"Degrade" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... survivors of the conquest might, perhaps, escape, and carry their wasp-fetish into a new land. But if they became poor and weakly, their brains and imagination, degenerating with their bodies, would degrade their wasp-worship till they knew not what it meant. Away from the sacred tree, in a country the wasps of which were not so large or formidable, they would require a remembrancer of the wasp-king; and ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... be said to have reached almost the last stage of national humiliation. There is scarcely anything that can wound the pride or degrade the character of an independent nation which we do not experience. Are there engagements to the performance of which we are held by every tie respectable among men? These are the subjects of constant ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... principles from which he acts; we suppose that they are the same in kind, only referred to different objects; and we not only misapply the name of love, in conjunction with self, but, in a manner tending to degrade our nature, we limit the aim of this supposed selfish affection to the securing or accumulating the constituents of interest, of the means of ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... possession of landed property by the tyrannous operation of the penal laws. Justly has a celebrated Irish patriot (Theobald Wolfe Tone) spoken of these laws as "an execrable and infamous code, framed with the art and malice of demons to plunder and degrade and brutalize the Catholics of Ireland. There was no disgrace, no injustice, no disqualification, moral, political, or religious, civil or military, which it has not heaped ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... mysticism, or Sacerdotalism, or whatever it may be called, if it's that which has caused this deterioration in you. That a woman-poet, a woman-seer, a woman whose soul shone like a diamond—whom all the wise of the world would have been proud of, if they could have known you—should degrade herself like this! I am glad I had nothing to do with Divinity—damn glad—if it's going to ruin ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... belonging to the regular army, and those only upon Indians or those degraded Canadians who go about with them, painted and disguised to resemble their dusky allies. For my part, I think that men who thus degrade themselves deserve ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... of it was that Guy Oscard never attempted to degrade Durnovo from his post of joint commander. This puzzled the half-breed sorely. It may have been that Oscard knew men better than his indifferent manner would have led the observer to believe. Durnovo's was just one of those natures which in good hands might ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... people. This is an unique effort on their part. Like Romanists, in the use of the Latin service, the Mohammedans cling, with deathly tenacity, to their Arabic bible and Arabic worship, foolishly believing that to vernacularize their faith is to degrade and corrupt it. In Madura, where there is a mosque of some pretension, there are only two or three who can pronounce their Arabic Quran. And while they have learned to pronounce, in the ancient tongue, their beloved book, they do not understand the meaning of what ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... left you. I have killed some salmon and plenty of sea trout, though after much apparently hopeless toil, against all the rules as to sun, wind, and cloud. I was recalling examples when the rod was made to quiver again, and this time it was a sea trout of over 1 1/2 lb. I would not degrade D. by allowing him to interfere, but walked back and hauled the fish up a sandy spit, extracted the hook, and weighed him myself, as I generally do. In the next quarter of an hour I got three sea trout of the smaller size, and weighed them en bloc, tied together, ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... necessaries of life as noble, its comforts as honorable, its luxuries as permissible,—thus reversing altogether the usual judgment of rich men, who in general like nothing worse than to leave their hoards to those of their relatives who will degrade them to the purchase of mere bread and cheese, blankets and clothes and coals. But I had no right to go against my husband's feeling. So long as the children had their bread and milk, I would endure with him. I am confident I could have ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... the theft with impunity it was first of all necessary to degrade the great national hero and saint and expose his memory to ridicule. In November 1538 St Thomas was declared a traitor, every representation of him was ordered to be destroyed, and his name was erased ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... catch at any little thing that may pass along for resources. We have a teeming prosperity, an abundant wealth, unending resources, and a people everywhere clamorous for liberal expenditures for adequate mails. Why shall we degrade ourselves by depending upon others for our mail facilities? It alway humbles and mortifies me to see one human being lick the hand of another; one who acknowledges himself a stupid drone that must needs have a master ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey
... group (the state legislature), to a large and indefinite group of persons (the voters as a class), upon whom responsibility cannot be fixed. By robbing the legislature of power and responsibility, the Initiative and Referendum are said to degrade rather than to improve that body: the best class of men is not attracted to a legislature which has been shorn of dignity and influence, and if the people rely upon the Initiative and Referendum, the voters deem it less necessary ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... thought I was blind because I shut my eyes. Now I have had enough of it. We do not die through the treacheries of a woman of your sort. When they become too monstrous we get out of the way. To inflict punishment on account of them would be only to degrade oneself." ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... the two poor beings who were dependent on him and who suffered like himself. He became familiar with 'viae dolorosae' painted at reduced prices, with male and female saints at so much per gross, even with 'pounced' shop blinds—in short, all the ignoble jobs that degrade painting and make it so much idiotic delineation, lacking even the charm of naivete. He even suffered the humiliation of having portraits at five-and-twenty francs a-piece refused, because he failed to produce a likeness; and he reached the lowest degree of distress—he ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... weak and worldly,—to assert your own will—your own thought and opinion—in the face of the Most High! What! YOU will desert the Church? YOU whose ancestors have for ages been devout servants of the faith? YOU, the last descendant of the Counts Hermenstein, a noble and loyal family, will degrade your birth by taking up with the rags and tags of humanity—the scarecrows of life? And by your sheer stupidity and obstinacy, you will allow your husband's soul to be dragged to perdition with your own! You call it love—to keep ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... intellectually and emotionally from his prejudices and conventions by giving him a wider horizon, a sounder judgment, a firmer and yet a more tolerant point of view. "Our proclivity to details," said Emerson, "cannot quite degrade our life and divest it of poetry." The college seizes upon the liberating instinct of youth and utilizes it for all it is worth. We summarize by saying that the college prepares not merely for "life" but for "living"; so that the society whom the individual ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... admitted, very creditable to him, but he had neither the Age nor the rank to justify the granting him a triumph. To bestow such an honor upon one so young and in such a station, would only bring the honor itself, he said, into disrepute, and degrade, also, his dictatorship ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott
... there is herein nothing what ever to distress her; no cloud of grief crosses the area of her vision, as she gazes upwards.' He even intimates that, from the stress laid upon immortality by 'modern divines,' they might seem to be 'incarnations of selfishness.' He says it tends to 'degrade religion into a prudential regard for our interests after death'; that 'conscience, the love of virtue, for its own sake, and much more the love of God, are ignored.' Many of the 'spiritual' school agree with him in this; ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... a class of men lecturing upon Phrenology, who have never mastered even the rudiments of the science; who have merely learned the location and nomenclature of the organs of the brain, and who, by flattery and cheap wit, degrade this noble science to the level of mere "bumpology," until the average good citizen who has never investigated the subject has come to look upon the term Phrenologist as signifying one who goes about over the country ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... public, by exaggerating the advantages to be derived from a settlement in the colony, by praising all the good qualities of her people, and by throwing a flattering veil over their defects; but this is not my object, and such servile adulation would do them no good, and degrade me in my own eyes. I have written what I consider to be the truth, and as such I hope it may do good, by preparing the minds of emigrants for what they will really find, rather than by holding out fallacious hopes that ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... hastily adjourning the debate. I sent him a note that evening, filling-in a few of the details of the policy that I had before sketched in outline. Amongst other things I submitted that it would be better for us to exalt Mr. Scandril's opponent than to degrade himself. To this Mr. Masthead reluctantly assented—"sinking the individual," he reproachfully explained, "in the dependent employee—the powerless bondsman!" The next issue of the Thundergust contained, under the heading, "Invigorating Zephyrs," ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... for lower purposes. True, no one can find fault with a physician for making his profession, no matter how exalted, a means of earning an honest livelihood and a decent competency; but to ambition this career solely for its pecuniary remuneration would be to degrade one of the most sublime vocations to which man may aspire. There is unfortunately too much of this spirit abroad in our day. There are too many who talk and act as if the one highest and worthiest ambition of life were to make as large a fortune in as short a time ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... tradesman. A final appeal was made to Delaware; she was implored to consider the situation of her sisters, who had all made more ambitious marriages or were about to make them. Why should she now degrade the family by marrying ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... watch the movements of two men—the Duke of Marlborough and Lord Bolingbroke. Marlborough was beyond question the greatest soldier of his time. He had gone into exile when Queen Anne consented to degrade him and to persecute him, and now he was on his way home, at the urgent entreaty of the Whig leaders, in order to lend his powerful influence to the ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... their own dishwashing, sweeping and bed-making. Once three boys about fourteen years old went on strike because the proctor asked them to scrub the dining-room floor on their knees. They thought this work would degrade them, and they started toward the superintendent's office. On the way they met me and told ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... concubine Of Aias, first of all the Greeks for might, How envied once, worn with what service now! So will they speak; and while my quailing heart Shall sink beneath its burden, clouds of shame Will dim thy glory and degrade thy race. Oh! think but of thy father, left to pine In doleful age, and let thy mother's grief— Who, long bowed down with many a careful year, Prays oftentimes thou may'st return alive— O'er awe thee. Yea, and pity thine own son, Unsheltered in his boyhood, lorn of thee, With bitter foes ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... ill-natured reflections; it having been objected that by exhibiting gratuitously through the country when the theatre is closed, they reduce themselves to the level of mountebanks, and thereby tend to degrade the respectability of the profession. Certainly Grimaldi never did this sort of thing; and though Brown, King, and Gibson have gone to the Surrey in vacation time, and Mr. C. J. Smith has ruralised at Sadler's Wells, we find no ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... man nor woman are safe with him; and his arts are such as to over-reach the most cautious. He has words at will; and his wit and invention, which are extraordinary, are employed to entrap, humiliate, degrade and ruin all with whom he has intercourse. His ambition is to gratify his desires, by triumphing over the credulity of the unsuspecting, whom he contemns for their want of his own vices. It was he that, after having seduced me, placed me in the family of the bishop, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... artfully this was put, to insinuate that she was herself in love with him!—she could not accept from Mr. Julian Gray an honor of which she was unworthy. Her gratitude to him and her interest in him alike forbade her to compromise his brilliant future by consenting to a marriage which would degrade him in the estimation of all his friends. She thanked him (with tears); she thanked Lady Janet (with more tears); but she dare not, in the interests of his honor and his happiness, accept the hand that he offered to her. God bless and comfort him; and ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... cripple, the Duchesse du Maine, resolved to have an explanation with my son. She made a sententious speech, just as if she had been on the stage; she asked how he could think that the answer to Fitz-Morris's book should have proceeded from her, or that a Princess of the blood would degrade herself by composing libels? She told him, too, that the Cardinal de Polignac was engaged in affairs of too much importance to busy himself in trifles like this, and M. de Malezieux was too much a philosopher to think of anything but the sciences. For her own part, she said ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... the laws of God to improve the talents he has received from the Creator's hands? So is the other. Is one embraced in the commands search the scriptures? So is the other."[55] He maintained that unless masters could lawfully degrade their slaves to the condition of beasts, they were just as much bound to teach them to read the Bible as to teach any ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... this it appeals least of all, if at all. Generally, also, persons of passionate and really sensitive temperament, easily moved by the other senses, are rather indifferent in regard to this. This very fact, which seems in some measure to degrade the sense of taste, and to make excess in its indulgence more contemptible, leads me, however, to conclude that the surest way to influence children is by means of their appetite. Gluttony, as a motive, is far better than vanity; for gluttony is a natural appetite depending directly ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... sense of shame was vivid; and she tried hard not to let her father see how deeply she loved the man who had gone from her to Miss Somerset. Besides, he had ordered her to fight against a love that now could only degrade her; he had ordered, and it was for ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... Intelligence, how remote the creative conception is from all scholastic and ethical formulae, I am led to think that a healthy mind ought to change its mood from time to time, and come down from its noblest condition,—never, of course, to degrade itself by dwelling upon what is itself debasing, but to let its lower faculties have a chance to air and exercise themselves. After the first and second floor have been out in the bright street dressed in all their splendors, shall not our humble friends in the basement have their ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... my fate, exulting in my pain, Tho' on thy hills the plenteous Herd should feed, And rich Pactolus roll along thy mead; For thee tho' Science ope the varied store, And Beauty on thy form its graces pour, Ere long shalt thou, while wrongs like these degrade, Droop with my woes, and with my rage upbraid; See on a Rival's brow thy garlands worn, And, with her falsehood, ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... more striking changes went others, less revolutionary but equally necessary to complete the new ecclesiastical system. The Saxon bishops had many of them had their seats in unimportant places in their dioceses, tending to degrade the dignity almost to the level of a rural bishopric. The Norman prelates by degrees removed the sees to the chief towns, changing the names with the change of place. Dorchester was removed to Lincoln, Selsey to Chichester, Sherborne to Old Sarum, and Elmham by two removes to Norwich. The new ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... second to Goethe, is clearly a disciple of Buffon, and uses the word "degeneration" in the same sense as Buffon used it many years earlier, that is to say, as "descent with modification," without any reference to whether the offspring was, as Buffon says, "perfectionne ou degrade." He cannot claim, any more than Goethe, to rank as a principal figure in the history ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... I trust always to be. But that is only my calling, not me. I—John Halifax—am just the same, whether in the tan-yard or Dr. Jessop's drawing-room. The one position cannot degrade, nor the other elevate, me. I should not 'respect myself' if ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... never recognized what is most noble and glorious in man; never recognized his equality, his common brotherhood, his natural rights. There was no compunction, no remorse in depriving human beings of their highest privileges. Its whole tendency was to degrade the soul, and cause forgetfulness of immortality. Slavery thrives best, when the generous instincts are suppressed, and egotism and sensuality and pride are the dominant ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... state corresponding to that of our past dark ages into one like that of the Renaissance. In the first case the minds of men are wholly taken up with routine work, and in copying what their predecessors have done; they degrade into servile imitators and submissive slaves to the past. In the second case, some circumstance or idea has finally discredited the authorities that impeded intellectual growth, and has unexpectedly revealed new ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... of his rheumatism. He dined there, but would not undertake the cure," p. 364. This was behaving with a tolerable degree of prudence and good sense. But let not the bibliomaniac imagine that it is my wish to degrade honest old Elias Ashmole, by the foregoing delineation of his weaknesses and follies. The ensuing entries, in the said Diary, will more than counterbalance any unfavourable effect produced by its precursors; and I give them with a full conviction ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... which forbade women to occupy a throne, is founded on the fact that when a woman is on the throne the country is ruled by men, and therefore ruled badly; whereas when a man is on the throne, the country is ruled by women, and therefore ruled well. The suffragets would degrade women from being rulers to being voters, mere politicians, the drudges of the caucus and the polling booth. We should lose our influence completely under such a state of affairs. The New Zealand women have the vote. What ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw
... to secure improved dwellings, open spaces, cheap baths, and better municipal sanitation for the poor. But improvement in these matters cannot come entirely from without; "the model tenement implies a model tenant." As a London authority puts it: "The condition of the house may degrade its occupants. The careless life and habits of the occupants will spoil the house, and make it filthy and unhealthy." The friendly visitor should try to make the family healthily discontented with unsanitary surroundings, ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... between spirit and matter might be considerably abated? Without this total revolution of the notions now prevalent, the Evolution hypothesis must stand condemned; but in many profoundly thoughtful minds such a revolution has already taken place. They degrade neither member of the mysterious duality referred to; but they exalt one of them from its abasement, and repeal the divorce hitherto existing between them. In substance, if not in words, their position as regards the relation of spirit and matter is: 'What God hath joined together, ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... and thus compelled us to resort to this stratagem or else to lose you altogether. Your destiny if you unite with us will be great and glorious. We have not taken you captive to make you prisoners or slaves, or to degrade you in any way from your former position; but to exalt you to positions of high consideration in a new and rising colony;—a colony which is surely destined to become great and powerful, and of which we mean you to be the chief ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... the Nominalists, the Realists had a good deal of reason. General ideas are essences. They are our gods: they round and ennoble the most partial and sordid way of living. Our proclivity to details cannot quite degrade our life and divest it of poetry. The day-laborer is reckoned as standing at the foot of the social scale, yet he is saturated with the laws of the world. His measures are the hours; morning and night, solstice and equinox, geometry, astronomy and all the lovely accidents of ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... him and his colleagues, and paying back with usury all that Ewing had said, when everybody thought and believed that he was digging his own grave; for it was known that Ewing would not quietly pocket any insinuations that would degrade him personally. I recollect his reply to Lincoln well. After addressing the Speaker, he turned to the Sangamon delegation, who all sat in the same portion of the house, and said: 'Gentlemen, have you no other champion than this coarse and vulgar ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... enjoy these miscalled festivities. I say miscalled, for, though a loyal subject of her Majesty, and one who hath borne arms at Tilbury Fort in defence of her Majesty, it inflamed my choler, as a plain and blunt man, that her Mightiness should so degrade her dignity. Howbeit, as a man who hath his way to make in the world, I kept mine eyes well upon the anticks of the Great, while my Lord joined the group of maskers and their follies. I recognized her Majesty's presence by her discourse in three languages to as many Ambassadors that were ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... gigantic commonplace—thus ignoring the innumerable deeds of derring-do which distinguished that immortal contest—blinding their eyes to the "lines of empire" in the "infant face of that cradled Hercules," and the tremendous sprawlings of his nascent strength—and seeking to degrade those forests into whose depths a path for the sunbeams must be hewn, and where, lightning appears to enter trembling, and to withdraw in haste; forests which must one day drop down a poet, whose genius shall ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... the common lot—the lot that will be the common lot as long as there are people to be made, by taking advantage of human necessities, to force men and women and children to degrade themselves into machines as wage-slaves. At two dollars a week, double what her income justified—she rented a room in a tenement flat in Bleecker street. It was a closet of a room whose thin, dirt-adorned walls were no protection against sound ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... such domestic tasks and entanglements he writes The Master, and very characteristically gets dissatisfied with the last parts, "which shame, perhaps degrade, the beginning." ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... said, strange stories of flirtations there. I could not doubt what he meant, but I would not seem to understand him: first, because I know not from whom he has been picking up this food for his busy spirit, since no one there appeared collecting it for him ; and secondly, because I would not degrade an acquaintance which I must hope will prove as permanent as it is honourable, by conceiving the word flirtation to be possibly ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... greatness, than the major's reception at the hotel, and this for the very reason that he had outdistanced the rabble. My declining years and gray hairs forbid me envying any man his laurels, but I will not degrade a noble profession by making myself the vassal of every great man who sets foot on these shores. I say, then, that when the cattle and the major reached the door of this spacious pile of white marble, wherein cheap luxury ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... number of brave artists in a pressing time, he nevertheless felt such a repugnance to the foreigner who had intruded into his house, that he could not think well of any of his doings. One ought to employ painters, but not degrade them to paper-stainers; one ought to be satisfied with what they have done, according to their conviction and ability, even if it does not thoroughly please one, and not be perpetually carping at ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... leaving enough wealth to pay his funeral expenses. He did not love bloodshed, even to gain liberty. He had objected to the conspiracy, since freedom was to be gained through murder. Yet this was the man who was to save Thebes and degrade ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... spirit of progress, which would break up their isolation and, with it, the social privileges of her class. However, she kept all her fears on this subject in her heart. Not even to Thora would she talk of them lest she might be an inciter of thoughts that would raise up a class who would degrade her own: "Few people can be trusted with a dangerous thought, and who can tell where spoken words go to." And this idea, she knit, or stitched, into every garment her ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... to greet; no home to harbor him, the voyage of his life becomes a joyless peril, and in the midst of all ambition can achieve, or avarice amass, or rapacity plunder, he tosses on the surge, a buoyant pestilence. But let me not degrade into selfishness of individual safety or individual exposure this individual principle; it testifies a ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... reckoning on finishing my Elizabeth, and on living more and more as a recluse—indeed, even a little like a bear—but not in the style of those estimable citizens of the woods, whom the impresarii of small pleasures degrade by making them dance in the market-places to the sound of their flutes and drums! I shall rather choose a model ideal of a bear—be sure of that—and the flutes and drums which might lead me into the slightest future ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... and character" were usually too busy in making money and getting clothes, houses, and horses, to attend to "politics," while Patrick was only too glad and ready to develop his political abilities. So it came to pass that a ring of powerful political "bosses"—if we may degrade so good and honest a Dutch word—was formed. Saloons, gambling-houses and dance-halls multiplied, while an oligarchy, ever grasping for more power, nullified the laws and trampled the statutes under its feet. The sins of drunkenness and bribery among policemen, ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... of Rome's nationality, that stamp which no nation ever successfully and permanently resisted; and thus the reception of the cult on the part of the state was not only a disgraceful thing, tending to degrade true religion and spread the contagion of Orientalism, but it also made those whose appetite had been aroused eager for other deities, whose cult would have the great additional charm of being unlicensed by the state, and hence savouring ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... of Life.]—On the Judgment of Paris see Miss Harrison, Prolegomena. pp. 292 ff. Late writers degrade the story into a beauty contest between three thoroughly personal goddesses—and a contest complicated by bribery. But originally the Judgment is rather a Choice between three possible lives, like the Choice of Heracles between Work and Idleness. The elements ...
— The Trojan women of Euripides • Euripides
... but die—that was the very worst that Fate had in store for us—but die in the body! How infinitely worse that the soul should perish through the selfish sensuousness of cannibalism, which would degrade life itself below dissolution, even if preserved by ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... reckoning here; for it is neatness, housewifery, and a decent appearance, which draws the kindness of the rich and charitable, while they turn away disgusted with filth and laziness: not out of pride, but because they see that it is next to impossible to mend the condition of those who degrade themselves by dirt and sloth; and few people care to help those who will ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... friend, among other grievous misconceptions current among men otherwise well-informed, and which tend to degrade the pretensions of my native land, an impression that there exists no such thing as indigenous modern Irish composition deserving the name of poetry—a belief which has been thoughtlessly sustained and confirmed by the unconscionable literary perverseness of Irishmen themselves, ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... judge. That man, Howbeit, I judge as lost, Whose mind allows a plan, Which would degrade it most; And he treats doubt the best who tries to ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... my profession that is the bar to everything. I have sold the best years of my life, and for what? To see my sister degrade ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... power of ecclesiastical jurisdiction doth no more agree to the king than the power of ecclesiastical order: his power is civil and temporal, not spiritual and ecclesiastical. Dr Field also confesseth,(1129) that none may judicially degrade, or put any one, lawfully admitted, from his degree and order, but the spiritual guides of ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... he took out his revolver and loaded every chamber. In the set of his lips was menace to the next employer who dared to insult and degrade him. ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... the change in your income. Be comforted, my dear sir; we shall not feel the want of those luxuries, which others value so highly, since we never had a taste for them; and poverty cannot deprive us of many consolations. It cannot rob us of the affection we have for each other, or degrade us in our own opinion, or in that of any person, whose opinion we ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... three thousand years, and of nations that have risen to wealth and power, in a great variety of situations, all terminating with a considerable degree of similarity, discovers the great outline of the causes that invigorate or degrade the human mind, and thereby raise or ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... are naturally more passionate than tender, would be at once the wife and the mistress. With the soul of a Heloise and the passions of a Saint Theresa, you slip the leash on all your impulses, so long as they are sanctioned by law; in a word, you degrade the marriage rite. Surely the tables are turned. The reproaches you once heaped on me for immorally, as you said, seizing the means of happiness from the very outset of my wedded life, might be ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... the world we know," Latimer said, his harsh voice unsteady; "the world's sorrow—the world's pain—the world's power to hurt and degrade itself. That is what seems to concern us—if we dare to say so—we, who were thrust into it against our wills, and forced to suffer and see others suffer. The man who was burned at the stake, or torn in the arena ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... to the effects of preventable causes, it is merely apparent. Thus, for instance, let us imagine for a moment a populous quarter, where pauperism is rampant and the poor will fight for a piece of bread; where dirt, drinking-shops and civic neglect degrade the inhabitants; where all, men and women alike, give way readily to vice. Our sole impression of such people at the moment is: "What wicked people!" On the other hand, let us take the modern quarter of an industrious city, where the houses of the people are hygienic, ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... which we ought to aspire, and discourages us by the very loftiness of the standard. It tells us in the same breath that we are sinners, and that we ought to be angels. It seems at the same time to elevate and degrade us. It elevates us by giving a great object to life, and making it serious and earnest; but it degrades us by making us constantly ashamed of ourselves, and keeping us in a perpetual state of humiliation. ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... seek her spell to decompose Or to its source each rill of influence trace That feeds the brimming river of her grace? The petals numbered but degrade to prose Summer's triumphant poem of the rose: Enough for me to watch the wavering chase, Like wind o'er grass, of moods across her face, Fairest in motion, fairer in repose. Steeped in her sunshine, let me, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... all, injure none," wrote Fowler, "whilst infidelity, selfishness and disorder curse some, delude others and degrade all. I therefore want all of my people encouraged to cultivate religious feeling and morality, and punished for inhumanity to their children or stock, for profanity, lying and stealing." And again: "I would that every human being have the gospel preached ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... honour which he has enjoyed for ages was inspired by that which seems to be his first and literal meaning? And more, will they venture to impute that literal meaning to him? can they suppose that the divine soul of Homer could degrade itself to write of actual and physical feastings, and nuptials, and dances, actual nightly thefts of horses, actual fidelity of dogs and swineherds, actual intermarriages between deities and men, or that it is this seeming vulgarity ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... know that this passage refers to Rear-Admiral Maxse, yet, well as we may know our man, we have him presented like an awkward, silly, comic puppet from a show. The professor of slang could degrade the conduct of the soldiers on board the Birkenhead; he could make the choruses from Samson Agonistes seem like the Cockney puerilities of a comic news-sheet. It is this high-sniffing, supercilious slang that I attack, ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... beauty unto gold degrade, And mix one bliss with many a woe and shame? Tears, quarrels, curses were the gifts he made; And Love bears now a very ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... excitedly to protest against the last speaker's proposals, which he declared were an insult to their common Guyhood. They might have come down in the world, but hitherto, whatever might be said of them, they had, at least, never rendered themselves publicly ridiculous. Now they were asked to degrade themselves by accepting the ignominious position of London Statues! Was there a Guy who would ever hold up his head again, after such an infamous surrender of his self-respect and independence? He felt it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 5, 1892 • Various
... Youth) I thought you had a better opinion of me, than to imagine I would so abjectly degrade myself as to consider my Father's Concurrence in any of my affairs, either of Consequence or concern to me. Tell me Augusta with sincerity; did you ever know me consult his inclinations or follow his Advice ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... running away, and begging his excellency to accept the head, and consider it as a proof of the writer's attachment to the crown. With the first successes of the court the work of punishment began. The judge at Ischia said it was necessary to have a bishop to degrade the traitorous priests before he could execute them; upon which Troubridge advised him to hang them first, and send them to him afterwards, if he did not think that degradation sufficient. This was said with the straightforward feeling of a sailor, who cared as little for canon-law ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... call me a Cynic—why, what a monstrous Cynicism it is, which you and the rest of you men of the world admit! I'd rather live upon raw turnips and sleep in a hollow tree, or turn backwoodsman or savage, than degrade myself to this civilisation, and own that a French cook was the thing in ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... not what I seem. I do not need to blush for my birth—rather I may glory in it. If I dared to betray the secrecy imposed upon me, for reasons of state, I could prove to you that most illustrious blood runs in my veins. Whoever may love me, noble though she be, will not degrade herself. But I have already said too much—my lips are sealed. I shall never be other than the humblest, most devoted of your slaves; even though, by one of those strange coincidences that happen sometimes in real life, I should come to be recognised ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... attention, and he had laid the case before the law officers, who had reported to him that there were no grounds for any legal proceedings against them. 'How, therefore,' said the Lord-Lieutenant, 'could I degrade men against whom my law officers advised me that no charge could be brought?' This was one offence; and another, that he had countenanced Lord Cloncurry, who, being a member of the Association, was unworthy to receive the ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... she interrupted, looking up at him with eyes like dark stars. "No! No! No! I wouldn't degrade even a worthless cowboy." ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... extraordinary in Florence. The expulsion of some of the patrician families was absolute. Others were allowed to participate with the plebeians in the struggle for civic honors, and for the wealth earned in commerce, manufactures, and handicraft. It became a severe and not uncommon punishment to degrade offending individuals or families into the ranks of nobility, and thus deprive them of their civil rights. Hundreds of low-born persons have, in a single day, been declared noble, and thus disfranchised. And the example of Florence was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... this miserable country appears in nothing so much as in dooming the female, the widow, to be burnt alive with the putrid carcase of her husband. The Hindoo legislators have sanctioned this immolation, showing herein a studied determination to insult and degrade woman. She is, therefore, in the first instance, deluded into this act by the writings of these bramhuns {u-caron}; in which also she is promised, that if she will offer herself, for the benefit of her husband, on the funeral pile, she shall, by the extraordinary merit of ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... generation, but still in a way unnatural to our race and status. At first I thought I would let my daughter grow up in a state of complete ignorance, that she should be Nature's child. But as time went on, I saw the folly and the wickedness of my plan. I had no right to degrade her to the level of the savages around me, for if the fruit of the tree of knowledge is a bitter fruit, still it teaches good from evil. So I educated her as well as I was able, till in the end I knew that ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard
... I can so describe them of the royal household, but for obvious reasons I will not describe the style of their dancing. It was barbarism run mad, and our chief feeling was disgust that human beings should so degrade themselves. ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... to the window, and stood there with her back toward me. Was the wretch taking advantage of my helpless condition? I stretched out my hand to ring the bell, and have her sent away—and hesitated to degrade Susan's mother, for Susan's sake. In my state of prostration, how could I arrive at a decision? My mind was dreadfully disturbed; I felt the imperative necessity of turning my thoughts to some other subject. Looking about me, the letters on the table attracted my attention. Mechanically, ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... all. When the war left them free, they simply said, "Poor fellows!" as they would of a dog without a master. When the blacks were entrusted with the ballot, they said again, "Poor fellows!" regarding them as the blameless instrument by which a bigoted and revengeful North sought to degrade and humiliate a foe overwhelmed only by the accident of numbers; the colored race being to these Northern people like the cat with whose paw the monkey dragged his chestnuts from the fire. Hesden had only wondered what the effect of these things would be upon "the South;" meaning by "the South" that ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... We must degrade the noblesse and attribute it to an odious origin, establish a germ of equality which can never exist but which will flatter the people; [we must] immolate the most obstinate, burn and destroy their property in order to intimidate the rest, so that if we cannot entirely destroy ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... and destroy his self-respect. Even those pleasures which would be most likely to have a civilizing effect are forbidden to him, merely on the ground that they are pleasures, while much of the suffering inflicted is of a kind which can only brutalize and degrade still further. I am not speaking, of course, of those few penal institutions which have made a serious study of reforming the criminal. Such institutions, especially in America, have been proved capable of achieving the most remarkable results, but they remain everywhere exceptional. ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... admission into his house. Had the Doctor not been dead, we should have given him a severe rowing and blowing-up for this vulgar folly; but as he is dead, we have only to hope that the readers of the Oracle who intend to travel will not degrade themselves, and disgust "authors of eminence," by thrusting their ugly or comely faces—both are equally odious—into the privacy of gentlemen who have done nothing to exclude themselves from the protection of the laws of civilised society—or subject their fire-sides to be infested ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... need for its ruin. As I have told you before, in talking like that you degrade yourself and ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... daughters virtuous, and unless he be besotted by intemperance, or given over to courses of shame, will quietly and joyfully yield to the remonstrance of a virtuous wife or daughter against patronizing scenes which degrade, and against permitting the mind and heart to give welcome to thoughts which pollute. True men desire to love, and to be influenced by pure, tender, ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... a very insignificant existence. Public taste inclined to the gross and the sensual, and welcomed as enjoyable, what the present discards as disgusting. Ladies of the highest rank sat through plays of which the purpose and effect was to degrade their own womanhood, to remove from the minds of the men who sat about and watched their countenances at each new obscenity, whatever respect for the sex might have lingered there. Some wore masks to hide the blushes which might have been looked for as a drama proceeded, ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... to—to—to degrade your rank. That is the truth. If I be your cousin, and the head of your family, I have a right to speak as such. What you told ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... kinds: it is like those neutral forces of faith and thought, which depend for their result upon the direction in which they are turned. Inspiration can uplift, but it may also degrade. We ourselves by the tuning of our own thoughts determine which it shall accomplish. Like can only answer to like: anger can never play echo to love, for their vibrations are so far apart in attunement ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... young clergyman] is actually a member of every 'push' in his neighbourhood, and the effect has been not to degrade the pastor, but to sweeten ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... act as an autonomous sovereign, displayed little zeal in accommodating himself to the new order of things. There was so much uncertainty as to the leanings of the Persian guard of Orcetes, that Darius did not venture to degrade the satrap officially, but despatched Bagseus to Sardes with precise instructions, which enabled him to accomplish his mission by degrees, so as not to risk a Lydian revolt. His first act was to show the guard a rescript ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... would our mother, though she seems to be dismayed at his serving as a common soldier. I adore Jack; I think him the finest, the most perfect nature after my father's—that lives. But I give him up gladly, because to keep him would be to degrade him. We know that he may fall; that he may come back to us a cripple or worse. But, as you see, we make no sign. Not a line of routine has been changed in the house. Jack will march away and never ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... most sacred rights guaranteed under the law is that of not being compelled to give evidence against ourselves or to testify to anything which might degrade or incriminate us. Now, this is all very fine for the chap who has his lawyer at his elbow or has had some similar previous experience. He may wisely shut up like a clam and set at defiance the tortures of the third ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... "An honest fear is sometimes expressed 'that women would degrade politics, and politics would degrade women,'" and the writers answer: "As the influence of woman has been uniformly elevating in new civilizations, in missionary work in heathen lands, in schools, colleges, literature, and general society, it is fair to suppose that politics would prove no exception." ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... call an idea in any speech or writing of ——'s. Those enormously prolix harangues are a proof of weakness in the higher intellectual grasp. Canning had a sense of the beautiful and the good; —- rarely speaks but to abuse, detract, and degrade. I confine myself to institutions, of course, and do not mean personal detraction. In my judgment, no man can rightly apprehend an abuse till he has first mastered the idea of the use of an institution. ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... took from him the cowl, and left them with only some short cassocks such as are worn by clergymen. They delivered them to the bishop, who was already prepared for the degradation. He immediately began to degrade them, and then delivered them over to the secular arm. They were taken to jail by the strong guard of soldiers that had been in the church ever since the criminals had been removed from the prisons to hear the sentence. But it was possible ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various
... dart their hissing tongues high up the sand: In hearing of the ocean, and in sight Of those ribbed wind-streaks running into white. If I the death of Love had deeply planned, I never could have made it half so sure, As by the unblest kisses which upbraid The full-waked sense; or failing that, degrade? 'Tis morning: but no morning can restore What we have forfeited. I see no sin: The wrong is mixed. In tragic life, God wot, No villain need be! Passions spin the plot: We are betrayed by what ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... to have the same were-gild (the lower, of course, the intent being to degrade all the conquered to one level, and to allow only the lowest were-gild of a freedman, fifty pieces, probably, in ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... It is not death that matters, but the fear of death. It is not killing and dying that degrade us, but base living, and accepting the wages and profits of degradation. Better ten dead men than one live slave or his master. Men shall yet rise up, father against son and brother against brother, and kill one another for the great Catholic ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... decree which showed to what extent the confidence of Roguin's clients had been betrayed. A concordat was held. For the honor of your petitioner, we call attention to the fact that his proceedings were remarkable for a purity not found in any of the scandalous failures which daily degrade the commerce of Paris. The creditors of Birotteau received the whole property, down to the smallest articles that the unfortunate man possessed. They received, gentlemen, his clothes, his jewels, things of purely personal use,—and not only his, but those of ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... humble, and degrade, and scourge those who are taken in its toils. From the threshold of the house of guilty pleasure there may issue the song and laugh of boisterous mirth; but those who enter within shall find disgrace ...
— The Runaway - The Adventures of Rodney Roverton • Unknown
... prejudices, a barbarous law, a sense of insecurity in the possessions they know were obtained by plunder, combine to sink them into the mischievous and unholy belief that it is their interest as well as their duty to degrade, and wrong, ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... us of the name and existence of Homer, does too much violence to that inward emotion, which makes our whole soul yearn with love and admiration for the blind bard of Chios. To believe the author of the Iliad a mere compiler, is to degrade the powers of human invention; to elevate analytical judgment at the expense of the most ennobling impulses of the soul; and to forget the ocean in the contemplation of a polypus. There is a catholicity, so to speak, in the very name of Homer. Our faith in the author of the Iliad ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... to punish him for heresy, rather than for treason. He was cited by the pope to stand his trial at Rome; and though he was known to be kept in close custody at Oxford, he was, upon his not appearing, condemned as contumacious. Bonner, bishop of London, and Thirleby of Ely, were sent to degrade him; and the former executed the melancholy ceremony with all the joy and exultation which suited his savage nature.[*] The implacable spirit of the queen, not satisfied with the eternal damnation of Cranmer, which she believed inevitable, and with the execution of that dreadful sentence to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... has a vice—a vice which may be rather ruinous, but which one cannot give up. As to the others, those who have nothing to use their money for, no vice, no wife, no children, and who sell themselves, ruin themselves, bow down, humiliate, enrich, and degrade themselves—ah! I'd give all such ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... been a bad wife, the Code allowed him to send her away, while he kept the children and her dowry; or he could degrade her to the position of a slave in his own house, where she would have food and clothing. She might bring an action against him for cruelty and neglect and, if she proved her case, obtain a judicial ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... present a disgraceful occupation on an amiable, almost a sentimental side, rather than in its own proper deformity. [Footnote: This tendency of men to throw the mantle of an honourable word over a dishonourable thing, or, vice versa, to degrade an honourable thing, when they do not love it, by a dishonourable appellation, has in Greek a word to describe it, [Greek: hypokorizesthai], itself a word with an interesting history; while the great ethical teachers of Greece frequently ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... called its fundamental attributes, those which lie nearest to the constant and successful prosecution of mundane affairs, and, consequently, I also establish the fact of her absolute and inevitable dependence in such sense on man. But do I thus degrade her, or in effect annul this asserted superiority? Because man, and the strength, amplitude, and stability of his more practical nature, form a sure basis upon which she may rest, do I any the less make her the very crown and perfection of God's ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... I trembled. I knew well that the King, particular in courtesies, never forgot to call his servants by their titles save in two cases: when he indicated by the error, as once in Marshal Biron's affair, his intention to promote or degrade; or when he was moved to the depths of his nature and fell into an old habit. I did not dare to reply, but I listened greedily ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... so numerous were opposed by one single objection!—where virtue, beauty, education and family were all unexceptionable,—Oh cruel clause! barbarous and repulsive clause! that forbids my aspiring to the first of women, but by an action that with my own family would degrade ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... reproaching the [132] Animadverter with the Character of a Wit, tho join'd with such ill-favour'd Epithets, as his witless Malice has thought fit to degrade it with, as that he is a spiteful Wit, a wrangling Wit, a satirical Wit, and the WITTY, subtle, good-natur'd Animadverter, &c. the Dr. says, that tho there be but little Wit shewn in making such Charges; yet if Wit ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... better feelings of my nature recoil from such an act of villainy—how often was my project abandoned, how often resumed at the alternate bidding of passion and of virtue! I will not repeat the idle sophistry which served to complete my wilful blindness; nor dare I degrade myself in your eyes by a confession of the tissue of contemptible fraud and hypocrisy into which I was necessarily betrayed by the execution of my dark designs. Oh! Helen—this heart of mine was once honest, once good and true as thine ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore
... sleep. Don't let us discuss anything solemnly. I am but too conscious of the fact that we are born in an age when only the dull are treated seriously, and I live in terror of not being misunderstood. Don't degrade me into the position of giving you useful information. Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught. Through the parted curtains of the window I see the moon like a ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... suicide. The king was not allowed the use of a razor to remove his beard; and the luxury of a barber to perform that essential part of his toilet was an expense which his foes could not incur. It was the studied endeavor of those who now rode upon the crested yet perilous billows of power, to degrade royalty to the lowest depths of debasement and contempt—that the beheading of the king and the queen might be regarded as merely the execution of a male and a female felon dragged from the loathsome dungeons ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... your streets those traps of hell Into whose gilded snares I fell. Oh! freemen, from these foul decoys Arise, and vote to save the boys. Oh, ye who license men to trade In draughts that charm and then degrade, Before ye hear the cry, Too late, Oh, save the boys from ...
— Poems • Frances E. W. Harper
... divided against itself cannot stand. It is said that (1) there must be some one authority in a household and that this should be the man; (2) woman will neglect the home if she is left free to enter politics or a profession; (3) politics will degrade her; (4) when independent and self-asserting she will lose her influence over man; and (5) most women do not want to vote or to ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... nor is he fit to be called chief in a nation which he has outraged and oppressed. A worse choice for such an office in a new commonwealth than that of a deposed tyrant could not possibly be made. But to degrade and insult a man as the worst of criminals, and afterwards to trust him in your highest concerns as a faithful, honest, and zealous servant, is not consistent with reasoning, nor prudent in policy, nor safe ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... Julia's pride and self-respect now co-operated. Relieved of her great terror, she felt her insult to her fingers' ends: "I'll never degrade myself so far as to pine for another lady's lover," she said. "I'll resume my duties in another sphere, and try to face the world by degrees. I am not quite alone in it; I have my ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... almost all the vices and misery that are seen in civil society to human institutions. Political regulations and the established administration of property are with him the fruitful sources of all evil, the hotbeds of all the crimes that degrade mankind. Were this really a true state of the case, it would not seem a hopeless task to remove evil completely from the world, and reason seems to be the proper and adequate instrument for effecting so great a purpose. But the truth is, that though human institutions ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... he is," replied Miss Gladden quickly, "but I can not conceive of a man being quite so low as to be without even animal instincts; I cannot believe that a father would insult and degrade his own daughter as he has Lyle, and as he would continue to do, if he were not restrained ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... that which turns a man into a thing—with indignation and abhorrence. Not to cherish these feelings would be recreancy to principle. They who desire me to be dumb on the subject of Slavery, unless I will open my mouth in its defence, ask me to give the lie to my professions, to degrade my manhood, and to stain my soul. I will not be a liar, a poltroon, or a hypocrite, to accommodate any party, to gratify any sect, to escape any odium or peril, to save any interest, to preserve any institution, or ...
— No Compromise with Slavery - An Address Delivered to the Broadway Tabernacle, New York • William Lloyd Garrison
... Town stands upon eleven Arches, under every one of which there are Shops, which degrade it to a meer Exchange. Nevertheless, the Stairs by which you ascend up to the Guard Room (which is very spacious too) are stately, large, and curious. So soon as you have pass'd the Guard Room, you enter into a long and noble Gallery, the right Hand whereof leads to the King's Apartment, the left ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... adherence or welcome from the rest more than from poets. They are the voice and exposition of liberty. They out of ages are worthy the grand idea ... to them it is confided and they must sustain it. Nothing has precedence of it and nothing can warp or degrade it. The attitude of great poets is to cheer up slaves and horrify despots. The turn of their necks, the sound of their feet, the motions of their wrists, are full of hazard to the one and hope to the other. Come nigh them awhile and though they neither ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... Dr. Rylance, earnestly, with an admiring look in his blue-gray eyes. They were somewhat handsome eyes when they did not put on their cruel expression. 'Not for you. Nothing could degrade, nothing could exalt you. You are superior to ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... all good men. The whole Church of God, from the days of Christ to the present, has been ever held in shame and contempt by men of this world. Proud men have reasoned against its Divine origin; crafty men have attempted to degrade it to political purposes: still it has lasted for many centuries; it will last still, through the promised help of God the Holy Ghost; and that same promise which is made to it first as a body, is assuredly made also to every one of us who seeks grace from God through ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... speculations; and with a generous appreciation of the various forms of truth and beauty, it will not fail to expose such instances of false sentiment, perverted taste and erroneous opinion, as may tend to vitiate the public mind or degrade the individual character. Nor will the literary department of the Harbinger be limited to criticism alone. It will receive contributions from various pens, in different spheres of thought, and, free from dogmatic exclusiveness, will accept all that in any ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... was only a flood of tears. He then retreated into his library and locked the door. An aged domestic told me all. Laura had abandoned her parental roof, and voluntarily entered one of those sinks of pollution that so much degrade human nature! I stood upon an awful abyss. The whirlpools of deceit, ingratitude, indifference, and calumny, howled around me, and the dark floods of sensual corruption roared below. Turn whithersoever I might (alas, ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... to this, political and social changes had been long modifying the structure of society in a way tending to degrade the general condition. As the lesser Kingdoms were merged into one large one, the wider dominion of the king removed him further from the people; every succeeding reign raising him higher, depressing them lower, until the old English ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... our heavy atmosphere, which induces gloomy thoughts and fancies; while moralists assign as its cause, the sanguinary spirit of our laws, our brutal exhibitions of hanging, drawing and quartering, of gibbettings, whippings, brandings, and torturings, which degrade men's natures, and give them a relish for scenes of blood ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 2, 1841 • Various
... clasped in your arms, I hold my soul secured by virtuous intentions, very different from yours, as you will see if you attempt to carry them into effect by force. I am your vassal, but I am not your slave; your nobility neither has nor should have any right to dishonour or degrade my humble birth; and low-born peasant as I am, I have my self-respect as much as you, a lord and gentleman: with me your violence will be to no purpose, your wealth will have no weight, your words will have no power to deceive me, nor your sighs or ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... and an indefinite series of past generations. We are like the coral insects, who can add but a hair's breadth to the structure which has been raised by their predecessors. Yet the little which we can do is something; and we will neither degrade ourselves nor our race. As measured by an absolute standard, man may be infinitesimal, but the absolute is beyond our powers. Science tells us that our little individuality might be swept out of existence without appreciable injury to the world; but it adds that the world is built up of ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph |
