffic. But it is due to England to say, that, since she withdrew from it, she has aimed to atone for the past by a noble and persevering devotion to the improvement of Africa. By repeated expeditions, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... plan. But the faithful guardian, in justice to his ward, would not allow him to grow up with the demoralizing anticipation of marrying an heiress to live ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... her, for in spite of all that he might be or do she cherished a sisterly affection for him. Family ties were very real and very strong to her—strong enough to keep her loyal to her kin even after the demoralizing change in her whole mode of life. The firmest, in fact, the only bond that she had ever known, was that of blood; obedience, faithfulness, and affection had been born in her, and she never thought to question ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... weather is turning warm again, the men are quartered in houses. I room at the hotel. This sort of life, however pleasant it may be, has a demoralizing effect upon the soldier. ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... for a colt that never kicked over the traces!" Which, if Jerry had really been guilty of any offence, would have been very demoralizing. But she was not and she watched Uncle Johnny go out of the room with a look of ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... roar of consternation, the tall man rushed into the street, flourishing his arms, and begging some one—any one—to "Take it away! Take it away!" He finally collided with the head end of the dragon, demoralizing that half of the chink procession as completely as ...
— Owen Clancy's Happy Trail - or, The Motor Wizard in California • Burt L. Standish
... striving vainly to rally his demoralized men, sank with a bullet in his brain; Hodgson, his leg broken by a ball, clung to a sergeant's stirrup until a second shot stretched him dead upon the bank. The loss in that wild retreat (which Reno later called a "charge") was heavy, the effect demoralizing; but those who escaped found a spot well suited for defence. Even as they swung down from off their wounded, panting horses, and flung themselves flat upon their faces to sweep with hastily levelled carbines ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... persons of all classes were already assembled, and I observed with a smile the effect which the novelty of the scene had produced upon an English friend, whom I had, with great difficulty, prevailed upon to accompany me; having, as he declared, but little taste for such brutal and demoralizing exhibitions. He seemed quite excited, and made some passing observation relative to the Roman Circus, to which the present exhibition bore no unapt resemblance. I directed his attention to many of his countrymen, as well as other foreigners, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... necessity for securing fire superiority in order to advance within the shorter ranges, and the impossibility of accomplishing this at ineffective ranges, make it imperative that fire be not opened as long as the advance can be continued without demoralizing losses. The attack which halts to open fire at extreme range (over 1,200 yards) is not likely ever to reach its destination. Every effort should be made, by using cover or inconspicuous formations, or by advancing the firing line as a whole, to arrive within 800 yards of the ...
— Infantry Drill Regulations, United States Army, 1911 - Corrected to April 15, 1917 (Changes Nos. 1 to 19) • United States War Department
... to the front was both confused and demoralizing. No American officer had ever had the chance even of seeing, much less handling, thirty-six thousand men under arms. This force was followed by an immense and unwieldy train of supplies, manned by wholly undisciplined civilian drivers; while other, and quite superfluous, ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... years, to get here; and that it is often in order that they may support poor relatives at home, who would otherwise starve. This shows some of their heathen virtues. A good deal of the objection to them seems to be on the ground of their being Pagans; some of the speakers saying that it is "so very demoralizing to our Christian youth," that they should be here,—quite overlooking a very large class of the population who are worse than ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... our people at home the assurance that they are standing four-square behind our soldiers and sailors. And it will give our enemies demoralizing assurance that we mean business—that we, 130,000,000 Americans, are on the march to Rome, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... so, I am not the proper person to be rejected. It will hurt some of these Russian subscribers more than it will me, because it is only a question of when I shall read it, not of whether I shall read it at all. I wonder that so many demoralizing things do not affect the officials. However, that is not the point; pray keep for your own use anything which you regard as deleterious to me. I am obliged to you for your consideration. But you have no right to spoil three or four articles; ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... the depths of his heart, that the demoralizing influences consequent upon those half-secret, half-audacious speculations had led him to the brink—nay, had actually plunged him into ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... all this, Liane ended her pensive moment by leaning toward Lanyard and making demoralizing eyes, while the hand left his and stole with a caressing ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... extravagances. Japan must develop her own soul: she cannot borrow another. A dear friend whose life has been devoted to philology once said to me while commenting upon the deterioration of manners among the students of Japan: "Why, the English language itself has been a demoralizing influence!" There was much depth in that observation. Setting the whole Japanese nation to study English (the language of a people who are being forever preached to about their "rights," and never about their "duties") was almost an imprudence. The policy was ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... experience in caring for children, and her cleanliness, honesty, truthfulness, morals, and general character carefully investigated. She ought to be fond of children, and young-hearted enough to enter into their little games and joys and sorrows. No maid whose example is demoralizing to the little ones should have any place in the home. The nurse probably will do the baby's washing, and may help a little here and there about the house, but as a rule she has nothing to do with the ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... new and terrible form of slavery, and equally demoralizing with the ancient form of slavery for both slave and slave-owner; only much worse, because it frees the slave and the slave-owner from their ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... and selling lies, dealing in cheap, shoddy shams, or botching one's work, is demoralizing to every element ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... that Buffon said all this, and much more, about cats, and that people have gone on repeating it ever since, principally because these spirited little beasts have remained just what it pleased Providence to make them, have preserved their primitive freedom through centuries of effete and demoralizing civilization. Why, I wonder, should a great many good men and women cherish an unreasonable grudge against one animal because it does not chance to possess the precise qualities of another? 'My dog fetches my slippers for me every night,' said a friend, triumphantly, not long ago. ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... quality. The effect of a victory is two-fold, moral and material. Had we been as roughly handled on water as we were on land during the first year of the war, such a succession of disasters would have had a most demoralizing effect on the nation at large. As it was, our victorious seafights, while they did not inflict any material damage upon the colossal sea-might of England, had the most important results in the feelings they produced at home and even abroad. Of course they ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... went by, a time of dead silence and anxious watching. Some of the less eager conspirators began to feel the demoralizing effects of the long wait; their courage began to ebb. Andrew Windybank had time to reflect, and he wished himself well out of the whole business. Here and there a man sighed or fidgeted in the darkness. Basil was quick ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... work and cruel treatment; and thus a new market was opened for the negro slaves captured by the Portuguese. They were accordingly introduced as early as 1503. Those who bought and those who sold were alike prepared to trample on the rights of their fellow-beings, by that most demoralizing of all influences, the accursed ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... source of innocent enjoyment, and an important aid to higher culture; but unless it leads to higher culture, it will probably be merely sensuous. And when art is merely sensuous, it is enfeebling and demoralizing rather than strengthening or elevating. Honest courage is of greater worth than any amount of grace; purity is better than elegance; and cleanliness of body, mind, and heart, than any amount ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... fifty-nine years—inherited as legacies from the immediate past: a well-furnished treasury, a nation in the enjoyment of peace, a firmly established throne, and a satisfactory state of foreign relations. These comfortable conditions seem to have exercised demoralizing influence. The bonds of discipline grew slack; fierce quarrels on account of women involved fratricide among the princes of the blood, and finally the life of an Emperor was sacrificed—the only instance of such ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... mother's whippings had always been very terrible, vindictively thorough. The indignity of them lashed her soul even more cruelly than the unsparing thong her body. Because of them she went in daily trepidation, submissive almost to the point of abjectness, lest this hateful and demoralizing form of punishment should be inflicted upon her. For some time now, by great wariness and circumspection she had evaded it, and she had begun to entertain the trembling hope that she was at last considered to have passed the ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... where he might kill time every day; and this in a commonwealth where formerly action had been with all and sundry the very object of existence, and idle enjoyment had been proscribed by custom as well as by law! The bad and demoralizing elements in these festal observances, moreover, daily acquired greater ascendency. It is true that still as formerly the chariot races formed the brilliant finale of the national festivals; and a poet of this period describes very vividly the straining expectancy with which the eyes of ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... Nelson's, and with a sweetheart just as true as Frankie; but years of disappointment had crushed both his hopes and his ideals, until now he lived for the petty and illusive pleasures of the moment; drink, gambling, and other demoralizing "recreations." ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen |
