"Corrupting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Kansas-Nebraska Bill has thrown the fertile state of Kansas into the ring to be fought for by free-state men and pro-slavery men. The Border Ruffians of Missouri are breaking the law every day by going over into Kansas, never meaning to live there only long enough to vote, and are corrupting the state government. They are corrupting it by violence and illegal voting. If slavery wins in Kansas and Nebraska, it will control the Union forever. The greatest battle in our history is about to be fought out in Kansas, a battle to see whether this nation shall ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... his own speeches at the beginning of his career, are the strongest evidence of his corruption. {10} According to his own public declaration at that time, he was the first Athenian to perceive that Philip had designs against the Hellenes and was corrupting certain leading men in Arcadia. With Ischander, the son of Neoptolemus, to second him in his performance, he came before the Council and he came before the people, to speak on the subject: he persuaded you to send envoys in all directions to bring together a congress at Athens ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
... Seuerus, and that after the death of Seuerus, and Fulgentius, which both died of hurts receiued in the batell fought betwixt them at Yorke: the Picts tooke part with Bassianus, and at length betraied him in the battell which he fought against Carausius: for he corrupting them by such subtile practises as he vsed, they turned to his side, to the ouerthrow and vtter destruction of Bassianus: for the which traitorous part they had those south countries of Scotland giuen vnto them for their habitation. But by the Scotish writers it should appeare, that those Picts ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (4 of 8) - The Fovrth Booke Of The Historie Of England • Raphael Holinshed
... reprehensible pursuits in vogue. Carlton House, in Pall Mall, which even the oldest of us can barely remember, with its elegant open screen, the pillars in front, its low exterior, its many small rooms, its decorations in vulgar taste, and, to crown the whole, its associations of a corrupting revelry,—Carlton House was, in the days of good King George, almost as great a scandal to the country as Whitehall in the time of improper King Charles II.(66) The influence which the example of a young prince, ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... for any other pleasure in the conquest of a woman but that of depriving another of her; and not able to persuade any one of his passion, because he spoke to her, as at all other times, in jest: but cruelly revenging himself on those who refused to hear him; corrupting the servants of those whom they did favour, counterfeiting their handwriting, intercepting their letters, disconcerting their rendezvous; in one word, disturbing their amours by everything which a rival, prodigal, indefatigable, and full of artifice, can be imagined to do. ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... kill in her daughter's heart any attachment which she may have felt towards her lover, the mother paraded openly before her daughter the intimacy of her relations with Vitalis, and with the help of the literature with which the young bookseller supplied her, set about corrupting her child's mind to her own depraved level. The effect of her extraordinary conduct was, however, the opposite to what she had intended. The mind of the young girl was corrupted; she was familiarised with vice. But in her heart she did not blame Vitalis for what she saw and ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... of course," said Gregg, "but I don't particularly want to have you going about under police protection, and that's what you'll be doing if Thady Gallagher catches you corrupting the nationalist principles of the people of Ballymoy by teaching the town band to play 'God Save ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... was restless, vice seemed to be corrupting the vitality of the nation. Statesmen had to do something. Their training was legal and therefore utterly inadequate, but it was all they had. They became panicky and reverted to an ancient superstition. They forbade ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... the best men of us will not choose one of these modern maidens who imitate the boldness of the character and dress of the adventuress or the stage and opera favorite. It has become a tiresome feature of our modern life with the insidious faculty of corrupting the manners even of families who know better. She was so different! And in that moment I knew her superiority as a woman. I could ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... speech was restored to him; "I'm often surprised at the liberty, I might almost say the licence, that is met with in Protestants in connection with their religion. Take the case of young Mr. Coppinger that I was speaking of. That was a melancholy instance of evil communications corrupting good manners. I may say that I regard with anxiety a too great freedom, what I may call an unrestrained intercourse, between members of the two churches—that is, indeed, if I am justified in describing as a church ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... by a kind of prescription from exposing his accounts, and has long had an opportunity of employing the publick money in multiplying his dependants, enriching his hirelings, enslaving boroughs, and corrupting senates. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... his feet. With fierce invective he declared this whole movement was instigated by the circulars sent out by the Abolition confederates in the Senate. These preachers had been led by an atrocious falsehood "to desecrate the pulpit, and prostitute the sacred desk to the miserable and corrupting influence of party politics." What right had these misguided men to speak in the name of Almighty God upon a political question? It was an attempt to establish in this country the doctrine that clergymen have a peculiar right to ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... that nations should live happily in the abundant enjoyment of all good things; and that every human being should have all that is good for him, of what the earth produces, and the labour of man can create. Then, why should affluence, and the other accessories of power, have so uniformly a corrupting and dissolving effect upon society? This the common theory leaves unexplained. There is no necessary connection betwixt the enjoyment of abundance and the corruption of nations. The Creator surely has not ordained laws which must necessarily ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... history which teaches conscience to be honest; it is the conscience which educates history. Fact is corrupting—it is we who correct it by ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... the country there is a certain quantity of force, equivalent to the force of so much fuel; and that it is mere insane waste to dig for coal for our force, while the vital force is unused, and not only unused, but in being so, corrupting and polluting itself. We waste our coal, and spoil our humanity at one and the same instant. Therefore, wherever there is an idle arm, always save coal with it, and the stores of England will last all the longer. ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... common vice of the world, and the devil fosters it among his numerous followers thereby causing every sort of misery and unhappiness, corrupting all ranks and stations, and rendering men vicious, depraved and incapable of executing good. In opposition to this vice the apostles diligently admonish Christians to be of one mind, regardless of station or occupation, since every individual must remain ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... how I contrived to get out of the scrape into which you and the Honourable George managed to inveigle me, having previously availed yourselves of my innocence, and succeeded, through the seductive medium of oysters and porter, in corrupting my morals, then leaving me, poor victim! to bear the blame, and suffer the consequences, of our common misdemeanour. However, mine is no pitiful spirit to be quelled by misfortune, and, as dangers thickened around me, I bore up against them bravely, like—like—(was ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... preferred the less expensive mode of walking, entering a strange world. Sauntering along the Bowery she turns down Bayard street. Bayard street she finds lined with filthy looking houses, swarming with sickly, ragged, and besotted poor; the street is knee-deep with corrupting mire; carts are tilted here and there at intervals; the very air seems hurling its pestilence into your blood. Ghastly-eyed and squallid children, like ants in quest of food, creep and swarm over the pavement, begging for bread or uttering profane oaths at one another. Mothers ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... remained: in any case it was noxious and dangerous. There was legislation on the subject, for the evil was already notorious in the fourteenth century. The first parliamentary attempt to restrain people in towns generally from thus corrupting and infecting the air is dated 1388. The many visits of distinguished people and public processions always conferred an incidental boon on the city, for one of the essentials of preparation was giving the main streets a good cleaning. There is no wonder that plagues perpetually harassed ...
— Life in a Medival City - Illustrated by York in the XVth Century • Edwin Benson
... service, or performing the weightiest duty, that will excuse the least sin, though that sin capacitated or gave us the opportunity for doing that duty. Thou wilt have little thanks, O my soul! if, when thou art charged with corrupting God's worship, falsifying thy vows, thou pretendest a necessity for it in order to a continuance in the ministry. As he read this, and glanced at much more which he did not read, he gained resolution for himself, and felt as if he too ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... to salt the corrupting Church. Ecclesiasticism, in its well-meant efforts at training men, by a complete discipline, to a perfect virtue, had suppressed the individual love of truth to such an extent, that religion had become a mere surface, without substance. Jesuitism abolished the distinction between ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... an early period, the Apology may form a fitting end to these dialogues. Socrates was condemned on the charge of corrupting the Athenian youth and for impiety. To most Athenians he must have been not only not different from the Sophists he was never weary of exposing, but the greatest Sophist of them all. He was unfortunate in his friends, among whom were Critias the ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... wish to speak of you. You must have thought me cantankerous, and so I have been sometimes, but always by conviction and on principle. I could not countenance the fashionable morality that is corrupting the manhood of the laity, or endure the toleration that is making the clergy thoroughly wicked; I could not without a pang see you cater to the world's appetites or be drawn into its gaieties and frivolities; and it was agony to me to fear that a girl of your pure if passionate ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... you to observe that large and terrible scythe which your governor affects to bear continually about him. Be pleased to remark the length and strength, the sharpness and hardness, of his nails and teeth; consider his baneful, abominable breath, enemy to life and matter, infectious and corrupting, and then reflect whether it be possible for any mortal ink and paper of this generation to make a suitable resistance. Oh, that your Highness would one day resolve to disarm this usurping maitre de palais of his furious engines, and bring ...
— English Satires • Various
... concluded betwixt the Britains, Scots and Picts, in the daies of the late king Constantine, Vortigerne caused the same league to be renewed, & [Sidenote: Hector Boet.] waged an hundred Picts, and as manie Scots to be attendant as a gard vpon the kings person, diuers of the which (corrupting them with faire [Sidenote: Constantius murthered.] promises) he procured by subtile meanes in the end to murther the king, and immediatlie vpon the deed doone, he caused the murtherers to be strangled, that they should not afterwards ...
— Chronicles 1 (of 6): The Historie of England 5 (of 8) - The Fift Booke of the Historie of England. • Raphael Holinshed
... purpose. In the hours of rest and slumber, when honest men, brave men, worthy men, seek their pillows and the sanctity of their homes, these despoilers of the poor, these tyrants of a confiding people, conspiring together and corrupting with infamous gold the brethren who have betrayed us, reckless of their pledges, false to their promises—when were they ever else?—have succeeded in running two or three trains through the blockade. Now it remains with you to say how long, how great shall be their triumph. Summon from far and ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... trustfulness which had guided her hitherto—a doubt, alas! which attacked at once her honour and her love, for she loved with all a woman's tender affection. Just as actual poison gradually penetrates and circulates through the whole system, corrupting the blood and affecting the very sources of life until it causes the destruction of the whole body, so does that mental poison, suspicion, extend its ravages in the soul which has received it. Bertrande remembered with ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... hedges of prickly briers and brambles—turning the evil into the good—the seed-catching into the seed-nourishing. Of the too consumptions let us prefer the active, benevolent, and purifying one of fire, to the passive, self-eating, and corrupting one of rust: one half minute's clear shining may touch some watching and waiting soul, and through him kindle ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... have come from Heaven; they cut up the other Scriptures according to their fancy. Origen himself, with all his great mind, corrupted the Scriptures and forged changes in the allegories which did not suit him, thus corrupting the sense of the prophets and apostles, and even some of the principal points of doctrine. His books are now mutilated and falsified; they are but fragments collected by others who have appeared since. The Ellogians attributed to the heretic Corinthus the Gospel and the ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... with provincials and Greeks, the strict and unbending government of your slaves. These are creditable even in the conduct of our private and everyday business: in such an important government, where morals are so debased and the province has such a corrupting influence, they must needs seem divine. Such principles and conduct on your part are sufficient to justify the strictness which you have displayed in some acts of administration, owing to which I have encountered certain personal disputes ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... exemplified the truth of his own philosophy. He was accused of corrupting the youth and denying the deities, and was condemned to die by drinking a cup of hemlock. He calmly submitted to his fate, refusing to avail himself of an opportunity to escape. According to the account given in Plato's "Phaedo," he ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... advance. He mistrusted the players. They had caricatured him on the stage as 'Mr. Lanternbug,' in General Bourgoyne's comedy, The Maid of the Oaks; and then his mocking artist brethren caught at the nickname, corrupting it, however, to 'Leatherbag.' Mr. Bannister was unable or unwilling to comply with the painter's requirements: so young John was sent to the school of the Royal Academy, which he soon deserted, and finally trod the boards, and charmed ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... amendment is equally just. The Government holds the public lands in trust. It is better to divide their proceeds at short intervals, and thus remove the subject from all danger of corrupting influences. But I shall leave this to ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... they would thus destroy the "vulgar prejudice" that unbelief is connected with bad qualities of head and heart. It is, I venture to remark, still more important to destroy the belief of sceptics themselves that in these matters a system of pious frauds is creditable or safe. Effeminating and corrupting as all equivocation comes to be in the long run, there are other evils behind. Who can see without impatience the fearful waste of good purpose and noble aspiration caused by our reticence at a time when it is of primary importance to ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... moreover, should the Levitical priests, had the disease been this creeping infection, have ever themselves escaped it, obliged as they were by their very office to submit the leper to actual handling and closest examination?... Leprosy was nothing short of a living death, a corrupting of all the humors, a poisoning of the very springs, of life; a dissolution, little by little, of the whole body, so that one limb after another actually decayed and fell away. Aaron exactly describes the appearance which the leper presented to the eyes of the beholders, when, pleading ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... theology has had a terribly corrupting effect on many members of churches. I meet proofs of it every day. God help me to do my duty. Some of my hearers say to me, 'We come to church to be comforted, and not to be continually told to do, do, do.' I do not wish people to be comforted unless they will do their duty; and ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... by the Diffusion of a Christian Standard among them, while actually Christian Nations in order to Subdue them do all they can to Destroy a Christian Standard—These Fruitless Attempts to Civilize Savages Cannot be Adduced as Proofs that Men Cannot be Subdued by Christianity—Violence by Corrupting Public Opinion, only Hinders the Social Organization from being What it Ought to Be—And by the Use of Violence being Suppressed, a Christian Public Opinion would be Established—Whatever might ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... beneath long Ida's flanks Paphlagoneion. As its waters flow 'Twixt fertile acres, once a year they turn To blood, when comes the woeful day whereon Died Memnon. Thence a sick and choking reek Steams: thou wouldst say that from a wound unhealed Corrupting humours breathed an evil stench. Ay, so the Gods ordained: but now flew on Bearing Dawn's mighty son the rushing winds Skimming earth's face and ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... comes mostly from painters, his ardent admirers, who realize that Cezanne attempted things which he failed to achieve and deliberately shunned others worth achieving. Also, they realize that there is always a danger of one good custom corrupting the world. ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... much. Wages should not be paid oftener than once a quarter. As long as a negro has a dime in his pocket he will go every Saturday to some store or town. Besides, if the men have money once a month they are constantly corrupting the women, who will not work because they expect to get money of the men. If the laborers are to pay for all their supplies, some think higher wages could be paid; but it would be necessary to require the negro to supply himself with at least two suits of clothes, one pair of shoes, ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz
... eyes, Miss Supervisor, and also ears—which leads me to ask: Why don't you clean out that saloon gang? Landon is sure there's crooked work going on at that mill—certainly that open bar is a disgraceful and corrupting thing." ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... perspiration in the cane-fields of the tropics. But let life depart, and it falls to that of the surrounding objects. Decay immediately begins. So, when religious vitality is maintained in the heart, the corrupting influences of the world remain inoperative. This vitality having been infused into the heart of Miss Hawley, the fervor of her spirit rose to a higher temperature than that of all surrounding objects. She could no ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... commonly, that such as value themselves by the greatnesse of their wealth, adventure on Crimes, upon hope of escaping punishment, by corrupting publique Justice, or obtaining Pardon by ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... signs of etymological corruption is '[)e]volution'. It seems to have been introduced as a technical term of the art of war, and of course, like 'd[)e]volution', shortened the e. The biologists first borrowed it and later seem desirous of corrupting it. Perhaps they think of such words as '[e]gress', but the long vowel is right ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt
... Shostak, just now brought the incriminating acts. In the court they say, quite openly, that the sentence has already been fixed. What does it mean? Do the authorities fear that the judges will deal too mercifully with the enemies of the government? Having so long and so assiduously kept corrupting their servants, is the government still unassured of their ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... unpunished. Your presence in the society of respectable people would lead the less able-bodied to think more lightly of all forms of illness; neither can it be permitted that you should have the chance of corrupting unborn beings who might hereafter pester you. The unborn must not be allowed to come near you: and this not so much for their protection (for they are our natural enemies), as for our own; for since they will not be utterly gainsaid, it must be seen to that they shall be quartered upon ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... or State, are not necessary as fiscal agents of the Government. Revenue duties have taken the place of the protective tariff. The distribution of the money derived from the sale of the public lands has been abandoned and the corrupting system of internal improvements, it is hoped, has ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... not been made without cost. Enormous sums had been spent in corrupting the Neapolitan people. Large amounts were still scattered throughout the annexed provinces, in order to maintain their loyalty to the new power; and the press was liberally subsidized, both in Italy and abroad. ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... wrong and most unjust to this beautiful woman, who remained good and pure in the midst of the corrupting and terrible circumstances in which destiny placed her. She preserved a chaste heart, an unspotted soul. Her misfortunes only refined her, and therefore I love her, and believe that God has placed me in her way that, after all her sufferings, I might make her ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... the permissible level of a man. Her sisters opposed it bitterly as bringing discredit on them all; and old Yacob, though he had formed a sort of liking for his clumsy, obedient serf, shook his head and said the thing could not be. The young men were all angry at the idea of corrupting the race, and one went so far as to revile and strike Nunez. He struck back. Then for the first time he found an advantage in seeing, even by twilight, and after that fight was over no one was disposed to raise a hand against him. But they ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... composite theme which expresses his complex personality, and allows the lighter treble notes to be momentarily drowned. Superficially speaking, there is perhaps a reminiscence of Zola in this book, not in the manner of treatment, but in the subject, which is the corrupting influence of the higher classes upon the lower. There is no denying that in spite of the ability, which it betrays in every line, Laboring People is unpleasant reading. It frightened away a host of the author's early admirers by the uncompromising vigor and the glaring realism ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... region, a region of gaping walls and potsherds, where the asphodel shoot up to monstrous tufts and the fallacious colocynth, the wild melon, scatters its globes of bitter gold. For it is in the nature of Orientals that their habitations should surround themselves with a girdle of corrupting things, gruesome and yet fascinating: a Browning might have grown enamoured of its ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... old, who had been lifted on to the throne of a murdered father, must have had a strong will and a love of goodness to have resisted the corrupting influences of royalty in a land full of idols. Here again we see that, great as may be the power of circumstances, they do not determine character; for it is always open to us either to determine whether we yield to them or ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... under the Protector, among which that of Monk stands foremost, appear in the narrative of the first of the Dutch wars under Charles. This superiority in tone and discipline gradually disappeared under the corrupting influence of court favor in a licentious government; and Holland, which upon the whole was worsted by England alone upon the sea in 1665, successfully resisted the combined navies of England and France in 1672. As regards the material of the three fleets, we are told ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... state. All the streets, courts, and houses were covered with dead bodies, among whom some miserable wretches were crawling about in the different stages of the most offensive diseases, occasioned by famine, the most unnatural food, and the pestilential smell of the corrupting carcases. Even the trees were stripped of their bark, and the ground had been everywhere dug up in search of any kind of roots it might be able to afford. Not a drop of water could be any where procured; and though it ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... from plain practical benevolence, than in the writings of the author to whom I allude. Instead of employing his talents for the benefit of his fellow-creatures, they were applied to the pernicious purposes of corrupting the national taste, and of lowering the standard of manners and morals. The tendency of his writings is to vitiate that purity of mind, intended by Providence as the companion and preservative of youthful virtue; and to produce, if the expression may be permitted, a morbid sensibility ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... through massacre to its triumph,—Danton, Robespierre, Marat. And of the three it was Marat who worked deepest on her imagination, Marat always baying for {189} blood, always scenting fresh victims, always corrupting opinion with his scum of printer's ink and poison. To Charlotte Corday it appeared that in this one individual all that was noble and beautiful in the Revolution was converted into all that was hideous and ignoble; ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... ... The corrupting influence of high salaries is beyond question—both on the Soviets ... and on the mass of the workers. But all thinking and honest workers and peasants will agree with us and will admit that we ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... of blood than he himself possesses, and an energy, nay, perhaps a genius, derived from the Kurts, which, with an upward instead of a downward tendency, may be a redeeming force in society instead of a corrupting one. ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... enormous waste of money, though he allows that about two hundred millions of pounds sterling are spent yearly in the States on strong drink; but he mourns most because of the steady ruin which he sees overtaking the social happiness of his country. The saloon is subtly corrupting the men of America, and the ghastly plagues of selfishness, brutality, and immorality are spreading with cruel swiftness. The great author's conclusion is more than startling, and I confess to having caught my breath when ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... Bristol. Then they drink the toast of "The Master" and go home in omnibuses. My friend was a schoolmaster and took a small class of boys in Bradshaw; he said they knew as much about it as he did. I call that corrupting the young. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various
... problem, have resigned themselves to the cheerless gloom of Skepticism. In reviewing all these speculations and theories, we must bear in mind that their authors and advocates, although more thoughtful and inquisitive than the great majority of mankind, were equally subject to the same corrupting influence,—"the evil heart of unbelief,"—and that the same cause which produced practical Atheism in some, and abject Superstition in others, may also have operated, but more insidiously, in producing Speculative ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... body leads the laggard soul; bidding it see The beauty of surrender, the tranquillity Of fusion with the earth. The body turns to dust Not only by a sudden whelming thrust, Or at the end of a corrupting calm, But oftentimes anticipates and, entering flowers and trees Upon a hillside or along the brink Of streams, encounters instances Of its eventual enterprise: Inhabits the enclosing clay, In rhapsody is caught ...
— The New World • Witter Bynner
... attempt to bring Hiram and the men who worked for the Temple to any knowledge of the God of the Temple, and the relation with Egypt was more unsatisfactory still, in that it meant only the importation of corrupting luxuries and the marriage with an Egyptian princess, an idolatress, this relation with the queen of Sheba was the true one. Solomon did in it what Israel was meant to do for the world. He attracted ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... you have windows to do; that is a fine business, I think; but, alas! the glass is so bad nowadays; realism invading even that, as well as the huge inferiority of our technical resource corrupting every tint. Still, anything that keeps a man to decoration is, in this age, ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... all sense, all shame, all grace— That seat,—like seats, the bane of Freedom's realm, But dear to those presiding at the helm— Is basely purchased, not with gold alone; Add Conscience, too, this bargain is your own— 'T is thine to offer with corrupting art The rotten borough[62] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... with that crew four years. They were smugglers. I'm free to say I loved Clyde, and liked the crew. For, granting he was much of a miser and maybe but a shrewd old man, to be corrupting folks with his theories, though I'm not so sure about that, not knowing what he really thought; yet, he was a bold man, and a kind man, and I never saw one that was keener in judgment. You might say ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... Marston!" she reflected when the door closed behind him. "And one who never presumes. A smile pays him for anything, and keeps him devoted to me. Yes, a very useful and satisfactory man. His idea of corrupting Carpenter may be rather futile; and he may get into a snarl by trying it, but," with a shrug of her shapely shoulders, "that is his affair and won't involve me. And if he should prove successful, the new French key-word which the Count, the dear Count, gave me just before ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... but if vice should be well thought of, and honour and reputation come to the person who promoted its pleasures or desires, no nature is so well constituted or strong that it would not be mastered by it. So the public man must oppose the praise not of men but of bad actions, for such praise is corrupting, and causes people to imitate and emulate what is base as if it were noble. But it is best refuted by putting it side by side with the truth: as Theodorus the tragic actor is reported to have said once to Satyrus the comic actor, "It is not so ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... This piece of tapestry, therefore, if Matilda really worked it, is about eight hundred years old. And when we consider how delicate, slender, and frail is the fibre of a linen thread, and that the various elements of decay, always busy in the work of corrupting and destroying the works of man, have proved themselves powerful enough to waste away and crumble into ruin the proudest structures which he has ever attempted to rear, we are amazed that these slender filaments have been able to resist their action so long. The Bayeux tapestry has lasted nearly ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... really tempers the corrupting effects of the power, and makes it compatible with such amount of good as we actually see? Mere feminine blandishments, though of great effect in individual instances, have very little effect in modifying the general tendencies of the situation; for their power only ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... high life, has become honeycombed with monarchism. We might have held that the inevitable effect of such marriages was to undermine the republican ideal at the very source of the commonwealth's existence, and by corrupting the heart of American motherhood must have weakened the fibre of our future citizenship to the point of supinely accepting any usurpation that promised ranks and titles and the ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... was an outcast; he was compelled to live apart from the dwellings of men. He was required to wear a covering over his mouth and to give warning of his approach by crying, "Unclean! Unclean!" His case was regarded as hopeless; he was reckoned as dead. Loathsome, insidious, corrupting, pervasive, isolating, ceremonially and physically defiling, surely leprosy is a fitting emblem of sin; and this graphic narrative presents a parable of the power of Christ to cleanse and to heal and to restore. It is a vivid picture which ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... into this plot, in spite of Sarah's threats, had resolved to make away with Fleur-de-Marie, as much from dread of the revelations of La Chouette, as from fear of the countess. But she had not renounced her designs, for she was almost certain of corrupting or intimidating the notary, when she had secured a girl capable of playing the ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... indefensible, as to repel rather than invite imitation. But there is another peculiarity in the productions of this gentleman which claims a more detailed notice, because it seems likely to have extensive effects in corrupting others: —we mean his taste for horrible and revolting subjects. We thought we had supped full of this commodity; but it seems as if the most ghastly and disgusting portion of the meal was reserved for the present day, and its ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... December night, for it had been snowing in the early part of the evening; that snow was suffering from a fall of blacks: and as evil communications corrupt good manners, the evil communication of the London soot was corrupting the good manners of the heavenly snow, which had become smirched by the town's embrace, and was sorrowfully weeping itself away in tears ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... women. There are wide open resorts on more than twenty streets outside of the big "levee." Segregation as practised is not a restriction of vice so much as it is a practical license to lawbreakers to wreck human lives and blight the homes of the people, by corrupting husbands and sons and taking captive wives and daughters. You would be astounded to learn how many ruined women are wives who have ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... they could not have recovered it again for ever. Watch then for the opportunity. 1. Because it is God's season; which, without doubts, is the best season and time for every purpose (Eccl 3:11). 2. Because Satan watches to spoil, by mistiming as well as by corrupting whatever thou shalt do for God. 'When I would do good,' saith Paul, 'evil is present,' that is, either to withdraw me from my purpose, or else to infect my work (Rom 7:21). 3. This is the way to be ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... very classes who exhibit the same vulgarities in their most perfect form, and that their conflict with each other, as between nation and nation, exhibit to us, in the magnified and hideous form of war, the same sore which is all the time corrupting our internal economy. The brutality, and atrocity of modern war is but the reflection of the brutality and inhumanity of our commercial regime and ideals. The slaughter of the battlefields may be more obvious, but it is less deliberate, and it is doubtful whether it ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... infidelity and hypocrisy of the upper orders, the indifference towards all religion, in even the better part of the common people, during the last days of the republic, and under the Caesars, and the corrupting principles of the philosophers, had exercised a very pernicious influence on the manners, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... interesting types into a picture of soul-stirring beauty. Even had the fifty been found, all with the proper dispositions and in harmonious unanimity of purpose, there was little chance that they would remain unaffected by the unbalancing and corrupting influences of a new country, where they would be absolute masters over an inferior race of people. Many excellent men of the highest principles and best intentions went from Spain to America in those times, but few resisted the temptations ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... gave all the more force to the anxiety with which she dwelt on the means of fulfilling his supreme wish. That piety towards his memory was all the atonement she could make now for a thought that seemed akin to joy at his loss. The laborious simple life, pure from vulgar corrupting ambitions, embittered by the frustration of the dearest hopes, imprisoned at last in total darkness—a long seed-time without a harvest—was at an end now, and all that remained of it besides the tablet in Sante Croce and ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... the heat of the summer water penetrating to it; and if, when the sea-bottom was upraised into land, the covering was sufficiently thick to prevent the heat of the summer air and sun thawing and corrupting it. ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... of the sixth trumpet, a "voice comes from the four horns of the golden altar," the immediate presence of the Almighty. This indicates punishment to be inflicted upon men for corrupting the gospel, similar to the judgment of fire from the "golden censer," (ch. viii. 5.) The effects of the first woe may be supposed to reach from the early part of the seventh century to the latter part of the thirteenth,—the period of Arabian ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... very good, but to make them seem even better, she complained, with a sigh, how difficult the lessons at school were now. . . . She made much of her visitor, and was sorry for her, though at the same time she was harassed by the thought that Nadyezhda Fyodorovna might have a corrupting influence on the morals of Kostya and Katya, and was glad that her Nikodim Alexandritch was not at home. Seeing that in her opinion all men are fond of "women like that," Nadyezhda Fyodorovna might have a bad effect on ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... 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 ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... to these matters can be established and different folkways compared and criticised. Only experience produces judgments of the expediency of some usages. For instance, ancient peoples thought pederasty was harmless and trivial. It has been well proved to be corrupting both to individual and social vigor, and harmful to interests, both individual and collective. Cannibalism, polygamy, incest, harlotry, and other primitive customs have been discarded by a very wide and, in the case of some of them, ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... is as corrupting to vulgar souls as money, this man seems to have been as regardless as he was of pelf. He received the Cross of the Iron Crown from the Emperor of Austria. He accepted what was graciously offered, but he said that, as an Englishman, he did not know what good ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... pursuits?—have they any interest in gaining you over?—oh! from that moment, suspect all that surround you, suspect the most noble attachments, the most tender affections, for these monsters sometimes succeed in corrupting your best friends, and making a terrible use of them, in proportion to the ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Fashion, corrupting like these other forms of rule, almost wholly ceases to be an imitation of the best, and becomes an imitation of quite other than the best. As those who take orders are not those having a special fitness for the priestly office, but those who see their way to a living by it; as ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... to wonder upon what ground the English accuse Americans of corrupting the language by introducing slang words. I think I heard more and more different kinds of slang during my few weeks' stay in London than in my whole "tenderloin" life in New York. But I suppose the English feel that the language is theirs, and that they may do with it ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... songs or dances, and tagged at the conclusion with a ludicrous and beastly farce? I cannot therefore, in conscience, give youth any other advice than to avoid such diversions as cannot be indulged without the utmost danger of perverting their taste, and corrupting their morals.' ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... classical allusions, will you, Esme? I promised Mr. Smith there should be nothing of that kind. He thinks classical allusions corrupting. Of course he's wrong—good people always are—but perhaps we ought to humour him, as he is the ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... now lost, thanks to the present generation of young fellows, a corrupted and at the same time corrupting race, but, above everything, vain, foolish and brutal. For the sake of uttering spiteful paradoxes, they chaffed these poor girls about their hands, disfigured by the sacred scars of toil, and as a consequence these ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... these amongst others—"All devising, counseling, commanding, using, and any ways approving any religious worship not instituted by God himself, tolerating a false religion.—— All superstitious devices, corrupting the worship of God, adding to it, taking from it, whether invented and taken up of ourselves, or received by tradition from others, though under the title of antiquity, custom, devotion, good intent, or any other pretence whatsoever." Hence, he expressed himself in these words—"I excommunicate ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery
... always spoke of morals and religion, the Athenians took him for a sophist.[82] In 399 he was brought before the court, accused "of not worshipping the gods of the city, of introducing new gods, and of corrupting the youth." He made no attempt to defend himself, and was condemned to death. He was ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... done. It was concluded, that the Lordis, Barronis, and gentilmen, with thare substantious housholdis, should remane in Edinburgh that hole winter, for establissing of the Church[859] thair. [SN: THE CAUS QUHY THE IRNES STAYED.] And becaus it was found, that by the corrupting of our money, the Quene maid to hir selff immoderat gaines for maynteaning of hir soldiouris, to the distructioun of our haill commone weill, it was thocht necessar[860] that the printing irnes, and all thingis to thame ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... is the head of it. But Christ's headship makes Christians no more one body politic with respect to ecclesiasticals than to civils." Here we must shew the reason and necessity of the Church being a corporation all over the world: To avoid heresies, and preserve fundamentals, and hinder corrupting of Scripture, &c. But there are no such necessities in government, to be the same everywhere, &c. It is something like the colleges in a university; they all are independent, yet, joined, are one body. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... the Solitaries, odious by their black arts to princes and people, were slain or driven out,—fifteen centuries and more,— Asirvadam the Brahmin has been selfish, wicked, and mischievously busy,—corrupting the hearts, bewildering the minds, betraying the hopes, exhausting the moral and physical strength of the Hindoos. He has taught them the foolish tumult of the Hooly, the fanatical ferocities of the Yajna, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... Company, and its numerous agents and attorneys are conducting here a business involving probably a larger use of the mails than that of any legitimate business enterprise in the District of Columbia. There seems to be good reason to believe that the corrupting touch of these agents has been felt by the clerks in the postal service and by some of the police ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... are mine. We cannot tell the day nor the hour when they may weakly yield to the solicitation of some companion, and enter the wide open door of ruin. And are we wise and good citizens to commission men to do the evil work of enticement—to encourage them to get gain in corrupting and destroying our children? To hesitate over some vague ideal of human liberty when the sword is among us, slaying our best and dearest? Sir! while you hold back from the work of staying the flood that is desolating ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur
... whole seemingly monotonous and uncompanionable half-dozen, stabled together, may pass the long wet hours when the door is shut in livelier communication than is held in the servants' hall or at the Dedlock Arms, or may even beguile the time by improving (perhaps corrupting) the pony in ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... for a sketch of this figure, remarkable for the fact that science and literature had filled the heart and passed through the strong head without corrupting either. At sixty years of age the abbe's hair was white as snow, so keenly did he feel the sorrows of others, and so heavily had the events of the Revolution weighed upon him. Twice incarcerated for refusing to take the oath he had twice, as he used ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... more than human, to say no to you," he returned, laughing a little unsteadily. "You're corrupting my upright professional ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... The military and naval professions in our typical modern State will subsist very largely upon tradition, the ostensible government will interfere with rather than direct them, and there will be no force in the entire scheme to check the corrupting influence of a long peace, to insist upon adequate exercises for the fighting organization or ensure an adequate adaptation to the new and perpetually changing possibilities of untried apparatus. Incapable but confident and energetic persons, having ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... things. In the month of August, they presented their proposals to the convention of estates and assembly, desiring, that because the popish prelatical faction is still pursuing their design of corrupting and altering the religion through the whole island, the two nations might be strictly united for their mutual defense against them and their adherents, and not to lay down arms until those, their implacable enemies, were disarmed, &c. Commissioners were deputed from the ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... tyrant," since "it has become self-paralyzed," and, "through a sort of anti-revolutionary contempt, neglected the manufacture, handling and expedition of diverse materials," we will thwart "the calculations of its barbarous arithmetic, and purge it of the aristocratic and corrupting fermentation which oppresses it." We make monopoly "a capital crime;"[2180] we call him a monopolist who "takes food and wares of prime necessity out of circulation," and "keeps them stored without daily and publicly offering them for sale." Penalty of death against whoever, within ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... The Pride person was responsible. Miss Matring was in her way, and a good deal of her own disposition to boot. It was a merry war, all right, while it lasted—scheming and squabbling and backbiting and tattling and corrupting servants to carry tales—all that sort of thing. To be honest about it, I don't just know which was the worse of the two; they didn't either of them stick at much of anything noticeable. But, of course, Miss Matring was handicapped, not being blood-kin, ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... and it is due to the presence of women. Every man now shows that civility which makes him take off his hat and not swear, and deport himself decently when ladies are present. Instead of women's going to the polls corrupting them it has purified the polls. Husband and wife go there together. No one insults them. There are no drunken men there, nothing but what ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... property, considered with a view to subsistence, or even to enjoyment, have little effect in corrupting mankind, or in awakening the spirit of competition and of jealousy; but considered with a view to distinction and honour, where fortune constitutes rank, they excite the most vehement passions, and absorb all the sentiments of the human ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D. |
