"Corrupt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the death of the most accomplished, the most enlightened, and, in spite of great faults, the most estimable of the statesmen who were formed in the corrupt and licentious Whitehall of the Restoration. About a month after the splendid obsequies of Mary, a funeral procession of almost ostentatious simplicity passed round the shrine of Edward the Confessor to the Chapel of Henry the Seventh. There, at the distance of a few feet from her coffin, lies ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the last things said by Sir Walter Scott, as he lay dying, was this: "I have been, perhaps, the most voluminous author of my day, and it is a comfort to me to think that I have tried to unsettle no man's faith, to corrupt no man's principles, and that I have written nothing which, on my deathbed, I would wish blotted out." To have lived such a life as he lived is more than to have ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... nothing of the gallant fighting impulse we have learned to believe is characteristic of the British sailor. He lost Minorca, and disgraced the British flag because he was too dainty to face the stern discomforts of a fight. The corrupt and ignoble temper of English politics—the legacy of Walpole's evil regime—poisoned the blood of the navy. No one can have forgotten Macaulay's picture of Newcastle, at that moment Prime Minister ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... patriot and poet, the friend of Milton, the Abdiel of a dark and corrupt age,—'faithful found among the faithless, faithful only he,'—was born in Hull in 1620. He was sent to Cambridge, and is said there to have nearly fallen a victim to the proselytising Jesuits, who enticed him to London. His father, however, a clergyman in Hull, went ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... Miss Kingsley's narrative,—"bah! Trying to lead a sober life! Tell me! I hear on all sides that your house has become a hot-bed of all that is worldly and luxurious in the city. And not content with that, you are scheming to corrupt the one who in this money-worshipping age is faithful to principle. I am almost disposed to say for the last time, 'Go your own ways, and never come near ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... nothing, said he, of this man, this Leman, and should have scorned a resort to so low a method as bribing the servant of any family to let me into the secrets of that family, if I had not detected him in attempting to corrupt a servant of mine, to inform him of all my motions, of all my supposed intrigues, and, in short, of every action of my private life, as well as of my circumstances and engagements; and this for motives too obvious to ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... that Lord B[yron] had any mischievous intention in these publications—and readily acquit him of any wish to corrupt the morals, or impair the happiness of his readers ... but it is our duty ... to say, that much of what he has published appears to us to have this tendency.... How opposite to this is the system, or the temper, of the great author of Waverley!"—Edinburgh ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... Dr. Horace Bianchon, who had saved so many characters of the Comedie humaine, who had comforted in their dying hours all ranks from the poverty-stricken Pere Goriot to the wealthy Madame Graslin, from the corrupt Madame Marneffe to the angelic Pierette Lorrain, whose incomparable fame had spread over a large ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... me—that's your right; I'm your enemy. But in defending your power don't corrupt people; don't compel me to have instinctive contempt for them; don't dare to poison my soul ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... originator of the business. Saw in incident of Hartlepool election an opening for minimising effect. Wrapped purpose up in form of question addressed to ATTORNEY-GENERAL. Question in subtly diplomatic form insinuated against FURNESS charge of breach of Corrupt Practice Act. ATTORNEY-GENERAL, knowing that HOWORTH is the man who pulls the strings of statecraft, not only in Salford and London, but in Berlin and St. Petersburg, did not venture to decline to answer; gravely played up to his lead. Opposition laughed and cheered; saw their opening, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 21, 1891 • Various
... took counsel and cut out the tongues of the women, lest they should corrupt their speech. And because of the silence of the women from their own speech, the men of Armorica are called Britons. From that time there came frequently, and still comes, that language from ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... a severe censurer of pieces of a light or indecent turn, which had a tendency to corrupt the morals of youth, to convey polluted images, or to wound religion, whether in itself, or through the sides of its professors, and this, whoever were the authors, and how admirable soever the execution. She often pitied the celebrated Dr. Swift for so employing ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... Assembly and Free Elections; The Suffrage, 28; The Force Bills; Interference with Voting; Bribery and Corrupt Practices; Lobbying Acts; The Form of the Ballot; Direct Primaries and Nominations; The Distrust of Representative Government; Corrupt Elections Laws; Direct Election of U.S. Senators; Women's Suffrage; Municipal Elections, The Initiative, Referendum, ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... worthy little man assumes a bolder tone, when he quotes from the fathers of the church; such as St. Jerome, who gives it as the opinion of all the doctors, that the air is filled with powers opposed to each other; and Lactantius, who says that corrupt and dangerous spirits wander over the earth, and seek to console themselves for their own fall by effecting the ruin of the human race; and Clemens Alexandrinus, who is of opinion that the souls of the blessed have knowledge of ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... long as agriculture is our principal object, which will be the case, while there remain vacant lands in any part of America. When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become corrupt as in Europe, and go to eating one another as they do there. I have tired you by this time with disquisitions which you have already heard repeated by others, a thousand and a thousand times; and, therefore, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... no: it will corrupt thee; besides, it will do poor Sid's memory no good. But, 'sdeath, it was a most wonderfully shrewd saying,—i' faith, it was. But, zounds, Morton, I forgot to tell you that I have had a ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... thereabout. Modern English polite society, my native sphere, seems to me as corrupt as consciousness of culture and absence of honesty can make it. A canting, lie-loving, fact-hating, scribbling, chattering, wealth-hunting, pleasure-hunting, celebrity-hunting mob, that, having lost the fear of hell, and not replaced it by the love of justice, cares for nothing but ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... spirits of the most horrible kind—who could tell? And in such a case it became a duty, a sacred duty, to give up the earthly body which had been once so loved, but which was now the habitation of a soul corrupt and horrible in its evil inclinations. Possibly, terror of death might bring on confession and repentance, and purification. Or if it did not, why away with the evil creature, the witch, out of the world, down to the kingdom of the master, whose bidding was done on earth in all ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... family, the historic muse of Constantinople again revives, but her apparel is gaudy, her motions are without elegance or grace. A succession of priests, or courtiers, treads in each other's footsteps in the same path of servitude and superstition: their views are narrow, their judgment is feeble or corrupt; and we close the volume of copious barrenness, still ignorant of the causes of events, the characters of the actors, and the manners of the times which they celebrate or deplore. The observation which has been applied to a man, may be extended to a whole people, that the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... that the corrupt lives of Christians in the later centuries of the middle ages, the avarice of the Avignon popes, the selfishness shown in the great schism, the simony and nepotism of the Roman court of the fifteenth century, excited disgust and hatred toward ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... it may be said that of all these internal maladies and external dangers, the decline in moral worth of the Roman nation is the most appalling. Influenced by a broken-down philosophy, degenerated in morals, corrupt in family and social life, the whole system decayed, and could not withstand the ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... keeper, Wan Lee, is a laundry-man. The republican who finds two or three cases of corruption among democrats, may conceive corruption as a quality common to democrats and affirm that honest John Smith is corrupt. Faulty concepts, therefore, are very likely to lead to faulty judgments. A first duty in education is evidently to see that children are forming correct class concepts. For this it must be seen that they always distinguish the essential features ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... changeth, giving place to the new; And God fulfils Himself in many ways, Lest one good custom should corrupt ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... simple country fellow, and make him believe he conjures. Whatsoever his complexion was before, it turns in this place to choler or deep melancholy, so that he needs every hour to take physic to loose his body; for that, like his estate, is very foul and corrupt, and extremely hard bound. The taking of an execution off his stomach give him five or six stools, and leaves his body very soluble. The withdrawing of an action is a vomit. He is no sound man, and yet an utter barrister, nay, a sergeant ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... who had radically unpoetical minds. Rousseau is not an exception to our doctrine, for his heart was naturally religious. Lucretius too had much poetical talent; but his work evinces that his miserable philosophy was rather the result of a bewildered judgement than a corrupt heart. ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... nation. War suspends the rules of moral obligation, and what is long suspended is in danger of being totally abrogated. Civil wars strike deepest of all into the manners of the people. They vitiate their politics; they corrupt their morals; they pervert even the natural taste and relish of equity and justice. By teaching us to consider our fellow-citizens in an hostile light, the whole body of our nation becomes gradually less dear to us. The very names of affection and kindred, which were ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... But he cast behind him a handful of earth, which became man. The first creation was free of evil; earth gave fruit without labor (the Golden Age); but the dark goddess sowed in man the seed of sin. A few were sinless still, and these became gods, but the corrupt no longer found favor in Bella (or Boora) Pennu's eyes. He guarded them no more. So death came to man. Meanwhile Bella and Tari contended for superiority, with comets, whirlwinds, and mountains, as weapons. According ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... 334. Sad and corrupt is it that the priests and people, following after the superstitions of auspicious times and days, seek ...
— Buddhist Psalms • Shinran Shonin
... all; but I mean there are no such things in the world as abstractions. There are only men and women. Thoughts don't seethe; men and women seethe. Principles don't reform or corrupt; men and women do the reforming and corrupting. If you want to do things, don't begin by making the air resound with denunciations of wickedness; but make people believe in you and despise the other fellow. When they like you they'll begin to think ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... nature, and of course, according to the out-worn formulae which still shame the distorted religion of humanity, hateful to the Father in Heaven who made her. She had grown up in antagonism with all that surrounded her. She had been talked to about her corrupt nature and her sinful heart, until the words had become an offence and an insult. Bathsheba knew her father's fondness for young company too well to suppose that his intercourse with Myrtle had gone beyond the sentimental and poetical stage, and was not displeased when she found that ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the Lord preserue thy good Grace: Welcome to London. Now Heauen blesse that sweete Face of thine: what, are you come from Wales? Fal. Thou whorson mad Compound of Maiestie: by this light Flesh, and corrupt ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Christ as applied to social difficulties. What Romans does as a theological treatise, and Galatians as a controversial admonition, and 2 Corinthians as a record of personal experience and vocation, this 1 Corinthians does as an instruction for influencing a corrupt urban life with the leaven of the gospel. It is very practical in tone, and the doctrine which it contains is not stated separately, but is throughout woven into the cords of the apostle's argument. There is nothing in the New ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... names are Gondi words, and their language is a form of Gondi, called after them Parji. Parji has hitherto been considered a form of Bhatri, but Sir G. Grierson [420] has now classified the latter as a dialect of the Uriya language, while Parji remains 'A local and very corrupt variation of Gondi, considerably mixed with Hindi forms.' While then the Parjas, in Bastar at any rate, must be held to be a branch of the Gonds, they may have a considerable admixture of the Khonds, or other tribes in different ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... never improved the morals of any race or nation; hypocrisy and secret evasion are the only results obtained. It would be better by far if steps were taken to enlighten the masses on the questions of sexual heredity and degeneration. Wisdom of this kind does not corrupt. It is rather the unrestricted power of capital and wealth that brings the rot into the community. Healthy people should be made to know that a large number of sound, industrious children is a blessing, in fact, riches to the family, but on the one condition ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... deal her honest vengeance on her insulting foes;—or could my eloquence pull down a state leviathan, mighty by the plunder of his country—black with the treasons of her disgrace, and send his infamy down to a free posterity, as a monumental terror to corrupt ambition, I would be foremost in such service, and act it with the unremitting ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... ravaged the country with fire and sword, and shed the blood of its sons like water; the French buy not its fruits and loathe its wines, yet there is no bad spirit in Portugal towards the French. The reason of this is no mystery; it is the nature not of the Portuguese only, but of corrupt and unregenerate man, to dislike his benefactors, who, by conferring benefits upon him, mortify in the most generous manner ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... not, therefore, professedly on a religious account that he had suffered deprivation and imprisonment, but on an obscure charge of having participated in some traitorous or rebellious design: a charge brought against him, in the opinion of most, falsely, and through the corrupt procurement of Northumberland, to whose project of erecting the bishopric of Durham into a county palatine for himself, the deprivation of Tonstal, and the abolition of the see by act of parliament, were indispensable preliminaries. This meek and amiable ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... of the fifteenth century, when Botticelli was beginning to grow old, great events took place in Florence. Despite the revival of learning, we are told by historians that the Church was becoming corrupt and the people more pleasure-loving and less interested in the religious life. Then it was that Savonarola, a friar in one of the convents of Florence, all on fire with enthusiasm for purity and goodness, began to awaken the hearts of the ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... what he would have said in defence of his weakness, in desiring to live by the dishonour of his virtuous sister, was interrupted by the entrance of the duke; who said, "Claudio, I have overheard what has passed between you and your sister. Angelo had never the purpose to corrupt her; what he said, has only been to make trial of her virtue. She having the truth of honour in her, has given him that gracious denial which he is most glad to receive. There is no hope that he will pardon you; therefore pass your hours in prayer, and make ready ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... for a strict diet, which would restore my health in six weeks without anyone having any suspicion of my illness, but I soon found out that I had not seen the end of my troubles; Melulla had communicated to my system all the poisons which corrupt the source of life. I was acquainted with an elderly doctor of great experience in those matters; I consulted him, and he promised to set me to rights in two months; he proved as good as his word. At the beginning of September I found myself in good health, and it ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... It was written by Mark Twain in a serious effort to bring back our literature and philosophy to the sober and chaste Elizabethan standard. But the taste of the present day is too corrupt for anything so classic. He has not yet been able even to find a publisher. The Globe has not yet recovered from Downey's inroad, ...
— 1601 - Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors • Mark Twain
... bringeth not forth corrupt fruit; neither doth a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. For every tree is known by his own fruit. For of thorns men do not gather figs, nor of a bramble bush gather they grapes.' (Luke vi. ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... to a great general movement in the popular mind, the progress of agriculture and industry in the whole country, superinducing an increase of wealth and intelligence, which, when unrestrained by the influence of a corrupt government, must naturally lead to the liberty and the happiness of ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... tempted him into politics, and who had been befriended by the local bosses under the belief that they could count upon him for anything they really wished. Unfortunately, what they really wished was often corrupt. Kelly defied them, fought the battles of the people with ardor and good faith, and when the bosses refused him a renomination, he appealed from them to the people. When we both came up for reelection, I won easily in my ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... again brought on the carpet, but just to come to the vote at once. Accordingly this was done, but it made no difference to Mr Hickery; on the contrary, he said, in a vehement manner, that he was sure there must be some corrupt understanding among us, otherwise a matter of such importance could not have been decided by a silent vote; and at every session of the council, till some new matter of difference cast up, he continued cuckooing ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... children that cannot help themselves, of which one is blind, and have nothing to live upon but the charity of good people.' How inscrutable are the ways of Providence; the rich reveling in luxury while using their wealth to corrupt mankind, while this eminent saint, with his family, were dependent upon charity! As soon as he could get his tools in order he set to work; and we have the following testimony to his industry by a fellow-prisoner, Mr. Wilson, the Baptist ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... not an evil produced by the denial of children's rights, nor is it inherent in the nature of schools. I mention it only because it would be folly to call for a reform of our schools without taking account of the corrupt resistance which ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... into the local conditions of each municipality, and did not conclude its labours until 1835. Its report laid bare not merely grotesque anomalies, but the grossest abuses of election and administration in boroughs ruled by small, corrupt, and irresponsible oligarchies which then abounded in England, and, still more, in Scotland.[132] The reform act had paved the way for the purification of such urban communities, by disfranchising ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... leader. In opposition to the implacable governing party, which eagerly but patiently waited for an opportunity of overthrowing him, he had to seek support among the citizens; and although their leaders might be ever so pure and noble, the multitude was deeply corrupt and accustomed by the unhappy system of corruption to give nothing without being paid for it. In particular emergencies, indeed, necessity or enthusiasm might for the moment prevail, as everywhere ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... accomplish divine results. Divination is an inquirer, and its virtue is obedience; magic is an investigator, and its virtue is achievement. Both are self-seeking, but divination is the more reverent and allies itself more easily with religion. But both tend to become corrupt and decadent, and their roles are determined from time to time by the conditions of the communities in which ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... called the Public Service League. Nothing quite like it ever existed before. It is a political but non-partisan association of women, pledged to work for the civic betterment of Denver, pledged to fight the corrupt politicians, determined that the city government shall be well administered even if the women have to take over the offices themselves. The League is, in effect, a secret society of women. It has an inflexible rule that its proceedings are to be kept inviolable. There is a perfect ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... while I am still living. But, again, how can I alone stop all the mouths of the devil? especially of those (as they all are poisoned) who will not hear or notice what we write, but solely exercise themselves with all diligence how they may most shamefully pervert and corrupt our word in every letter. These I let the devil answer, or at last Gods wrath, as they deserve. I often think of the good Gerson who doubts whether anything good should be [written and] published. If it is not done, many souls are neglected who could be delivered: ...
— The Smalcald Articles • Martin Luther
... highest motive. If the evil of foreign customs is to be incorporated into American society, if foul freedom of manners is to defile our pure freedom of life, if the robes of our refinement are to be white only when relieved against the dark background revealed by polluted stage of a corrupt metropolis, on you will fall the burden of the consequences. Believe ME, for your weal and mine are one. Your glory is my glory. Your degradation is mine. There are honeyed words whose very essence is insult. There are bold ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... sinister figure ever cast a shadow across the history of a great nation than did this mulatto woman in the most corrupt hour of American life. The grim old man who looked into her sleek tawny face and followed her catlike eyes was steadily gripping the Nation by the throat. Did he aim to make this woman the arbiter of its social life, and her ethics the limit of its ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... certainly published; but of this no printed copy is known to exist. John Davies of Hereford says that "good men tore that pamphlet to pieces." I owe to the kindness of Mr. A. H. Bullen the inspection of a transtript of a very corrupt manuscript of this work. ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... Constantinople, but it opened the doors of cottages to the ministering angels of Christ. It had much to do with the great ones of earth. And what is more interesting than the death-rattle of an empire corrupt to the very marrow of its bones, than the sombre galvanism under the influence of which the skeleton of tyranny danced upon the tombs of Heliogabalus and Caracalla? How beautiful that mummy of Rome, embalmed in the perfumes of Nero and swathed in the shroud of Tiberius! It had to do, my ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... of miscellaneous and corrupt literature, when people of every condition of life are literally devouring irreligious magazines and serials, it surely cannot be amiss to add another volume to the already rich store of our libraries in order to help roll back ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... distinction, and of complete self-possession, may justly claim all the honour which belongs to an attainment equally difficult and valuable, and the more valuable for being rare. It is at all times the proper food of the understanding; but in an age of corrupt eloquence it is both ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... that they might give way in a moment of weakness to the temptations of a corrupt nature, sought relief in suicide, which was called the endura. There were two forms for the sick heretic, suffocation and fasting. The candidate for death was asked whether he desired to be a martyr or a confessor. If he chose to be a martyr, they placed a handkerchief or a pillow over his mouth, ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... province. The colony assemblies, though, like the house of commons in England, they are not always a very equal representation of the people, yet they approach more nearly to that character; and as the executive power either has not the means to corrupt them, or, on account of the support which it receives from the mother country, is not under the necessity of doing so, they are, perhaps, in general more influenced by the inclinations of their constituents. The councils, which, in the colony legislatures, ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... of Comus has airiness and jollity; but, what may recommend Milton's morals, as well as his poetry, the invitations to pleasure are so general, that they excite no distinct images of corrupt enjoyment, and take no dangerous ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... lege inspecta judicare. The permission of evils comes from a kind of moral necessity: God is constrained to this by his wisdom and by his goodness; this necessity is happy, whereas that of the prince spoken of in the maxim is unhappy. His State is one of the most corrupt; and the government of God ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... is not the same thing as to live so, but a new and worse offence. It implies an intellectual defect also, the not perceiving that the present corrupt condition of human nature (which condition this harlot muse helps to perpetuate) is a temporary or superficial state. The good word lasts forever: the impure word can only buoy itself in the gross gas that now envelops ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... reckless children, les enfants massacreurs like those seen dragging an insulted dead body to the Seine, greed or malice or the desire for swift settlement of some long-pending law-suit finding here an opportunity. A religious pretext had brought into sudden evidence all the latent ferocities of a corrupt though dainty civilisation, and while the stairways of the Louvre, the streets, [128] the vile trap-doors of Paris, run blood, far away at Deux-manoirs Gaston watches as the light creeps over the silent cornfields, the last sense of it in those aged eyes now ebbing softly away. The village ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... the other group—to a lower type. What is the test, the touchstone, by which we can tell to which class any value belongs? We shall find the test clearly stated in the Sermon on the Mount. Is the treasure in question one that moth and rust can corrupt or that thieves can break through and steal? If so, it belongs to the lower class, to Property. But if it is one that cannot be taken away, then it is a Possession and belongs to the higher type. There is another test, which is really a part of this: Can you share it without loss? If ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... Peoples' Council, and that she intended to contribute more. She had put up bail for a whole bunch of Reds and Pacifists, and she intended to put up bail for McCormick and his friends, just as soon as the corrupt capitalist courts had been forced to admit them to bail. "I know McCormick well, and he's a lovely boy," she said. "I don't believe he had anything more to do with dynamite bombs ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... consider that schools and universities are (as in a body) the noble and vital parts, which being vigorous and sound send good blood and active spirits into the veins and arteries, which cause health and strength; or, if feeble or ill-affected, corrupt all the vital parts; whereupon grow diseases, and in the end, death itself.' A low standard up here for ten years may corrupt half the parishes ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... was his equal in suavity and good-nature; but Lord North was not a man of strict principles. His administration was not only an administration hostile to liberty, but it was supported by vile and corrupt means,—by direct bribery, I fear, in many cases. Lord Althorp has the temper of Lord North with the principles of Romilly. If he had the oratorical powers of either of those men, he might do anything. But his ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... free-love filth, to corrupt and demoralize our people, is being propagated by the Socialist Party of America through its National Headquarters in Chicago, Berger's publication company in Milwaukee, Hillquit's "New York Call," and other publishing houses ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... the confused roar of a stormy sea. The dead walls and hoardings were placarded with bills from which the life of the inhabitants could be constructed. Many were in Yiddish, the most hopelessly corrupt and hybrid jargon ever evolved. Even when the language was English the letters were Hebrew. Whitechapel, Public Meeting, Board School, Sermon, Police, and other modern banalities, glared at the passer-by ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Manie great estates and gouernours there be, that during their office are lodged Lord-like, and doe beare the port of mightie Princes: but they be so many times displaced and other placed a new, that they haue not the time to become corrupt. True it is that during their office they be well prouided for, as afterward also lodged at the kings charges, and in pension as long as they liue, payed them monethly in the cities where they dwell by certaine officers appointed for that purpose. The king then is a Lord onely, not one ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... war and the cataclysmic problems depending upon its outcome.... Well, it was odd to remember that petty political conflict as I stood there in the trenches under the gigantic shadow of world-wide disaster—to find myself there, talking with this sallow, wiry, shifty ward leader—this corrupt little local tyrant whom I had opposed in the 50th Ward—this ex-lightweight bruiser, ex-gunman—this dirty little political procurer who had been and was everything brutal, ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... probably a corrupt name. The territory of Arpinum, now Arpino, was in the Volscian mountains. Arpinum was also the birth-place of Cicero. Juvenal in his rhetorical fashion (Sat. viii. 245) represents the young Marius as earning his bread by working at the plough as a servant and afterwards ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... the latest fashions, from Paris." In every instance; the contracted, deformed, and, as it is called, lady-like waist, is portrayed in all its fascinating loveliness. These periodicals are found on almost every centre-table, and exercise an influence almost omnipotent. If the plates which corrupt the morals are excluded by civil legislation, with the same propriety ought not those to be suppressed that have a ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... true: that's very true. When I see the windbags, the carpet-baggers, the charlatans, the—the—the fools and ignoramuses who corrupt the multitude by their wealth, or seduce them by spouting balderdash to them, I cannot help thinking that an honest man with no humbug about him, who will talk straight common sense and take his stand on the solid ground of principle and public duty, must win his way ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... with the crowd, and "spotting" the most turbulent, for the purpose of refusing to grant them a license, when next they applied. He went upon the principle that a few agitators were sufficient to corrupt the morals of all the miners in Ballarat, and to get them to leave for other parts ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... should possess the land seemed incapable of fulfilment. According to one rather obscure narrative, Abram's sole heir was the servant, who was over his household, apparently a certain Eliezer of Damascus3 (xv. 2, the text is corrupt). He is now promised as heir one of his own flesh, and a remarkable and solemn passage records bow the promise was ratified by a covenant. The description is particularly noteworthy for the sudden appearance of birds ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... that employments could never be put into such dangerous hands as those of persons so qualified; and at least, that the mistakes committed by ignorance, in a virtuous disposition, would never be of such fatal consequences to the public weal as the practices of a man whose inclinations led him to be corrupt, and who had great abilities to manage, to ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... respecting the Tarnhut is confused, and the text probably corrupt; but so much is plain, that Siegfried got it from Elberich in the struggle which ensued with Schilbung and Niblung, after ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... is as far removed from parsimony as from corrupt and corrupting extravagance; that single regard for the public good which will frown upon all attempts to approach the Treasury with insidious projects of private interest cloaked under public pretexts; that sound fiscal administration which, in the legislative department, guards against ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Caribbean islands to be colonized by Europeans due chiefly to the fierce resistance of the native Caribs. France ceded possession to Great Britain in 1763, which made the island a colony in 1805. In 1980, two years after independence, Dominica's fortunes improved when a corrupt and tyrannical administration was replaced by that of Mary Eugenia CHARLES, the first female prime minister in the Caribbean, who remained in office for 15 years. Some 3,000 Carib Indians still living on Dominica are the only ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... phrase brought a shock to Dr. Blake. At the only spiritualistic seance he had ever attended, a greasy affair in a hall bedroom, he had heard that very phrase. A picture of this woman, so clean and windblown of mind and soul, caught like a trapped fly in the web of the unclean and corrupt—it was that which quite whirled him off ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... things—adventure, diversity of character, and the realistic picture of contemporary life—especially that of the navy on a day when, if Smollett is within hailing distance of the facts, it was terribly corrupt. Too much credit can hardly be given him for first using, so effectively too, the professional sea-life of his country: a motive so richly productive since through Marryat down to Dana, Herman Melville, Clark Russell and many other ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... his person." "You need only be inclined to it: such is your merit, you will accomplish it: and he is capable of being won; and on that account the first access to him he makes difficult." "I will not be wanting to myself: I will corrupt his servants with presents; if I am excluded to-day, I will not desist; I will seek opportunities; I will meet him in the public streets; I will wait upon him home. Life allows nothing to mortals without great labor." While he was running on at ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... corrupt old thing you are! I believe you've been bought up by that disgusting interview with father. Nestor of the Leather Interest! Father ought to have turned him out of doors. Well, this family is getting a little too good, ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... to stay put. If I can convict certain corrupt members of the department, I'm going to nail brass-buttoned hides all over the front of ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... a world which rather neglected Barry Lyndon was devoted to Marchionesses and Milliners? Lady Fanny is represented as having editors and reviewers at her feet; she sits among the flowers, like the Sirens, and around her are the bones of critics corrupt in death. She is puffed for the sake of her bouquets, her dinners, her affabilities and condescensions. She gives a reviewer a great garnet pin, adorned wherewith he paces the town. Her adorers compare her to "him who sleeps ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... thing," she said to herself, "to think of the corrupt weaklings the strong ones dwindled down to. I hate them. ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... with the most debased, repeated, with the pruriency of a boy, the falsehoods about women which, armed with the authority of learned doctors, had grown reverend and incontestable with age; and even after the Reformation more than one witch-mania proved that the corrupt tree had vitality enough left ...
— Women and Politics • Charles Kingsley
... traditions, and follow her example of sacrificing the truth and the approval of God, in order to form an unlawful alliance with the world. The message of Revelation 14, announcing the fall of Babylon, must apply to religious bodies that were once pure and have become corrupt. Since this message follows the warning of the judgment, it must be given in the last days; therefore it cannot refer to the Roman Church alone, for that church has been in a fallen condition for many centuries. Furthermore, in the eighteenth chapter of the Revelation, ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... meats; but of this I have never known any instance, except in those who breathed a marshy air, or what was otherwise putrid, and who wanted exercise, fruits, and green vegetables: under such circumstances it must be granted, that the humours will corrupt in the same manner, though not in the same degree, with those of mariners. Thus, in the late war, when Sisinghurst Castle in Kent was filled with French prisoners, the scurvy broke out among them, notwithstanding ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... pruning of the vine has to be done according to certain rules which were made known to me. This pruning is, in a spiritual sense, the cutting off whatever is useless, penance and mortification, that so the true Vine may grow in us, and bring forth fruit, in the place of corrupt nature, which only bears wood and leaves. The pruning is done according to fixed rules, for it is only required that certain useless shoots should be cut off in man, and to lop off more would be to mutilate in a ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... also in the East, and no two of them are identical in the text. Lepsius translated from the Turin papyrus; Budge bases his translations on what is called the Theban recension. But in all the text is exceedingly corrupt, and translation is often no more than a guess. Owing to the number of proper names and technical terms which we have no means of understanding, it is often quite impossible to know the drift of large paragraphs, and even of whole chapters. Since many of the chapters ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... good will or living faith; but it rested with God alone to grant it them. We know that besides inward grace there are usually outward circumstances which distinguish men, and that training, conversation, example often correct or corrupt natural disposition. Now that God should call forth circumstances favourable to some and abandon others to experiences which contribute to their misfortune, will not that give us cause for astonishment? And it is not enough (so it seems) to say with some that inward grace is ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... occasion! What will become of our posterity? These are some of thy favors, Britain! Thou art called our mother country; but what good mother ever sent thieves and villains to accompany her children; to corrupt some with their infectious vices, and murder the rest? What father ever endeavored to spread the plague in his family! We do not ask fish, but thou givest us serpents, and worse than serpents! In what can Britain show a more sovereign contempt for us, than by emptying their gaols into ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... that, though they might have been cut to pieces, they could never have been defeated or routed. I pity our children when I reflect that their tranquillity and happiness will, perhaps, depend upon such a corrupt and unprincipled people of soldiers,—easy tools in the hands of every ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... think, is a thing to be deprecated. Between the white people and the colored people of this country there is a unanimity of interest and I know that our interests and duties all lie in one direction. Can men corrupt and intimidate voters in the South without a reflex influence being felt in the North? Is not the depression of labor in the South a matter of interest to the North? You may protect yourself from what you call the pauper of Europe, but ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... companion from your cradle! And when you neglect me, and have no more natural affection for me than if I was a stranger—not a twentieth part of the affection that you have for Florence—but I am only your mother, and should corrupt her in a day!—you reproach me with ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... spare Would kindle joy, dispel their care, Abate the rigour of the night And warm each heart—achievement bright. Yea, brighter far than such as grace The annals of a princely race, Where kings bestow a large domain But to receive as much again, Or e'en corrupt the purest laws, Or fan the ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte
... of Jesus. Such truly is what the priests of Rome teach, though nearly for a thousand years after Christ came Christian ministers, whom they acknowledged as belonging to their communion, were allowed to marry like other men; and certainly those who did so were less corrupt than the celibates who, having no family ties, became the servile tools of ...
— Villegagnon - A Tale of the Huguenot Persecution • W.H.G. Kingston
... force of example is powerful; we are creatures of imitation, and, by a necessary influence, our tempers and habits are very much formed on the model of those with whom we familiarly associate. Better be alone than in bad company. Evil communications corrupt good manners. Ill qualities are catching as well as diseases; and the mind is at least as much, if not a great deal more, liable to infection, than the body. Go with mean people, and you ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... we not also say that the soul of the slave is utterly corrupt, and that no man of sense ought to trust them? And the wisest of our ...
— Laws • Plato
... justice, kept back the barbarians of the frontier, and for great spaces of time preserved "the Roman peace" throughout their habitations. Doubtless there was another side to this picture: heavy taxation, corrupt judges, national aspirations repressed, free peasants sinking down into hopeless bondage. Still it cannot be denied that during a considerable part of its existence the Roman Empire brought, at least to the western half of Europe, material prosperity and enjoyment of life which it ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... less we try to get personality and character into our household effects the more beautiful and interesting they will be. As soon as we put the Standard Household-Effect Company in possession and render it a relentless monopoly, it will corrupt a competent architect and decorator in each of our large towns and cities, and when you hire a new house these will be sent to advise with the eternal-womanly concerning its appointments, and tell her what she wants, and what she will like; for at present the eternal womanly, as soon as she ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... governor's chair, with Thomas C. Reynolds for his lieutenant governor, a native of South Carolina, an acknowledged missionary of the nullification faith to a State that required to be corrupted, and that he had, during his residence, zealously endeavored to corrupt. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... a cigar at least," said Axel, opening his case. "That will not corrupt you as much as the beefsteak, and will soothe you a little on your way home. For you must go home and get to bed. You are as near an illness as any man ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... New Charter, that that instrument restored to the citizens of New York the right of self-government. Had its provisions been honestly carried out, New York might have had a good government; but we shall see that they were perverted by a band of corrupt men into the means of the ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... after my late rebuke. Gesticulating, his voice rising into a senile scream, he upbraided me for folly, extravagance, unthrift and prodigality. He declared that such indulgence would ruin me, would debauch him and his fellows and would, by its evil example, infect, corrupt and deprave the whole countryside. He railed at me. He vowed that, whatever the rest might do, he would use all his powers of persuasion to urge them to stick to their farms till harvest was over and he swore ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... crumbling to dust, at the foot of a tree that is splitting asunder?... You may command what is opposed to nature, but you will not be obeyed. You will multiply evil-doers and the unhappy by fear, by punishment, and by remorse; you will deprave men's consciences; you will corrupt their minds; they will have lost the polar star of their ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... or was fired with a greater desire to devote himself to it. He was all this. And yet being all this, seeing deep into man's worth, his capacities, his greatness, his weakness, his sins, he was not true to what he knew. He cringed to such a man as Buckingham. He sold himself to the corrupt and ignominious Government of James I. He was willing to be employed to hunt to death a friend like Essex, guilty, deeply guilty, to the State, but to Bacon the most loving and generous of benefactors. With his eyes open he gave himself up without resistance to ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... slow-poison has gone deep into them. Instead of manna, this long while back, they have been living on mouldy corrupt meats sweetened by sugar-of-lead; or perhaps, like Voltaire, a few individuals prefer hunger, as the cleaner alternative; and in contemptuous, barren, mocking humor, not yet got the length of geniality or indignation, snuff the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the papers except the racing and betting news. He doesn't seem to feel that he has any stake in this great country of yours, or any responsibility towards it. It makes me believe in manhood suffrage as I've never believed before. Our people may be politically corrupt, but at least they're interested; they're alive—alive enough to want to understand how to get the best of things—as they see best. I've rarely met an American that I couldn't get to talk; now it's almost impossible to get Thomas to talk. Yet he's a nice young fellow; he ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... towns. Early in 1666 active operations on both sides dwindled down, and Charles, anxious to use naval appropriations for other purposes, allowed the fleet to fall into a condition of unreadiness for service. One of the least scandals in this corrupt age was the unwillingness or inability of the officials to pay the seamen their wages. In consequence large numbers of English prisoners in Holland actually preferred taking service in the Dutch navy rather than accepting ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... certainly be my comrades," said Ulysses. "I recognize their dispositions. They are hardly worth the trouble of changing them into the human form again. Nevertheless, we will have it done, lest their bad example should corrupt the other hogs. Let them take their original shapes, therefore, Dame Circe, if your skill is equal to the task. It will require greater magic, I trow, than it did to ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... corrupt age is the lack of respect children have for parents. This is largely owing to the neglect of teachers. I am heartily thankful I was taught to say 'Yes Ma'am, and 'No, ma'am,' 'Yes, Sir, and No, ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... simplicity!" she said, half aloud, as Barbara closed the door. "And yet I would sooner trust my life in the hands of that country damsel, than with the fine ones, who, though arrayed in plain gowns, flatter corrupt fancies at ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... and still so imperfect, of great and civilized nations. France of the fifteenth century was in neither of these conditions. But it is a crown of glory to have felt that honest and patriotic ambition which animated Masselin and his friends at their exodus from the corrupt and corrupting despotism of Louis XI. Who would dare to say that their attempt, vain as it was for them, was so also for generations separated from them by centuries? Time and space are as nothing in the mysterious development of God's designs towards men, and it is the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Therefore in order to secure the permanent peace of the Far East, instead of supporting a Chinese Government which can neither be long continued in power nor assist in the attainment of our object, we should rather support the 400,000,000 Chinese people to renovate their corrupt Government, to change its present form, to maintain peace and order in the land and to usher into China a new era of prosperity so that China and Japan may in fact as well as in name be brought into the most intimate and vital relations with ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... in the material sense. If the scales were evenly balanced the augury would be good. But if weighed down on one side it is Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin, "Thou art weighed and found wanting"; it shows a corrupt judgment, a wrong conclusion, an unbalanced mind, failure in one's obligations, injustice, etc. And if a sword should lie across the scales or be seen overhead, then a speedy judgment will be ...
— How to Read the Crystal - or, Crystal and Seer • Sepharial
... course, and Tom was esteemed good authority in such matters. Like many others, his character is made up of those yielding qualities which the teachings of good men may elevate to usefulness, or bad men corrupt by their examples. There is a stage in the early youth of such persons when we find their minds singularly susceptible, and ready to give rapid growth to all the vices of depraved men; while they are equally apt in receiving good, if good men but take the ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... author, there is certainly a very bad taste prevailing at present. Our language, though capable of great improvements, has, I imagine, been for some time on the decline, and your works have a manifest tendency to hasten that on, and corrupt it still farther. Generally speaking, an odd affected expression is observable through the whole, particularly in the epistles of Bob Lovelace. His many new-coin'd words and phrases, Grandison's meditatingly, Uncle Selby's scrupulosities; and a vast variety of others, all of the same Stamp, ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous
... precautions in the education of one sex have been met by equally fatal negligence in the education of the other; and while to girls have been denied the very thoughts of love,—even in its noblest and purest form,—the most effeminate and corrupt productions of the heathen writers have been unhesitatingly laid open to boys; so that the two sexes, on whose respective notions of the passion depends the ennobling or the degrading of their race, meet on these terms:—the men know nothing of love but ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... something else, Dr. Sorbier had been listening quietly to those amazing accounts of burglaries and daring deeds that might have been taken from the trial of Cartouche. "Assuredly," he exclaimed, "assuredly, I know of no viler fault nor any meaner action than to attack a girl's innocence, to corrupt her, to profit by a moment of unconscious weakness and of madness, when her heart is beating like that of a frightened fawn, and her pure lips seek those of her tempter; when she abandons herself without ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... all remarkable (either good or bad) actions performed by any of the society; and they can have no temptation to make choice of any but the most worthy, as their king has no titles or lucrative employments to bestow, which might influence or corrupt their judgment. ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... recent generations out of virile foreign stock; but it is great enough to have brought deep disgrace upon us and to have made it necessary that we should promptly make use of processes of law by which we may be purged of their corrupt distempers. America never witnessed anything like this before. It never dreamed it possible that men sworn into its own citizenship, men drawn out of great free stocks such as supplied some of the best and strongest elements of that ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... should be such a book as Pepys's Diary is incomparably strange. Pepys, in a corrupt and idle period, played the man in public employments, toiling hard and keeping his honour bright. Much of the little good that is set down to James the Second comes by right to Pepys; and if it were little for a king, it is much for a subordinate. ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson |
