"Demoralizing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 always at ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... the putrid fact, a good bit of it, and Tom sat back in his chair and listened, outwardly respectful, inwardly hot-hearted and contemptuous. Was this smooth-spoken, oracular prince of the market-place a predetermined hypocrite, shaping his words to fit the money-gathering end without regard to their demoralizing effect? Or was he only a subconscious Pharisee, self-deceived and complacent? Tom's thought ran lightning-like over the long list of the Vancourt Hennikers: men of the business world successful to the Croesus mark, large and liberal benefactors, founders of colleges, libraries and hospitals, gift-givers ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... against false opinions in league with false facts, the press, confined to truth, needs no other legal restraint; the public judgment will correct false reasoning and opinions on a full hearing of all parties; and no other definite line can be drawn between the inestimable liberty of the press and its demoralizing licentiousness. If there be still improprieties which this rule would not restrain, its supplement must be sought in the censorship of ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... administration, but the regulation which forbade a mandarin to hold any office for more than three years made it the selfish interest of every office-holder to get as much out of the people within his jurisdiction as he possibly could in that time. This corruption in high places had a thoroughly demoralizing effect. While among the better commercial classes Chinese probity in business relations with foreigners is proverbial, the people generally set little or no value upon truth, and this has led to the use of torture in their courts of justice; for it is argued that where the value of an oath ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... whole four years' stay in India I was practically barred from ladies' society, nearly all the planters being unmarried men. Alas! for twenty years longer of my life this very unfortunate and demoralizing ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... with its remnant race of human wrecks, and after months of the demoralizing fatalism and moral laxity of the Russian, I was astounded by the miracle of stability of the tiny Czech force in establishing an economic frontier between the Germanophile sections of Russia and freedom-loving Siberia. Not only is ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... 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 Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... 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 catastrophe in ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... anything 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
... divorced. The only class amongst whom it is at all common is the class of hangers-on to our Administration, the clerks and policemen, and so on. I fear there is little that is good to be said of many of them. It is terrible to see how demoralizing our contact is to all sorts and conditions of men. To be attached to our Administration is almost a stigma of disreputableness. I remember remarking once to a headman that a certain official seemed to be quite regardless of public opinion in his life, and asked him ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... a 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 ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... cannot exercise powers not conferred by its organic law or necessary for its own preservation, nor dishonor its own engagements when able to meet them, without either shocking or demoralizing the sentiment of the people; and the fact that the indefinite continuance of the circulation of an inconvertible but still legal tender currency is so generally advocated indicates how far we have wandered from old landmarks both in ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... was needed—a 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
... time. Of his poetical writings it may be said that though only surpassed in wit and humor by his more universally known prose, they are infinitely NASTIER than any thing else in the English language. They have, however, the negative virtue of being nowise licentious or demoralizing—or at least no more so than is inseparable from the choice of obscene and repulsive subjects. Nearly all his unobjectionable comic verses may be ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... 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
... stories I had read of 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 this. Satiated ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... though those antecedents, and not the laxity of his own principles, had brought about his ruin. She was prepared to live entirely for the future, and to look back on her London life as bad, tasteless, and demoralizing. England to her was no longer a glorious country; for England's laws had made a felon of her husband. She would go to a new land, new hopes, new ideas, new freedom, new work, new life, and new ambition. 'Excelsior!' there was no longer an excelsior left for talent and perseverance ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... 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 stand any more of it, Stratton, ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... joyless thing. But substitute the national service of the Guilds for the profiteering of the few; substitute responsible labor for a saleable commodity; substitute self-government and decentralization for the bureaucracy and demoralizing hugeness of the modern State and the modern joint stock company; and then it may be just once more to speak of a "joy in labor,'' and once more to hope that men may be proud of quality and not only of quantity in their work. ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... cursed him that owned the slave. (Hear, hear.) When we recollect the insuperable temptations which that system held out to maintain in a state of degradation and ignorance a whole race of mankind; the horrors of the internal slave-trade, more widely demoralizing, in my opinion, than the foreign slave-trade itself; the violence which was done to the sanctities of domestic life; the corrupting effect which it was having upon the very churches of Christianity, when we recollect all these things, we can fully estimate the evil from which my distinguished ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... spotless place upon shelf or nail was a wealth and a comfort to us. Besides, we really did not need half the lumber of a common kitchen closet; a china bowl or plate would no longer be contraband of war, and Barbara said she could stir her blanc-mange with a silver spoon without demoralizing anybody to the extent of having the ashes ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... pleasant and attractive, and yet very heartless. Art is a 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 ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... the famous debates in the British Parliament and other signs of the times announced the dawn of freedom for the oppressed African race. Wilberforce, Clarkson, and Buxton, the English abolitionists, continued their denunciations of the demoralizing institution. Their effects were crowned with success in 1833. The traffic was abolished, and ten years later Great Britain emancipated more than twelve million slaves in her East and West Indian possessions, ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... 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
... constantly offered fractions, to an eighth or a sixteenth. There are ticket-brokers who accommodate the poorer classes with interests to the amount of ten cents, and so on. Thus, for them, the lottery replaces the savings-bank, with entire uncertainty of any return, and the demoralizing process of expectation thrown into the bargain. The negroes invest a good deal of money in this way, and we heard in Matanzas a curious anecdote on this head. A number of negroes, putting their means together, had commissioned ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... 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. ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... Life among the devotees of Jane Addams and Jacob Riis, he was dazed and horrified to find himself suddenly subjected to the demoralizing Influences of ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... point of things, Philadelphia had what some of the fans called "one of them afternoons." There is no use trying to describe all the details of this so-called contest, for it is demoralizing to the young to see such things in print. Many criminals have confessed on the scaffold that they got their start watching the Athletics assault some honest young pitcher who was trying to support his aged mother. They say that, if the Macks can ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... of simony was, therefore, explicable enough, and perhaps ineradicable under the circumstances. It was, nevertheless, very demoralizing, for it spread downward and infected the whole body of the clergy. A bishop who had made a large outlay in obtaining his office naturally expected something from the priests, whom it was his duty to appoint. The priest in turn was tempted to reimburse himself by improper exactions for the ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... urged, 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 low dram-shops, to satisfy his ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... of men who came in contact with the Boers at a time when one would expect that the demoralizing and hardening influences of war had removed ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... objections to it. Its tendency, wherever it has been introduced in the history of our world, has been evil, and only evil. France, at the commencement of her revolution in 1789, was an infidel nation. The profligacy of the Catholic priesthood, and the demoralizing example of the Regent, Duke of Orleans, and the infidel publications of Voltaire and his associates, had produced a contempt for religion through every rank of society. The people of France were taught by their literati that the Bible was at war with ...
— The Christian Foundation, May, 1880
... experiences, therefore, of France, Belgium, and Germany all yield convincing and corroborative testimony to the demoralizing influence on political life which results from the coalitions at the second ballots. Insufficient attention, however, has been directed to one aspect of this influence, its pernicious effect upon the inner working of parliamentary institutions. ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... demoralizing to both students and teachers. I refer to the inevitable outcome of such a system; some students (sometimes few and sometimes many) develop considerable skill in "working the Prof." Teachers offering elective courses are constantly under great temptation ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... were declared untrue, we could, under the protection of the laws alone, go on living as before, without any special addition to our apprehensions or our measures of precaution. I will go beyond this, and say that religions have very frequently exercised a decidedly demoralizing influence. One may say generally that duties towards God and duties towards humanity ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... "Don't put such demoralizing ideas into the child's head. How it is that girls are not ruined," said Miss Dorset, shaking her head, "ruined! by such examples, I cannot tell. They must have stronger heads than we think. As poor ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... the other hand, you are demoralizing me completely. You have no idea what empty, formal affairs recitals seem to me now; they are so impersonal. I feel like grumbling, because I can't talk over each item of the programme with the one who does it. I said something of the sort to Miss Dane, the ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... is usually the hall-mark of the particularly mild and harmless individual. It is the dissipation of the Y.M.C.A.; the innocent joy of the pure-hearted boy long ere the demoralizing influence of our vaunted civilization has dragged him down into the depths ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome
... the result not 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
... mode" from which the "Ionic" was derived was still more demoralizing; it was counted "orgiastic," and proper only in ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... 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 fortune-tellers ...
— Commercialism and Journalism • Hamilton Holt
... thrilled the peoples of the peninsula when they realized at what a price their liberation was to be effected. Yet it is unfair to lay the chief blame on Bonaparte for the pillage of Lombardy. His actions were only a development of existing revolutionary customs; but never had these demoralizing measures been so thoroughly enforced as in the present system of liberation and blackmail. Lombardy was ransacked with an almost Vandal rapacity. Bonaparte desired little for himself. His aim ever was power rather than wealth. Riches he valued only ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... Knox, "I never blamed her so much as that bold little creature, Podge Byerly! No one could make any impression upon Agnes's confidence until that bright little thing went to board with her. It is so demoralizing to take these working-girls, shop-girls and school-teachers, in where religious influences had prevailed! They became inseparable; Agnes had to entertain such company as Miss Byerly brought there, and it produced ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... the side of the railroad, and catch the coppers and silver coins thrown to them by the passengers, and these are gathered together to give the children their yearly treat. But this association in the children's minds of their annual pleasure with Derby Day must, I often think, have a demoralizing tendency. ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... long and warm. Every argument which has since become so familiar on the subject was advanced on one side and on the other. The moral evil of slavery, its demoralizing influence upon freeman and bondman, its cruelties in practice, were dilated upon by some; others pictured "the peculiar institution" in its more patriarchal and pleasant aspects. Finally, the northern members agreed to admit Missouri as a slave State, on condition that thenceforth all ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... Purvy had announced that his would-be assassin dwelt on Misery, and was "marked down." So, there were obvious exigencies which the Souths must prepare to meet. In particular, the clan must thrash out to definite understanding the demoralizing report that Samson South, their logical leader, meant to abandon them, at a ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... followed by ruinous contractions. At successive intervals the best and most enterprising men have been tempted to their ruin by excessive bank loans of mere paper credit, exciting them to extravagant importations of foreign goods, wild speculations, and ruinous and demoralizing stock gambling. When the crisis arrives, as arrive it must, the banks can extend no relief to the people. In a vain struggle to redeem their liabilities in specie they are compelled to contract their loans and their issues, and at last, in the hour of distress, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... 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 ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... went into the hut. He was in the hardest moment of his trial. It was the inability to fight, the lack of freedom, of weapons, the sense of helplessness, that had come nearer to demoralizing Menard than a hundred battles. He had been trusted with the life of a maid, and, more important still, with the Governor's orders. He was, ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... with a realization of their significance, in the early part of our war experience would, no doubt, have been hopelessly demoralizing, but now the calmness and fortitude with which we took it demonstrated the fact that four years of such schooling had seasoned us to meet unflinchingly the most desperate situations. When broad daylight ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... his wrath or his power. Superstition, indeed, or the sympathy with the invisible, is the great test of man's nature, as an earthly combining with a celestial. In superstition lies the possibility of religion. And though superstition is often injurious, degrading, demoralizing, it is so, not as a form of corruption or degradation, but as a form of non-development. The crab is harsh, and for itself worthless. But it is the germinal form of innumerable finer fruits: not apples only the most exquisite, and pears; the peach and the nectarine are said to have radiated ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... 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
... an accidental and inferior offshoot from the original religion of the race, not adapted to their needs, and fitted only for exportation. And now, tainted and poisoned by a thousand years of habitation in the West, Christianity returns to the East, virulent and baneful as small-pox, a distinctly demoralizing influence, having power only to change excellent Buddhists into prostitutes and thieves. And in such a way, according to the same laws, Mike had observed, since he had adopted pessimism, certain unmistakable signs ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... Rome soon became mistress of the whole Mediterranean world. Her ships plied the seas, her armies and governors ruled the land. The introduction of wealth, luxuries, and slaves from the new provinces, which followed their capture, soon had a very demoralizing influence upon the people. Private and public religion and morality rapidly declined; religion came to be an empty ceremonial; divorce became common; wealth and influence ruled the State; slaves became very cheap and abundant, and were ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... political friend of his who was then editor of a great Chicago daily. He wrote that while there were doubtless many members of the Illinois legislature who during the great contracts of the war time and the demoralizing reconstruction days that followed, had never accepted a bribe, he wished to bear testimony that he personally had known but this one man who had never been offered a bribe because bad men were instinctively afraid ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... of Australians Cruel Treatment of Women Were Savages Corrupted by Whites? Aboriginal Horrors Naked and not Ashamed Is Civilization Demoralizing? Aboriginal Wantonness Lower than Brutes Indifference to Chastity Useless Precautions Survivals of Promiscuity Aboriginal Depravity The Question of Promiscuity Why do Australians Marry? Curiosities of Jealousy Pugnacious Females Wife-Stealing Swapping Girls The Philosophy of Elopements ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... to hear Dr. Hansen minimising a crime that is distinctly mentioned in Divine and human law as one of the worst—to hear him reduce it to the size of a trifling and insignificant misdemeanour. Is not this highly demoralizing ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... age they are sold by fathers and mothers into an existence which is worse than slavery itself. It is not uncommon to see girls at the tender age of thirteen or fourteen—mere children—hardened courtesans, lost to all sense of shame and decency. They are reared in ignorance, surrounded by demoralizing influences, cut off from the blessings of church and Sabbath school, see nothing but licentiousness, intemperance and crime. These young girls are lost forever. They are beyond the reach of the moralist or preacher and have no comprehension of modesty and purity. Virtue ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... claims that the commission is autocratic, down to its last deputy. Denies that we have the right to apportion one-half the earnings to the workers and the other half to the owners. States that our system is wasteful, unjust, and demoralizing." ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... Lichtenfeld will stay because she has no money to get away, and Buisson will stay because he feels somewhat responsible. These complications are interesting enough to cold-blooded folk like myself who have an eye for the dramatic element, but they are distracting and demoralizing to young people with ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... The Weekly, which you should read and the Captain told them I was a great Chief from the East, whereat all the soldiers who were of noble lineage claimed their privilege of shaking hands with me, which had a demoralizing effect upon the formation and the white privates were either convulsed with mirth or red with indignation. But you cannot treat them like white men who do not know their ancestors— Dad's letter was the best I have ever got from him and he had always better write when he is tired. ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... 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 passed ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... his religion been merely a pastime of adolescence, would have been disastrous. Owing to human nature's respect for the conspicuous there is nothing so demoralizing to faith as the failure of a leader of religion to set forth in his own actions the word of God. Mark, however, looked at the whole business more from an ecclesiastical angle. He had reason to condemn the Bishop ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... difficulty had been prevailed on to leave Carignan the night before about eleven o'clock—when entreated to push on to Mezieres had refused point-blank to abandon the post of danger and take a step that would prove so demoralizing to the troops. Others asserted that he was no longer in the city, that he had fled, leaving behind him a dummy emperor, one of his officers dressed in his uniform, a man whose startling resemblance to his imperial master had often puzzled the army. Others ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... 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 classes been apathetic and indifferent until ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... that the men lack this moral preparation for war. Their system of fighting is demoralizing. "They come on in close formation, thousands of them, just like sheep being driven to the slaughter," is the description that nine soldiers out of every ten give of the Germans going into action. "We just mow them down in heaps," says an artilleryman. "Lord, even a woman couldn't miss ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick
... pleasanter ways of passing a desultory hour than haphazard reading amongst old numbers of a good magazine. I say advisedly "a desultory hour," for when it comes to more than that the habit is apt to become demoralizing. And, excellent as many English magazines are, I must own that for this particular purpose I give the preference to our American cousins. It would not be easy to say precisely why, but so it is. One feels lighter after them than one does after ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... a cent 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 ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... history of Upper Canada, passed an Address to the King, in which the Lieutenant-Governor's conduct was painted in no neutral tints. He was directly charged with being despotic, tyrannical, unjust and deceitful. His conduct was declared to have been "derogatory to the honour" of his Majesty, and "demoralizing to the community." A memorial to the House of Commons was also adopted, in which his public acts were referred to as having been arbitrary and vindictive, and wherein he was charged with mis-statements, misrepresentations, ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... body and mind. It can serve both as an awakener and a test of intelligence, predispose the heart against vice, and turn the springs of character toward virtue. That its present decadent forms, for those too devitalized to dance aright, can be demoralizing, we know in this day too well, although even questionable dances may sometimes work off vicious propensities in ways more harmless than those in which they would otherwise find vent. Its utilization for and influence on the insane would be another ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... was not a satyr. And deserters are 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
... theatres at the present day. Now, they have a more splendid stage, within a costly, spacious building, but there is little or no improvement in the purity of the play and its incidentals. It is just as demoralizing now as it was then, and has been so in every age of the world. For that reason, such exhibitions have been suppressed, at times, in some countries, and this was the case, at one period, in ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... instead of demoralizing him, had been his salvation. It set him to work, and made a man of him. He never believed that he would inherit a dollar of his father's, so he prepared to make his own way in the world, ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... in that subdued, heartbroken way which is so demoralizing to the person who has caused the tears. Like a hurt child she rubbed her ankle and huddled ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... the publishers of such pornographic books as "The Memoirs of Fanny Hill" and "Only a Boy." Then the newspapers were filled with inflammatory matter about the wide dispersal of such stuff, and its demoralizing effects upon the youth of the republic. Then a committee of self-advertising clergymen and "Christian millionaires" was organized to launch a definite "movement." And then a direct attack was made upon Congress, ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... deserters had traveled nearly forty miles since "tattoo" of the night before. The other party had captured three, so that only one man had escaped. I doubt not this prevented the desertion of the bulk of the Second Infantry that spring, for at that time so demoralizing was the effect of the gold-mines that everybody not in the military service justified desertion, because a soldier, if free, could earn more money in a day than he received per month. Not only did soldiers and sailors desert, but captains and ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... 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 little ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... business investments rather than as communities of human beings. The existence of Chartered Company government marks a survival of this habit of mind. The old colonial system, which embodied this point of view, proved demoralizing not only to the home government but to the colonists, as a similar view is to the working class, and it led to the loss of the American colonies as surely as a similar attitude on the part of employers leads to unrest and ...
— Progress and History • Various
... Lovejoy, servant to Captain William Lovejoy. Pompey's cabin stood there, and as election day approached, great store of election- cake and beer was manufactured for the hungry and thirsty voters, to whom it proved less demoralizing than the whiskey of to-day. There is a record of the death in 1683, of Jack, a negro servant of Captain Dudley Bradstreet's, who lost also, in 1693, by drowning, "Stacy, ye servant of Major Dudley Bradstreet, a mullatoe born ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... 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 day ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... purposes, and on more than one occasion bestowed large sums of money for the relief of distress. We may assume that he was niggardly by habit and generous by impulse. Utterly ignorant of everything except the art of music, bred under the most unfortunate and demoralizing conditions, the fact that his character was, on the whole, so naive and upright, speaks eloquently for the native qualities of his disposition. His eccentricities, perhaps, justified the unreasoning vulgar in believing ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... begins to be understood by a large section of the educated world. The author of this tract connects the old logic with the indecencies of the classical writers, and the new with moral purity: he appeals to women, who, "when they see plainly the demoralizing tendency of syllogistic logic, they will no doubt exert their powerful influence against it, and support the Baconian method." This is the only work against logic which I can introduce, but it is a rare one, I mean in contents. I quote the author's idea ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... typal characters. Let the magnanimous North be just, even to its enemies. Slavery is a great wrong, as well as a great mistake in political economy; men are by no means good enough to be trusted with irresponsible power; slaves have been treated with savage cruelty, and the institution is indeed demoralizing: all this, and a great deal more, we readily grant our writer; and yet we cannot help wishing he had shown us something to love, to hope for, in our enemy. He makes an earnest and able protest against a great wrong, and as ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... stampede of the natives interfered too much with labor and the interests of the white folks, and by sticking in a law here, and preaching a sermon there, and by various other means, they gradually broke it up. The demoralizing hula hula was forbidden to be performed, save at night, with closed doors, in presence of few spectators, and only by permission duly procured from the authorities and the payment of ten dollars for the same. There are few girls now-a-days able to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Liberal League' has become so widely and injuriously associated in the public mind with attempts to repeal the postal laws prohibiting the circulation of obscene literature by mail, with the active propagandism of demoralizing and licentious social theories, and with the support of officials and other public representatives who are on good grounds believed to have been guilty of gross immoralities, that it has been thereby unfitted for use by any organization which desires the support ...
— The Christian Foundation, April, 1880
... be free from his depredations. If the $1,750 in the bank had been meant as a bribe or a stipend for good behavior, such as was formerly paid to Italian brigands, it certainly could not have been more demoralizing in its effect; for all agreed that, since Lars Moe's death, ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... Mr. Buchanan and his opening policy in Kansas, soothed the irritation, and was rapidly demoralizing the new Party, when the Pro-Slavery Party in Kansas perpetrated, and the President and the South accepted, the Lecompton fraud, and again united the North more resolutely in resistance to that invasion ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... freely to buy bread when famine threatened, and the confessional was daily crowded with penitents. One of his biographers says that "the most remarkable change that was apparent in the manners of the people, in their recreations and amusements, was the abandonment of demoralizing practices, of debauchery of all kinds, of profane songs of a licentious character which the lower grades of the people especially were greatly addicted to; and the growth of a new taste and passion for spiritual hymns and sacred poetry that ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... game upon any other man, Mr. Belcher would have patted his shoulder and told him he was a "jewel." So much of Mr. Belcher's wealth had been won by sharp and more than doubtful practices, that that wealth itself stood before the world as a premium on rascality, and thus became, far and wide, a demoralizing influence upon the feverishly ambitious and the young. Besides, Mr. Talbot quieted what little conscience he had in the matter by the consideration that his commissions were drawn, not from Mr. Belcher, but from the profits which others would make out of him, and the further consideration ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... who would enforce the laws 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
... decided upon it should be carried forward step by step without wavering or retrograding. Workmen will tolerate and even come to have great respect for one change after another made in logical sequence and according to a consistent plan. It is most demoralizing, however, to have to recall a step once taken, whatever may be the cause, and it makes ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... need, or perhaps, to speak more truthfully, what you want, for one can hardly be quite content with mere necessities until one grows either so old or shapeless that everything is equally unbecoming, samples are forthcoming, from which an intelligent selection can be made without the demoralizing effect of ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... appears strange to me that any one who was not born a slaveholder, and steeped to the very core in the demoralizing atmosphere of the Southern States, can in any way palliate slavery. It is still more surprising to see virtuous ladies looking with patience upon, and remaining indifferent to, the existence of a system that exposes nearly two millions of their own sex in the manner I have mentioned, and ...
— Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom • William and Ellen Craft
... how 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
... do, Mr. Denton, but I can see no way out of it, sir. If I am to go on into the Army, and be an ostracized officer, I should be of no value to myself or to the service. Wherever I should go, my usefulness would be gone and my presence demoralizing." ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock
... Knowing how demoralizing the possession of such a sum would be, Charlie assembled his force next morning. He pointed out to them that, as the greater part of the plunder was in silver, it would be impossible for them to carry it on their persons. He advised them, then, to allow the whole sum to remain in ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... another hell, on a day of great battle—September 14, 1916—when for the first time tanks were used, demoralizing the enemy in certain places, though they were too few in number to strike a paralyzing blow. The Londoners gained part of High Wood at frightful cost and then were blown out of it. Other divisions followed them and found the wood stuffed with machine-guns ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... heretofore allotted to the proletariat. It cannot be gainsaid that there are races on the globe which are incapable of assimilating the higher forms of civilization, but which might well be made to render valuable services in the lower without either suffering injustice themselves or demoralizing others. And it seems nowise impossible that one day these reserves may be mobilized and systematically employed in virtue of the principle that the weal of the great progressive community necessitates such a distribution of parts as will set each organ to perform ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... editor too, would have to set his face against the demoralizing practice of feeding the public mind habitually on slander, and the depravity of taste which this nauseous aliment induces. Defamation is becoming a necessary of life; insomuch, that a dish of tea in the ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... 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
... phallus, which to us are so obscene. The mimus was the lowest and most popular kind of theatrical exhibition, and it was in it that the use of the phallus was most constant. Even Christian preachers who denounced the mimus as demoralizing, and who specified in detail what they found objectionable in it, never mention the display of obscene things. All people were accustomed to the phallus as the archaic symbol of the servants of Dionysus.[1550] Christian preachers would have made no allowance for it on that account,—rather ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... matter of no ordinary importance. It was John Henry Wichern, founder of the Rough House, near Hamburg. He had just returned from his laborious tour through the districts of Silesia, which, in addition to the demoralizing revolutionary excitement, were stricken by famine and fever. Whole villages were depopulated, not enough inhabitants being left alive to bury the dead. Grief and despair reigned everywhere. The number of orphans ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... French dead, a very 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 to forget that picture in favor of the ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... former creed; yet you must follow and sustain them, or else you are a traitor, and denounced and driven from the party, and often from intercourse socially with those who have been your neighbors and friends from boyhood. In this method party compels dishonesty in politics, and is eminently demoralizing, for it is impossible to familiarize the conscience with political dishonesty without tainting the moral man in ordinary matters pertaining to life. Once break down the barrier which separates the right from the wrong, that success may come of it, and every ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... good-will to all mankind, A new era seemed to dawn upon the world, marked by a desire to cultivate the arts, sciences, and literature; to develop industries, and improve social conditions. War was seen to be barbaric, demoralizing, and exhausting. Peace was hailed with an enthusiasm scarcely less than that which for twenty years had created military heroes. The Holy Alliance was not hypocritical. Although a political compact made under a religious pretext, it was formed by monarchs deeply ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... 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 ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz |
