"Degenerate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... we reached the dizzy height of the Sixth Reader, were presented to us samples of the best English ever written. If you can find, up in the garret, a worn and frayed old Reader, take it down and turn its pages over. See if anything in these degenerate days compares in vital strength and beauty with the story of the boy that climbed the Natural Bridge, carving his steps in the soft limestone with his pocket knife. You cannot read it without a thrill. ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... back old Turnspit into the remotest corner under the backstairs of the Dark Ages. I have alluded to his alleged descendants, as pointed out to my observation in boyhood; but they were an effete and degenerate race, purposeless, and wallowing much with the pigs, whom their grandsires would have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... the only things worth while, in this world, and I purpose to write briefly of a man, who, though living in these, our own, so-called, degenerate days, would have found a perfect setting in "the spacious times of great Elizabeth." He would have been a worthy companion of Raleigh, half-pirate and half-poet. He had in his time but one soul-kinsman, and that man was at once England's shame and glory, embalmed forever in the ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... Socialistic Labour policy. "A member of an Imperial Parliament is an Imperialist in spite of himself. A party which concerns itself with sectional interests only will soon cease to be a party; it will degenerate into a group, and as such it cannot hope to receive serious backing ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... O degenerate Italy! exclaims Dante; land without affections, without principle, without faith in any one good thing! here was a man who could not hear the sweet sound of a fellow-citizen's voice without feeling his heart gush towards ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... satirical than the women; but, on the other hand, they had far more of the distinguished bearing and graceful urbanity of the grands seigneurs of the olden time. The emigre nobles would have gazed with unutterable horror at their degenerate descendants of the present day; but these young, booted, bearded, cigar-smoking scions of la jeune France would have run round their courteous, but, perhaps, rather slow ancestors, in all ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... addition to the heart, A, Plate 1, and great bloodvessels, G C B, contains the oesophagus, bronchi, &c. The ribs are the true enclosures of thoracic space, and, generally, in mammalian forms, they fail or degenerate at that region of the trunk which is not pulmonary or respiratory. In human anatomy, a teleological reason is given for this—namely, that of the ribs being mechanically subservient to the function of respiration alone. But the transcendental anatomists interpret this fact otherwise, and ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... and never equaled, unless perhaps by Virgil. Yet the Doctor has little or nothing to say upon this copious theme, but talks something about the unfitness of the English language for blank verse, and how apt it is, in the mouths of some readers, to degenerate into declamation. Oh! I could thrash his old jacket till I made his pension ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... they? and where art thou, My country? On thy voiceless shore The heroic lay is tuneless now— The heroic bosom beats no more! And must thy lyre, so long divine, Degenerate ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... horizontal hydraulic wheels. A harvest of twenty for one was expected; and, as if that produce were but moderate, I was asked whether corn yielded more in Prussia and in Poland. By an error generally prevalent under the tropics, the produce of grain is supposed to degenerate in advancing towards the equator, and harvests are believed to be more abundant in northern climates. Since calculations have been made on the progress of agriculture in the different zones, and on the temperatures under the influence of which corn will flourish, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... declamation which had no reference to realities. Attempts had been made—the last, only a few years ago, by Cassiodorus—to establish Christian schools in Rome, but without success, so profoundly were the ancient intellectual habits rooted in this degenerate people. The long resistance to the new religion was at an end, but Romans, even while confessing that the gods were demons, could not cast off their affection for the mythology and history of their glorious time. Thus Basil had spent his schooldays ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... to Canadian forest warfare on snow-shoes, with spruce boughs and snow-drifts for beds. But let us not anticipate. We must be content to accompany them on that day to the Sillery settlement, a march quite sufficient for us degenerate Canadians ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... such women, but he had not thought they existed; they belonged to the heroic ages, past now and dead. Here, in the midst of the days he considered so degenerate, he had found the very ideal of ...
— The Coquette's Victim • Charlotte M. Braeme
... difficulty to sheep and goats, and cattle seem to be entirely immune. It runs a variable course and usually produces the death of the animal affected with it. It is characterized by the formation of neoplasms, or nodules, of connective tissue, which degenerate into ulcers, from which exude a peculiar discharge. It is accompanied with a variable degree of fever, according to the rapidity of its course. It is subject to various complications of the lymphatic glands, of the lungs, of the testicles, of the internal organs, ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... of Corsica, where men think sorrowfully of the wilder communes to the south, and raise their eyebrows at the very mention of Corte and Sartene—where, at all events, the women have for husbands, men—and not degenerate Pisan vine-snippers. ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... to the beginning of the present century the property or farm on the opposite side of the Almond, above Caerlowrie, was designated by a name, having apparently the Celtic "battle" noun as a prefix in its composition—viz., Cat-elbock. This fine old Celtic name has latterly been changed for the degenerate and unmeaning ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... The vilest inclinations, the basest actions, succeeded my amiable amusements and even obliterated the very remembrance of them. I must have had, in spite of my good education, a great propensity to degenerate, else the declension could not have followed with such ease and rapidity, for never did so promising a Caesar so quickly ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... I think I will join you in a pipe," said the lieutenant, pulling out a tin case, in which he kept the blackest of little cutty pipes. "In days of old our ancestors loved to fight—now we degenerate souls love to smoke the pipe ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... psychology on reactions is that it keeps us "close to the ground", and prevents our discussions from sailing off into the clouds of picturesque but fanciful interpretation. Psychology is very apt to degenerate into a game of blowing bubbles, unless we pin ourselves down to hard-headed ways of thinking. The notion of a reaction is of great value here, just because it is so hard-headed and concrete. Whenever ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... appropriate type. The etymology, the primitive and derivative, the general and special, the proper and tropical significations of a word; its meaning before the courts, in the temples, at the games, among the Roman mob or the Roman exquisites; its anti-classical, golden-augustan, neo-degenerate or patristic use—all this is given in a regular order, by changes of type and an ingenious system of abbreviations, so that the whole origin, history, value and application of any Latin word may be taken in, almost at a glance. The ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... concerning the gospel's fleeting westward. Sometimes I have had such thoughts, Why may not that be the place of the New Jerusalem? But you have handsomely and fully cleared me from such odd conceits. But what, I pray? Shall our English there degenerate, and join themselves with Gog and Magog? We have heard lately divers ways, that our people there have no hope of the conversion of the natives. And, the very week after I received your last letter, I saw a letter, written from New England, discoursing ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... there at times to put one piece into another? Are not his discussions and monologues too long? Does not his own exuberant genius become a fatigue to himself and to his readers? Are not, perhaps, his characters too real? and do they not often degenerate, without motive, from the sublime into the ridiculous? Would Hamlet have appeared less interesting or less mad had he not spoken indelicate and cruel words to Ophelia? Would Laertes have seemed less grieved on hearing of ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... the wrath of O'Iwa San brought this Cho[u]bei. Does not Iemon, the one-time neighbour Kazuma, recognize Cho[u]bei? And yet all comes through Iemon. Child, wife, means of life, all these have failed Cho[u]bei. In the jail robbed of everything, degenerate in mind and body, Cho[u]bei has found refuge at nights in the booths of street vendors; on cold wet nights, even in the mouths of the filthy drains. Fortunate is he when fine weather sends him to rest on the river banks. To seek rest; not ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... This degenerate scion had committed a farther offence against the head and source of their gentility, by the intermarriage of their representative with Judith, heiress of Oliver Bradshawe, of Highley Park, whose arms, the same with those of Bradshawe the regicide, they ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... exceptional care; and that with high feeding and artificial appliances comes vastly increased liability to disease, which may practically annihilate the race. But then the race, like the bursted boiler, could not be said to wear out, while if left to ordinary conditions, and allowed to degenerate back into a more natural if less useful state, its hold on life would evidently be increased rather ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... perhaps, of flattery. 'Twould scarcely here be out of place If Edward Griffin's smiling face I should present in colors true— In good Samaritanic view; The patron of Joe Lee, whose name Is known to histrionic fame; Who play'd at Shylock on the stage, When tragedy was more the rage Than in this sad degenerate age. And where art thou, my friend, George Story, A man of yore, though not yet hoary? The even tenor of thy way Hast thou maintain'd for many a day; They tell us within human range That mortal things are given to change, It may be so, yet thou art still But little changed, ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... enjoy or understand or tolerate, things that fill them, therefore, with envy and perplexity—such things as pleasure, beauty, delicacy, leisure. In the cant of modern talk you will find them call everything that is not crude and forcible in life "degenerate." But back to the very earliest writings, in the most bloodthirsty outpourings of the Hebrew prophets, for example, you will find that at the base of the warrior spirit is hate for more complicated, for more refined, for more beautiful and ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... it remains to be said that what is really great in Veronese is the sobriety of his imagination and the solidity of his workmanship. Amid so much that is distracting, he never loses command over his subject; nor does he degenerate into fulsome rhetoric. ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... proud, insolent, and needlessly rich. He had a passion for gambling, horse-racing, dog-fighting, and indulged in the churchly habit of doing that which he ought not and leaving undone that which he should have done. He was worse than that degenerate scion of a proud ancestry, who a-kneiping went with his lady friends in the Cincinnati fountain, after the opera, on a wager. He whipped a man who admitted he did not have a copy of the "Iliad" in his house; publicly destroyed the record of a charge against one of his friends; and when his wife ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... man of some intelligence—witness his grasp of the secret of successful plough-making (none for the home market!)—had often considered this important proposition of phlegm. People said England was becoming degenerate and hysterical, growing soft, and nervous, and towny, and all the rest of it. In his view there was a good deal of bosh about that! "Look," he would say, "at the weight that chauffeurs put on! Look at the House of Commons, and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... stepping only upon the metal. In some cases the bridegroom descends to his boat at the landing-stage on each of these eight excursions, thus showing that he is free to come and go as he pleases and has no entanglements. In this degenerate age the ceremony terminates with this act, but for the feasting and speech-making which fill up the evening hours. But in the old days, as we are credibly informed by those who have been eye-witnesses, the ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... the fact that they have fallen from a higher. In such cases, however, there is some danger lest the beauty and appropriateness of the conception should entice us to receive it on insufficient evidence. The fact that some plants in certain adverse circumstances tend to degenerate, and in certain favourable circumstances to attain a higher type, is well known in natural history; but it seems questionable whether these changes ever take place to such an extent, and in such a uniform method, as must be assumed ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... am well aware that this custom of adorning graves with flowers prevails in other countries besides England. Indeed, in some it is much more general, and is observed even by the rich and fashionable; but it is then apt to lose its simplicity and to degenerate into affectation. Bright, in his travels in Lower Hungary, tells of monuments of marble and recesses formed for retirement, with seats placed among bowers of greenhouse plants, and that the graves generally are covered ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... "Dear Fanny," and it ended with "yours truly." "—Yours truly—mine truly—and how kind to write at all!" Now it so happened that Vaudemont, having never merged the art of the penman into that rapid scrawl into which people, who are compelled to write hurriedly and constantly, degenerate, wrote a remarkably good hand,—bold, clear, symmetrical—almost too good a hand for one who was not to make money by caligraphy. And after Fanny had got the words by heart, she stole gently to a cupboard and took forth ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... heel, and strode away without another word. Long after he was out of sight the chaplain stood fixed in the same attitude of panic-stricken, helpless despondency. By my faith! even in these degenerate days, we have petrifying influences left that may match ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... is often a snare to us. It calls us to certain occupations that dissipate the mind, and that may degenerate into mere amusement. It is for this reason that St. Chrysostom says that nothing is so important as to keep an exact proportion between the interior source of virtue and the external practise of it; else, like the foolish virgins, we shall find that ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... with nothing to remind me of Derrick's stay but his pictures which still hung on the wall of our sitting-room. I made him promise to write a full, true, and particular account of his return, a bona-fide old-fashioned letter, not the half-dozen lines of these degenerate days; and about a week later I received ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... not to sink. Another of her principles was that God put us into the world to be good, to be unselfish. Another one, again, was as follows: We must give account for our talents. Now, to allow the talent of beauty, for instance, to degenerate into what it is likely to do in your case, Verena, is distinctly wicked. To allow you to sink when you might rise is sinful. To allow you to be selfish when you might be unselfish is also wrong. Your talents, and the talents of Pauline, and ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... of a dark drab colour and the surface of the newly painted doors bore a strong resemblance to corduroy cloth, and from the bottom corners of nearly every panel there was trickling down a large tear, as if the doors were weeping for the degenerate condition of the decorative arts. But these tears caused to throb of pity in the bosom of Misery: neither did the corduroy-like surface of the work grate upon his feelings. He perceived them not. He saw only that there was a Lot of Work done and his ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... and during his stay at Miss Vane's he had taken much council with himself as to whether he ought not to get a new suit with his first money instead of sending it home. Now he had solved the question, after sending the money home, by the discovery of a place on a degenerate street, in a neighbourhood of Chinese laundries, with the polite name of Misfit Parlours, where they professed to sell the failures of the leading tailors of Boston, New York, and Chicago. After long study of the window of the Parlours, Lemuel ventured within one day, and was ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... the universe, who, pursuant to the dictates of his wisdom, dispenses both light and darkness, and knows how to check the impetuous torrent of human passions, would not permit mankind, though abandoned to the utmost corruptions, to degenerate into absolute barbarity, and brutalize themselves, in a manner, by the extinction of the first principles of the law of nature, as is seen in several savage nations. Such an obstacle would have too much retarded the rapid progress, promised by him to the ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... a blush for every twig, and a drop curtain for every branch. Thank God for the Penrhyn graft! Let us hope that it will do as much good as its fairest flower has already done the degenerate scion of all the Dartmouths. But, to the castle! I would get through—I mean, I would gaze upon its ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... the debased Cairene pronunciation, Mudemmes. A legend says that, before the days of Pharaoh (always he of Moses), the Egyptians lived on pistachios which made them a witty, lively race. But the tyrant remarking that the domestic ass, which eats beans, is degenerate from the wild ass, uprooted the pistachio-trees and compelled the lieges to feed on beans which made them a heavy, gross, cowardly people fit only for burdens. Badawis deride "beaneaters" although they do not loathe ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... to that, I should distinguish,' returned the doctor. 'The mother is; not so the children. The mother was the last representative of a princely stock, degenerate both in parts and fortune. Her father was not only poor, he was mad: and the girl ran wild about the residencia till his death. Then, much of the fortune having died with him, and the family being quite extinct, the girl ran wilder than ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dost think, degenerate son of Odin, Unmanly pining for a foolish maiden, And all the weary train of love-sick follies, Will move a bosom that is steel'd by virtue? Thou dotest! Dote and weep, in tears swim ever; But by thy father's arm, by Odin's honour, Haste, ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... of the morality of good sense is, that it tends to degenerate into cynicism, either of the indolent variety which commended itself to Chesterfield, or of the more vehement sort, of which Swift's writings are the most powerful embodiment. A shrewd man of the ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... for you yet," she said. "I was afraid that you were a very degenerate Osbaldistone. But what brings you to Cub Hall? I suppose you could have stayed away if ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... laborious sport of hunting. And if the laws of etiquette and Court manners can act on the spinal marrow to such an extent as to affect the pelvis of kings, to soften their cerebral tissue, and so degenerate the race, what deep-seated mischief, physical and moral, must result in schoolboys from the constant lack ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... morning chill and concluded, likewise fasting, in the noonday heat. Still, it would scarcely have distressed those sturdy limbs, well developed and preserved by Roman training, never permitted by him to degenerate into effeminacy. And as his fine countenance and well- knit frame testified, Marcus AEmilius Victorinus inherited no small share of genuine Roman blood. His noble name might be derived through clientela, and his lineage had a Gallic intermixture; but the true Quirite ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... locutions blacklisted herein are always to be reprobated as universal outlaws. Excepting in the case of capital offenders—expressions ancestrally vulgar or irreclaimably degenerate—absolute proscription is possible as to serious composition only; in other forms the writer must rely on his sense of values and the fitness of things. While it is true that some colloquialisms and, with less of license, even some slang, may be ...
— Write It Right - A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults • Ambrose Bierce
... formally approved; and while she was meeting Giovanni almost daily, and dancing with him almost every evening, her father was slowly negotiating an appropriate marriage for her with the eldest son of certain friends who were almost as clerical and intransigent as himself. The young man was a limp degenerate, with a pale face, a weak mouth, and an inherited form of debility which made him fall asleep wherever he was, if nothing especial happened to keep his eyes open; he not only always slept from ten at night till nine the next morning with the regularity of an idiot, but he went to sleep wherever ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... in a country once so famous both for arts and arms, that (however degenerate at present) it still deserves your attention and reflection. View it therefore with care, compare its former with its present state, and examine into the causes of its rise and its decay. Consider it classically and politically, and do not run through it, as too many of your young countrymen ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... life that is the mark of great poetry. He does not demand of poetry an orthodox code of morals, but he does contend that great poetry marches along the path that leads to abundance of life, and not to a feeble and degenerate egotism. ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... lot might be written about how the Knights of Malta became very great, then very small and degenerate, and finally were pushed into the discard by the relentless hands of time and public opinion. Valetta has quite a number of people living there besides the soldiers and sailors, some 80,000 I believe, but most of them are tired of climbing the steep streets, many of which contain stairs. Lord Byron, ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... cheek-bones, a da Vinci smile, rather depraved, while the coarse language and shrill laughter destroyed this harmony that was in their faces when in repose. Even in the dregs of the people, in those large-headed, beady-eyed creatures with their bestial faces, their thick-set, squat bodies, those degenerate descendants of the most noble of all peoples, even in that thick, fetid muddiness there were strange phosphorescent gleams, like will-o'-the-wisps dancing over a swamp: marvelous glances, minds subtle and brilliant, a subtle electricity ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... of type two are normal in appearance, but the pollen-mother-cells degenerate before pollen grains are formed. A comparison of the degenerate pollen-mother-cells of this plant with ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... few other instances, the polemical zeal natural to men who had sacrificed their worldly all for the sake of religion, was observed to degenerate among the refugees into personal quarrels disgraceful to themselves and injurious to their noble cause, it ought on the other hand to be observed, that some of the firmest and most affectionate friendships of the age ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... of Cairo," Margaret said. "It seems to me so vulgar and degenerate. The native quarter is just what it sets out to be, no ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... held many a stag at bay, killed many a hare, and otherwise risen to the position of a Caesar among dogs. Care was taken that he should not mate indiscriminately, so that his descendants' blood should not degenerate. On the other hand, poor Lurcher bestowed his affections wherever he would and his brood became populous. He was the progenitor of all turn-spits in France; a variety which became common enough to form at last a race in themselves. They show more readiness ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine
... A bully, a degenerate, a thug of the city, a brigand of the country, a horse thief of the western plains, attacks a weaker and unprepared victim. A man with red blood in his veins sees the assault, and attacks the attacker with strength enough to save the victim, arrest the disturber of the ...
— The Spirit of Lafayette • James Mott Hallowell
... apprehension; and the day was appointed at some distance of time, that the treater might have leisure to compose certain pickles and confections which were not to be found among the culinary preparations of these degenerate days. With a view of rendering the physician's taste more conspicuous, and extracting from it the more diversion, Peregrine proposed that some foreigners should partake of the banquet; and the task being left to his care and discretion, he actually bespoke the company of a French marquis, an ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... heedlessly on my desk was—what should it be but the little morocco case, empty now, in which our Francesca keeps her dead mother's engagement ring,—the mother who died when she was a wee child. Truly a very pretty modern ballad to be sung in these unromantic, degenerate days! ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... power; or they are clannish, and choose those who are like themselves,—the temperate marrying the temperate, and the courageous the courageous. The two classes thrive and flourish at first, but they soon degenerate; the one become mad, and the other feeble and useless. This would not have been the case, if they had both originally held the same notions about the honourable and the good; for then they never would have allowed the ...
— Statesman • Plato
... whether, beyond all private benefit and pleasure, their chief result has not been the improvement and refinement of the human race. But, it must be confessed, the letter of introduction is too much fallen and degenerate. Convenience, depredation, the compassing of by-ends, rather than any loving communion, is too often its intent. It savors less of the paradise of affection than of the vulgar wilderness of the world. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... controlling influence, it becomes gradually eclipsed, while its satellites fly from their prescribed bounds and chaos and darkness return. The sceptre, stretched over realms so wide, requires stronger hands than those of degenerate Carlovingians. It breaks asunder. Functionaries become sovereigns, with hereditary, not delegated, right to own the people, to tax their roads and rivers, to take tithings of their blood and sweat, to harass them in all the relations ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... profligate son; but the only trace of the real greatness of the family importance thus swept away is in the motto inscribed on the point of old Inigo's water-gate, towards the street: 'Fidei coticula crux.' It is sad for all good royalists to reflect that it was not the rabid Roundhead, but a degenerate Cavalier, who sold ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... born Chinese ladies in holiday attire are seated in a garden of potted plants on the river's bank, drinking tea, flirting their fans, and doubtless talking over the latest Court gossip. Nearby is a willow, not the stiff, ugly tree now seen upon tame and degenerate imitations of real old China pottery, but a graceful weeping-willow, whose drooping branches sweep the opposite shore, as sublimely indifferent to distance as the untrammeled ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... Fairbridge was like an insect, born with the conviction that it was an elephant. There was at once something ludicrous, and magnificent, and terrible about it. It had the impressiveness of the abnormal and prehistoric. In one sense, it was prehistoric. It was as a giant survivor of a degenerate species. ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... written, why did hosts of grammarians and interpreters flock in, who never attain to any sound notion either of grammar or interpretation? Why did the physical sciences never arrive at any true knowledge or make any real progress? Why did poetry droop and languish? Why did history degenerate into fable? Why did words lose their power of expression? Why were ages of external greatness and magnificence attended by all the signs of decay in the ...
— Phaedrus • Plato
... portion of the population of India, and to them Benares—or as they delight to call it, Kasee the Splendid, the Glorious City—is the most sacred spot on earth. They say, indeed, it is not built on the earth, but on a point of Shiva's trident. They assert that at one time it was of gold, but in this degenerate age it has been turned into stone and clay. In their belief the Ganges is sacred through its entire course, but as it flows past the sacred city its cleansing efficacy is supposed to be vastly increased. The rites performed ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... like a rude child as the woman slowly, with shapeless red fingers, untied her bonnet-strings and revealed herself as something at once agelessly primitive and most modernly degenerate. The frizzed thicket of coarse hair which broke into a line of tiny, quite circular curls round her low forehead made Ellen remember side-streets round Gorgie and Dalry, which the midday hooters ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... must belong to the race of the invincible and the indomitable, to persevere now in the rugged path of renunciation and of duty. An indescribable gangrene of material prosperity threatens to cause public honesty to degenerate into rottenness. Oh! what happiness to be banished, to be disgraced, to be ruined,—is it not, brave workmen? Is it not, worthy peasants, driven from France, who have no roof to shelter you, and no shoes to your feet? What happiness to eat black bread, to lie on a mattress thrown on the ground, ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... built by the same kind of people who cut their rock houses in some of the canons in Mexico," said Briscoe; "only those are a degenerate set, and their cells or dwellings are very rough and primitive. These people must have been greatly in advance. There: I want to get to work again. There must be a way into that temple place ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... shiftless, thriftless life and seems satisfied merely to exist. He has, unfortunately, inherited more of the baser than the better qualities of his ancestors, and, to all appearance, is destined to further degenerate. The American is the last comer and has already pushed civilization and commerce into the remotest corners and, as ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... careless, as if the wearer informed the garment or the garment explained the wearer. It is well known that "Fashions are the external expression of the mental states of a country, and that if its men and women degenerate in their character, their fashions become absurd." Surely then, a sympathy which can affect a nation has some influence upon the individual. Sunna had noticed even in her childhood that her dresses were lucky and unlucky, ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Degenerate in muscles and vitality, the skunk must forego all strenuous hunts and trust to craft and sudden springs, or else content himself with the humble fare of insects, helpless young birds, and poor, easily confused mice. The flesh ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... 15: I am not one of those who think the age degenerate: but certainly the rigid manly character of old times is melted into one of elegance and comparative softness. Perhaps the change is for the better, as I think no virtue has been lost in the transfusion. Be that as it ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... The name ungracious ever stuck. To high exploits his brother grew, Put many a stag at bay, and tore Full many a trophy from the boar; In short, him first, of all his crew, The world as Caesar knew; And care was had, lest, by a baser mate, His noble blood should e'er degenerate. Not so with him of lower station, Whose race became a countless nation— The common turnspits throughout France— Where danger is, they don't advance— Precisely the Antipodes Of what we call ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... The list was produced—the names called over, and only forty-five monks presented themselves. By order of the viceroy, the five who had broken through the rules, were never again admitted into the convent. Alas! could his Excellency have lived in these our degenerate days, and beheld certain monks of a certain order drinking pulque and otherwise disporting themselves! nay, seen one, as we but just now did from the window, strolling along the street by lamplight, with an Yntida (Indian girl) tucked ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... gold succeeds the rags of conquest: The lust of gold, unfeeling and remorseless! The last corruption of degenerate man. 132 DR. JOHNSON: Irene, Act ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... swept over the girl as she turned to look into Kid Rickard's sullen eyes and degenerate, cruel face. But, since the Kid was a couple of paces removed and was slow about coming forward, not so much as raising his hand to his wide hat, she nodded at him and managed to say a quiet, non-committal, "How do you do?" Then she slipped ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... powerless to prevent him. Of course, if the poor man prolongs his walk then is he in danger from the law of trespass. On weekdays, however, this is the most secluded spot on the estate, and I regret to say that my lordly uncle does not trouble it even on Sundays. I fear we are a degenerate race, Monsieur Valmont, for doubtless a fighting and deeply religious ancestor of mine built this church, and to think that when the useful masons cemented those stones together, Madame la Marquise de Bellairs or Lady Alicia were alike unthought ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... running water, and with his face upturned to the sun apostrophises the Divine Essence, whose qualities and attributes he has alone been taught to recognise, through the numberless incarnations of his degenerate creed. Five times a day the Mussulman kneels in open adoration of his Maker, and, doffing his slippers, repeats, with forehead to the ground, the formula laid down for him by the only Prophet he has learnt ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... man, a slender German of five and twenty, with the massive forehead of a scholar and the tumble-home chin of a degenerate, did not trouble to reply. He was busy emptying powdered quinine into a cigarette paper. Rolling what was approximately fifty grains of the drug into a tight wad, he tossed it into his mouth and gulped it down without the ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... cooerdinate with tribes of men. All of these gods have invisible duplicates—spirits—and they have often visited the earth. All of the wonderful things seen in nature are done by the animal-gods. That elder life was a magic life; but the descendants of the gods are degenerate. Now and then as a medicine-man by practicing sorcery can perform great feats, so now and then there is a medicine-bear, a medicine-wolf, or a medicine-snake that can ...
— Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians • John Wesley Powell
... safe anchorage in the holy keeping of the Christian Sabbath, and in the word of God, for these are the best and surest legacies of a pious mother's precepts. A civilization in which the early lispings of childhood are of God and Christ, cannot become altogether corrupt and degenerate, for woman here is the depository and transmitter of ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... present Queen is a princess of as many and great virtues as ever filled a throne: How would it brighten her character to the present and after ages, if she would exert her utmost authority to instil some share of those virtues into her people, which they are too degenerate to learn only from her example! And, be it spoke with all the veneration possible for so excellent a sovereign, her best endeavours in this weighty affair are a most important part of her duty, as well as of her interest and ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... home late to supper after a session at Bertha Appleby's. An informal gathering had convened under the disguise of a church-society meeting, only to degenerate into a dancing-bee after ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... froth to rise to the surface and thence be swept aside; mere bubbles, that shine a moment and then burst. It is fashion that unsexes women and unmakes men. To be in the world of fashion and of it, is to degenerate; but to be in it and not of it, to know it and remain untainted, despising all it has to give, makes towards solid advance. There are some ugly stages to be gone through, however, before ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... strict garb and the "thee" and "thou" of those who followed George Fox to unfashionable lengths, whilst their children studied music and dancing. More zealous brethren called the Gurneys "worldly," and shook their heads over their degenerate conduct; but, all unseen, Mrs. Gurney was training up her family in ways of usefulness and true wisdom; while "the fear of the Lord," as the great principle of life and action, was constantly set before them. With such a mother to mould their infant ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... one endeavoring by the aid of religion, and by studying the wisdom of the past, to exalt and purify his fallen nature; the other by grovelling in the dust, and mingling with beings yet more sinful and degraded, rapidly debased his mind to a more degenerate and fallen state. ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... and just as definitely, can the mind be developed and strengthened. Some are by nature keen, alert, brilliant. They may develop into masterfulness; or they, too, may degenerate, through abuse, or from the effect of body infections, into uselessness. The germ-plasm has foreordained some individuals to psychic disorders; but training and mode of life can modify many of these defects. And the ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... these pages we all confess what we have never confessed to anyone. Our self-love is outraged, but outraged with that strange accompaniment of thrilling pleasure that means an expiation paid, a burden lightened. Use the word "degenerate" if you will. But in this sense we are all "degenerates" for thus and not otherwise is woven the stuff whereof men ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... I said, shaking my head, "the times are sadly changed. One cannot tie barons—caddish or otherwise—to trees in these degenerate days." ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... depravity of Imperial Rome. Looking back to Republican Rome, and considering the state of public morals but fifty years before the emperors, we can with difficulty believe that the descendants of a people so severe in their habits could thus rapidly degenerate, and that a populace, once so hardy and masculine, should assume the manners which we might expect in the debauchees of Daphne (the infamous suburb of Antioch) or of Canopus, into which settled the very lees and dregs ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... in search of exploits, so did not care a jot which way he rode. In former days, he told me, there used to be a tournament in every town each Friday, where any stranger knight might show his prowess, winning honour and renown. But in these degenerate times it was necessary for the would-be champion to cry his challenge in some public place, or else arrange the fight beforehand meanly in some tavern. I should have been delighted with him on the whole, if he had not been quarrelsome and had not expected us, as his companions, to extricate him ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... traditions of his birth and breeding had returned upon him; something instinctive and inherited had reappeared; and the gentlemanly, easy-going father, who yet, as Doris remembered, when matters were serious "always got his way," was there—strangely there—in the degenerate son. ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... was revealed to me only in the morning, when descending the staircase I suddenly discovered the poor general en chef, Hanuman, deprived of his cradle and unceremoniously stowed away under the stairs. Decidedly, the Hindus of the nineteenth century are a degenerate and blaspheming race! ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... Anthony appeared to the convention like Minerva, goddess of wisdom. Her advent was with thunders, not of applause, but of the scorn of a degenerate masculinity. The great Horatio said, with infinite condescension, that he held in his hand a memorial of the women of the United States. The name of Miss Anthony was greeted with a yell such as a Milton might imagine to rise from a conclave of the damned. ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... of Automates; that he might break his shins in stumbling through a hundred vaults without finding anything but rats and mice; and become the tenant of a dozen sets of shabby tenements without finding that they contained any manuscript but the weekly bill for board and lodging. A dairymaid of these degenerate days might as well wash and deck her dairy in hopes of finding the fairy ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... can you bring me," began Mr. Arp, deliberately, "that we folks, modernly, ain't more degenerate than the ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... all he prayed for. He was also, early or late, to be obedient to others, so that in due time others might obey him. The secret of all success lay in a moderate diet with rare use of wine. A gloomy brow was, however, to be avoided. Rather should the youth give himself to be merry, so as not to degenerate from his father. Above all things should he keep his wit from biting words, or indeed from too much talk of any kind. Had not nature ramparted up the tongue with teeth and the lips with hair as ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... appear that climate to a certain extent directly modifies the forms of dogs. We have lately seen that several of our English breeds cannot live in India, and it is positively asserted that when bred there for a few generations they degenerate not only in their mental faculties, but in form. Captain Williamson (1/75. 'Oriental Field Sports' quoted by Youatt 'The Dog' page 15.), who carefully attended to this subject, states that "hounds are the most rapid in their decline;" "greyhounds and pointers, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... Rome became a degenerate Empire. Why? Because of the lowering of her racial stock by slaves. The decline of the Roman spirit was due to a mixture of races. The flower of her manhood died on her far-flung battle lines. Slaves and degenerates at home ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... being necessary to the understanding of the New Testament, it is to the poet matter of regret that "loveless learning" should leave its proper work, and make such havoc in that which belongs not to it. But while he sits "talking with his mind," his mood begins to degenerate from sympathy with that which is good to indifference towards all forms, and he feels inclined to rest quietly in the enjoyment of his own religious confidence, and trouble himself in no wise about the faith of his neighbours; for doubtless all are ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... a hero, a man whose character is unstained by any low or degenerate vices, or even feelings," said Julia, with a little more than her ordinary enthusiasm; "whose courage is as natural as it is daring; who is above fear, except of doing wrong; whose person is an index of his mind, and whose mind is ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... father's partner. But what strikes us, is the daring courage of the hero who thus gallantly risked life and limb, rather than that the lady of his love should pine in vain. Except Leander's, of old, we know of no such feat of love and gallantry in these degenerate days.' ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... evil upon evil can accrue from such a system,—and those who have prophetic eyes to see through the veil of events can perceive, even now, the not far distant end—namely, the ruin of the country that has permitted itself to degenerate into a mere nation of shopkeepers, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... consequences of legislative tyranny, rather than tyranny itself; and I am not sure that political jurisdiction, as it is constituted in the United States, is not the most formidable which has ever been placed in the rude grasp of a popular majority. When the American republics begin to degenerate, it will be easy to verify the truth of this observation, by remarking whether the number ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... passed since the Trojan war, and each of the ninety has used the same bountiful magazine. All readers of the Iliad must remember how often Ajax or Hector, took up chermadia, 'such as twice five men in our degenerate days could barely lift,' launching them at light-armed foes, who positively would not come nearer to take their just share of the sword or spear. 'The weapon is the more effectual, owing to the nature of the rock itself, broken as it is in its whole ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... think I don't understand. [His voice trembles] I fully understand. Had you beaten me like a dog, it would have felt less hard. Don't I understand what I am? I am a rascal, a degenerate, I mean. Forgive me for the Lord's sake. [Sobs, throws the parcel on the table, and goes ...
— The Cause of it All • Leo Tolstoy
... associates. And now we find them, in further contempt of the modes of honorable warfare, supplying the place of a conquering force by attempts to disorganize our political society, to dismember our confederated Republic. Happily, like others, these will recoil on the authors; but they mark the degenerate counsels from which they emanate, and if they did not belong to a sense of unexampled inconsistencies might excite the greater wonder as proceeding from a Government which founded the very war in which it has been so long engaged on a charge against the disorganizing and insurrectional ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... citizen of the place, after filling all the municipal offices of honour. I myself, immediately after my first entry into the municipal senate, succeeded to my father's position in the community, and, as I hope, am in no ways a degenerate successor, but receive like honour and esteem for my maintenance of the dignity of my position. Why do I mention this? That you, Aemilianus, may be less angry with me in future and may more readily pardon me for having been negligent enough ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... it let the head announce it," he said. "I won't take it from you. I believe you to be a low, gibbering degenerate. Let us see the head of ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... that are famous. Wherefore, the fame of another clothes thee not with splendour if thou hast none of thine own. So, if there is any excellence in nobility of birth, methinks it is this alone—that it would seem to impose upon the nobly born the obligation not to degenerate from the ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... long and life so short No man was allowed to ask anything of the gods for himself Take heed lest pride degenerate into vainglory ...
— Quotations From Georg Ebers • David Widger
... ruin overwhelmed us; after the great Caesars, so fatal to Spain, came the little ones—Philip III., who gave the final blow by expelling the Moors; Philip IV., a degenerate with literary fancies, who wrote verses and courted nuns, and the miserable ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... conversation which ensued between them, but for the sake of true art I am constrained to state that Lucifer descended to commonplace. M. Renan tells us that since he left Saint Sulpice he did nothing but degenerate, and the inference is obvious, that he ought to have gone back to Saint Sulpice, despite the literary splendours of the Vie de Jesus. Since he last broke a lance with Michael, the devil has debilitated mentally, and the substance of his causerie with Diana ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... have enjoyed their freedom, they have made less progress in civilization than their philanthropic champions have promised or anticipated, let the want I have suggested receive some consideration. It may be that even a white peasantry would degenerate under such influences. Reverse this, and when the negro has cropped his sugar or his coffee, create a demand for his labour in the mills and manufactories of which nature has invited the establishment on this island, and before another sixteen years would ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... imprisonment. The judge who sentenced me informed me—and the world at large—that he deemed it expedient to 'make an example' of me—only he put it more legally—as an educated young woman, of apparent refinement, who had committed a crime connected generally with illiterate and ignorant persons of degenerate tendencies." ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... vast accumulation of evidence in favour of Mr. Darwin's views would give me much to add. As is the case with all new doctrines, so with that of Evolution, the enthusiasm of advocates has sometimes tended to degenerate into fanaticism; and mere speculation has, at times, threatened to shoot beyond its legitimate bounds. I have occasionally thought it wise to warn the more adventurous spirits among us against these dangers, in sufficiently plain language; and I have ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... praise his subjects without offending him. Doubtless, it proceeds from a just confidence of his own virtue, which the lustre of no other can be so great as to darken in him; for the good or the valiant are never safely praised under a bad or a degenerate prince. But to return from this digression to a further account of my poem; I must crave leave to tell you, that as I have endeavoured to adorn it with noble thoughts, so much more to express those ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... tendency to promote his improvement and perfection; by the light, the life, the blessedness it gives; by the love it kindles; by the glorious transformations which it effects in depraved individuals and degenerate communities; by the peace, the hope, the joy it inspires; and by the courage and strength it imparts both in ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... his son's apartment, taking with him Philotas, the son of Parmenio, one of Alexander's intimate friends and companions, and there reproved him severely, and reproached him bitterly, that he should be so degenerate, and unworthy of the power he was to leave him, as to desire the alliance of a mean Carian, who was at best but the slave of a barbarous prince. Nor did this satisfy his resentment, for he wrote to the Corinthians, to send Thessalus to him in chains, and banished Harpalus, Nearchus, Erigyius, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... to degenerate after the captivity, and it continued to do so. It leaned upon the past more and more, having an external and formal character with little of the living soul. The independence of their religious literature disappeared with the national independence of the Jews; ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson
... morning of that Pass! And have you seen these? [Reading from the newspaper] "We will have no truck with the jargon of the degenerate who vilifies his country at such a moment. The Member for Toulmin has earned for himself the contempt of all virile patriots." [He takes up a second journal] "There is a certain type of public man who, even at his own expense, cannot resist the itch to advertise himself. We would, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... 'pagans.' These names are used in Binh-Thuan to make a distinction, but Banis and Kaphirs alike are all Chams.... In Cambodia all Chams are Mussulmans." (E. Aymonier, Les Tchames, p. 26.) The religion of the pagan Chams of Binh-Thuan is degenerate Brahmanism with three chief gods, Po-Nagar, Po-Rome, and Po-Klong-Garai. (Ibid., p. 35.)—H.C.] The books of their former religion they say (according to Dr. Bastian) that they received from Ceylon, but they were converted to Islamism by no less a person than 'Ali ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... waste a dozen years, write a lot of rubbish, make the subject more obscure than ever—and nothing more. It is always a good thing to think scientifically, but the trouble is that scientific thinking about creative art will be bound to degenerate in the end into searching for the "cells" or the "centres" which control the creative faculty. Some stolid German will discover these cells somewhere in the occipital lobes, another German will agree with him, a third will disagree, and a Russian ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... means of that very theory. Attention was drawn to the fact that by virtue of the laws which Darwin himself had discovered isolation leads to etiolation. There is a risk that the privilege which withdraws the privileged elements of Society from competition will cause them to degenerate. In fact, Jacoby in his "Studies in Selection, in connexion with Heredity in Man", ("Etudes sur la Selection dans ses rapports avec l'heredite chez l'homme", Paris, page 481, 1881.), concludes that "sterility, mental debility, premature death and, finally, the extinction of the stock ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... a satirist and humourist, I cannot place him so high as some of his admirers do; and the purely polemical portions of his poems, those in which he puts forth his antagonism to tyrants and religions and custom in all its myriad forms, seem to me to degenerate at intervals ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... scarce known by name In these degenerate days, but once far-famed, Where liberty and justice, hand in hand, Ordered the common weal; where great men grew Up to their natural eminence, and none Saving the wise, just, eloquent, were great; Where power was of God's gift to whom ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... sundry other ingenious Dutch fantasies. The beaux distinguished themselves by their adroitness in replenishing this pot from a huge copper tea-kettle which would have made the pigmy macaronies of these degenerate days sweat merely to look at it. To sweeten the beverage a lump of sugar was laid beside each cup, and the company alternately nibbled and sipped with great decorum, until an improvement was introduced ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... unambitious. Meaner men, their contemporaries or successors, raved of high art with incoherent passion; arrogated to themselves an equality with the masters of elder time, and declaimed against the degenerate tastes of a public which acknowledged not the return of the Heraclidae. But the two great—the two only painters of their age—happy in a reputation founded as deeply in the heart as in the judgment of mankind, demanded no higher function ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin |
