"Corruption" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a very brief examination of society to prove the truth of Christ's contention; very little experience of life to discover that the utmost corruption of the human heart lies in lovelessness. The spiteful and rancorous temper, always seeking occasions of offense; the jealous spirit which cannot bear the spectacle of another's joy; the bitter nagging tongue, darting hither and thither like a serpent's fang full of poison, and ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson
... venison? Will she initiate them into the merits of a Parisian pasty, imported by the last steamer that ever crossed the Atlantic? Will she not, rather, bid them turn with disgust from fish, fowl, and flesh, which, to their pure nostrils, steam with a loathsome odor of death and corruption?— Food? The bill of fare contains nothing ...
— The New Adam and Eve (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... touching the world to come; and as touching this world to be dead to it, to give up all interest in it, to have the sentence of death in ourselves and admit it, to count the grave my house, to make my bed in darkness, and to say to corruption, thou art my father; and to the worm, thou art my mother and sister; that is, to familiarize these things to me.' With this preparation, when the storm suddenly fell, though the ship at first bowed and labored heavily ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... themselves. Almost in every city, the ancient churches were found insufficient to contain the increasing multitude of proselytes; and in their place more stately and capacious edifices were erected for the public worship of the faithful. The corruption of manners and principles, so forcibly lamented by Eusebius, may be considered, not only as a consequence, but as a proof, of the liberty which the Christians enjoyed and abused under the reign of Diocletian. Prosperity had relaxed the nerves of discipline. Fraud, envy, and ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... second time was the venerable Judson bereaved of his dear companion, and in the midst of strangers called upon to surrender up the remains of the loved one to corruption and decay. They buried her where the hero of Lodi and Austerlitz slept, and a long train of mourners followed her to the tomb. The flags of the vessels in the harbor were seen waving at half mast, and signs of woe were ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... Persia, the principal features of life in the French capital. But the uses to which Montesquieu put this borrowed plot were all his own. He made it the base for a searching attack on the whole system of the government of Louis XIV. The corruption of the Court, the privileges of the nobles, the maladministration of the finances, the stupidities and barbarisms of the old autocratic regime—these are the topics to which he is perpetually drawing ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... governments, from the President down to the ten thousand postmasters, and from governors to the fifty thousand constables, escapes the charge of 'abuse of power.' 'Oppression,' 'Extortion,' 'Venality,' 'Bribery,' 'Corruption,' 'Perjury,' 'Misrule,' 'Spoils,' 'Defalcation,' stand on every newspaper. Now without any estimate of the lies told in these mutual charges, there is truth enough to make each party ready to believe of the other, and of their best men too, any abuse ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... fathers—being so found in the big chair, with the worn, leather-bound Bible open in his lap—the revived but still tender faith of Aunt Bell Hardwick was bitten as by frost. And this though the Bible had lain open at that psalm in which David is said to describe the corruption of a natural man—a psalm beginning, "The fool hath said in his heart, 'There is ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... changing; views which commend themselves to-day will in a few years seem absurd; measures which are thought to be of vital importance will grow to be inapplicable. To talk and write about such things is well,—may help to prevent stagnation and corruption in public life; but they exercise altogether a higher office, who live in the presence of what is permanently true and good and beautiful, who believe in ideal aims and ends and prevent the masses from losing sight of what constitutes man's real ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... the most aged of the monks, and said: "Already, Father Abbot, hast thou spoken judgment. Grievously shall I lament what must be done; but in one way only can we root out this corruption. Let the bones of the holy man be unearthed and cast forth. He in the high heavens will know that we do not use him despitefully, but that of two evils this, indeed, is scarcely to be spoken of ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... Near the close of the fifth, or perhaps in the sixth century, the so-called Athanasian Creed was adopted, which would form less than three pages of the Platform. During the subsequent, centuries of Romish corruption, different councils made various enactments for the church, but they generally related to the multitudinous rites and ceremonies introduced into the popish worship, or to the functions, rights and privileges of the pope, the different ranks of priests, bishops, arch-bishops and ...
— American Lutheranism Vindicated; or, Examination of the Lutheran Symbols, on Certain Disputed Topics • Samuel Simon Schmucker
... as they also call it, wanakaye (evidently a corruption of "guanaco"), one of their modes is to lie in wait for it on the limb of a tree which projects over the path taken by these animals, the habit of which is to follow one another in single file, and along ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... a first step, after you have let the parents see the social evils which result from a Godless school, such as crime against purity, murder, suicide, rapine and robbery, disobedience against civil and ecclesiastical authorities, in short, the corruption of customs, all the seasoned fruit of those lay schools, your reverences should influence them to declare, in writing or communications which they should address to us, to the government without euphemisms their ...
— The Legacy of Ignorantism • T.H. Pardo de Tavera
... this chronicle of Tregeagle carries him back to the time of Petrock, the patron saint of Padstow, whose name is a corruption of Petrock's-stow. Little Petherick, sometimes called St. Petrock Minor, is thought to be a corruption of the same name. Petrock was a Celtic saint, probably a Welshman, who went to Ireland for his religious education; he crossed to Cornwall ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... glancing briefly at their various excellencies. WILLIAM becomes a Christian. His reception into a. church. Different views of things after conversion. Voice of Nature heard in God's praise. Wonders why Man is so backward in this. Discovers reasons in Man's inbred corruption, temptations, etc. Salvation all of Grace. The humbling nature of this truth to Man's pride, but the security it affords believers. Its effects on him. Fresh Love-trials. Consequent resolutions. Sabbath morning walk. Church bells. Visit to Farm-house. Family worship. ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... civilisation. Want of unity in feeling and interest among the people—irritability, violence, and revenge—want of comfort and cleanliness in the lower orders—habitual disobedience to the law—want of confidence in magistrates—corruption, venality, the perpetual necessity of recurring to military force—all carry back the observer to that remote and early condition of mankind, which an Englishman can learn only in the pages of the antiquary or the historian. We do not draw this picture for censure but for truth. ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... we could trust; who would be above corruption. As it is"—she shrugged her shoulders "that would be but to afford her opportunities to bribe them one by one until they were all ready to act ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... the robber and assassin, or from the man who, were it not for penalties and statutes, would perpetrate against him all the mischiefs which malignity might suggest. Civil policy however subjects him to a variety of evils, which wealth or corruption are accustomed to inflict under the forms of justice; at the same time that it can never wholly defend him from those violences to which he would be every moment exposed in what is called the ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... line of conduct. You are a grown woman, and know well enough that honesty will take care of its own in the end. I was thinking rather of Corona. As you say, she has laid some hold upon the pair of us. She has a pathetic belief in all the inmates of St. Hospital—and God pity us if our corruption infects this child! . . . ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... tell you about her presently," continued Lord Tremlyn. "There was a great deal of corruption in the government of the kingdom under the native king. The people were robbed of vast sums in the guise of taxes, the police was miserably inefficient, and it was not a safe region for the traveller. ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... of the Plan about the Gift, and of how Mr. Queed drinks his Medicine like a Man; Fifi on Men, and how they do; Second Corruption of the ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... cruel before now; and gradual decline into barbarism, where no examples of decency or civilization existed around them, has sunk, before now, isolated populations to the lowest level of possible humanity. But cruelty stretched to its fiercest against the gentle and unoffending, and corruption festered to its loathsomest in the midst of the witnessing presence of a disciplined civilization,— these we could not have known to be within the practicable compass of human guilt, but for the acts of the ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... I may observe that the plain called by the Greeks Esdraelon, as a corruption of Jezreel, is that named "Megiddo" in Old Testament Scripture. In the New Testament it bears the prefix of the Hebrew word Har (mountain) minus the aspirate, being written in Greek, and so becomes "Armageddon" in the ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... places that were before Jerusalem, which were on the right hand of the Mount of Corruption, which Solomon the king of Israel had builded for Ashtaroth the abomination of the Zidonians ... did ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... justice and honor, women's bodies and men's souls, were for sale in the marketplace, and human beings writhed and fought and fell upon each other like wolves in a pit; in which lusts were raging fires, and men were fuel, and humanity was festering and stewing and wallowing in its own corruption. Into this wild-beast tangle these men had been born without their consent, they had taken part in it because they could not help it; that they were in jail was no disgrace to them, for the game had never been fair, the dice were loaded. They were swindlers ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... squadron came to the very verge of winning a triumphant success. That he failed was due to the fact that the French Navy... was honeycombed by the intellectual and moral vices which were bringing France to the great Revolution—corruption, self-seeking, acrid class insolence, and skinless, morbid vanity."—THE ROYAL NAVY, David Hannay, ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... good-looking, both prosperous, and who had been companions and rivals from their boyhood. Abel Behenna was dark with the gypsy darkness which the Phoenician mining wanderers left in their track; Eric Sanson—which the local antiquarian said was a corruption of Sagamanson—was fair, with the ruddy hue which marked the path of the wild Norseman. These two seemed to have singled out each other from the very beginning to work and strive together, to fight for each other and to stand back to back ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... personality, however, could no longer stand between the throne and popular opinion, for, in addition to the discontent aroused by the acts of the Princess, the centralized system of government, and the general prevalence of corruption in the provincial administration, had excited a widespread feeling of discontent, especially in the Assembly and among ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... kept up on the wages of a secret industry eked out by the sale of more or less secret wares: the poor expedients devised by a mediocre mankind for preserving an imperfect society from the dangers of moral and physical corruption, both secret too of their kind. They were spoken because Mr Verloc had felt himself really outraged; but the reticent decencies of this home life, nestling in a shady street behind a shop where the sun never shone, remained apparently ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... Melcher's signal. They were inconspicuous fellows, who bore fanciful dime-novel names—Dago Red, Izzy the Toad, Jew Mike, the Worm, and the rest—and no rustler's stronghold of the old-time Western cattle country ever boasted more formidable outlaws than they. New York is law-ridden, therefore corruption reigns; vice is capitalized, and in consequence there are men who live not only by roguery, but by violence. They hide in the crannies of the underworld; politics is their protection. At election times they do service for men high in authority; betweenwhiles they thrive on the bickerings and ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... by Thy Passion Thou Sav'st men from passions base, And by Thy Resurrection, now Dost from corruption raise. Glory to Thee we humbly bring, O Christ, who art ...
— Hymns of the Greek Church - Translated with Introduction and Notes • John Brownlie
... degraded monster, and sin is over all. Ah, my friend, I have shed many of my illusions since I came to this seething hive of misery and wrongdoing. What shall one man's life—a million men's lives—avail against the corruption, the vulgarity, and the squalor of civilisation? Sometimes I feel like a farthing rushlight in the Hall of Eblis. Selfishness is so long and life so short. And the worst of it is that everybody is so ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... and ruins, from fifty to seventy in each village, their burial Ghans and houses filled with the dead, these islands most have contained at least ten times their present population. Smallpox and the corruption of their women have been the principal causes of their destruction. The Hyda women, being good looking compared with those of the other coast tribes, have for twenty years been the special prey of the coarse libertines of a large floating ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden
... others: first she died most voluntarly, villingly, and gladly; when to the most of men Death's a king of terrors. 2ndly, she died of no sickness, frie of all pain, languor or angoisse. 3dly, hir body after death was not capable of corruption, since its absurd to think that that holy body, which carried the Lord of Glory 9 moneths, layes under the laws of corruption. For thir privelegdes he cited Jean Damascen and their pope Victor. But it was ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... over the Marconi contract, in connection with which he had also fiercely attacked Rufus Isaacs, Herbert Samuel and other ministers of the Crown. But in the witness box he accepted the word of the very ministers he had been attacking, and declared that he no longer accused them of corruption: which seemed to me a complete ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... party; and Mr. Hyndman's classical quotation, 'Non olet'—'It does not smell,' meaning that there is no difference in the flavour of Tory and Whig gold once it comes into the Socialist treasury, was a sufficient retort to the accusations of moral corruption which were levelled at him. But the Tory money job, as it was called, was none the less a huge mistake in tactics. Before it took place, the Federation loomed large in the imagination of the public and the political parties. This is conclusively proved ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... wholly in New England, it would not have lacked so many words that do duty as native-born or naturalized citizens in large sections of the United States, and among these words is the one that stands at the head of the present chapter. I know that some disdainful prig will assure me that it is but a corruption of the French "charivari," and so it is; but then "charivari" is a corruption of the low Latin "charivarium" and that is a corruption of something else, and, indeed, almost every word is a corruption of some other ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... speech, which called things by their right names and dealt in no polite periphrases; he proclaimed with heightening confidence the advent of renovation—of a moment when there would be a general revolt against corruption. As to his own destiny, he seemed to have a double and alternating prevision: sometimes he saw himself taking a glorious part in that revolt, sending forth a voice that would be heard through all Christendom, and making the dead body of the Church tremble into new life, as the body ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... born to regal honours, he would doubtless have bent the necks of his people to the yoke: As a subject, he was restless and turbulent; and though as lord Orrery says, he was above corruption, yet that virtue was certainly founded on his pride, which disdained every measure, and spurned every effort in which he ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... went on to discuss the politics of Lockmanville, and to lay bare the shameless and grotesque corruption in a town where business interests were fighting. The trouble was, apparently, that the people were beginning to rebel—they were tired of being robbed in so many different ways, and they went ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... better than the disease is questionable. The penal system, as we found it carried out in Roumania, is mild, utilitarian, and slovenly; and if all that was told us be true, we fear we must add that it is by no means free from corruption. ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... well-nigh the most fortunate birds in all the world. The men who found them were not low-browed butchers thinking only of "oil" or "fertilizer"; and they did not go to work at once to club all those helpless birds into masses of death and corruption. Those men wondered at them, laughed at them, photographed them, studied them,—and ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... alone can tell. But as to the intention of Zola in his books, I have no doubt of its righteousness. His books may be, and I suppose they often are, indecent, but they are not immoral; they may disgust, but they will not deprave; only those already rotten can scent corruption in them, and these, I think, may be deceived ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... gesture of great souls In agony, those awful columns towered Against the clouds, that city of ash and slag Assumed the grandeur of some direr Thebes Arising to the death-chant of those gods, A dreadful Order climbing from the dark Of Chaos and Corruption, threatening to take Heaven with its vast slow storm. I slept, and dreamed. And like the slow beats of some Titan heart Buried beneath immeasurable woes, The forging-hammers ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... forms of Northern poetry it is plain that there is a tendency to lyrical emphasis which is unfavourable to the chances of long narrative in verse. Very early, also, there are symptoms of the familiar literary plague, the corruption of metaphor. Both these tendencies have for their result the new school of poetry peculiar to the North and the courts of the Northern kings and earls,—the Court poetry, or poetry of the Scalds, which in its rise and progress involved ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... of William's first parliament was signalised by the discovery of a system of wholesale corruption. That every man had his price was scarcely less true in William's day than it was in the later age of Sir Robert Walpole. The discovery of one delinquent guilty of receiving money for services, real or supposed, quickly led to another, until suspicion turned ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... this does not affect his testimony respecting the origin and universal reception of the four canonical gospels. His works are very numerous, and in them all he insists with great earnestness that the gospel narratives, as also the other apostolic writings, have been received without corruption, as a sacred inheritance, from the apostolic churches. His work against Marcion, whom he accuses of employing a mutilated gospel of Luke, is particularly instructive as showing how deep and settled was the conviction ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... scaffolding black against the sky. The very earth had lost its wholesome odour; trampled into mire, fouled with builders' refuse and the noisome drift from adjacent streets, it sent forth, under the sooty rain, a smell of corruption, of all the town's uncleanliness. On this rising locality had been bestowed the title of 'Park.' Mrs. Morgan was decided in her choice of a dwelling here by the euphonious address, Merton Avenue, ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... Triennial, with annual Meetings. I leave it to every Man's Judgment, which of these wou'd be the truest Representative; wou'd soonest ease the House of that Number of Members that have Offices and Employments, or take Pensions from the Court; is least liable to Corruption; wou'd prevent exorbitant Expence, and soonest destroy the pernicious Practice of drinking and bribing for Elections, or is most conformable to ancient Custom. The Law that lately pass'd with so much Struggle for Triennial Parliaments ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman
... north from the towers of Lunnasting, the view extended nearly up the Sound, and commanded the whole island of Eastling, which perhaps obtained its name from lying east of the chief habitation of the lords of the domain, Eastling being a corruption of Eastlying. Such was the view on which Hilda Wardhill was occasionally turning her gaze, though her eyes were more frequently fixed on the pages of a large volume lying open on a dark oak reading desk fixed in ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... astonished at this revelation of your son's condition. I expected it; though assuredly, believe me, not this sudden and indisputable proof of it. But I knew that the seed was in him, and therefore I have not latterly invited him to Raynham. School, and the corruption there, will bear its fruits sooner or later. I could advise you, Thompson, what to do with him: it ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... existence: it discovers Life in putridity, vigour in decay; Dissolution even, and disintegration, Which in our dull thoughts symbolise disorder, Finds in God's thoughts irrefragable order, And admirable the manner of our corruption As of our health. It grafts upon the cypress The tree of Life—Death dies on his own dart Promising to our ashes perpetuity, And to our perishable elements Their proper imperishability; extracting Medicaments from out mortality Against too mortal cogitation; till Even of the caput mortuum we ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... Fifty and one as arrant knaves as ever lay on a hurdle! Oh, what a mass of corruption have we here! ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... soul, and inspire me with loathful thoughts leading me into crimes which at present I abhor?' and so on, till the very dread of what might happen, and the constant dwelling of the thoughts, even with horror, upon certain possibilities, or what were esteemed such, really brought about the corruption of imagination at least, which at first they had shuddered at. Moreover, there was a sort of uncertainty as to who might be infected—not unlike the overpowering dread of the plague, which made some shrink from their best-beloved with irrepressible ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... her emancipation? Equal suffrage in a few states. Has that purified our political life, as many well-meaning advocates have predicted? Certainly not. Incidentally it is really time that persons with plain, sound judgment should cease to talk about corruption in politics in a boarding-school tone. Corruption of politics has nothing to do with the morals or the laxity of morals of various political personalities. Its cause is altogether a material one. Politics is the reflex of the business and industrial world, the ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... the dead, Illa Ticci was appealed to, to protect the body, that it should not see corruption nor become lost in the earth, and that he should not allow the soul to wander aimlessly in the infinite spaces, but that it should be conducted to some secure haven of contentment, where it might receive the sacrifices and offerings which loving hands laid upon the tomb.[1] ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... expenditure wholly unexampled in history; and to their influence is to be ascribed above all, the decorum of manners, and the purity of morals, for which the society of Holland has at all times been remarkable. But though they preserved their virtue and modesty uncontaminated amid the general corruption, they were no longer able to maintain their sway. The habit which the Dutch youth had acquired, among other foreign customs, of seeking amusement abroad, rendered them less dependent for happiness on the comforts of a married ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... his age, active and sinewy. His mother had brought him up as if he had been a peasant boy. As a child he had run about barefoot and, as he grew, had spent much of his time among the mountains, sometimes with shepherds, sometimes engaged in the chase. Jeanne herself had a horror of the corruption of the French court, and strove to make her son hardy and robust, with simple tastes and appetites; and preferring exercise, hard work, and hunter's food to the life of the town. He had practised constantly in arms, and his mother regretted nothing ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... would not live alway, thus fetter'd by sin, Temptation without and corruption within: E'en the rapture of pardon is mingled with fears, And the cup ...
— Elsie at the World's Fair • Martha Finley
... brought the Court to Christchurch, and them to Chilton. I have had few in whom to confide. And you—remember what you have been to me, and do not wonder if I trust you more than others. Thou didst go down to the very grave with me, didst pluck me out of the pit. Corruption could not touch a creature so lovely and so innocent Thou didst walk unharmed through the charnel-house. Remembering this, as I ever must remember, can you wonder that you are nearer to me than all the rest ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... despotism." He saw liberty attacked in "the effort to place capital on an equal footing with—if not above—labor in the structure of government." It is never to be forgotten that neither he nor his Cabinet officers were ever upbraided for corruption; [Footnote: It is true that Lincoln's first war minister, Simon Cameron, was accused of smoothing the way to certain fat war contracts, a wit suggesting Simony as the term, but no charges were really brought. Lincoln ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... ordinary business agent, though he may be convinced of the corruption of his firm, will take good care to keep this fact from the ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... Ember days, a corruption from Latin Quatuor Tempora (four times). "The purpose of their introduction, besides the general one intended by all prayer and fasting, was to thank God for the gifts of nature, to teach men to make use of them in moderation, and to assist ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... imprisonment or trial in a prejudiced court. A bill of attainder is an English term, meaning an act which without trial inflicts death for treason: attainder of treason cannot in the United States work "corruption of blood" so as to prevent a person from transmitting lands to his descendants. An ex-post-facto law makes an act criminal or penal which was not so at the time it was committed. A United States office-holder, wishing to accept a present or distinction offered him by ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... notoriety of his public corruption, Lord Vargrave was secretly suspected by some of personal dishonesty,—suspected of selling his State information to stock-jobbers, of having pecuniary interests in some of the claims he urged with so obstinate ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... smiled at once, as the thought struck her that while she was mourning over other people's corruption she was herself not untouched. She detected herself admitting some dislike to the lady because she so occupied Rollo that he had left off supplying his mother with fishes' livers and seal-fat for oil. The best season had passed:— she had spoken to him several ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... who is believed to come down the chimney laden with good things for those children whose conduct had been exemplary during the past year; for peccant babies the stocking held a birch rod. Krishkinkle is a corruption of Christ-kindlein or ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... am well aware, grew out of the French word contre danse; indicating the regular contraposition of male and female partners in the first arrangement of the dancers. The word country dance was therefore originally a corruption; but, having once arisen and taken root in the language, it is far better to retain it in its colloquial form; better, I mean, on the general, principle concerned in such cases. For it is, in fact, by such corruptions, by offsets upon an old stock, arising through ignorance or mispronunciation ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... in Cornwall, May-day seems to have been known by the name of Furry Day. Perhaps a corruption of "Flora's Day." People wore hawthorn in their hats, and danced hand-in-hand through the town to the sound of a fiddle. This particular performance ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... weighed it, measured it, and sounded it to its uttermost depths, too steadfast and too simple not to bow his head before mysteries, all the while acknowledging his ignorance. "If there were no darkness," says he, "man would not feel his corruption; if there were no light, man would have no hope of remedy. Thus it is not only quite right, but useful, for us that God should be concealed in part, and revealed in part, since it is equally dangerous for man to know God without knowing his own misery, and to know his own misery ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... in London are rather apt to take our police for granted. Occasionally, in a mood of complacency, we boast of the finest police force in the world; at other times, we hint darkly at corruption and brutality among a gang of men too clever, too unscrupulous to be found out. We associate Scotland Yard with detectives—miraculous creations of imaginative writers—forgetting that the Criminal Investigation Department ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... experience, adroitness and knowledge of men, he aspired to a task which surpassed his strength.' —Ihne. 4-6. By the Sempronian Laws of C. Gracchus 123 B.C. exclusive judicial rights had been given to the Equites, as a counterpoise to the power of the Senate. The corruption of the Equites (as Judices) was flagrant, and Drusus proposed to transfer the judicial functions to a mixed body of 300 Senators and 300 Knights, the selected Knights to be included in the now attenuated ranks of the Senate. 14. ad dandam civitatem Italiae. The ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... the Republican candidate. To achieve so desirable an end, its leaders are ready to coalesce, here with the Douglas, and there with the Breckinridge faction of that very Democratic party of whose violations of the Constitution, corruption, and dangerous limberness of principle they have been the lifelong denouncers. In point of fact, then, it is perfectly plain that we have only two parties in the field: those who favor the extension of slavery, and those who oppose ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... enough, good woman, I cannot listen to you any more; many patients to get through this morning—never do to hear them talk—go and take your draught.—The Catarrh woman made way for a long train of victims of corruption, cases of fever, dropsy, scrofula, and some disorders peculiar to women, detailed without any ceremony before young students. This melancholy review of human infirmities was suddenly interrupted by ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... loyalty. The life so loved of God, so provided for, and in such close communion with the Eternal is not, can not be the creature of the day, and this assurance stands firm in face of even death and the horrible corruption of the body. The psalmist refuses to believe that he is to dwell in the horrible under-world forever—either himself or any of God's believers. "Thou must not, thou wilt not leave my soul in sheol, thou must not, thou wilt not suffer thy loved ones to see the pit." To this man it is incredible, ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... caution, so that it must be a very unusual thing to find one who, merely out of regard to his virtue, and for his being esteemed a singularly good man, was raised up to so great a dignity, degenerate into corruption and vice; and if such a thing should fall out, for man is a changeable creature, yet, there being few priests, and these having no authority but what rises out of the respect that is paid them, nothing of great consequence to the public can proceed ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... temporary conveyances from their friends and patrons, on condition of their being restored and cancelled after the election. By this scandalous fraud the intention of the legislature was frustrated, the dignity of parliament prostituted, the example of perjury and corruption extended, and the vengeance of heaven set at defiance. Through this infamous channel the ministry had it in their power to thrust into parliament a set of venal beggars, who, as they depended upon their bounty, would always be obsequious to their will, and vote according to direction, without ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... advocated during the middle of the nineteenth century as "American Lutheranism" was a misnomer, for in reality it was neither American nor Lutheran, but a sectarian corruption of both. ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... all its many forms she appreciated luxury, even entertaining a kindness for that necessary handmaid of luxury—waste. Appreciated these the more ardently, that, with birth-pangs at the beginning of each human life, death-pangs and the corruption of the inevitable grave at the close of each, all this lapping, meanwhile, of the doomed flesh in exaggerations of ease and splendour seemed to her among the very finest ironies of the great comedy ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... burdens of the government were increased by a spirit of extravagance, speculation, and even of corruption. Washington wrote, "Unless extortion, forestalling, and other practices which have ... become exceedingly prevalent can meet with proper checks, we must inevitably sink under such a load of accumulated oppressions." The whole cost of the war is estimated at one hundred and ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... not Auerbach, in his Poet and Merchant, who said, "The lovelier a thing is in its perfection, the more terrible it becomes through its corruption"? and ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... and eighth chapter of Romans, a believe I agree with thee; but lately I have had stronger feelings than I used to have about the distinction between defective religion and infant religion. The full feeling of our corruption must certainly precede the full reception of the Christian's joy; and I believe we ought not to be too anxious to reduce to regular theory what is so much above our finite understandings as the work of ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... I felt at home with him immediately, had prepared the way for my lectures on effective voting in San Francisco. He was an even greater enthusiast than I. "America needs the reform more than Australia," he used to say. But if America needs effective voting to check corruption, Australia needs it just as much to prevent the degradation of political life in the Commonwealth and States to the level of American politics. My lectures in San Francisco, as elsewhere in America, were well attended, and even ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... eyes had seen, her ears had heard, all those disgusting details, too revolting to be portrayed; for in drunkenness there is no royal road—no salvo for greatness of mind, refinement of taste, or tenderness of feeling. All alike are merged in the corruption ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... appeared quite regular, healthy and strong. As a rule, too, the women had better teeth than the men. No doubt the admixture of bad blood in the Tibetan race contributes a great deal to the unevenness and malformation of their teeth, and if we add to this the fact that the corruption of the blood, even apart from disease, is very great owing to their peculiar laws of marriage, it is not surprising that the services of dentists are everywhere required. The teeth of Tibetans are generally of such a brittle nature that the dentist of ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... ought to belong to that brave girl below. I do not grudge it to her, for I have you. We two shall be together through the ages—for ever and for ever. Heart of my heart, you have striven manfully and well, and if you did not altogether succeed in saving my flesh from premature corruption, be satisfied in that you have ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... to be spent in it, and the risk of frustration or capture. Often they seduce one of the household to let them in, or hand out the things they want. Any such gang, however, must soon have become convinced that at Miss Tempest's corruption was impossible, and that they could avail themselves solely of their ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... to stay at home; and at home he stayed, cultivating his emotions. Ah, those emotions! If Tyson had been simply and passionately vicious there might have been some chance for him. But sentimentalism, subtlest source of moral corruption, worked in him like that hectic disease that flames in the colors of life, flouting its wretched victim with an extravagant hope. The deadly taint was spreading, stirred into frightful activity by the shock of his wife's illness. He ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... almost two years after "Une Vie," that is to say, about 1885. Discussed and criticised as it has been, it is in reality a satire, an indignant outburst against the corruption of society which in the story enables an ex-soldier, devoid of conscience, honor, even of the commonest regard for others, to gain wealth and rank. The purport of the story is clear to those who recognize the ideas that governed Maupassant's work, ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... established in the world has not been such, as to lead to any confident expectation that their foundation is laid on a sufficiently secure subsoil of public spirit, morality, and intelligence. On the contrary, they exhibit examples of personal corruption and of political profligacy as fine as any hotbed of despotism has ever produced; while they fail in the primary duty of the administration of justice, as none but an effete despotism ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... firmly decided To spend his whole life In promoting their welfare, In striving to succour The poor and afflicted. The demon of malice Too long over Russia Has scattered its hate; The shadow of serfdom Has hidden all paths 180 Save corruption and lying. Another song now Will arise throughout Russia; The angel of freedom And mercy is flying Unseen o'er our heads, And is calling strong spirits To follow the road Which is ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... "It is corruption!" cried the baron, who had no idea who Victoria was, and a very slim notion of what Mr. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Fact, and not suffer ourselves to be led away by Opinion. In order to explain what I mean, I shall give an Instance. All the World knows that not only the vulgar, but the learned, were for many Ages in a constant Error about Corruption, and really believed that the Heat of the Sun, and even animal Heat produced Worms, Maggots, and other living Creatures. Many grave Writers carried the Thing farther, and told us of Rats, Mice, and other Creatures produced out of the Slime ...
— The Shepherd of Banbury's Rules to Judge of the Changes of the Weather, Grounded on Forty Years' Experience • John Claridge
... 168.).—If SELEUCUS will refer to Mr. Chamber's Collection of Scottish Ballads, he will find there the whole story under the name of Lammilsin, of which Lonkin appears to me to be a corruption. In the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 46, Saturday, September 14, 1850 • Various
... our duty in a particular case is very often nothing but endeavouring to explain it away. Thus those courses, which, if men would fairly attend to the dictates of their own consciences, they would see to be corruption, excess, oppression, uncharitableness; these are refined upon—things were so and so circumstantiated—great difficulties are raised about fixing bounds and degrees, and thus every moral obligation whatever may be evaded. Here ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... "Macbenach" meant the "Great Son of the Sun." I at once resolved to make the most of my time in learning as much as possible of this dialect from these men, because they said it was the tongue spoken by the people of Iximaya and the surrounding region. It appeared to me to be merely a provincial corruption, or local peculiarism, of the great body of the Maya language, with which I was already acquainted; and, in the course of the next day's conversation, I found that I could acquire it ...
— Memoir of an Eventful Expedition in Central America • Pedro Velasquez
... bishop approved of his remarks, and once more promised him his protection. It is true that the state of voluntary poverty in which a person possesses nothing whatever, has its inconveniences; and where does human corruption fail to find such? But it cannot be denied that the state in question is very favorable to salvation, since it is based upon the counsel of Jesus Christ; and that, on the contrary, the possession of property is dangerous for salvation, since He Himself has said emphatically: "How hardly shall they ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... in which a man of big ideas and fine ideals wars against graft and corruption. A most satisfactory love affair terminates ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... Bonaparte suffers, himself to be teased with impunity is no insignificant favourite, particularly when, like this Cardinal, he unites cunning with devotion, craft with superstition; and is as accessible to corruption as ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... diminish instead of swelling his numbers. He devoted himself, at the sacrifice of everything else, to gain the Pope to acknowledge him as king. He appeared the inflexible chastiser of simony and ecclesiastical corruption. The very day of his coronation he had obtained the dismissal of a simoniacal deacon. Everywhere he compelled the nominees of Henry to fly, and filled their places with zealous champions of the canonical discipline. At Constance and Zurich he drove the irregularly appointed bishops from their sees: ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... time and sadness and scepticism and everything devilish as that station was: it looked as if it had always been raining there ever since the creation of the world. The water streamed from the soaking wood of it as if it were not water at all, but some loathsome liquid corruption of the wood itself; as if the solid station were eternally falling to pieces and pouring away in filth. It took me nearly ten minutes to find a man in the station. When I did he was a dull one, and when I ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... that was his portion, but he shook his head. "No, Stephen, my work is over. I could only help my dear master, and that is at an end. Dean Colet is gone, Sir Thomas is gone, what more have I to do here? Old ties are broken, old bonds severed. Crime and corruption were protested against in vain; and, now that judgment is beginning at the house of God, I am thankful that I am not like to ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... it being thus diligently ignored, Bushido itself could long remain free from a thousand and one evils of which money is the root. This is sufficient reason for the fact that our public men have long been free from corruption; but, alas, how fast plutocracy is making its way ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... freedom and safety, but to spare, and to bestow upon the solidest and sublimest points of controversy and new invention, it betokens us not degenerated, nor drooping to a fatal decay, but casting off the old and wrinkled skin of corruption to outlive these pangs and wax young again, entering the glorious ways of Truth and prosperous virtue destined to become great and honourable in these latter ages. Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant Nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson |
