"Degrade" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I think, that any woman that is holy and humble, will take offence at what I have said; for I have not in anything sought to degrade them, or to take from them what either nature or grace, or an appointment of God hath invested them with: but have laboured to keep them in their place. And doubtless to abide where God has put us, is that which not only ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... resolutions, but her mind, once made up, was seldom changed. It distressed her grievously to leave her people, but at the thought of remaining longer with them every instinct rebelled. Her own kin, urged by greed, had not hesitated to cheapen and degrade her; their last offense, coupled with all that had gone before, was more than could be borne. Yet she was less resentful than sad, for it seemed to her that this was the beginning of the end. First the father had been crippled, then the moral ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... women from intoxicating drinks! These degrade women and she degrades men. "Rise up ye women who are at ease in Zion!" The drinking places in the cities, especially in New York, by every device get women in their dens that they may ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... effects at Strawberry Hill, to see this chest, with the MSS. in the clean Horatian hand, and to reflect how poignant would have been the anguish of the writer could he have seen his Gothic Castle given up for fourteen days, to all that could pain the living, or degrade the dead. ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... answered lowly, As a youth should sneak a maid; "Like thyself, thy word is holy; Love is hate, if it degrade. ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... for ryme or reso, e for{e}wryter was not to blame, For as he founde hit aforne hy[-m], so wrote he e same, and augh{e} he or y in our{e} mater{e} digres or degrade, blame neithur of vs / For we ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... Christ the righteous; as the heathens that have, and still do make a great improvement of the law and light of nature: crying out with disdain against the narrowness, rigidness, censoriousness, and pride of those that think the contrary. Being not ashamed all the while to eclipse, to degrade, to lessen and undervalue the love of Jesus Christ; making of him and his undertakings, to offer himself a sacrifice to appease the justice of God for our sins, but a thing indifferent, and in its own nature but as ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... liberty and of Switzerland, he has given us little more than a sturdy peasant, who, in destroying Gessler, follows only a personal revenge, and feels the remorse of a common assassin. If this were historic truth, it was not the part of the poet to be the first to discover and proclaim it. Was he to degrade the character below the rank which ordinary historians assigned to it? We do not want a drama to frame the portrait of a Lincolnshire farmer; it is the place, if place there is, for the representation of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... 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 ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... burn this town. You juggled with the official records in the courthouse. You would basely deceive and marry a girl whose consent could be given only to save her father's memory from stain, and her mother from a broken heart. And greatest and blackest of all, you would utterly destroy the life and degrade the soul of one whose erring feet we owe it to ourselves to lead back to straight paths. On these charges I have summoned you to this account. Every charge I have evidence to prove beyond any shadow of question. ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... she began, gently. "I cannot consent, in justice to you, to shelter myself behind your name. It is the name of your family; and they have a right to expect that you will not degrade it—" ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... it is pretended that the idea of the immortality of the soul and of a happier life has a tendency to lift up the heart of man and to sustain him in the midst of the adversities with which he is assailed in this life. Materialism, on the contrary, is, we are told, an afflicting system, tending to degrade man, which ranks him among brutes; which destroys his courage, whose only hope is complete annihilation, tending to lead him to despair, and inducing him to commit suicide as soon as he suffers in this world. ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... mind which enabled him to prosecute his studies with success. He believed that a noble- minded woman insensibly elevated the character of her husband, while one of a grovelling nature as certainly tended to degrade it. {4} ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... helpless you may be, I have no fear of failing to make you "all the world to me", provided only that I am not false to my ideal. You must know from what I have written before that I can love, that I do know what love is, and that you may trust me. I am not trying to degrade passion—I simply see how passion throws the burden on the woman, and therefore it is utterly a crime with us—the least thought of it! I ought to consider you as a school-girl, really just that; and instead of that I ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... all thoughts. "It is easier to conceive," says Count Gamba, "than to relate the various means employed to engage him in one faction or the other: letters, messengers, intrigues, and recriminations,—nay, each faction had its agents exerting every art to degrade its opponent." He then adds a circumstance strongly illustrative of a peculiar feature in the noble poet's character:—"He occupied himself in discovering the truth, hidden as it was under these intrigues, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... to our several stations, and not degrade ourselves by learning the evil and discontented habits of human beings, each one of whom thinks ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... exception perhaps of Maria Theresa of Germany and Elizabeth of England; but she was infinitely below these princesses in moral worth,—indeed, she was stained by the grossest immoralities that can degrade a woman. She died in 1796, and her son Paul succeeded her,—a prince whom his imperial mother had excluded from all active participation in the government of the empire because of his mental imbecility, or partial insanity. A conspiracy naturally was formed against him in such unsettled ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... motive, simply for the sake of mischief and the pleasure he found in the despair of a fellow-being: you did not believe that there are men who will afflict the innocent with pain and sorrow, who will degrade, socially and morally humiliate you, and then laugh you in the face and make game of you. Stay here, move in our society, and you will find out your mistake! Why, what a sight it will be to have the great debater, the candidate-elect, ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... not speak, however, but looked at him fearlessly. It was impossible for her to humble herself before the latent insolence of his look. It seemed to degrade her out of all consideration. He felt the courage of her defiance, and it moved him. Yet he could ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... were taken by a number of courtiers and the ladies, if 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
... Macaulay in a sentence of pre-eminent absurdity: "Posterity has felt that the greatest of English philosophers could derive no accession of dignity from any title which power could bestow, and, in defiance of letters-patent, has obstinately refused to degrade Francis Bacon into Viscount St. Albans." But, without stopping to discuss the propriety of representing a Britiph peerage, honestly earned, and, in his case as Lord Chancellor, necessarily conferred, as a "degradation," ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... professed an interest in the fortunes and future of the systematized youth, had occasionally mentioned names of families whose alliance according to apparent calculations, would not degrade his blood: and over these names, secretly preserved on an open leaf of the note-book, Sir Austin, as he neared the metropolis, distantly dropped his eye. There were names historic and names mushroomic; names that the Conqueror might have called in his ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... his country brave, Would fly from her invader? Who his base life to save Would traitor like degrade her? Our hallowed cause— Our homes and laws, 'Gainst tyrant hosts sustaining, We'll win a crown of bright renown, Or die, man's rights maintaining, ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark
... indeed, the flowering of ruder and cruder powers and attributes of the life below us, I cannot for a moment doubt. Call it a transmutation or a metamorphosis, if you will; it is still within the domain of the natural. The spiritual always has its root and genesis in the physical. We do not degrade the spiritual in such a conception; we open our eyes to the spirituality of the physical. And this is what science has always been doing and is doing more and more—making us familiar with marvelous ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... in him and set snares for him, so that they insinuated into King Shah Bakht's eyes hatred against him and sowed in his heart despite towards him; and plot followed plot, and their rancour waxed until the king was brought to arrest him and lay him in jail and to confiscate his wealth and degrade him from his degree. When they knew that there was left him no possession for which the king might lust, they feared lest the sovran release him, by the influence of the Wazir's good counsel upon the king's heart, and he return to his former case, so should their machinations be ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... all his pleasures. It is regarded as an affront to reason if one dares to say a word in favour of its rivals. Yet it is only passions, and strong passions, that can raise the soul to great things. Sober passions produce only the commonplace. Deadened passions degrade men of extraordinary quality. Constraint annihilates the greatness and energy of nature. See that tree; 'tis to the luxury of its branches that you owe the freshness and the wide-spreading breadth of its shade, which you may enjoy till winter comes ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... not 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 her great enemy, Sparta. ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... life of the author'? Leave that to some neutral writer, who neither loves nor hates. And whilst crowds of men need better biographical records whom it is easy to love and not difficult to honour, do not you degrade your own heart or disgust your readers by selecting for your exemplification not a model to be imitated, but a wild beast to be baited or a criminal to be tortured? We privately hate Mr. Thomas Hobbes, of Malmsbury; we know much evil of him, and we ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... water, ready to obey your slightest will—I had not found myself. I am a creature as primitive and passionate as a savage"—her breath came in little pants with her great emotion,—"I could not belong to two men—it would utterly degrade me, then I do not know what I should become. I love Denzil, body and soul—and while he lives no other man shall ever touch me; that is what passion means to me—fidelity to the thing I love! He is my Beloved and my darling, and I must go away from you altogether and throw off the thought of ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... degrade myself. I could neither lower my standard, nor sacrifice my ideal," said Leo, with a touch of scorn ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... of intoxication, playing all kinds of mad pranks, until he sank into a stupor, in which he remained for two days. The old chieftain repaired to his friend, M'Dougal, with indignation flaming in his countenance, and bitterly reproached him for having permitted his son to degrade himself into a beast, and to render himself an object of scorn and laughter to ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... imagination has its use, it has its abuse also. If visions of truth and beauty can exalt, visions of vice can debase and degrade. In that picture where Faust and Satan battle together for the scholar's soul, the angels share in the conflict. Plucking the roses of Paradise, they fling them over the battlements down upon the heads of the combatants. When the roses fall on Faust they heal his wounds; ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... food! Why, sir, much of the pleasure of drinking and smoking and eating—as a gentleman understands these pleasures—is in their peaceful contemplation before the act! Otherwise, we are swine, and degrade our nutriment by coarse handling! What respect can we have for self, sir, if we choke and gurgle, and contemptuously treat those things we put into our bodies! I shall have no more ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... Mr. Jenkins, I never knocked a living soul, but I don't mind telling you as a friend that I personally would not degrade myself by speaking to her, and of course you know that the hair she wears is not her own. I haven't a thing in the world against the poor creature, but it has been breathed around the company that she is not all she should be. Of course, I don't know positively, but it is what ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... barbarous—Not a tyrant, for terrible as are the evils of irresponsible authority, with whomsoever it may be vested, in her hands it becomes the most tremendous instrument that Providence in its indignation can employ to crush, degrade, and utterly to paralyze the nations within its reach. The former position will readily be conceded; and the history of Rome under the Emperors, or of France during the last century, affords but too striking an exemplification of the second. It is, then, of the last importance to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... those countries know little or nothing about simple amusements which are so popular in the United States, and acquire from their elders their knowledge of betting and taking part in games of chance, two evils which unquestionably have done much to degrade ...
— Spalding's Official Baseball Guide - 1913 • John B. Foster
... myself! I am ashamed of myself; no, never will I degrade myself by making a trade of a profession. If I cannot live a gentleman, I will starve a gentleman. But I will dismiss this unpleasant subject, the particulars of which I can better relate to you than write. Suffice it to say that my ill-treatment does not prey upon my spirits; ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... will be made a vehicle for the freest thought, though not of random 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, ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... artlessness, but then their friendly humor turns to hate. Doors which stood wide open offer an impassable front of wood, and ears once attentive are deaf. And the pity is that they have closed not to the evil alone, but to the good. This is the crime of those who distort and degrade speech: they shake confidence generally. We consider as a calamity the debasement of the currency, the lowering of interest, the abolition of credit:—there is a misfortune greater than these: the loss of confidence, ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... me, cordially, "you can move your things into the cabin. You are to be supercargo." He tapped his pencil on the table and turned to Davie with a kindly smile. "You, Davie, can have your old berth of second mate, if you wish it. I'll not degrade a faithful man. You'd better move aft to-day, for the new crew ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... fatal far Than any chance of fateful war When faction howled with Cerberus throat, When falsehood struck a felon stroke, When forgery did its worst To pull its hated quarry down, To dim, disarm, degrade, discrown. Against the array accurst That ancient chief made gallant head, Dismayed not, nor disquieted At rancour's rude assault. He shared opprobrium undeserved, But not for that had courage swerved, Or loyalty made default. But now? The hand that reared hath razed; And ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 6, 1890 • Various
... 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 his duty to denounce the Guy who was guilty of such a suggestion as a wolf, in sheep's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 5, 1892 • Various
... poetic art has borne an ample harvest of nonsense. I could, were it worth while, name many living bards who consider that any sort of fancy or feeling is good enough for poetry so long as it be prettily or gracefully handled, who would thus degrade poetry to the position of the easiest, as it has for long been the least prized, of the fine arts. This havoc has been wrought, in part, by what I may call the doctrine of the sensitive soul. Keats is the classic example of the poet who lived and died through sensitiveness. It was a weakness inherent ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... Charlton, lifting up his pale face, twitching with nervousness, "I don't want to get free by playing tricks on a court of law. I know that fifteen or twenty years in prison would not leave me much worth living for, but I will not degrade myself by evading justice with delays and false affidavits. If you can do anything for me fairly and squarely, I should like to have ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... higher the oppressed, so much higher the self-exaltation of the oppressor. Paul and Peter exalt their virtuous woman, but only as their own appendage, adorning themselves; and while society with religious ministers at the head of it call on woman to submit, and degrade the sex, we shall continue to hear of such disgraces to England as I see in your police reports—brutal mechanics beating ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... at all ashamed of marrying a singing girl. It was the thing he would be sure to do. And he thought of some singing girls before his time, and of his time also, whom it would be an honour for such as him to marry. But he would degrade himself—so he felt—by the connection with an advanced Landleaguing Member of Parliament. He looked round the lot of them, and he assured himself that there was not one from whose loins an English nobleman could choose a wife without disgrace. ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... complacency, regards the eating of his pie as a virtuous action, enjoys the contemplation of it, and thinks what a pleasant object he thus makes of himself to his parents? Shall I, to take a step farther, degrade the sanctity of the closet, hallowed in the words of Jesus, by shutting its door in the vain fancy of there doing something that God requires of me as a sacred OBSERVANCE? Shall I foolishly imagine that to put in exercise the highest and loveliest, the most entrancing privilege of existence, that ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... and ate freely at this supper. In a short while mirth had reached its last limit, and the words that seem funny to a certain class of people, words that degrade the mouth that utters them, were heard from time to time, amidst the applause of Nanine, of Prudence, and of Marguerite. Gaston was thoroughly amused; he was a very good sort of fellow, but somewhat spoiled by the habits of his youth. For a moment I tried to forget myself, to force my heart and ...
— Camille (La Dame aux Camilias) • Alexandre Dumas, fils
... Caste, in society, may degrade, but, at the same time, it elevates. Where this caste was distinguished by master and slave, the distinction was most marked, because there was no intermediate gradation. It was the highest and the lowest. It was between the highest and purest of the races of the human family, and the lowest ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... on some grass in front of the little gipsy tent mending my camp stool, I invited him to take a seat on the grass beside me. This was peremptorily refused: "he had never sat on the ground during the late chief's reign, and he was not going to degrade himself now." One of my men handed him a log of wood taken from the fire, and helped him out of the difficulty. When I offered him some cooked meat on a plate, he would not touch that either, but would take it home. So I humored him by sending ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... further with results that would be advantageous as well as curious. We degrade and finally vitiate our conscience if we do not respect its behests. Conscience then itself becomes small and timid and humble, shamefaced, and at length a mere whisper. Absolutely silent ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... who 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 directed against yourself for grasping at everything which may serve your ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... clergyman for using personal violence," said Mr. Groschut, very grandly. "He should have borne anything sooner than degrade his sacred calling." Mr. Groschut had hoped to extract from the Canon some expression adverse to the Dean, and to be able to assure himself that he ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... life. The man of good character in a workshop will give the tone to his fellows, and elevate their entire aspirations. Thus Franklin, while a workman in London, is said to have reformed the manners of an entire workshop. So the man of bad character and debased energy will unconsciously lower and degrade his fellows. Captain John Brown—the "marching-on Brown"—once said to Emerson, that "for a settler in a new country, one good believing man is worth a hundred, nay, worth a thousand men without character." His example is so contagious, that all other men ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... glass of wine, a man esteemed and beloved by all who really knew him. Thus was first revealed to me what, in my opinion, is the worst evil in American public life,—that facility for unlimited slander, of which the first result is to degrade our public men, and the second result is to rob the press of that confidence among thinking people, and that power for good and against evil which it really ought to exercise. Since that time I have seen many other examples ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... the controlling force in this country shall be a moral force?—that it shall conspire with the great idea of Liberty, and not degrade and destroy it? The theory of our institutions is our pride. But it is a pitiful truth that our public life has become synonymous with knavery. If a politician is introduced, you feel of your pockets. It is shameful that it ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... flee?" Neh. vi. 11. A Christian hath more reason. Shall such a man as I, who am born again to such a hope, and called to such a high dignity, shall I, who aim and aspire so high as fellowship with God, debase and degrade myself with the vilest servitude? Shall I defile in that puddle again, till my own clothes abhor me, who aim at so pure and so holy a society? Shall I yoke in myself with drunkards, liars, swearers, and other ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... sensation which makes me happy necessarily have a name? Love! Do not degrade my feeling by giving it a name which is so often misapplied by the weak-minded. Who ever felt before what I do now? Such a being never before existed; how then can the name be admitted before the emotion which it is meant to express? Mine is a novel and peculiar feeling, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... don't want any arbitration. I paid and will be paid back, or else I go into court, where the name and title of our representative at St. Petersburg will be dragged through the dirt. If I can only degrade the wretch, I shall have won the ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... his approach, and the principal head in this group is made an exact likeness of Voltaire. When Dr. Goldsmith saw this picture, he was very indignant at it, and said:—"It very ill becomes a man of your eminence and character, Sir Joshua, to condescend to be a mean flatterer, or to wish to degrade so high a genius as Voltaire before so mean a writer as Dr. Beattie; for Dr. Beattie and his book together will, in the space of ten years, not be known ever to have been in existence, but your allegorical picture and the fame of Voltaire will live for ever to your disgrace as a flatterer."' Northcote's ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... "I wish to avoid being happy. That would mean giving up the longing that transcends all fulfillment, which is my most exquisite meaning. To degrade the holy hump, with which a friendly destiny has endowed me, through which I have experienced existence much more deeply, more unhappily, more wonderfully, than people perceive, to a burdensome superficiality. I wish to ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... one certain method was, by giving her son the constant preference to the other lad; and as they conceived the kindness and affection which Mr Allworthy showed the latter, must be highly disagreeable to her, they doubted not but the laying hold on all occasions to degrade and vilify him, would be highly pleasing to her; who, as she hated the boy, must love all those who did him any hurt. In this Thwackum had the advantage; for while Square could only scarify the poor lad's reputation, he could flea his skin; and, indeed, he considered every lash he ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... and Malvolio especially later; though Shakespeare never employed the method of humours for an important personage. It was not Jonson's fault that many of his successors did precisely the thing that he had reprobated, that is, degrade "the humour" into an oddity of speech, an eccentricity of manner, of dress, or cut of beard. There was an anonymous play called "Every Woman in Her Humour." Chapman wrote "A Humourous Day's Mirth," Day, "Humour ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... future civil servants of the Crown have excited a similar feeling in her mind. Where is moreover the application of the principle of public competition to stop, if once established? and must not those offices which are to be exempted from it necessarily degrade the persons appointed to them ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... consider them at 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 ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... really intended to treat for peace. Pitt afterwards assured the House of Commons that Maret had not made the smallest communication to Ministers.[189] Evidently they looked on him as an unofficial emissary, to which level Chauvelin had persistently endeavoured to degrade him. ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... requires of some classes a time suitable for probation and preparation. To give it indiscriminately to a new class, wholly unprepared by previous habits and opportunities to perform the trust which it demands, is to degrade it, and finally to destroy its power, for it may be safely assumed that no political truth is better established than that such indiscriminate and all-embracing extension of popular suffrage must end ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... announced that "a nation may be too proud to fight." The country gasped for breath when it read those words, which seemed to be the official statement of the President of the United States that foreign nations might out rage, insult, and degrade this nation with impunity, because, as the rabbit retires into its hole, so we would burrow deep into our pride and show neither resentment nor sense of honor. As soon as possible, word came from the White House that, as the President's speech had been written before ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... think of it day after day, the more convinced I am that my suspicions are true. He is too interested in me—well, in plain words, loves me; or, not to degrade that phrase, has a wild passion for me; and his affection for Caroline is that towards a sister only. That is the distressing truth; how it has come about I cannot tell, and it wears ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... would have held out to him the hope of every adventurer—a marriage with some woman whose wealth and connections would clear an upward path in whatever line he chose to follow. Why not abandon to Nancy the inheritance it would degrade him to share, and so purchase back his freedom? The bargain might be made; a strong man would carry it through, and ultimately triumph ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... root of a man, which will develop into sacrificial virtues. But all the virtues are means and uses; and, if we hinder their tendency to growth and expansion, we both destroy them as virtues, and degrade them to that rankest species of corruption reserved for the most noble organizations. For instance,—non-intervention in the affairs of neighbouring states is a high political virtue; but non-intervention does not mean, passing by on the other side when your neighbour falls among thieves,—or ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... vain to talk of the evil of 'degrading' a criminal by flogging him, if we degrade him by penal labour, subjecting him to a very ignominious and tedious slavery. It is vain to say that whipping demoralizes, until we have a system of effective and severe punishment, clearly free from this danger.... A felon destined to long penal servitude cannot fulfil a father's duties, ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... say that you love me; do not degrade me by forcing me into your arms. I am a woman, and weak, and you are ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... is often incorrectly used in the sense of degrade, lower. It should be used in the sense of behave, conduct, deport, and not in the ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... was more impressive,—"here indeed is an object-lesson in the effects of crime! Is it possible that to this Man's passions can degrade his divinely inherited features? Were it not altogether too horrible, I would have this picture framed and glazed and hung up in every cottage ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... eclat which he chooses to give to his conversion. You will have seen the disgusting proceedings in the case of Lyon: if they would have accepted even of a commitment to the Serjeant it might have been had. But to get rid of his vote was the most material object. These proceedings must degrade the General Government, and lead the people to lean more on their State governments, which have been sunk under the early popularity of the former. This day the question of the jury in cases of impeachment comes on. There is no doubt how it will go. The general division of the Senate ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... 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. The broad rule ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... darkness and lust. Every profound vision of the world must recognise these two equally essential aspects of Nature and of Man; every vital religion must embody both aspects in superb and ennobling symbols. A religion can no more afford to degrade its Devil than to ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... her comparative Defencelessness in Public. She may hold opinions dear to her heart, and sound in themselves. These views may be unjustly assailed. Yet such is the sentiment of the community she inhabits, that it would degrade her, to appear as a public champion of her opinions, wrestling in the vulgar arena with man. Her character may be rudely aspersed; but who does not feel that to defend it by lifting up her voice in tumultuous ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... way grumbling, and labours hard to make his readers as peevish and wretched as himself. The tendency of the strain of Homer is to transform us for the moment into heroes; of Cowper, into saints; of Milton, into angels: but Lord Byron would almost degrade us into a Thersites or a Caliban; or lodge us, as fellow-grumblers, in the style of Diogenes, or any of his two or four-footed snarling or moody posterity. Now his Lordship, we trust, is accessible upon much higher grounds; but he ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... a matter or fact, we cannot raise one class to a higher class, unless we add an entirely new function to the former; we can only improve their lower status; but if we apply the reverse method, we can degrade ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... trying to do infinitesimally what the government, but for your opposition, might do universally. Your true creed is the survival of the fittest. You grind these people down into what is really an economic slavery and dependence, and then you insult and degrade them by inviting them to exercise and read books and sing hymns in your settlement house, and give their children crackers and milk and kindergartens and sunlight! I don't blame them for not becoming Christians on that basis. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... should be only a breathing-time, but a pause in the roar of the bloody tempest, let us improve it to remedy all wrongs at home; to educate our ignorant and neglected masses; to eradicate the vices that disgrace and degrade our nation; to build up the Church wherever it lies in ruins; to extend not so much Britain's empire as Christ's kingdom abroad, and so hasten forward the happy time when the Song of the Angels shall be echoed from every land, and the voices of the skies of Bethlehem ...
— The Angels' Song • Thomas Guthrie
... our babies, and also shame. The child is pure, innocent, natural. One of the first efforts of nursery culture is to smear that white page with our self-made foulness. We labor conscientiously and with patience, to teach our babies shame. We degrade the human body, we befoul the habits of nature, we desecrate life, teaching evil and foolish falsehood to our defenceless little children. The "sex-taboos" of darkest savagery, the decencies and indecencies ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... every man two ways of doing work, of reading a book, of loving a woman. He who keeps his spiritual life pure and high finds that in all these things there is a noble path. He who yields to his lower self will prostitute and degrade them all, and the tragedy that leads on to the mad scene at the close, where the cries of Margaret have no parallel in literature except those of Lady Macbeth, is the inevitable result of choosing the pagan and refusing the ideal. The Blocksberg is ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... Land Act was first announced. They were to urge that such a measure would be exploitation of the cruelest kind, that it would not only interfere with the economic independence of the Natives, but would reduce them for ever to a state of serfdom, and degrade them as nothing has done since slavery was abolished at the Cape. Missionaries also, and European friends of the Natives, did not sit still. Resolution after resolution, telegraphic and other representations, were made to Mr. Sauer, from meetings in various ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... were executed. They forced the Nabob himself to accompany their troops, and their Resident, Mr. Middleton, to attack the city and to storm the fort in which these ladies lived, and consequently to outrage their persons, to insult their character, and to degrade their dignity, as well as to rob them of all ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... well—if Fate decrees them a happy marriage; but, if otherwise, give their existence some object, their time some occupation, or the peevishness of disappointment and the listlessness of idleness will infallibly degrade their nature. ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... What in God's name have I if I haven't hope? Take that from me and what would I be? Why, the very fate I have been fighting off with tooth and nail would overwhelm me. I'd sink into unimportance—my unparalleled misfortunes would degrade me to a level with the commonest! No, sir, I've never been without hope, and though I've fallen I've always got up. What Fentress has is based on money he stole from me. By God, the days of his profit-taking are at an end! I am going to strip him. And even if I don't live ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... dishonour. And I answered that no engagement could bind you to become the wife of a man you did not love; that no moral code could hold you to such a sin; that no code of honour could command you to permit a man to degrade himself and you. Then you pleaded that you were not sure you liked my kind of a life, that you feared you wanted wealth and a great establishment and social leadership and—and ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... connected to a powered-off terminal but still enabled for login; misconfiguration, misimplementation, or simple bad luck can start such a terminal screaming. A screaming tty or two can seriously degrade the performance of a vanilla Unix system; the arriving "characters" are treated as userid/password pairs and tested as such. The Unix password encryption algorithm is designed to be computationally intensive in order to foil brute-force crack attacks, so although ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... either grossly immoral, or tend to engender a very low estimate of the character of God—an estimate far below the standard of the best earthly kings; where they are not immoral, or do not tend to degrade the character of God, they are the merest commonplaces imaginable, such as one is astonished to see people accept as having been first taught by Christ. Such maxims as those which inculcate conciliation and a forgiveness of injuries (wherever ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... mean, sir. Mr. Monson, that would be degrading lawful wedlock to the level of a bet—a game of cards—a mercenary, contemptible bargain. No, sir—nothing shall ever induce me to degrade this honorable ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... and the fortunate man must proceed to reciprocate in the same way. The brew is distributed in tumblerfuls or in bamboo joints holding about a tumblerful each. To refuse the allotted portion would degrade one in the eyes of everyone, for here it is a sin to be sober and a virtue to get drunk. Gluttony finds no place in a Manbo dictionary—one is merely full,[7] but always ready to go on; friend divides his rice with friend, when he sees that the latter's supply is getting low, and his own is ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... 