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Corrupt   /kərˈəpt/   Listen
Corrupt

verb
(past & past part. corrupted; pres. part. corrupting)
1.
Corrupt morally or by intemperance or sensuality.  Synonyms: debase, debauch, demoralise, demoralize, deprave, misdirect, pervert, profane, subvert, vitiate.  "Socrates was accused of corrupting young men" , "Do school counselors subvert young children?" , "Corrupt the morals"
2.
Make illegal payments to in exchange for favors or influence.  Synonyms: bribe, buy, grease one's palms.
3.
Place under suspicion or cast doubt upon.  Synonyms: cloud, defile, sully, taint.
4.
Alter from the original.  Synonym: spoil.



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"Corrupt" Quotes from Famous Books



... years, Among new men, strange faces, other minds." And slowly answered Arthur from the barge: "The old order changeth, yielding place to new, And God fulfils himself in many ways, Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. Comfort thyself: what comfort is in me? I have lived my life, and that which I have done May He within himself make pure! but thou, If thou shouldst never see my face again, Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice Rise like ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... had uttered during his vision. Before he passed away, he spoke once more, saying: "If such be the rest which the righteous obtain after their death, it were better for them to die than live in this corrupt world and ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... hae forty years mair than thou hast, an' years ken mair than books. An' wi' a' thy book skill hast thou ne'er read that 'Evil communications corrupt gude manners'? Mak up thy mind that I shall tak it vera ill if thou sail again this year wi' that born heathen;" and with these words Dame Alison Sabay rose up from the stone bench at her cottage door and went dourly into ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... crucified Christ as applied to social difficulties. What Romans does as a theological treatise, and Galatians as a controversial admonition, and 2 Corinthians as a record of personal experience and vocation, this 1 Corinthians does as an instruction for influencing a corrupt urban life with the leaven of the gospel. It is very practical in tone, and the doctrine which it contains is not stated separately, but is throughout woven into the cords of the apostle's argument. There is nothing in the New Testament equal to this Epistle in its power ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan

... their votes against them, and they were rejected. Hitherto the professed principles of the Marquess of Buckingham's government had been strict economy, but when this struggle terminated every source of influence was thrown open in order to prevent future opposition to its measures. This system of corrupt influence was continued after the Earl of Westmoreland was appointed lord-lieutenant, in 1730, notwithstanding strenuous opposition had been made to it by the patriotic party. In order to render their ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... confess, only God must know," he said, smiling proudly. "In our corrupt times even the secrets of the confessional are no longer sacred, and if I confessed the truth to you, it would mean the betrayal of my friends. God sees my heart; He knows its secrets and will have mercy on me. I wish to be alone, that is ...
— A Conspiracy of the Carbonari • Louise Muhlbach

... me but the liberty of the press, and I will give to the minister a venal House of Peers—I will give him a corrupt and servile House of Commons—I will give him the full sway of the patronage of office—I will give him the whole host of ministerial influence—I will give him all the power that place can confer upon him to purchase ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various

... weary) to sit downe, not spit, Not wipe his sweat off but with what he wore.[44] Meane time how would he eye his adversaries, How he would seeke t'have all they did disgract; Traduce them privily, openly raile at them; And them he could not conquer so he would Corrupt with money to doe worse then he. This was his singing ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various

... us has she been required to voluntarily declare herself to be, and to have always been, demon of the nature of the Succubus, which is a female devil whose business it is to corrupt Christians by the blandishments and flagitious delights of love. To this the speaker has replied that the affirmation would be an abominable falsehood, seeing that she had always felt herself to be ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac

... enters "in a Devil's array without, and within as proud as a gallant," that is, with a gallant's dress under his proper garb; relates the creation of Man, describing Mind, Will, and Understanding as the three properties of the soul, which he means to assail and corrupt. He then goes out, and presently returns, succeeds in the attempt, and makes an exulting speech, at the close of which "he taketh a shrewd boy with him, and goeth his way crying"; probably snatching up a boy from the audience,—an incident designed to ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... by all parliamentary law, even though the electors themselves might wish to be rid of him, and that Lord Brentford could not even open his mouth upon the matter in a tone more loud than that of a whisper. But Phineas, feeling that he had consented to accept the favour of a corrupt seat from Lord Brentford, felt also that he was bound to give up the spoil if it were demanded from him. If it were demanded from him, either by the father or the son, it should be ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... have fought for rebels and patriots, sometimes for kings, sometimes for pretenders. I was out with Garibaldi, because I believed he would give a republic to Italy; but I fought against the republic of Mexico, because its people were rotten and corrupt, and I believed that the emperor would rule them honestly and well. I have always chosen my own side, the one which seemed to me promised the most good; and yet, after thirty years, I am where you see me to-night. I am an old man without a country, I belong to no political party, ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis

... childhood, when the skin tingles, and the heart beats at a suffocating gallop. It was very dark, but momentarily his eyes grew accustomed to it. He was conscious of a queer, pungent smell, horribly animal and corrupt. ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various

... however, so much engage him as to withhold his thoughts from things of more importance. He had, in the pride of juvenile confidence, with the help of corrupt conversation, entertained doubts of the truth of Christianity; but he thought the time now come when it was no longer fit to doubt or believe by chance, and applied himself seriously to the great question. His ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson

... last he felt something like himself again, and not wishing to hear anything more of the same kind, he knocked at the door, and the next minute stood face to face with Mr. Mandeville. Black as his corrupt heart had become, he could not look unmoved upon that countenance, and behold the ravages made in a short hour by the pains of soul ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison

... very wrong to corrupt so virtuous a man, luring him to laughter, and that too when he is the sworn ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon

... acquiring money; every one may say what he pleases, but we are not bound to believe such a thing; for I never saw anything sordid or anything mean in you. Although a man's intimate friends do sometimes corrupt his natural disposition, still I know your firmness; and I only wish that, as you avoid that fault, you had been able also to escape ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero

... Beauty, "there are many that deserve that name more than you, and I prefer you, just as you are, to those who, under a human form, hide a treacherous, corrupt, ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford

... that, creatures of rags and shavings as they were, they had their feelings? Not he! they were all alike, these politicians, directly they got into office. How long, he asked them, were Guys to be chivied, and harried, and moved along into back-streets by the brutal minions of a corrupt middle-class? If they wanted to get their rights, they must make themselves a nuisance to the Authorities, like other people. It was all very fine to talk about the Franchise, and "One Guy, one vote!" and all ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 5, 1892 • Various

... pesos in less than five years' service, which sum he left to pious works. On the secession of Mexico (in 1819) the Government took over the Obras Pias funds, to control their administration. There is reason to believe that many of the donations were the fruits of the corrupt practices of high officials, the legacies ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... vices, which was the unintended result of the inroad on insularity which had already begun. They saw the danger ahead, and they laboured to meet it as it came. Ascham in his Schoolmaster railed against the translation of Italian books, and the corrupt manners of living and false ideas which they seemed to him to breed. The Italianate Englishman became the chief part of the stock-in-trade of the satirists and moralists of the day. Stubbs, a Puritan chronicler, whose book The Anatomy of Abuses is a valuable aid to the ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair

... "Your mind is so corrupt that you cannot conceive of an honest friendship, even between near relations. You fill me with repulsion—I measured the depth of your degeneracy at Pisa. That is why I left you. I wanted to breathe in an uninfected atmosphere. My cousin is a person of remarkable intellectual powers, of chivalrous ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... be utterly lost, as one of the children of darkness. Trow ye, that in this day of bitterness and calamity, nothing is required at our hands but to keep the moral law as far as our carnal frailty will permit? Think ye our conquests must be only over our corrupt and evil affections and passions? No; we are called upon, when we have girded up our loins, to run the race boldly, and when we have drawn the sword, we are enjoined to smite the ungodly, though he be our neighbour, and the man of power and cruelty, ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... believing in these views, will act with them to secure honest administration in Federal and State affairs, a rigid maintenance of the Constitution, economy in public expenditures, honesty in the award of contracts, justice to the soldier in the field and the taxpayer at home, and the expulsion of corrupt men ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... out vindictively that family livings were a corrupt and indefensible institution. Mr. Grey replied calmly that they probably were, but that the fact did not affect, so far as he could see, Elsmere's competence to fulfil all the ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... never heard such conversation: I cant believe my ears. And mind you, this is the man who objected to my marrying his daughter on the ground that a marriage between a member of the great and good middle class with one of the vicious and corrupt aristocracy would be a misalliance. A misalliance, if you please! This is the man ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw

... the crowd, and "spotting" the most turbulent, for the purpose of refusing to grant them a license, when next they applied. He went upon the principle that a few agitators were sufficient to corrupt the morals of all the miners in Ballarat, and to get them to leave for other parts was Mr. ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... have to seek from day to day, all the means immediately possible, we must think of nothing else in practical life except the amelioration of habits and the reconciliation of interests. France is agonizing, that is certain; we are all sick, all corrupt, all ignorant, all discouraged: to say that it was WRITTEN, that it had to be so, that it has always been and will always be, is to begin again the fable of the pedagogue and the child who is drowning. You might as well ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert

... offices, and the practice of dividing the salaries of a single office between a principal and deputies, still continued; but Peel did his utmost to eradicate them. If it were permitted in one case, he said, 'every officer in every department who purchased on corrupt terms and is now living may claim a right to sell ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... Dress coming under the direction of religion is, that our manners and style of Dress shall not interfere with the principles of true religion, shall not injure the body, corrupt the heart, debase the mind of the individual; shall not degrade society, nor work any evil influence in it, but, on the contrary, shall do good both to the individual and society. Now let us ask whether our present modes of Dress are thus brought under the direction ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver

... white or black. I have never yet met with an unforgiving enemy, except in the person of one of whose injustice I had a right to complain. On the part of the slaves, my lords, I was not without anxiety; for I know the corrupt nature of the degrading system under which they groaned. * * * * It was, therefore, I confess, my lords, with some anxiety that I looked forward to the 1st of August, 1834; and I yielded, though reluctantly, to the plan of an intermediate state before what was called the full enjoyment ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... evil. Hugh Peters returned to England a few years ago and announced before Parliament that he had not seen a drunken man, nor heard a profane oath during the six years he had spent in the colonies. We can surely then control this ungodly habit that is threatening to corrupt us." ...
— Some Three Hundred Years Ago • Edith Gilman Brewster

... midst of seminal pleasures and corrupt passions men are always miserable. The influence of the Gospel of Christ is the only remedy for such diseases. It saves men from aggravating selfishness and holds in check their fierce passions until ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 7, July, 1880 • Various

... the midst of barbaric pomp and luxury. The power of life and death was in their hands, and in many instances they used it in the most unjust and arbitrary manner. They were themselves, of course, natives of Old Spain—often the pampered favourites of that corrupt court. ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... the Ohio penitentiary remarks that not only in the prison of that state, but in others, depraved appetites and corrupt habits, which have led to the commission of crime, are usually found with the ignorant, uninformed, and duller part of mankind. Of 276 at one time in that institution, nearly all were below mediocrity, and 175 are represented as grossly ignorant, and, in point ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew

... this magnitude is rarely attempted. A man must be conscious of being supported by the forces of a corrupt ecclesiastical literary police before venturing on a transaction of this kind. No shame can touch the President of the "Academy of the Industrious." His book has the triple Imprimatur of Rome. It is a comment, not so much on ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various

... that, however corrupt his nature, he is under no irresistible impulse, no constraining necessity. If he commit sin it is voluntarily. Sin is his choice and his pleasure. He does not sin because he is necessitated to do it, but because he loves it: and however willing the carnal ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox

... truth, it was not merely interested voices which opposed a peace; and if both Sweden and the German states were anxious, from corrupt motives, to prolong the conflict, they were seconded in their views by sound policy. After the defeat of Nordlingen, an equitable peace was not to be expected from the Emperor; and, this being the ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.

... then took up the cause of Greece. In all four enterprises his efforts were hampered by the utter corruption of the governments of these countries, just as his efforts on behalf of British sailors and of the British people at large had brought upon him the hatred and persecution of a government as corrupt as those of Chili, Brazil, and Greece. He was rewarded only with the basest ingratitude, and returned home after having expended a large part of his fortune and permanently injured his health in the inestimable services ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty

... but I'm much more against the Cabinet. The Cabinet is seeking to control not only the Upper but the Lower Chamber as well, it is fighting the Bishops merely to delude the people; and there are the Laity so stupid, or so lazy, or so corrupt that they won't see it. Every one knows that the Government sells honors for party purposes, and then covers it up by pretending that contributions to the party funds are 'public services.' Everything now is to be had ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman

... never by any chance distrusts the girl who is to become his wife; and just the same may be said of the German of the better classes. In both countries you will find sections of society above and below where morals are lax and manners corrupt. German professors write sketches of London in which our busy grimy city is held up to a virtuous Germania as the modern Sodom and Gomorrah; and the Continental Anglophobe likes nothing better than to entertain you with pictures of our decadent society, pictures that really do credit ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick

... had been presented to men in its true, uncorrupted form, it would not have been accepted by the majority, who would have been as untouched by it as the nations of Asia are now. The peoples who accepted it in its corrupt form were subjected to its slow but certain influence, and by a long course of errors and experiments and their resultant sufferings have now been brought to the necessity of assimilating it ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy

... I did not believe, nor do I now believe," said Coasson, "that the devil would single out one of a family, to corrupt her heart with such atrocious hatred as that whose avowal chilled the marrow of my bones. It was her countenance of wretchedness that attracted me. I saw that she was less capable of dissimulation than the rest of you; and ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau

... imperfect, meager, scant, blemished, deficient, incomplete, perverted, short, corrupt, deformed, inferior, poor, spoiled, corrupted, fallible, insufficient, ruined, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... the simple faith they had learned from the English missionaries. They chose ministers from their own people, and continued to meet and worship God with the simple forms to which they had been accustomed, and it is a remarkable fact that Romanism, notwithstanding its gorgeous ceremonies and corrupt ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston

... heard of but one of the eminent Spanish politicians of the present time, who made a boast that he was innocent of poetry; and if all that his enemies say of him be true, it would have been well both for his country and his own fame, if he had been equally innocent of corrupt practices. The compositions of Carolina Coronado, even her earliest, do not deserve to be classed with the productions of which I have spoken, and which are simply the effect of inclination and facility. They possess ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant

... allow of the passage of a human body. The defection of the Irishman caused the captain great pain, while it produced surprise even in the serjeant. Mike's fidelity had been thought of proof; and, for an instant, the master of the place was disposed to believe some evil spirit had been at work to corrupt his people. ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper

... a bad, bad (though personally not displeasing) old man, ridden by ruinous ideas about the almightiness of the dollar, or lucre as we term it.... I have observed for some time that he desires to corrupt me ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... little Jewish pedlar. Artem, the handsome, strong, but corrupt lover of the huckstress, is tended by him when he has been half-killed by envious and revengeful rivals. In return for this nursing, and for his rescue from need and misery, Artem protects the despised and persecuted Kain. But he has grown weary of gratitude—gratitude to ...
— Maxim Gorki • Hans Ostwald

... but she is somebody's wife, mother, sister, or daughter. It is a violation of all law." One Chief of Police wrote: "Open houses of prostitution breed disease, crime, increase the number of prostitutes, corrupt the morals of the community, and are a menace to the youth of the country." Another replied: "The only reason I have ever heard advanced in favour of houses of prostitution is that they protect innocent girls. I am opposed to sacrificing ...
— Venereal Diseases in New Zealand (1922) • Committee Of The Board Of Health

... height that I have done. Yet you look not like one who has had nights of delirium, and days in which the heart lay in the breast, as a corpse endowed with consciousness might lie in the grave, feeling the worm gnaw it, and the decay corrupt, and yet incapable of resistance or of motion. Your cheek is thin, but firm; your eye is haughty and bright; you have the air of one who has lived with men, and struggled and not been vanquished in the struggle. Suffered! No, man, no,—you have ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... purely selfish—so guiltless of entertaining any purpose unconnected with his ambition, covetousness, and desire of selfish enjoyment—that he almost seems an incarnation of the devil himself, permitted to do his utmost to corrupt our ideas of honour in its very source. Nor is it to be forgotten that Louis possessed to a great extent that caustic wit which can turn into ridicule all that a man does for any other person's advantage but his own, and was, therefore, peculiarly qualified ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... Jasher, the "Book of the Upright." Many modern writers attribute its authorship to David himself; others reject this view; all agree in regarding it as extremely ancient. The title, "Song of the Bow," is based on the possibly corrupt ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... accomplished at length by the exercise of almost superhuman ingenuity, with a solitary exception in the case of Arima, who, it was at once recognised, was so faithfully and devotedly attached to his royal master that it would be worse than folly to attempt to corrupt him; he was therefore left severely alone; the most stringent precautions being taken to keep the ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood

... expressed his desire to encourage the work, and therefore commanded the Archbishop that the fine of L300, which had been inflicted upon Robert Barker and Martin Lucas in the preceding year, for what was described as a base and corrupt printing of the Bible in 1631 (the omission of the word 'not' from the seventh commandment, which has earned for the edition the name of the Wicked Bible), should be converted to the buying of Greek letters. The King further ordered that Barker and Lucas should ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer

... himself to prove false to his trust is the worst thing about it. This is a queer world, my darling, in which we live. I never knew much about it until lately. It is not so at home, or was not when I was a boy—but here you can take away a man's character, rob him of his home, corrupt his children. You can break your wife's heart, be cruel, revengeful; you can lie and be tricky, and no law can touch you—in fact, you are still a respectable citizen. But if you take a dollar-bill out ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith

... too hasty with the death sentence. What matters it what Tepti may think! He is a good embalmer, reticent of speech and his belief in death and nothingness if expressed would neither find believers nor corrupt our faith. The thought of non-existence is not acceptable to the Egyptians; it lacks enthusiasm, it lacks certainty, it lacks hope; there is no appeal to ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt

... Europeans due chiefly to the fierce resistance of the native Caribs. France ceded possession to Great Britain in 1763, which made the island a colony in 1805. In 1980, two years after independence, Dominica's fortunes improved when a corrupt and tyrannical administration was replaced by that of Mary Eugenia CHARLES, the first female prime minister in the Caribbean, who remained in office for 15 years. Some 3,000 Carib Indians still living on Dominica are the only pre-Columbian population remaining ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... could no longer interfere in matters of state. Probably a majority of the radicals would have liked to abolish the church altogether, but even they must have realized that the great body of Russia's population, the peasantry, had not yet arrived at this state of mind, corrupt though they ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... constitution, and a spirit of supine confidence, had led to this sad result. It seemed impossible that Polterham could ever fall from its honourable position among the Conservative strongholds of the country; but the times were corrupt, a revolutionary miasma was spreading to every corner of the land. Polterham must no longer repose in the security of conscious virtue, for if it did happen that, at the coming election, the unprincipled ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing

... into the House by Dundas, with the view of stripping Sir Thomas of his ill-gotten gains. This bill was briskly pushed through the earlier stages; suddenly the proceedings were arrested by adjournment, and the measure fell to the ground. The rumour of the day attributed Rumbold's escape to the corrupt assistance of Rigby; who, in 1782, found himself, by Lord North's retirement, deprived of his place in the Pay Office, and called upon to refund a large amount of public moneys unaccounted for. In this strait, Rigby was believed to have had recourse to Rumbold. ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... had not yet arrived, but Lady Julia Postlethwaite was seated on a sofa by Mrs. Merillia, and was conversing with her about the Court, the dreadful amount of money a certain duke—her third cousin—had recently had to pay in Death Duties, the corrupt condition of society, and the absurd pretensions of the lower middle classes. Lady Julia was sensitive and a very grande dame. She wore her hair powdered, and had a slight cough and exquisite manners. Once a lady in waiting, she was now a widow, possessed a set ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens

... 1992 Albania ended 46 years of xenophobic Communist rule and established a multiparty democracy. The transition has proven difficult as corrupt governments have tried to deal with high unemployment, a dilapidated infrastructure, widespread gangsterism, and disruptive political opponents. International observers judged legislative elections ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... dialects and the Gypsy tongue—if the Gypsies were Bohemians—should closely resemble one another. They were from the same parent stem. The learned Buesching said, "The Gypsy language is a mixture of corrupt words from the Wallachian, Slavonian, Hungarian, and other nations." These are the cognate languages of the Slavic race, all descended from the same source, and that also the source of the Cech. The ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... imperial Parliament to amend their origin, which is bribery; to cleanse their consciences, which are corrupt; to throw off their disguise, which is hypocrisy; to break off with their false allies, who are the saints; and finally, to banish from among them the purchased rogues, who are three-fourths ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various

... there; if we only admire what is good, without trying to copy it, we shall lose that light. Our corrupt and diseased nature (and corrupt and diseased it is, as we shall surely find, as soon as we begin to try to do right) will quench that heavenly spark in us more and more, till it dies out—as God forbid that it ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley

... We have evidence that this is partially true of the British people. But we know also how much they are influenced by their political and social superiors, and we know, too, what base influences have been long at work to corrupt their judgment and inflame their prejudices. We have too often had occasion to see that the middle classes had been reached by the passions of their superiors, or infected by the poison instilled by traitorous emissaries. We have been ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various

... use of the term. Though we employ it to denote goodness that has stood no very severe test, we use it only where such a test may be regarded as possible. Though we call a man virtuous who has been shielded from all corrupt examples and influences, and has had no inducements to be otherwise than good, we do not apply the epithet to the little child who cannot by any possibility have been exposed to temptation. Nor yet would we apply it to the perfect purity and holiness of the ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody

... almost equal, triumphs. Wit, pathos, humour, realism, exaggeration, and romance are in this marvellous story all blended together, and out of the very clash and chaos of these things comes life itself. And what a curious life it is, half civilised and half barbarous, naive and corrupt, chivalrous and commonplace, real and improbable! Cressy herself is the most tantalising of heroines. She is always eluding one's grasp. It is difficult to say whether she sacrifices herself on the altar of romance, ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... take it all! was he still dreaming? A subtle odour came wafting from the rustling silk of her attire, a breath of depravity, as though hailing from the corrupt life of some big city; a bewildering, insinuating atmosphere, that had of a sudden overpowered the delicious ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein

... share of happiness, even though they may have departed a step or two from the stern maxims of worldly prudence. The bread earned by honourable toil is sweeter than the bread of idleness; and mutual love and domestic calm are treasures far preferable to the possessions rust can corrupt and moths consume away. ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter

... who, from the death of his mother, was driven into a hand to hand struggle with life for a bare existence, was necessarily forced into contact with much that was vicious and corrupt. But he in no way became a part of it. That same inherent love for mental cleanliness and spiritual truths that has so distinguished the works of the man kept the boy unstained in ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright

... picture and quotations from her hysterical speeches. They never think—or care—for the effect this will have on her, filling her head with all sorts of notions. This paper is absolutely without a soul, and seems determined to corrupt the country. And on the Women's Page, too, where they ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung

... fixing his glaring eye on the lawyer; 'fight to the last; leave nothing untried; spare not gold; bribe—corrupt—suborn; do any thing; but do not leave the triumph to my enemies. It's that that is tearing away at my heart. It's that which is killing me,' exclaimed he, bitterly, shaking his ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various

... anti-Semite and a despot of the worst type. Sipiagin, to whom, it is alleged, the manuscript had been previously given, was also a bitter anti-Semite and one of the most infamous of Russian bureaucrats. He was notoriously corrupt and unspeakably cruel while he was Minister of the Interior. He was assassinated by Stephen Balmashev, in March, 1902. Even if we credit this revised version of the way in which he came into possession of the manuscript, Nilus is closely identified with the secret agencies of the old regime. Let ...
— The Jew and American Ideals • John Spargo

... perfidious and there is no honesty in thee nor is there honour. How much of foulness hidest thou under thy beauty, and how many a pious man hast thou seduced from his duty and made his end penitence and perdition? Avaunt from me, O thou who devotest thyself to corrupt others!" Thereupon, he threw his goat's hair cloak over his head that he might not see her face, and betook himself to calling upon the name of his Lord. And when the angel saw the excellence of his submission ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... the last two are modern. The Christian portions are lives of saints, and prayers. The medical directions are often found separate, under the title "The Book of the Jew." Its language is modern and corrupt—mestizado, as the Spaniards ...
— Aboriginal American Authors • Daniel G. Brinton

... tortured, in which men and women showed to remorseless eyes the evil that was in their hearts: a fair face concealed a depraved mind; the virtuous used virtue as a mask to hide their secret vice, the seeming-strong fainted within with their weakness; the honest were corrupt, the chaste were lewd. You seemed to dwell in a room where the night before an orgy had taken place: the windows had not been opened in the morning; the air was foul with the dregs of beer, and stale smoke, and flaring gas. There was no laughter. At most you sniggered at the hypocrite or the fool: ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham

... to one of a few small groups—notably peers (except Irish); clergy of the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of England, and the Church of Scotland; certain office-holders; bankrupts; and persons convicted of treason, felony, or corrupt practices. A member is not required to be a resident of the electoral district which he represents. Once elected, a man properly qualified cannot escape membership by resignation. He may be expelled, but the only means by which he can retire from the House voluntarily is the acceptance of some public ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg

... for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi

... children at Green Fancy. They are men with the brains of foxes and the hearts of wolves. To deceive you was child's play. You are an honest man. It is always the honest man who is the victim; he is never the culprit. If honest men were as smart as the corrupt ones, Mr. Barnes, there would be no such thing as crime. If the honest man kept one hand on his purse and the other on his revolver, he would be more than a match for the thief. You were no match for Chester Naismith. Do not look so glum. The shrewdest police officers in ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon

... speaks of the 'power of Elias.' The outward appearance of the man corresponds to his function and his character. Gaunt and sinewy, dwelling in the desert, feeding on locusts and wild honey, with a girdle of camel's skin about his loins, he bursts into the history, amongst all that corrupt state of society, with the force of a hammer that God's hand wields. The whole of his career is marked by this one thing,—the strength of a righteous man. And then, on the other hand, this Ahab;—the keynote of his character is the weakness ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... the sentimental and careless verdicts of juries, in a lack of public spirit, and in an indisposition to prosecute wrong-doers. In addition, the impression sought to be conveyed by the yellow press that our judiciary is corrupt and that money can buy anything—even justice—leads the jury in many cases to feel that their presence is merely a formal concession to an archaic procedure and that their oaths have ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train

... the press. Of those four plays, the two tragedies at least were thoroughly recast, and rewritten from end to end: the pirated editions giving us a transcript, more or less perfect or imperfect, accurate or corrupt, of the text as it first came from the poet's hand; a text to be afterwards indefinitely modified and incalculably improved. Not quite so much can be said of the comedy, which certainly stood in less need of revision, and probably would not have borne it so well; nevertheless every ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... pursued, and with circumstances very unusual, do not in the least degree fright me. God knows I am innocent in every particular as I ought to be; and I hope your Majesty knows enough of me to believe that I had never a violent appetite for money that could corrupt me. But, alas! your Majesty's declared anger and indignation deprives me of the comfort and support even in my own innocence, and exposes me to the rage and fury of those who have some excuse for being my enemies; whom I have sometimes displeased, when (and only then) your Majesty believed them ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik

... liar—a young liar," said Harry, with great unction, "and you're to have tea down here because you're not fit to speak to us. And you're not to speak to Judy again till Mother gives you leave. You'll corrupt her. You're only fit to associate with the servant. ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling

... They, like the banks, were crowded; companies of negroes sat over dishes of mucous consistency and drank, with thick lips, liquors of vicious dyes. The prodigious women, often paler than the men, drinking with them, gabbled in a loud and corrupt Spanish and, without hats on their sere crinkled masses of hair, were unrestrained in displays of calculated or emotionally ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer

... to mistake in the point of your own liberty. There is a liberty of a corrupt nature which is effected both by men and beasts to do what they list, and this liberty is inconsistent with authority, impatient of all restraint; by this liberty 'sumus omnes deteriores': 'tis the grand enemy of truth and peace, and all ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... dy'd hereafter;/ There would have been a time for such a word] This passage has very justly been suspected of being corrupt. It is not apparent for what word there would have been a time, and that there would or would not be a time for any word seems not a consideration of importance sufficient to transport Macbeth into the ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson

... was a practicing attorney, not noted for the quality of his community service. The administration of San Francisco had been a scandal for years. Few cared. It was a "corrupt and contented" city. The corruption grew worse. Lower and meaner grafters rose to take the place of the earlier and more robust good fellows who trafficked in the city o' shame. Graft lost class, and lost caste. It was ultimately exposed in all its shocking ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous

... makes it a charity to our neighbours to destroy those creatures, not for any personal injury received, but for prevention.... Serpents, toads, and vipers, &c., are noxious to the body, and poison the sensitive life: these poison the soul, corrupt our posterity, ensnare our children, destroy the vital of our happiness, our future felicity, and contaminate the whole mass.' And he concludes: 'Alas, the Church of England! What with Popery on the one hand, and schismatics on ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... to speak to you to-night about one of those old despotic empires which were in every case the earliest known form of civilisation. Were I minded to play the cynic or the mountebank, I should choose some corrupt and effete despotism, already grown weak and ridiculous by its decay—as did at last the Roman and then the Byzantine Empire—and, after raising a laugh at the expense of the old system say: See what a superior ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... attention from its significance and quaintness," representing a donkey cart with two passengers on one side and a steam engine and carriages on the other, to personify "Ellesmere of yesterday," and "Ellesmere of to-day," with the philosophic addendum, "Evil communications corrupt good manners," "Aye, says the preacher, every valley shall be raised and every hill shall be brought low." "Aye, says the teacher, let us bless the bridge that carries us safely over," "Aye, aye, quoth honest nature." The application ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine

... having said so much. "I'm glad you've done nothing yet—that you have it still to do. It's a very good thing for a girl to have refused a few good offers—so long of course as they are not the best she's likely to have. Pardon me if my tone seems horribly corrupt; one must take the worldly view sometimes. Only don't keep on refusing for the sake of refusing. It's a pleasant exercise of power; but accepting's after all an exercise of power as well. There's always the danger of refusing once too often. It was not the one I fell into—I didn't refuse ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James

... themselves, like the Edinburgh gardyloo. Flunky is defined in Fergusson's glossary as "a better kind of servant." This is an exact definition of the Scotch hench-man, the most probable original of which is haunch-man or body-guard. Turn haunch-man into French and you get flanquier; corrupt it back into Scotch and you have flunky. Whatever liberties we take with French words, the Gauls have their revenge when they take possession of an English one. We once saw an Avis of the police in Paris, regulating les chiens et les boule ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... really, at that which conservatism represents. The merit of the reformer is his sincerity, not his busy effort to emancipate the slaves or to raise the drunkards. And the deeper his sincerity the more deeply grounded seems to him the order he holds to be so corrupt. God always weighs down the Devil. Therefore the church is not a collection of puzzling priests and deceived people, but the representative, now as much as ever, of the religious sentiment. A pious man ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke

... that they be transported to a more hospitable region would, if carried out, cause their extermination in two or three generations. Our variable climate they could not endure, as they are keenly susceptible to pulmonary and bronchial affections. Our civilization, too, would only soften and corrupt them, as their racial inheritance is one of physical hardship; while to our complex environment they could not adjust themselves without losing the very childlike qualities which constitute their chief virtues. To Christianize them would be quite ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary

... approve of such actions as tend to the peace of society, and disapprove of such as tend to its disturbance. The same natural obligation of interest takes place among independent kingdoms, and gives rise to the same morality; so that no one of ever so corrupt morals will approve of a prince, who voluntarily, and of his own accord, breaks his word, or violates any treaty. But here we may observe, that though the intercourse of different states be advantageous, and even sometimes necessary, yet it is nor so necessary nor advantageous as that among ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume

... accordance with that command—although your Majesty's purpose had not been realized hitherto, either because the governors my predecessors were unable (which is the most certain thing), or they did not always have the cloves in the quantities necessary, or because of the corrupt agents who have been occupied in that business—I have now forty-five bars [i.e., bahars] of cloves stored in the magazines; and I judge that an average of fifty bars per year (rather more than less) could be obtained without much difficulty. Considering the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various

... of their childhood and youth, might now be bound in some mysterious deadly pact with evil spirits of the most horrible kind—who could tell? And in such a case it became a duty, a sacred duty, to give up the earthly body which had been once so loved, but which was now the habitation of a soul corrupt and horrible in its evil inclinations. Possibly, terror of death might bring on confession and repentance, and purification. Or if it did not, why away with the evil creature, the witch, out of the world, down to the kingdom of the master, whose bidding was done on earth ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell

... doubtful if Gushing possessed the dash and intrepidity which Butler showed in dealing with the situation at Baltimore. That portion of his military career was certainly a good success, and how far he should be held responsible for the corrupt proceedings of his brother at New Orleans I do not undertake ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns

... noble minds, who despise death, and who know how, upon occasion, to give it to themselves. It is not for weak beings, who enter into a composition with guilt, and cover selfishness and cowardice with the name of prudence. It is not for corrupt wretches, who rise from the bed of debauchery, or from the mire of indigence, to feast their eyes upon the blood that streams from the scaffold. It is the portion of a people who delight in humanity, practice justice, despise ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... saltum.(503) No, believe it, ye must come and enter this way, before ye compass the end, and the way to this kingdom is by another kingdom, namely righteousness. It is the kingdom of grace within us, and the fruit of it is this. Deny thyself, and follow me, Matt. xvi. 24-26. Overcome yourselves, and your corrupt lusts, and ye shall be more than conquerors. Kingdoms are gotten by conquest. But here is the greatest conquest and triumph in the world, for a man to overcome himself. He that rules himself and his own spirit, is greater than he that taketh a city, Prov. xvi. 32. Other conquerors but overcome ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... catechised or questioned, and candidates because they wore long white robes, candidus being the Latin word for white, and by degrees the day came to be called Whitsunday. Furthermore, Miss Etta told all about the Whitsuntide festivals of old English times in the days of the corrupt church, when festivities of the most riotous kind took place on the two days following Sunday; and the girls left the school, if not impressed by the holy teachings of the lessons, very full of a certain knowledge of that kind which St. Paul says "puffeth up," and prepared to pass a brilliant examination ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow

... pleasure instead of doing God service. It is not considered disreputable to take fee after fee to uphold injustice, to plead against innocence, to pervert truth, and to aid the devil. It is not considered disreputable to gamble on the Stock Exchange, or to corrupt the honesty of electors by bribes, for doing which the penalty attached is equal to that decreed to the offence of which I am guilty. All these, and much more, are not considered disreputable; yet by all these are the moral bonds of society loosened, while in ...
— The Three Cutters • Captain Frederick Marryat

... been more of a passing phase (even as Schopenhauer is lost in the chain of ethical sages) but for its strange coincidence with the Wagnerian music. The accident of this alliance gave it an overwhelming power in Germany, where it soon threatened to corrupt all the arts, banishing idealism from the land of its special haunts.[A] The ultimate weakness of the Wagnerian philosophy is that it finds in fatalism an excuse for the surrender of heroic virtue,—not in the spirit of a tragic truth, but in a glorification of the senses; ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp

... very small majority that justice had not been denied. In some points, however, they succeeded: in the case of a controverted election at Maidstone, between Thomas Blisse and Thomas Culpepper, the house resolved, That the latter had been not only guilty of corrupt, scandalous, and indirect practices, in endeavouring to procure himself to be elected a burgess, but likewise being one of the instruments in promoting and presenting the scandalous, insolent, and seditious petition, commonly called the Kentish petition, to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... "The text here is corrupt." Las Casas, I. 324, gives the same figures and adds, "yet I think the text is erroneous." Navarrete says the quadrants of that period measured the altitude double and so we should take half of forty-two as the real altitude. If so, ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various

... different true and only way? Great statesmen upon whose knowledge and leadership the salvation of the nation depended, until the next election discovered them to be foolish puppets of a dishonest and corrupt party and put new leaders in their places to save the nation with a new brand of political salvation, the chief value of which was its newness? No indeed! Such as these were not the intellectual giants of the man's Yesterdays. The heights of ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright

... to the throne[148] several forms of religion probably co-existed at Pagan, and probably most of them were corrupt, though it is a mistake to think of his dominions as barbarous. The reformation which followed is described by Burmese authors in considerable detail and as usual in such accounts is ascribed to the activity of one personality, ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot

... in defence of his weakness, in desiring to live by the dishonour of his virtuous sister, was interrupted by the entrance of the duke; who said, "Claudio, I have overheard what has passed between you and your sister. Angelo had never the purpose to corrupt her; what he said, has only been to make trial of her virtue. She having the truth of honour in her, has given him that gracious denial which he is most glad to receive. There is no hope that he will pardon you; therefore pass your hours in prayer, and make ready ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb

... distinctive tenets of the reformed. The "diabolical imaginations" of Servetus were equally condemned with the gross abuses of monastic vows, pilgrimages, celibacy, auricular confession, and indulgences. The pure observance of the sacraments was established, as well against their corrupt and superstitious use in the papal church, as against the "fantastic sacramentarians" who rejected them entirely. Nor need we be surprised to find the warrant of magistrates to interfere in behalf of the truth formally recognized. The right of ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... a whole seem less mixed with the Malayan than any other group, and fewer mixed bloods are seen among them. Their average stature is also somewhat lower. They speak corrupt Tagalog, though careful study may reveal traces of an original tongue. (See Appendix B ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed

... their lives, which they read in their churches, recited at their tables, quoted in their writings, appealed to in their controversies, translated into many languages, and dispersed into every part of the known world, they neither would, nor could, corrupt ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... plea so tainted and corrupt But being season'd with a gracious voice Obscures the show ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... them within a moderate period of time, I must pronounce that the liberties of America cannot be unsafe in the number of hands proposed by the federal Constitution. From what quarter can the danger proceed? Are we afraid of foreign gold? If foreign gold could so easily corrupt our federal rulers and enable them to ensnare and betray their constituents, how has it happened that we are at this time a free and independent nation? The Congress which conducted us through the Revolution was a less numerous body than their successors will be; they were not chosen by, nor responsible ...
— The Federalist Papers

... there is also a tope to Buddha, where a good spirit constantly keeps (all about it) swept and watered, without any labour of man being required. A king of corrupt views once said, "Since you are able to do this, I will lead a multitude of troops and reside there till the dirt and filth has increased and accumulated, and (see) whether you can cleanse it away or not." The spirit thereupon raised a great wind, which blew ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien

... shirt: and so he did. And then he took him a scarlet coat, so that should be instead of his shirt till he had fulfilled the quest of the Sangreal; and the good man found in him so marvellous a life and so stable, that he marvelled and felt that he was never corrupt in fleshly lusts, but in one time that he ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory

... far-away autumn of her fourteenth year when Blake had led an at-first forlorn crusade against "Blind Charlie" Peck and swept that apparently unconquerable autocrat and his corrupt machine from power, she had admired Blake as the ideal public man. He had seemed so fine, so big already, and loomed so large in promise—it was the fall following his proposal that he was elected lieutenant-governor—that it had been a humiliation to her that she, so insignificant, so unworthy, ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott

... loves I have of comfort and despair, Which like two spirits do suggest me still: The better angel is a man right fair, The worser spirit a woman colour'd ill. To win me soon to hell, my female evil Tempteth my better angel from my side, And would corrupt my saint to be a devil, Wooing his purity with her foul pride. And whether that my angel be turn'd fiend Suspect I may, yet not directly tell: But being both from me, both to each friend, I guess one angel ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken

... create national ideals, which will dominate the policy of statesmen, the actions of citizens, the universities, the social organizations, the administration of State departments, and unite in one spirit urban and rural life. Unless this is done Ireland will be like Portugal, or any of the corrupt little penny-dreadful nationalities which so continually disturb the peace of the world with internal revolutions and external brawlings, and we shall only have achieved the mechanism of nationality, but the spirit ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell

... sideways at them to make notes, but in two seconds they were all up and at attention, and two came running forward for Sahib's orders and cards, so I drove away lamenting. The Red Chupprassies, by the way, or "corrupt lictors," are official messengers wearing red Imperial livery, who are attached to all civil officers in India. See Mr Aberich-Mackay on the subject in ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch

... preach the opening sermon. It was a full meeting. The Archbishop with a 'grait pontificalite and big countenance' was seated by the preacher's side. The subject of discourse was the evil that had been done to the Church from the time of its planting by the ambitious spirit and corrupt lives of men holding its highest offices. On reaching his application, the preacher, turning to the Archbishop and directing his speech to him personally, recalled his long course of disloyalty to the Church and his persistent efforts to overthrow its discipline, ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison

... as to combine total annihilation with bewitching music. For instance, by turning one of the cranks by which it is worked, PUNCHINELLO will be able to project a shower of such mortiferous missiles against all abettors of crime and vice, all quacks, political and social, all corrupt officials, all Congress, (except the Right Party,) all torpid fogies and peddlers of red tape, all humbugs of every size and shape, in fact, as will speedily reduce them to ashes. Then, by skilfully ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 27, October 1, 1870 • Various

... woody hills, and they smoked; he set his foot upon the grassy plains, and they withered. He lifted the hand of violence against the red sons of the forest, and they fled; he breathed upon them, and they became diseased, corrupt, and feeble; he sowed the seeds of strife among them, and straightway they fell to wrangling and warring one with another, more fiercely than ever before; he stretched his long arm over their heads and thrust his terrible ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady

... be ready for him by six; and you will take care, Lettice, that everything is prepared as you know he would like to have it. Going into Parliament, is he? Yes, I have always told you that he would. He is a born orator, child; he will serve his country brilliantly—not for place, nor for corrupt motives of any kind, but as a patriot and a Christian, to whom duty is the law of ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... rapid growth is also to be reckoned fame of a false and artificial kind; where, for instance, a book is worked into a reputation by means of unjust praise, the help of friends, corrupt criticism, prompting from above and collusion from below. All this tells upon the multitude, which is rightly presumed to have no power of judging for itself. This sort of fame is like a swimming bladder, by its aid a heavy body ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer

... not far from being taken down. She was an old woman,—very old, for a period wherein few lived to old age; she had long outlived her husband, and had seen the funerals of nearly all her children. The greater part even of her earthly treasures were already safe where moth and rust corrupt not, and her own feeling of earnest longing to rejoin them grew daily stronger. It was for the daughter's sake alone that she cared to live now; the daughter to whom men had left only God and that mother. A new lesson was now to be taught to Constance—to rest ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt

... by a wild, unguarded appeal to partisan prejudices. Knowing his hearers, he was personally vindictive in his references to Black Republicans in general and to Lincoln in particular. He reiterated his stock arguments, giving new vehemence to his charge of corrupt bargain between Trumbull and Lincoln by quoting Matheny, a Republican and "Mr. Lincoln's especial and confidential friend for the ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... unmistakably threatened them. While Varney had been more interested by the man, personally, than by his whimsical menaces, the editor's conversation could certainly not be called reassuring. Smith owned a corrupt newspaper; he was a clever man and, by his own confession, an unscrupulous one, bought body and soul by the local freebooters; and if he thought the headlong intruder Maginnis important enough to warrant it, there were presumably no lengths to which he would ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... was added, so that "the mouth of Port," i.e. of the place called Portus by the Romans, became at last Portsmouth. But this does not satisfy the early historians, and, as happens so frequently when there is anything corrupt in language, a legend springs up almost spontaneously to remove all doubts and difficulties. Thus we read in the venerable Saxon Chronicle under the year 501, "that Port came to Britain with his two sons, Bieda and Maegla, with two ships, and their ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... one occasion while I was exercising this command, impurity of motive was imputed to me, but it has never been truthfully shown (nor can it ever be) that political or corrupt influences of any kind controlled me in any instance. I simply tried to carry out, without fear or favor, the Reconstruction acts as they came to me. They were intended to disfranchise certain persons, and to enfranchise certain others, and, ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 5 • P. H. Sheridan

... second half of the 14th century French had ceased to be the mother-tongue of any considerable part of the population of England. By a statute of Edward III., in 1362, it was displaced from the law courts. By 1386 English had taken its place in the schools. The {29} Anglo-Norman dialect had grown corrupt, and Chaucer contrasts the French of Paris with the provincial French spoken by his prioress, "after the scole of Stratford-atte-Bowe." The native English genius was also beginning to assert itself, roused in part, perhaps, by the English victories ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... political purpose should be forbidden by law; directors should not be permitted to use stockholders' money for such purposes; and, moreover, a prohibition of this kind would be, as far as it went, an effective method of stopping the evils aimed at in corrupt practices acts. Not only should both the National and the several State Legislatures forbid any officer of a corporation from using the money of the corporation in or about any election, but they should also forbid such use of money in connection with any legislation save by the employment ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... same American had sat upon the throne of Lutha for two days and had led the little army to victory; but since then the true king had been with them daily in his true colors. Arrogance, haughtiness, and petty tyranny had marked his reign. Taxes had gone even higher than under the corrupt influence of the Blentz regime. The king's days were spent in bed; his nights in dissipation. Old Ludwig von der Tann seemed Lutha's only friend at court. Him ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... said Gray, "I have sometimes been afraid that he kept too much company with that Tam Hillary of yours; but twenty Tam Hillarys would not corrupt ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott

... indirectly; sometimes by the words of his own mouth, oftener by the mouths of those whom he attacked, and almost constantly by the unfriendly newspapers, she deftly portrays the elements of his character. Warmoth had almost unlimited power and he used it like Cataline to corrupt the corruptible elements of the State. He was essentially a Nero, callous to the last degree and indifferent to the progressive anemia which was destroying the State's finances. Like Julius Caesar he attained his gubernatorial ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various

... and gave her ten million dollars besides. It was vehemently opposed in the House, and its fate seemed to hang in doubt up to the final vote upon it; but its passage was really assured from the beginning by the corrupt appliances of its friends. Texas bonds, which were then worth ten cents on the dollar, would be lifted nearly to par by this measure, and its success was undoubtedly secured by the bribery of members. The territorial question was disposed of by the legislative ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian

... altered by too much intercourse with a cold and corrupt world!" he rather whispered, than uttered aloud. "Would that thus they might all continue! Thou art a singular compound of thy sex's weakness, and of manly resolution, belle Barberie; but trust me," and he laid his hand on his heart with an earnestness that spoke well ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper

... lady, a little indignant, "in some memoirs the other day, that our court was a corrupt and dissolute court. It was a court of pleasure, if you like; but of pleasure that animated and refined, and put the world in good humour, which, after all, is good government. The most corrupt and dissolute courts on ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli

... preaching was a great offense to some of the easy-going formalists of the English church at Calcutta, and some of the ministry attacked him bitterly from their pulpits, declaring, for instance, that to affirm repentance to be the gift of God and to teach that nature is wholly corrupt, is to drive men to despair, and that to suppose the righteousness of Christ sufficient to justify is to make it unnecessary to have any of our own. Though compelled to listen to such downright heresies, to hear himself described as knowing neither ...
— Life of Henry Martyn, Missionary to India and Persia, 1781 to 1812 • Sarah J. Rhea

... Assembly and Free Elections; The Suffrage, 28; The Force Bills; Interference with Voting; Bribery and Corrupt Practices; Lobbying Acts; The Form of the Ballot; Direct Primaries and Nominations; The Distrust of Representative Government; Corrupt Elections Laws; Direct Election of U.S. Senators; Women's Suffrage; Municipal Elections, The Initiative, Referendum, ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... woman in this city whose business it is, at least so I judge, to corrupt, morally and physically, young school and messenger boys, as you will surmise by a conversation which took place this very morning, and it is not her first offense. She called for her party, and ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts

... Italian, and, as I apprehend, the French of his time. For this purpose, it is necessary to presume that many terminations, now mute, were syllabically pronounced; and where verses prove refractory after all our endeavours, Tyrwhitt has no scruple in declaring them corrupt. It may be added, that Gray, before the appearance of Tyrwhitt's essay on the versification of Chaucer, had adopted without hesitation the same hypothesis. But, according to Dr Nott, the verses of Chaucer, and of all his successors ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... characters of mortals are little short of angelic. And coevally with these dreamers of grand socialistic improvement, we are met by such evidence as that of Wall Street, its air foul with the mephitic exhalations that rise from dead and rotting principle. When the state is corrupt, and large bodies of its citizens are not only corrupt but wholly scornful of every fraternal and philanthropic purpose as well,—when communities like this of Wall Street, cold-blooded, shameless, injurious, are bowed to as powers, instead of being shunned as pests, then the ideals of such men ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various

... All things change and glide, Corrupt and crumble, suffer wreck and decay, But, obstinate dark Integrities, you abide, And obey but them who obey. All things else are dyed In the colours of man's desire: But you no bribe nor prayer Avails to ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various

... English influences that made them anxious to emigrate to America. As the years passed, Robinson sympathized more with the Barrowistic standards of other churches and came also to regard more leniently the English Established Church as one having true religion under corrupt forms and ceremonies, and accordingly one with which he could hold a limited fellowship. This was a step in the approachment of Separatist and Puritan, and Robinson was a most influential writer. ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.

... the French buy not its fruits and loathe its wines, yet there is no bad spirit in Portugal towards the French. The reason of this is no mystery; it is the nature not of the Portuguese only, but of corrupt and unregenerate man, to dislike his benefactors, who, by conferring benefits upon him, mortify in the most generous manner his ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... the Jubilee festivities soon gave way to a sterner phase of empire. For years South Africa had been in ferment owing to the conflicting interests of narrow, fanatical, often corrupt Boer leaders, greedy Anglo-Jewish mining magnates, and British statesmen-Rhodes, Milner, Chamberlain—dominated by the imperial idea and eager for an "all-red" South Africa. Eventually an impasse was reached over the question of the rights and privileges of British subjects in the Transvaal Republic. ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton

... she continued, "any human being so utterly bad-hearted, so altogether vile and corrupt, as this man who now calls himself Leon Dudleigh. In pure fiendish malignity, and in all those qualities which are abhorrent and shameful, he surpasses ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille

... horror in a thieves' kitchen, who can rid themselves of those elementary instincts of the man and the gentleman which cling to the very bones of our civilisation, cannot rid themselves of the influence of two or three remote Oriental anecdotes written in corrupt Greek. The fact, when realised, has about it something stunning and hypnotic. The most convinced rationalist is in its presence suddenly stricken with a strange and ancient vision, sees the immense sceptical ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton

... Provided, That if any person shall knowingly and falsely take and subscribe any oath in this act prescribed, such person so offending and being thereof duly convicted, shall be subject to the pains, penalties, and disabilities which by law are provided for the punishment of the crime of wilful and corrupt perjury. ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 5 • P. H. Sheridan

... we must return; but if you put us to death, you will do it wrongfully, for the treacherous vizier hath accused me falsely, and he alone is guilty.' She then informed us of his having endeavoured to corrupt her by rich presents, and that she had ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.

... invited discussion of the point, whether the natural law can conduct society to perfection without the aid of political laws.[151] In 1749 they proposed this question as a theme for their prize essay: Has the restoration of the sciences contributed to purify or to corrupt manners? Rousseau was one of fourteen competitors, and in 1750 his discussion of the academic theme received the prize.[152] This was his first entry on the field of literature and speculation. Three years afterwards the same academy propounded ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley



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