"Degrading" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... into a popular error concerning the division of labour in savagery, if we consider that all women's work is regarded as degrading to men and all men's work is tabooed to women. The duties of war and the chase are the chief occupation of men, yet in all parts of the world women have fought at need, and sometimes habitually, both to ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... the best mode of accomplishing the end, nor could it in any case be thoroughly efficient. The restraint and punishment of crime belong to society as a whole, in its sovereign capacity. To the same society belongs the duty of seeing that its members do not fall into degrading ignorance and vice. God, in ordaining human society, had something higher in view than merely providing for the punishment of crime. Our Heavenly Father would have his children raised to the full enjoyment of their ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... the ores at the pit's mouth, and dress and sort them. The hard nature of the employment may not be actually injurious to health, yet it quite unsexes them. Their whole demeanor becomes as coarse and rude as their degrading occupation. As they labor at men's work, so they wear men's clothing. A stranger would feel sure that they were men, and it would be by their conversation alone that he could identify them as women. He would think it strange to hear persons dressed like men conversing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... especially the male portion, seem to have a natural distaste for labor. They would be aristocratic if they could. In days of slavery they had their household servants, and tried to imitate the more wealthy slave-owners by living in idleness, and they still look upon labor as degrading. ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 38, No. 01, January, 1884 • Various
... might have reverted to its proper course, while he was in the flower of age, with eyesight still available, and a spirit exalted by the triumph of the good cause. His fame would have been saved from the degrading incidents of the contention with Salmasius and Morus, and from being tarnished by the obloquy of the faction which he fought, and which conquered him. No man can with impunity insult and trample upon his fellow-man, even in the best of causes. ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... the glorification of his own name, settling everything by sacerdotal authority, and issuing every day, concerning ceremonies, faith, and all else, new decrees which he sought to make as sacred and authoritative as the laws of Moses. (14) Religion thus sank into a degrading superstition, while the true meaning and interpretation of the laws became corrupted. (15) Furthermore, while the high priests were paving their way to the secular rule just after the restoration, they attempted to gain popular favour by assenting to ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part IV] • Benedict de Spinoza
... age-period of 18 to 30 would fall that pseudo-educational monstrosity, the undergraduate university, and the degrading popular activities of 'beginning a business' or 'picking up a trade.' Much money must be spent here. Perhaps few fields of activity have been conventionalized as much as university education. Here, just where a superficial theorist would expect to find enthusiasm, emancipated ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... was engaged in the painful process of trying to bring the apparently drowned girl to life. More than once Blanche felt tempted to implore him to leave off those terribly arduous efforts of his. It seemed to her so—so horrible, almost degrading, that Bubbles' delicate little body should be ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... recesses and writes its fearful sentence on the palace wall of recoiling tyrants. As an englishman, my expiring sigh should be breathed for its preservation; but as an admirer of social repose and national liberality, I regret to see its noble energies engaged in the degrading service of fretful spleen, and ungenerous animadversion. When the horizon is no longer blackened with the smoke of the battle, it is unworthy of two mighty empires to carry on an ignoble war of words. If ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... character well: I knew how far his affections and his sympathies might prevail over his prejudices—even over his principles—in some peculiar cases; and this very knowledge convinced me that the consequences of a degrading marriage contracted by his son (degrading in regard to rank), would be terrible: fatal to one, perhaps to both. Every other irregularity—every other offence even—he might sooner or later forgive. This irregularity, ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... which corrupts soul and body alike. But might not the girls be somehow put into the way of earning a decent livelihood? Ida knew so well the effect upon them of the occupations to which they mostly turned, occupations degrading to womanhood, blighting every hope. Even to give them the means of remaining at home would not greatly help them; there they still breathed a vile atmosphere. To remove them altogether was the only efficient way, and how could ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... prospect that is now exhibited in Europe, those troubles which are the natural offspring of their forms of government originating, indeed, in the spirit of liberty, but gradually degenerating in tyrannies, equally degrading to the rulers and the ruled, I rejoice in finding an asylum from persecution in a country in which these abuses have come to a natural termination, and have produced another system of liberty founded on such wise principles, as, I trust, ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... he said, in accents that vainly struggled for calm, "if thou hast admitted to thy heart one unworthy thought towards a Moorish infidel, dig deep and root it out, even with the knife, and to the death—so wilt thou save this hand from that degrading task." ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book I. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... raised his face and given one look at my swollen, tearful eyes, he deliberately crossed the name out again. And, indeed, throughout that period he so consistently refused to see that the boys were showing detestation of my degrading presence, and was so inexpressibly gentle in his manner towards me, that now I always think of this weak-eyed German master as a ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... Letheon is administered to the judgment by continual progression in some improper path, till that which is to all others palpably and painfully degrading becomes pleasant and eminently proper in him who labours under the mental oblivion. Such a course Mr. Freeman has trod, for while he admits that gambling is pernicious, he clamours for the natural right which all men possess, to do it so ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... earnestness the band of abstainers, as he sat in all boyish sincerity at Mr Bernard Oliphant's table, eager to make the trial and bear the cross, were fresh upon his memory now. And all the bitter past, with its shameful, degrading, sinful records, gathered its thick shadows round his soul. What should he do? He sank upon his knees and prayed—prayed to be forgiven, prayed that he might do better—and then he rose, and was in part comforted. And now, what should he do with ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... right hand of brotherhood to nature worshippers, demon worshippers, animal worshippers, tree worshippers, fetich worshippers. It does not scruple to permit the most grotesque forms of idolatry and the most degrading varieties of superstition, and it is to this latter fact that yet another remarkable peculiarity of Hinduism is mainly due—namely, that in no other System of the world is the chasm more vast which separates the religion ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... Brahmans only, yet by a distinction which it is difficult for Europeans to grasp, the priests of temples are not necessarily and, in many places, not usually Brahmans. The reason perhaps is that the easy and superstitious worship offered in temples is considered trivial and almost degrading in comparison with the elaborate ceremonial and subtle speculation which ought to occupy a ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... comes, nor what it costs. If, at least, you had to justify your expenses, the excuse of some great passion, or of some object, were it absurd, ardently pursued! But I defy you to confess upon what degrading pleasures you lavish our humble economies. I defy you to tell us what you mean to do with the sum that you demand to-night,—that sum for which you would have our mother stoop to beg the assistance of a shop-keeper, to whom we ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... to say. I would wish to show you something at least of the success with which religion among the Jews has been turned to domestic uses. No detail of the home life is left unhallowed. Even the poorest Jewish home is saved by its ceremonies from the degrading indifference to decency and tenderness, which is the terrible feature of the industrial homes of poverty. The sanctity of the home is an affectionate tradition linking the Jews through the ages with a golden chain. The purity of home life has fought and triumphed over ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... concerned with his vileness," Mark answered. "I hate myself sometimes and wish I was a grocer or a linen draper or even a soldier or sailor. It's degrading to let your life's work depend on the wickedness of your fellow creatures, Ganns. I hope a time is coming when our craft will be as obsolete ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... of education or through insufficient mental capacity'.[77] Along the lines of this philosophy no permanent industrial advance is possible. It may improve the product for a time, but only at the cost of degrading the producer. If we are to make happiness our test, and to stand by our definition of happiness as involving free activity, such a system, destructive as it is of any real or intense relationship between the workman ...
— Progress and History • Various
... could understand how useless it is, dearest, or how it hurts me, this talk of hell. For people to be good for fear of hell is like saying 'Honesty is the best policy;' it is degrading. And it seems selfish to me, somehow, to think so much about one's own salvation,—it is small, John. The scheme of salvation that the elders talk so much about really resolves itself into a fear of hell and hope of heaven, all ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... though Burns took advantage of her weakness, it was in the ugliest and most cynical spirit, and with a heart absolutely indifferent judge of this by a letter written some twenty days after his return - a letter to my mind among the most degrading in the whole collection - a letter which seems to have been inspired by a boastful, libertine bagman. "I am afraid," it goes, "I have almost ruined one source, the principal one, indeed, of my former happiness - the eternal propensity ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... charge of him! Go, rate him well—for degrading you, and me and his other friends with ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... learned to know life in the great cities. What a life he had found it. He shuddered as it all came back to him now. The many times when inspired by the memory of his mother, he had tried to break away from the evil, degrading things that were in and about him, and the many times he had been dragged back by the training and memory of his father; the gambling, the fighting, the drinking, the periods of hard work, the struggle to master ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... mischievous notion of it which would encourage us to draw immediate and crude deductions from Holy Scripture, subject only to the control and the colouring of our own minds, responsible for nothing further than our own consciousness of an honest intention. Whilst we claim a release from that degrading yoke which neither are we nor were our fathers able to bear, we deprecate for ourselves and for our fellow-believers that licentiousness which in doctrine and practice tempts a man to follow merely ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... to think, to misuse the Divine gift of artistic inspiration. The poet may devote his genius to animalism, like Byron, or to teach immoral license, like Swinburne; the painter may crowd his canvas with degrading ideas and vulgar representations, and the artificer may be ingenious in the production of forms of ugliness and degrading grotesqueness. Such desecration of great endowments is alike displeasing to God and ruinous to the man. Of such it may be said: ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... the mind was oft Stolen at the body's cost. I have gone dinnerless And supperless, the scoff of our poor street, For tattered vestments and lean, hungry looks, To pay the pedagogue.—Add what thou wilt Of injury. Say that, grown into man, I've known the pittance of the hospital, And, more degrading still, the patronage Of the Colonna. Of the tallest trees The roots delve deepest. Yes, I've trod thy halls, Scorned and derided midst their ribald crew, A licensed jester, save the cap and bells, I have borne this—and I have borne the death, The unavenged death, of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... greatest number possible of his brothers should participate in the succor offered. He addresses himself, in the first place, to honest, industrious workmen, with families, whom the want of work often reduces to the most cruel extremities. It is not a degrading alms which he gives to his brothers but a gratuitous loan which he offers. May this loan, as he hopes, prevent them often from resorting to those cruel pledges which they are forced to make (while awaiting the return of work), for the ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... exclaimed, is it not dangerous to tell them anything about it? Such a course is unnecessary. Teach them that any handling of the parts, any indecent language, any impure thought, is degrading and hurtful. See that the servants, nurses, and companions with whom they associate are not debased; and ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... increased, for he found the dominant vice was precisely that one most repugnant to his nature. If Lord Byron ever admitted, with La Rochefoucault, that hypocrisy is a homage vice renders to virtue, he did not the less consider this homage as degrading to him who offered it, insulting to those to whom it is addressed, and most corrupting in its effect upon ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... saying; but that is the result of disputing with shoemakers. Besides, it is degrading to compare women to wine! He is a coarse fellow who sets his wife on the same ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... except by the ruin of those who had offended him. With all this, the manners of Lord Lovat were courteous, and, for the times, polished; whilst beneath that superficial varnish lay the coarsest thoughts, the most degrading tastes. His address must have been consummate; and to that charm of manner may be ascribed the wonderful ascendancy which he acquired even over the ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... magnificent art which the Vandals produced. To centuries, to revolutions which at least laid waste with impartiality and grandeur, are conjoined the host of scholastic architects, licensed and sworn, degrading all they touch with the discernment and selection of bad taste, substituting the tinsel of Louis XV. for Gothic lace-work, for the greater glory of the Parthenon. This is the donkey's kick at the dying lion. It is the old oak, decaying at the crown, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... or wives. No man who is engaged in the serious work of the world, in the effort to purify public opinion and direct it aright, but is helped or hindered by the women of his household. Few men can stand the depressing and degrading influence of the uninterested and placid amiability of women incapable of the true public spirit, incapable of a generous or noble aim—whose whole sphere of ideas is petty and personal. It is not only that such women do nothing themselves—they slowly asphyxiate their friends, ...
— Three Addresses to Girls at School • James Maurice Wilson
... asked too much, you have pleaded the fear of ridicule, but you could not understand that you were consenting to buy me—me—your wife! You wished to possess me for a little, as a sort of variation to your usual list, although your heart must have told you that it was degrading to me to be placed on such a plane. You did not recoil from such an idea, but pursued it, just as you pursue them, and the more eagerly, because I was more expensive. But you have deceived yourself, not ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... journeyed to Jerusalem to fulfil his office, for a week of six days and two Sabbaths. There were, Josephus tells us, somewhat more than 20,000 priests settled in Judaea at this time; and very many of them were like those whom Malachi denounced as degrading and depreciating the Temple services. The general character of the priesthood was deeply tainted by the corruption of the times, and as a class they were blind leaders of the blind. Not a few, however, were evidently deeply religious ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... deformed, we will seek everywhere, even in the darkness of a religion we have ceased to practise, for some God whose intention to question; but if the child be born poor—a calamity, as a rule, no less capable than the gravest infirmity of degrading a creature's destiny—we do not dream of interrogating the God who is wherever we are, since he is made of our own desires. Before we demand an ideal judge, we shall do well to purify our ideas, for whatever blemish ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... Our Benevolent Fund is sufficient for the relief of those who apply in distress. We cannot build "almshouses," but "Atheist widows" are not neglected. On the whole, however, we are not so loud as the Christians in praise of "charity," Much of it is very degrading. If we had justice in society there would be ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... proved by Mr. Hastings's own evidence, had ruined the country. Nothing is more natural than that a man, sensible of his duty to himself and his subjects, should form a scheme to get rid of a band of robbers that were destroying his country and degrading and ruining his family. Thus you see a family compact naturally accounted for: the Nabob at the head of it, his mother joining her own son, and a natural brother joining in the general interests of the family. This is a possible case. But is this ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... is something degrading in this recollection, it is not unpleasant to compare it with those of the last war, when Edinburgh, besides regular forces and militia, furnished a volunteer brigade of cavalry, infantry, and artillery, to the amount of six ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... the morning, I will cudgel my brains without ceasing, I will chastise my laziness without mercy. I will toil, suffer, even to the extent of making myself ill; but I will put a stop, once for all, to this languishing and tiresome life, which is degrading me and causing sorrow to others. Courage! to work! To work with all my soul, and all my nerves! To work, which will restore to me sweet repose, pleasing games, cheerful meals! To work, which will give me back ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... somehow it hadn't come off. Instead of diminishing as he should have done, Horace had worked himself gradually up to her height, had caught flame from her flame, and now he was consuming her with her own fire. It was she who had taken, the view most degrading to the man she admired; she who would have dragged her poet down to earth and put him on a level with Rankin and Fulcher and such people. Horace would have her believe that his own outlook was the clearer and more heavenly; ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... blotch, big as the Royal seal, Branded beneath the beard of every Jew. These vermin so infest the isle, so slide Into all byways, highways that may lead Direct or roundabout to wealth or power, Some plain, plump mark was needed, to protect From the degrading contact ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... Telia for Teli, Jugia for Jogi, Kuria for Kori, and that the Bharias belong to the great Bhar tribe who were once dominant in the eastern part of the United Provinces, but are now at the bottom of the social scale, and relegated by their conquerors to the degrading office of swineherds. The Rajjhars, who appear to have formed a separate caste as the landowning subdivision of the Bhars, like the Raj-Gonds among Gonds, are said to be the descendants of a Raja and a Bharia woman. The Rajjhars form a separate caste in the Central Provinces, and the Bharias ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... Tennessee, his wholesale abuse of the American party, towards whose members, without a single exception, he has indulged in language which ought not to be tolerated within the precincts of Billingsgate, no epithet is too low, too degrading, or disgraceful, to ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... said that "He desired one Service, because he thought it was most degrading that certain man, although they were doing the same work should be classed in a Provincial Service, while others should be classed in an Imperial Service. The prospects of the members of the Provincial Service were not at all what they ought ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... Maurepas, the D'Aiguillons, and that hateful Abbe Terray, who, for rapacity, were none of them better than Du Barry—and thus he ended by losing the love of his subjects. I have often pitied Louis XV. for degrading himself as he did before the eyes of his family, ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... last night recklessly imputed to him that I felt deeply ashamed, and was nearly carried away by mingled admiration and self-reproach to confess the absurd vagrancy of my thoughts and humbly ask his pardon. But you can understand the reluctance at a confession so insulting to him, so degrading to me. It is at all times difficult to tell a man, face to face, eye to eye, the evil you have thought of him, unless the recklessness of anger seizes on it as a weapon with which to strike; and ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... considered, she thought he would go without delay. That Miss Crawford should endeavour to secure a meeting between him and Mrs. Rushworth, was all in her worst line of conduct, and grossly unkind and ill-judged; but she hoped he would not be actuated by any such degrading curiosity. He acknowledged no such inducement, and his sister ought to have given him credit for ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... informers, ever ready, for their own advantage, to swear before ex parte committees to pretended private conversations between the President and themselves, incapable from their nature of being disproved, thus furnishing material for harassing him, degrading him in the eyes of the country, and eventually, should he be a weak or a timid man, rendering him subservient to improper influences in order to avoid such persecutions and annoyances; because they tend to destroy ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... selection of elders, care was enjoined that all such persons should be honorable, free from any pernicious or degrading habits, "for if men cannot control themselves, they are not fit to be rulers or leaders in the ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... instance, the new government has ushered itself to the world as honest, masculine, and dignified. It has shown genuine dignity, in my opinion, in exploding adulatory titles; they are the offerings of abject baseness, and nourish that degrading vice in the people. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... English, and spoke with great bitterness of the ill-treatment of Philip, the native chief, who came as passenger in the ship. He described and mimicked his cleaning shoes and knives; his being flogged when he refused to do this degrading work; and, finally, his speech to his countrymen when he came on shore, soliciting their assistance in capturing the vessel, and revenging his ill-treatment. Over and over again our friend George, having worked up his passion by a full recollection ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... religions could hardly be expected to harmonise or combine. Confucianism exalts letters, and lays stress on ethics to the neglect of the spiritual world. Taoism inculcates physical discipline; but in practice it has become the mother of degrading superstition—dealing in magic and necromancy. Buddhism saps the foundations of the family and enjoins celibacy as the road to virtue. Metempsychosis is its leading doctrine, and to "think on nothing" its mental discipline. It forbids a flesh diet and ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... employed to bring in the labourers, seem to have abused their powers. To the genuine Matabili, who lived only for war and plunder, and had been accustomed to despise the other tribes, work, and especially mine work, was not only distasteful, but degrading. They had never been really subdued. In 1893 they hid away most of the firearms they possessed, hoping to use them again. Now, when their discontent had increased, two events hastened an outbreak. One was the removal of the white police to Pitsani. Only forty-four were left in Matabililand ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... against this degrading habit with determined resolution. Let neither the example, nor the solicitations, nor the taunting jests of your companions, induce you to demean yourself so far, as to be guilty of a vice so utterly unworthy of you, both as a man ...
— Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford - In Ten Letters, From an Uncle to His Nephew • Edward Berens
... his friends had arranged this disgraceful exhibition of unholiness in order to discredit and destroy Grichka's rival. Five minutes later I met the Bishop Theophanus walking with the Procurator of the Holy Synod, who, like myself, witnessed the degrading sight, and from that moment Mitia the Blessed no longer exercised power, and was not further invited to the salons of those mystical members of the aristocracy. He had been swept into oblivion in ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... plans and his resolutions melted away before this discovery. There was nothing to be done but to save the poor girl from this miserable and degrading attachment, and ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... most ancient sacred hymns;" then he comes to this conclusion: "Egypt, in possession of an admirable fund of doctrines respecting the essence of God, and the immortality of the soul, did not for all that defile herself the less by the most degrading superstitions; we have in her, sufficiently summed up, the religious history of all antiquity."[12] As regards the civilization which flourished in India, M. Adolphe Pictet, in his learned researches on the subject of the primitive Aryas, arrives, in what concerns ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... within reach she clung to it with pathetic tenacity. But if the young man's value had risen in the eyes of his employers it had deteriorated in his own. He was condemned to play a part he had not bargained for, and it seemed to him more degrading when paid in bank-notes than if his retribution had consisted merely in good dinners and luxurious lodgings. The first time the smiling aide-de-camp had caught his eye over a verbal slip of Mrs. Hicks's, Nick had flushed to the forehead and gone to bed swearing that he would chuck ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... victims, the drinking saloon first opens its gorgeous doors, and when the burning liquid has inflamed the mental and physical man, soon hurries him onward into those fascinating habitations where vice and voluptuousness mingle their degrading powers. Once in these whirlpools of sin, the young man finds himself borne away by every species of vicious allurement-his feelings become unrestrained, until at length that last spark of filial advice which had hovered round his consciousness ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... had had no such intention the night before; an accumulated mail and many matters demanding decisions were awaiting him; and his sudden departure seemed an act directed personally against her, in the nature of a retaliation, since she had offended and repulsed him. Through Lise's degrading act she had arrived at the conclusion that all adventure and consequent suffering had to do with Man—a conviction peculiarly maddening to such temperaments as Janet's. Therefore she interpreted her suffering in terms of Ditmar, she had looked forward ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... properly enough demanded of every student, when matriculated, as a pledge for meeting any loss from unsettled arrears, such as his sudden death or his unannounced departure might else continually be inflicting upon his college. By releasing the college, therefore, from all necessity for degrading vigilance or persecution, this demand does, in effect, operate beneficially to the feelings of all parties. In most colleges it amounts to twenty-five pounds: in one only it was considerably less. And this trifling consideration it was, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... believes in spirit. He is timid and womanly, his mind is pure and inexpressibly shocked at the carnal desires which disfigure the otherwise fair picture of humanity. Love, marriage, procreation, cannot these be purged from the base and degrading obsessions of sex? By abstinence, by concentration, we may eliminate them. Surely the story of the Fall makes it quite clear that we were never meant to perpetuate such gross mistakes.... Here is the woman who believes sex to be the source of all good, all life, ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... dream I have sometimes, you know.... I often dream it—it's always the same ... that some one is hunting me, some one I'm awfully afraid of ... that he's hunting me in the dark, in the night ... tracking me, and I hide somewhere from him, behind a door or cupboard, hide in a degrading way, and the worst of it is, he always knows where I am, but he pretends not to know where I am on purpose, to prolong my agony, to enjoy my terror.... That's just what you're doing now. It's ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... offer up the poor man's sweat to the abomination,—when they lay before it the crippled child of the factory,—when they take from life its bloom and dignity, and degrading human nature to mere brute breathing, make offering of its wretchedness as the most savoury morsel to the perpetual craving of their insatiate god,—when we consider all the "manifold sins and wickednesses" of the barbarians ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... for his "masterly refutations of the vagaries of this man Darwin, wherein the Creator is left out of all things and man proclaims himself independent, his own king, his own priest, his own God—then degrading man to the level of the brute by declaring he had the same origin, and this origin was lifeless matter. Could folly and pride go further than to degrade Science into a vehicle for throwing contumely and disrespect ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... degrading or vilifying an object, is done successfully by ranking it with one that is really low."—Kames, El. of Crit., ii, 50. "The magnifying or diminishing objects by means of comparison, proceeds from the same cause."—Ib., i, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... contribute to deforestation and soil degradation; water pollution and overfishing threaten marine life populations; groundwater contamination limits potable water supply; growing urban industrialization and population migration are rapidly degrading environment in Hanoi and ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... to become a mere walking, talking machine, be the object of a beginner, by all means let him be instructed in calisthenics and elocution, and the art of first-night speech-making; but to call such a combination of classes a School of Dramatic Art is degrading; it robs the calling of its highest attribute—imagination. Innate ability must undoubtedly be developed, "which nobody can deny," but such an institution as is suggested would develop everything in the same form; and as there is no accepted standard to aim at, the result would be, ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... this Ministry of little men were suspected of tricks degrading and treacherous. The recitals of their distorted versions of their woes affected the public imagination like a dreary litany. Vast communities of men were beginning to realise that a tragedy was being engineered in the name of sanctity ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... but no one could be sure at what unlooked-for moment, and how fiercely, she might resent in earnest a display of what she had herself encouraged. Essex was ruined for all real greatness by having to suit himself to this bewildering and most unwholesome and degrading waywardness. She taught him to think himself irresistible in opinion and in claims; she amused herself in teaching him how completely he was mistaken. Alternately spoiled and crossed, he learned to be exacting, unreasonable, absurd in his pettish resentments or brooding sullenness. ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... to destroy or in any wise to impair the civil and political rights of the citizens of the United States, and much more so the power to establish inequalities amongst those citizens by creating privileges in one class of those citizens, and by the disfranchisement of other portions or classes, by degrading them from the ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... for her unfortunate and peculiarly unhappy child. It had been neglected and seemed almost starved. Those around apparently took pleasure in tormenting it and rendering it miserable, and vied with each other in applying to it insulting and degrading epithets. The little articles that Cecil gave to it, in the hope that the Indians seeing him manifest an interest in it would treat it more tenderly, it put to its mouth eagerly; but not finding them eatable, it threw them aside in disgust. Cecil turned away ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... she had served her apprenticeship at that, but simply to force herself to realize vividly just how matters stood with her. Those columns and pages of closely printed offerings of work! Dreary tasks, all of them—tasks devoid of interest, of personal sense of usefulness, tasks simply to keep degrading soul in degenerating body, tasks performed in filthy factories, in foul-smelling workrooms and shops, in unhealthful surroundings. And this, throughout civilization, was the "honest work" so praised—by all who don't do it, but live pleasantly ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... in the midst of tears, terror, and murder. Why does the stately Muse of History, that delights in describing the valor of heroes and the grandeur of conquest, leave out these scenes, so brutal, mean, and degrading, that yet form by far the greater part of the drama of war? You, gentlemen of England, who live at home at ease, and compliment yourselves in the songs of triumph with which our chieftains are bepraised—you pretty maidens, ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... in Luther, Calvin, Cranmer, Knox, we discover humiliating proofs of imperfection and fallibility. And, while the fundamental truths of Christianity have been preserved in the Catholic Church, those truths have been mingled or associated with errors so injurious and degrading, that no blind faith is to be rested on any human authority. Let us uphold the majesty of divine revelation, and vindicate our right and our duty to interpret the sacred page—not by the traditions of fallible men, not by the metaphysics of the schools, not ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... was so amiable and so much beloved by the princess, that she easily yielded; and casting down her eyes, confessed that she loved one who regarded her with contemptuous indifference; and what rendered her choice still more degrading was, its object being equally ugly ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... whom they call the infidel, is full of contempt. They know no gratitude, and they would not cringe to the greatest Christian potentate. They are very long-suffering in adversity, hesitating in attack, and the bravest of the brave in defence. They disdain work as degrading and only a fit occupation for slaves, whilst warfare is, to their minds, an honourable calling. Every male over 16 years of age has to carry at least one fighting-weapon at all times, and consider himself ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... her previous conduct has in any way prepared her friends, is now said to have been due to the shock of hearing, some time during her wedding-day, that a sister whom she had supposed dead was really alive and in circumstances of almost degrading poverty. As this sister had been her own twin the effect upon her mind was very serious. To find and rescue this sister she left her newly made husband in the surreptitious manner already recorded in the papers. That she is not fully herself is shown ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... leave less of a sting than to be bilked by a male. But, as burglars, the idea seems revolting. To think of women going about nights with a jimmy and a dark lantern, and opening doors, or windows, and sneaking about rooms, is degrading. If a male burglar gets in your house, and he is discovered, you can shoot him, if you get the drop on him, or kick him down stairs; but who wants to shoot a female burglar, or kick her over the banisters? It would be unnatural. ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... for himself was a serious business. It would be very silly to jump into a career with slaves, coarse and degrading, just because a fool happened to be teaching at the County Academy. He must think this thing over. Tired as he was, he lay awake until eleven o'clock, thinking, thinking ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... Burke was alive to the existence of social problems, and that he was even tormented by them, we know from an incidental passage in the Reflections. There he tells us how often he had reflected, and never reflected without feeling, upon the innumerable servile and degrading occupations to which by the social economy so many wretches are inevitably doomed. He had pondered whether there could be any means of rescuing these unhappy people from their miserable industry without disturbing ...
— Burke • John Morley
... too, like the first listeners, drink in the tale with delight. The poet, in other words, has the secret not only of seeing but of idealizing the actual world. We catch from him some subtle art by which, standing a little aloof from the pressure and turmoil around us, often felt as painful or degrading, we see it through an atmosphere in which it becomes a splendid and heart-stirring scene. At a later stage we may perhaps in a degree analyze the change of view; we may partly understand how through the struggle with evil man is ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... breathe the spirit of the most primitive magic." Speaking of the importance of magic in the East, and especially in Egypt, Professor Maspero remarks that "we ought not to attach to the word magic the degrading idea which it almost inevitably calls up in the mind of a modern. Ancient magic was the very foundation of religion. The faithful who desired to obtain some favour from a god had no chance of succeeding except by laying hands on the deity, and ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... wiles and her beauty had culminated in a degrading scene of anger on her part, when, forgetting her breeding, her birth and her nationality, she had first of all twitted him and then openly laughed at ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... three other graves were added to that sunny bank! One by one, all those fair children whom Fessenden's had seen in the warm room where the fire was had followed their sister to the tomb. So fast they followed that Mr. Frisbie had no time to move his family-vault from the degrading proximity of the negro graves. And Fessenden's still lived, an orphan, yet happy, in the family of blacks which had adopted him; while the parents of those children, who had loved them, were left alone in the costly house, desolate. Was it, as some supposed, a judgment upon Frisbie for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... the least indelicate her finebred nature instinctively recoiled. She loathed that sort of person, the fallen women off the accommodation walk beside the Dodder that went with the soldiers and coarse men with no respect for a girl's honour, degrading the sex and being taken up to the police station. No, no: not that. They would be just good friends like a big brother and sister without all that other in spite of the conventions of Society with ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... play off one against the other, for the existence of a lower paid class makes it increasingly difficult for the Men Clerks to substantiate a claim for better pay themselves. The standard of their work is raised by the "moving-down" or "degrading" of duties, without any improvement in pay such as they would probably be able to obtain if women were not involuntarily undercutting them. Women fully sympathise with their male colleagues, whose prospects are injured in this way, but they insist that the only ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... dishonorable. . . . There is a generally, in militant society, small respect for the common forms of labor. But in old Japan the occupation of the farmer and artisan were not despised; trade alone appears to have been considered degrading, and the distinction may have ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... is to provide a temporary home and school for the dependent and neglected children of the state. No child in Minnesota need go without a home if the officers of the several counties do their duty. There is not a semblance of any degrading or criminal feature in the manner of obtaining admittance to this school. Under the law, it is the duty of every county commissioner, when he finds any child dependent, or in danger of becoming so, to take steps to send him to this school. The process of admission wisely guards against the ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... in his own thoughts, but in the air; it was the spontaneous revulsion of white men against the rule of an inferior race. These were the very men, above all others in the town, to join him in a movement to change these degrading conditions. ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... action, and the total refutation and utter explosion of Filmer would not have been effected. By criminal prosecutions the odious positions would only have been suppressed for a time, not as they now are, extinguished for ever; and the base and degrading doctrines of passive obedience and divine right, which are the stigma of the times in which they prevailed, might have been the disgrace and reproach ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... faith in the Paternal love I need, so ruthless or so negligent seems the government of this earth. I feel calm, yet sternly, towards Fate. This last plot against me has been so cruelly, cunningly wrought, that I shall never acquiesce. I submit, because useless resistance is degrading, but I demand an explanation. I see that it is probable I shall never receive one, while I live here, and suppose I can bear the rest of the suspense, since I have comprehended all its difficulties in the first moments. Meanwhile, I live ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... far more definite terms, he perceived the injustice of the world toward women. Here with Berrie, as in ages upon ages of other times, the maiden must bear the burden of reproach. "In me it will be considered a joke, a romantic episode, in her a degrading misdemeanor. And ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... are two or three poor societies; it is for them to look after these cases. What is the use of having poor societies, if we are to do the work ourselves? So low! so undignified! so degrading! just ask any minister,—ask Dr. Blandford,—what ...
— Trading • Susan Warner
... wings to the mind and make a man soar to heaven. Thus I hope that my wise words will give you wings to fly to some less degrading trade. ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes
... spirits in bodily decay, in fasting, and in ascetic practices, is no disproof of the general principle, but merely the introduction of another principle, namely, that we can feed one part of the system at the expense of degrading and ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... Shaftesbury, more than to any other is due the persistent investigation and disclosure which aroused the public mind to the prevailing conditions in mine and factory where hours of labor were excessive, and where women and children were subjected to degrading tasks and brutal treatment. The Factory Law and kindred legislation since 1830 are the fruits of the beneficent and untiring labors ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... fancying that it was degrading to his dignity to root in the gutter, came upon the sidewalk, and full of his consequence, promenaded from morning till night, leaving his humbler companions to munch corn, husks and potatoe parings. He fared as people usually do, who from vanity assume a station they are not qualified ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various
... proud queen of the Am[)a]zons. Being rejected by Bellodant "the Bold," she revenged herself by degrading all the men who fell into her power by dressing them like women, giving them woman's work to do, such as spinning, carding, sewing, etc., and feeding them on bread and water to effeminate them (canto 4). When she overthrew Sir Artegal in single combat, she ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... her. She would not listen to the first insidious suggestion of the tempter. Thus the man who expected to go away despising now honored, reverenced, loved her, and through her strong but gentle ministry had turned his back on evil, and was struggling to escape its degrading bondage. ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... exercised in my mind about Stokes' going into Parliament (as a strong party man, moreover) while still P.R.S. I do not know what you may think about it, but to my mind it is utterly wrong—and degrading to the Society—by introducing ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... he said, sadly. "Then, if domestic service is degrading in your eyes, and people are not willing servants among you, may I ask why ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... addressed her lord in anger, looking at him, 'Knowing everything, O monarch, how canst thou, like an inferior person, thus say that thou knowest it not? Thy heart is a witness to the truth or falsehood of this matter. Therefore, speak truly without degrading thyself. He who being one thing representeth himself as another thing to others, is like a thief and a robber of his own self. Of what sin is he not capable? Thou thinkest that thou alone hast knowledge of thy deed. But knowest thou not that the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... with sexuality, and its purely spiritual element is lost. In every instance this spiritual element should constitute the basis of marriage, which, without it, is nothing more than legal prostitution. Without it, the selfish, degrading, animal propensities run rampant, while the emotions with all their boundless sweetness lie dormant. Woman is regarded as only a plaything to ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... face with his blue eyes, and receiving her crown-piece in his hand, which was nobler than his face, inasmuch as it was seamed with the action of his paints and tools, without a notion of anything unbecoming or degrading. ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... long within myself, watching the mere shadows and shades of life. To deceive a man on some issue which could be decided quicker, by his destruction while one is disarmed, helpless, without even the power to run away—no! That seems to me too degrading. And yet I have you here. I have your very existence in my keeping. What do you say, Lena? Would I be capable of throwing you to the lions to save ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... themselves have been always free from the pernicious influence of the errors and corruption, which had already spread almost throughout the world; it was necessary that their minds should have remained unpolluted by the notions of the extravagant and degrading idolatries, which were in practice among almost all the ancient nations; and that their hearts should have remained untouched by the contagion of universal depravity. The soil to which any seed, however good, is to be committed, would never respond to ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... were to see her, to catch her in the brazen act of looking for him! Mrs. Maldon was grieved; and her gentle sorrow for Rachel's incalculable lapse was so dignified, affectionate, and jealous for the good repute of human nature that it mysteriously ennobled instead of degrading ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... process had been a dangerous one, and during the long business experience the iron had entered his soul, and he had witnessed at close quarters the degrading influence of the lust of acquisition. The self-advertising humbug of most philanthropy had clouded something in him that he felt could never again grow clear and limpid as before, and a portion of his original zest had faded. ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... disappointed Robert. In the work of moving in he had to do with people who work at day's work, and the fault was his more than theirs. He forgot that they did not consider their work degrading. They resented his bossing. The drayman ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... that the reader will carefully distinguish between those opinions which have a dramatic propriety in reference to the characters which they are designed to elucidate, and such as are properly my own. The erroneous and degrading idea which men have conceived of a Supreme Being, for instance, is spoken against, but not the Supreme Being itself. The belief which some superstitious persons whom I have brought upon the stage entertain of the Deity, as injurious to the character of his benevolence, is widely ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... and thought how great England was, because her slightest work was done so thoroughly. Alas! if read rightly, these perfectnesses are signs of a slavery in our England a thousand times more bitter and more degrading than that of the scourged African, or helot Greek. Men may be beaten, chained, tormented, yoked like cattle, slaughtered like summer flies, and yet remain in one sense, and the best sense, free. But to smother their souls within them, to blight ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... audience of Louis the Just, who recruits his finances by the present of a handful of pistoles; and a few days later he is appointed to a cadetship in the company of guards of the Chevalier des Essarts, a brother-in-law of Treville. According to the singular ideas of those days, there was nothing degrading to a gentleman in receiving money from the king's hand. D'Artagnan, therefore, pockets the pistoles with many thanks, and takes an early opportunity of dividing them with his friends with the mythological names, Messieurs Athos, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... Dr. Tyng. For any intelligent Christian must allow that those claiming to represent the Church of Christ have too often sided with the oppressor, fettered human thought in departments foreign to religion, and inculcated degrading beliefs, which scholars eminent in orthodoxy declare indeducible from any Biblical precept. It is not the incredibleness of a metaphysical belief, but a laxity or cowardice of the practice connected with it, which can point the reformer's gibe and wing his sarcasm. Theodore ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... emotionally excited; I from relief at escaping the clutches of that dread hell of which for certain moments I had felt the flaming grasp; he because of a sudden degrading realization that he had attempted to practise on a faithful comrade in arms a cowardly and contemptible piece of treachery. My impulsive gratitude for the measure of justice granted me made his avaricious greed seem even to him despicable, and for an instant ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... fumbled in his pocket and brought forth the thin packets of letters and the folded yellow cheques. One by one he laid them where her hands could touch them. He dared not look at her. He felt that her newly awakened soul was staring from her eyes at the mute evidence of a degrading past. ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... original state, and make me give up the name of Bellino, which I hate since the death of my protector, and which begins to inconvenience me. I have only appeared at two theatres, and each time I have been compelled to submit to the scandalous, degrading examination, because everywhere I am thought to have too much the appearance of a girl, and I am admitted only after the shameful test has brought conviction. Until now, fortunately, I have had to deal only with old priests who, in their good faith, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... upon individual initiative, individual capacity and effort; upon the energy, character, and foresight which it is so important to encourage in the individual. But as a matter of fact the deadening and degrading effect of pure socialism, and especially of its extreme form communism, and the destruction of individual character which they would bring about, are in part achieved by the wholly unregulated competition which results in a single individual or corporation rising at ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... pretty—that most seductive prettiness which seemed to be warmed into life by her consciousness of himself. Why should he take her or himself so seriously? Why not play out the farce, and let those who would criticise him and think his acceptance of the work degrading understand that it was only an affair of gallantry. He could afford to serve Woodridge at least a few weeks for the favor of this Rachel! Forgetful of his rebuff of the night before, he fixed his brown eyes on hers ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... their hands in cadence, and burst at intervals into a barking laugh. I could not find any thing very amusing in this entertainment; on the contrary, it had the effect of making me feel very melancholy, as displaying these good people in a very idiotic and degrading light. ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... this connection. It consists of a comfortably and elegantly fitted-up clubhouse, within easy driving distance of a large city, and surrounded by facilities for tennis, racquets, golf, polo, baseball, racing, etc. So far it has kept clear of the degrading sport ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... this; but it was the singular fact of seeing a white woman stretch her sinews in any toilsome exercise which astounded them, accustomed as they are to see both men and women of the privileged skin eschew the slightest shadow of labour, as a thing not only painful but degrading. They will learn another lesson from me, however, whose idea of Heaven was pronounced by a friend of mine, to whom I once communicated it, to be 'devilish hard work'! It was only just six o'clock, and these women had all done their tasks. I exhorted them to go home and wash their children, ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... in taming and driving the horse, and the others in the use of the sword and spear. When Arjuna made use of the bow and the noose the plaudits with which the spectators greeted his skill so enraged the Kauravas that they turned the contest of clubs, which was to have been a friendly one, into a degrading and blood-shedding battle. The spectators left the splendid lists in sorrow, and the blind Raja determined to separate the unfriendly cousins before further harm could come from ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... holiness. But there is was; the pride of riches was beginning its disintegrating work. They had lived to prove, once more, a sad truth which had been proven many times before in the world: that whereas principle is a great and noble protection against showy and degrading vanities and vices, poverty is worth six of it. More than four hundred thousand dollars to the good. They took up the matrimonial matter again. Neither the dentist nor the lawyer was mentioned; there was no occasion, they were out of the running. Disqualified. They discussed the son of the ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... discipline such as could be exercised only by the pope. He, in their ideal, was to stand towards the whole world as the Cluniac abbat stood towards each Cluniac priory, the one ultimate source of jurisdiction, the Universal Bishop, appointing and degrading the diocesan bishops as the abbat made and unmade ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton
... we have loaded this great natural process of human labor with a mass of superstitions and degrading lies. The lazy old orientals called it a curse! Work, a curse! Work; which is the essential process of human life; man's natural function and means ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... day—degenerate lot! To seize a fisherman, or stop a cart, Or "fright the wandering spirits from the shore." His "brief authority" has just detain'd A boat of cockles and a quart of gin! The smart Lieutenant's epaulette, methinks, Blushes at this degrading, pimping trade.— For deeds like these—let objects be employ'd, Who never shared their country's high renown! Adieu! vast Ocean, cradle of the brave, Tablet of England's glory, and her shield! To ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... was the man who, with thoughts intent on his last and most degrading makeshift, was forging his way up Second Avenue, the mantilla—the veriest film of old Salamanca lace—pressed into a small wad and stuffed in ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... freedom from anxiety would restore her to her nobler self. How could he find fault with her? She knew nothing of such sordid life as he had gone through, and to lack money for necessities seemed to her degrading beyond endurance. Why, even the ordinary artisan's wife does not suffer such privations as hers at the end of the past year. For lack of that little money his life must be ruined. Of late he had often thought about the rich uncle, John Yule, who might perhaps leave something to Amy; but the ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... and courage the preaching of the word of God. His enemies were active and powerful, but the queen and many of the nobles were his friends, and the people in great numbers sided with him. Comparing his pure and elevating teachings and holy life with the degrading dogmas which the Romanists preached, and the avarice and debauchery which they practised, many regarded it an honor ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... as when we kneel at that altar, for we are coming to that which is part of God's image—made in His likeness. And as we speak to them, when they answer purely and simply, the Word of God speaks through them. This is not degrading the sacraments—nay, but raising all human life—nay, raising the sacraments as well, for it brings them into relation with real life, and transforms the poor magical abstractions into ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... servitude is not a degrading one, but the reverse. Nothing is so pleasant to a reasonable and truly noble mind as to pay obedience to those to whom it is due; and if the adaptability of the same individual to be both master and servant was more practically ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... possible for any society in which there is a very large body of wise and virtuous men to be as vicious as our society is—to have as low a standard of right and wrong, to have so much belief in falsehood, or to have so degrading, barbarous a notion of what pleasure is, or of what justly raises a man above his fellows. Therefore let us have done with this nonsense about our being much better than the rest of our countrymen, or the pretence that that was a reason ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... the sailor. It was on all hands taken for granted that he was bad, and, wonderful to say, he was provided for accordingly. His treatment was a disgrace. The barrack-room, with its corners curtained off as married quarters, the lash, the hideous and degrading medical inspection—samples of the general treatment—all tended to destroy what remained of manly self-respect and virtue. Whilst the neighbourhood of the barracks and the naval ports, teeming with public-houses and brothels, still further aided the degradation. ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... been repeated in fifty communities from the Alleghanies to the Pacific coast; only these little states, instead of dying in the bud, would have gone through a rank flowering period of bloody and aimless revolutions, of silly and ferocious warfare against their neighbors, and of degrading alliance with the foreigner. From these and a hundred other woes the West no less than the East was saved by the knitting together of the ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... accustomed to sing—anything but hymns—with a kind of mad, ferocious joy. I spoke to all who approached my dungeon, jeering and bitter things; and I tried to look upon the whole creation through the medium of that commonplace wisdom, the wisdom of the cynics. This degrading period, on which I hate to reflect, lasted happily only for six or seven days, during which my Bible had become covered with dust. One of the jailer's boys, thinking to please me, as he cast his eye upon it, observed, "Since you left off ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... unclean and degrading about this humble side of Christianity. Ursula suddenly revolted ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... degrading laws the European progressive women are trying to remove from the Codes. They have their origin in the belief in "The imprudence, the frailty, and the imbecility" of women, to ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... shut his teeth with a snap. "That's worse than hoarding money as I've done. Mine may, as you say, do good in the future, but theirs is degrading human beings at the present. I wish I could do something for them, especially the mothers. It's a shame they have ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... experimental garden and model farm. An English gardener was also employed to naturalise the large collection of valuable plants from the East and West Indies and the South Sea Islands supplied by Kew. The Nova Scotians, however, like true slaves, considered agriculture servile and degrading work—a prejudice which, as will be seen, prevails to this day not only in the colony, but throughout the length and ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... street boys shouted to one another, "Take care what you're doing! You haven't got Captain Burton's six senses." At Great Russell Street, Burton commenced by defending materialism. He could not see with Guizot that the pursuit of psychology is as elevating as that of materialism is degrading. What right, he asked, had the theologian to limit the power of the Creator. "Is not the highest honour His who from the worst can draw the best?" [313] He then quoted his letter to The Times, and ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... mansion of a wealthy man, they raised a wild din, and whirled about, and cut themselves and scourged themselves until they were covered with blood. The master of the mansion was so impressed with this savage and degrading spectacle that he gave the priests a good sum of money, and invited them into his house. They took the goddess with them, and I scampered out into the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... however, he, my poor father, believed implicitly my assertions of entire innocence of the crime for which I had been transported. But he felt bitterly for the degrading situation in which I stood, and from which neither my own conscious innocence nor his convictions, he was but too sensible, could rescue me in so far as regarded the opinion of ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... of the degraded condition of the people. I wandered around and examined the idols, most of which had in front of them, and in some instances on their flat heads, offerings of tobacco, food, red cotton, and other things. My heart was sad at these evidences of such degrading idolatry, and I was deeply impressed with my need of wisdom and aid from on high, so that when I met the people who here worshipped these idols I might so preach Christ and Him crucified that they would be constrained to accept Him ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... I attempted to show that slighter causes than is commonly thought may change a nation from the stationary to the progressive state of civilisation, and from the stationary to the degrading. Commonly the effect of the agent is looked on in the wrong way. It is considered as operating on every individual in the nation, and it is assumed, or half assumed, that it is only the effect which ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... admit with a gulp, as if he were swallowing his pride, and he knew that in saying the word he was degrading his sister—throwing her at this man's feet as the price ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... believe very much in marriage—modern, upper-class marriage," she repeated. "And, just precisely on that account, it seems to me all the more degrading and shameful that a girl should risk marrying the wrong man. People talk about a broken engagement as though it was a disgrace. I can't see that. An unwilling, a—a—loveless marriage is the disgrace. And ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... in the pulpit and defiling the very show of religion, by pretending to read and preach lessons of holiness and godliness to those who, the night before, had witnessed him in a state of beastly intoxication, at a common village alehouse, not only degrading the character of a clergyman, but even that of the lowest and most abandoned of the human species, by exhibitions of his person, most indecent and most revolting to humanity; nor am I alluding to this as a solitary ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... it from being only a degrading superstition in those who believe that mortals like themselves can predict the future, that it seems, on the contrary ennobling. It is precisely because man feels a mystery within himself that he admits it may ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... the poems that interested him, and on the whole he did not think much of poetry. But this opinion he never dared to put into words. To do so in the face of Dally's clearly manifested reverence would have been like openly confessing a particularly degrading form ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... arrives at practical strength who is convinced, whether rightly or wrongly, that he knows all about his own ideas that needs to be known. Byron never did thus know himself, either morally or intellectually. The higher part of him was consciously dragged down by the degrading reminiscence of the brutishness of his youth and its connections and associations; they hung like miasma over his spirit. He could not rise to that sublimest height of moral fervour, when a man intrepidly chases from his memory past evil done, suppresses the recollection of old corruptions, ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... the Campanile of Airolo. But he saw instead the fair myth of Endymion. This woman was a goddess to the end. For her no love could be degrading: she stood outside all degradation. This episode, which she thought so sordid, and which was so tragic for him, remained supremely beautiful. To such a height was he lifted, that without regret he could now have told her that he was her worshipper too. But what was the use of telling ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... now pass well enough among the Mahometans," he said, "for you have learned a good deal of our manners, and if you had been willing to forsake your degrading idolatry, and embrace the true worship of Allah, you might have attained to a high position among us. But now you are to pass through the country parts of Bengal, in which there are few or no Moors, but only Gentoos, of whom I would have you beware. For the secret ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... it be that Miss Barrett is afraid of degrading poetry to the low rank of an accomplishment—whether it be that she has some peculiar theory of her own on the subject of language, and on the mode in which poetical emotions may be most felicitously expressed—whether ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... a table in the sitting-room beyond which extended other rooms that, in addition to being ugly, were dark. But Lennox had no degrading manias for comfort. Pending the great day he camped in these rooms, above which, on an upper storey was a duplex apartment which, if Margaret liked, ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... father,' she said, with dignified reproach. 'I hope'—here a timid glance, as if imploring support—'I hope we know better than to place any real faith in these degrading superstitions.' ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... deeds. It said, "We have come to an end. We have been robbed of the rights guaranteed to us by the Kansas-Nebraska bill. We have been robbed of the rights of American citizens. We have been given the alternative of abject and degrading submission or of extermination. And now we make our answer. We will return blow for blow, wound for wound, stripe for stripe, and burning for burning. Murder shall be paid back with murder, robbery with robbery; and every act of aggression shall be paid back with swift and terrible ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... before he was well aware that his life had begun in earnest; and when he realised that he was in possession of his full manhood, and that the prime of life was not far off, he found himself chained hand and foot, toiling heavily in the most degrading servitude. A few more years and he realised also that, do what he would, he could not set himself free. No one in the world had any knowledge of the struggle he made. Some—his mother among them—gave ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... having no private property of their own, and being always on the brink of sheer starvation, are compelled to do the work of beasts of burden, to do work that is quite uncongenial to them, and to which they are forced by the peremptory, unreasonable, degrading Tyranny of want. These are the poor, and amongst them there is no grace of manner, or charm of speech, or civilisation, or culture, or refinement in pleasures, or joy of life. From their collective force ...
— The Soul of Man • Oscar Wilde
... not be long delayed, and that his best chance of saving himself and his cause lay in stirring up the king to energetic action against the Earl of March. The death of his uncle irritated Edward, who at seventeen was old enough to feel the degrading nature of his thraldom, and was eager to govern the kingdom of which he was the nominal head. In June, 1330, the birth of a son, the future Black Prince, to Edward and Philippa seems to have impressed on the young monarch that he had come to man's estate. Lancaster accordingly found him eager ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout |