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 they ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... have been made,—in Mississippi, for example,—with the "understanding" clause, hold out a temptation for the election officer to perjure and degrade himself by too often deciding that the ignorant white man does understand the Constitution when it is read to him, and that the ignorant black man does not. By such a law, the state not only commits a wrong against its black citizens; it ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... ignorant of that law; but I know that the king will make an exception—that he will pay the money I lent to his successor. It is possible I may feel his crutch upon my back, but blows will not degrade me. The Jew is accustomed to blows and kicks—to be daily trodden under foot. Even if the king beats me, he will give me back my honor, for he will give me back ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... in filthy dresses, and unwashed hands. No matter how skilled the workman may be, he is ready to sink his mind and character to the lowest level of his co-workers. Even the extra money which he earns by his greater skill, often contributes to demoralize and degrade him. And yet he might dress as well, live as well, and be surrounded by the physical comforts and intellectual luxuries of professional men. But no! From week to week his earnings are wasted. He does not save a farthing; he is a public-house victim; ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... before Herrick condemned the bears to starve on acorns, he should give them a farewell drink, and Herrick, who was slightly rattled, replied excitedly that he had not ransomed the animals only to degrade them. The argument was interrupted by the French chef falling out of a tree. He had climbed it, he explained, in order to obtain a ...
— The Nature Faker • Richard Harding Davis
... redeem, So dearly to redeem what hellish hate So easily destroyed, and still destroys In those who, when they may, accept not grace. Nor shalt thou, by descending to assume Man's nature, lessen or degrade thine own. Because thou hast, though throned in highest bliss Equal to God, and equally enjoying God-like fruition, quitted all, to save A world from utter loss, and hast been found By merit more than birthright Son of God, Found worthiest to be so by being good, Far more than great or high; ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... 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 of the choice vary in different versions: ...
— The Trojan women of Euripides • Euripides
... over the South, or are you still slumbering at your posts?—Are there no Shiphrahs, no Puahs among you, who will dare in Christian firmness and Christian meekness, to refuse to obey the wicked laws which require woman to enslave, to degrade and to brutalize woman? Are there no Miriams, who would rejoice to lead out the captive daughters of the Southern States to liberty and light? Are there no Huldahs there who will dare to speak the truth concerning the sins of the people and those judgments, which it requires no prophet's ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... 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 temptation of cutting capers ...
— 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
... eat its cake and have it too. It cannot adopt a policy and a code of laws to degrade its Negro labor, to hedge it about with unequal restrictions and prescriptive legislation, and raise it at the same time to the highest state of productive efficiency. But it must as an economic necessity ...
— Modern Industrialism and the Negroes of the United States - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 12 • Archibald H. Grimke
... cannot degrade, that is, change downwards into lower forms, ask him, who told him that water-babies were lower than land-babies? But even if they were, does he know about the strange degradation of the common goose-barnacles, which one finds ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... 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")
... with an audience that knows my work—that is ready to support a serious attempt at playwriting. I claim that a play may do something more than amuse—it may interest. There is a wide difference, you will see. To be an amusement merely is to degrade our stage to the level of a Punch-and-Judy show. I am sorry for tired men and weary women, but as a dramatist I can't afford to take their troubles into account. I am writing for those who are mentally alert and willing to support plays that have at least the dignity of intention which ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... exclaimed, shaking his fist. "To express publicly the opinion that a nobleman could so far degrade himself as to become a secret assassin! I will know who my insolent calumniators are, and I will then see if justice has power at Antwerp to protect an innocent stranger against the defamation ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... than the great majority of his contemporaries, and the penal code was chiefly enacted under his successors. It required, indeed, four or five reigns to elaborate a system so ingeniously contrived to demoralize, to degrade, and to impoverish the people of Ireland. By this code the Roman Catholics were absolutely excluded from the Parliament, from the magistracy, from the corporations, from the bench, and from the bar. They could not vote at Parliamentary ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... books in existence in England were in Latin, and it was a "great" library which contained fifty copies of these. There was a great objection to the use of the vernacular in the Holy Scriptures, as tending to degrade them by its uncouth jargon; but the Venerable Bede had rendered the Gospel of St. John into the Anglo-Saxon, together with other extracts from holy Scripture; and there were versions of the Psalter in the vulgar tongue, very ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... fit to do so, messire. Believe me, there is not a lackey in this realm—no, not a cut-purse, nor any pander—who would not in meeting you upon equal footing degrade himself. For you have slandered that which is most perfect in the world; yet lies, Messire de Montors, have short legs; and I design within the hour to insure the calumny against ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... or came by chance. Only a mere handful of the whole human race have ever yet believed such an untenable doctrine. The existence of a Creator, is doubted or denied by extreme atheistic evolutionists, who would dethrone God, "exalt the monkey, and degrade man." ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... termed "Roman Greatness,"—that self-esteem that would not allow the possessor to degrade himself, even in his own estimation, by indulging in any thing that was mean, or disreputable, or contrary to the unchangeable rule of right. Cato's probity, who chose to die rather than appear to connive at selfishness; ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... as conquered territory when the Union is restored. They shall return as our brethren to live with us in peace and good will with the curse of Slavery lifted from them and their children. Nor will I permit the absorption of this black blood into our racial stock to degrade our National character. When free, the negro must return ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... at these words, ambition, burning in thy soul, breaks out uncontrollable! Probity, honor, treaties, duty: feeble considerations these, to a heart letting loose its flamy passions; determining to rob the generous Germans of their liberties; to degrade thy equals; to extinguish 'Schism' (so called), and set up despotism on ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... 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 King's representative ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... to be laid at the door of those who degrade and enslave that which they assert to be most beautiful in human nature. But I am not speaking to convince; merely to shew where you cannot count upon me for a point of attack. Try ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... tribe of Judah. And I beheld, and lo, a lamb!'—the blended symbols of kingly might, and lowly meekness, power in love, and love in power. The supremest act of resolved consecration and heroic self-immolation that ever was done upon earth—an act which we degrade by paralleling it with any other—was done at the bidding of love that pitied us. As we look up at that Cross we know not whether is more wonderfully set forth the pitying love of Christ's most tender ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... plausible, and dangerous. Neither 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, laid the ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... whom the ladies generally mention with terror and aversion under the name of scholars, but whom I have found a harmless and inoffensive order of beings, not no much wiser than ourselves, but that they may receive as well as communicate knowledge, and more inclined to degrade their own character by cowardly submission, than to overbear or oppress us with their learning ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... Dean's "Frequent 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 be a Reproach (be it of what sort it will) the Animadverter ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... the Fawn girls very often,—but to have told Lady Eustace that any word spoken by her was a lie, would have been a worse crime than the lie itself. To have brought such an accusation, in that term, against Lord Fawn, would have been to degrade herself for ever. Was there any difference between a lie and an untruth? That one must be, and that the other need not be, intentional, she did feel; but she felt also that the less offensive word had come to mean a lie,—the world having ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... Previously to our late contest with Britain, it was the unceasing endeavor of the leaders of the federal party to bring into discredit, and contempt, the worthiest and best men of the nation; to ridicule and degrade every thing American, or that reflected honor on the American Independence. So bitter was their animosity; so insatiate their thirst for power, and high places, that they did not hesitate to advocate ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... over-crowding of population, the same intense commercial activity, the same almost insane thirst for amusement and excitement, the same degeneracy of moral fibre. The sins that sapped the life of Ephesus are the same that degrade contemporary life. In some ways Ephesus was, possibly, more frankly corrupt; but on the other hand it had no daily press to advertise and promote sin and social corruption. There is more of Christianity and of Christian influence in the modern city, ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... fact, to experiment and not theory,—to begin at the beginning and not fly to the end,—has added so much to the knowledge of man in science; why may it not greatly assist the moral purposes of the Arts? It cannot be well to degrade a lesson by falsehood. Truth in every particular ought to be the aim of the artist. Admit no untruth: let the ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... sentimental sympathy: he is telling you of a plain fact. He is not saying, 'It is a very fine and saintly thing, and will increase your chance of heaven, to help the poor.' He is saying, 'If you neglect the poor, you neglect yourself; if you degrade the poor, you degrade yourself. His poverty, his carelessness, his immorality, his dirt, his ill-health, will punish you; for you and he are members of the same body, knit together inextricably for weal or woe, by the eternal laws ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... the better to 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 ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... is not observed to the letter, I'll proclaim you through the army. I'll degrade you in the eyes of every English officer and gentleman in the land. You disgrace your sword, sir, by this very hesitation. Your bitter, unsoldierly, and dishonourable hatred and persecution of an honourable prisoner, drove me to an extremity which nothing ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Love in '76 - An Incident of the Revolution • Oliver Bell Bunce |
