"Degenerate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... example that it is never too late to follow. Why, who that had seen you both as youths, notwithstanding Audley had the advantage of being some years your senior—who could have thought that he was the one to become distinguished and eminent, and you to degenerate into the luxurious idler, averse to all trouble and careless of all fame? You, with such advantages, not only of higher fortunes, but, as every one said, of superior talents; you, who had then so much ambition, so keen a desire for glory, sleeping with Plutarch's Lives under your pillow, and ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... reference to the 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 ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... soldiers to command, to take up positions on that road, as if they had still armies at their beck. One of them made the observation to him with some degree of asperity, and was beginning an enumeration of his losses; but Napoleon, determined to reject all reports, lest they should degenerate into complaints, warmly interrupted him with these words: "why then do you wish to deprive me of my tranquillity?" and as the other was persisting, he shut his mouth at once, by repeating, in a reproachful ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... sufficient care being taken to strike the imagination, or at least to avoid all that may distract it. A worship, dazzling and majestic in its external forms, is certainly calculated to fill the soul with the most elevated sentiments; but care must be taken that the ceremonies do not degenerate into a spectacle in which each one plays his part—in which each one studies what he must do at such a moment; when he is to pray, when he is to finish his prayer; when to kneel down, and when to get up. The regulated ceremonies ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... no matter how many hands it passes through; but submission to unnecessary evils is cowardice or laziness; and extolling of the evil as good is sheer ignorance, or perversity, or servility. Even the ills that must be borne, should be borne under protest, lest patience degenerate into slavery. Christian character is never formed by acquiescence in, ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... a dread of intrusting to it too many important functions. Mason thought that the sway of an aristocracy would be worse than an absolute monarchy; and if the Senate might every now and then elect the president, there would be a risk that the dignity of his office might degenerate, until he should become a mere creature of the Senate. On the other hand, the small states, in order to have an equal voice with the large ones, in such an emergency as the failure of choice by the electoral college, wished ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... Addison[4] have joined in giving testimony against our author, as to the choice of his verse, which they condemn as boyish and being apt to degenerate into the doggrel; but while they censure his verse, they applaud his matter, and Dryden observes, that had he chose any other verse, he would even then have excelled; as we say of a court favourite, that whatever his office be, he still makes it uppermost, and most ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... Degenerate Douglas! oh, the unworthy Lord! Whom mere despite of heart could so far please, And love of havoc (for with such disease Fame taxes him) that he could send forth word To level with the dust a noble horde, ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... degenerate, pettifogging barrister, with all his father's faults and none of his grandfather's virtues—for whom Mary had advanced money so that he could go to college, came to her in her dire extremity and proffered help. But it was on condition that she should give ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... to believe and to preach the belief that we are a decadent and degenerate people. They proclaim to the world through their professors that we are a non-heroic nation skulking behind our mahogany counters, while we egg on more gallant races to their destruction. This is a description given of us in Germany—"a timorous, craven nation, ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... the all-round championship of the world at New York. The distinguished part taken by Irishmen or sons of Irishmen in all departments of the Olympic games is so recent and so well known as to call for no comment. Ireland is far indeed from being degenerate ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... consequently, they make a business of "head hunting," accumulating the ghastly visages of their victims in their huts.39 The Caribs have a sort of sensual paradise for the "brave and virtuous," where, it is promised, they shall enjoy the sublimated experience of all their earthly satisfactions; but the "degenerate and cowardly" are threatened with eternal banishment beyond the mountains, where they shall be tasked and driven as slaves by their enemies.40 The Hispaniolians locate their elysium in a pleasant valley abounding with ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... anybody ought to be trusted by nobody;—that it is continuing the uncivilized principles of governments founded in conquest, and the base idea of man having a property in man, and governing him by a personal right;—that aristocracy has a tendency to degenerate the human ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... The Sunday meetings, exclusive of religious benefits, were the only social bonds that might have inspired them with some degree of emulation in neatness. Is it then surprising to see men thus situated, immersed in great and heavy labours, degenerate a little? It is rather a wonder the effect is not more diffusive. The Moravians and the Quakers are the only instances in exception to what I have advanced. The first never settle singly, it is a colony ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... and appendages—the pedestal and the ornaments of that great white tower in the centre, whose sleepless fiery eye blinks all night long over the night-mists of the Atlantic. If, as a wise man has said, the days will come when our degenerate posterity will fall down and worship rusty locomotives and fossil electric-telegraphs, the relics of their ancestors' science, grown to them mythic and impossible, as the Easter-islanders bow before the colossal statues ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... his couch and looking at him entreatingly. "Don't you know that if you had taken your injury like a man, you'd have gotten a hold on my tenderness and respect that nothing could have destroyed? Sara, I've watched you degenerate for eight years, but I never realized to what a depth you had sunk until you ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... and you are to understand that his time is come and so should a Viking die: further, if you will, the subject is a modern Viking, ready for the responsibilities of the title. Sketches of our ancient wooden walls and our iron and plated defences line the panellings. These degenerate artists do work hard ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... ejaculations with the sound of guns popping. His face was red with indignation, his eyes leaping at his degenerate nephew. The next words did not ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... excesses; and, when the enemy appears, run on board the ships with their booty. Thus the dignity of the service is debased; they lose all sense of honour and of shame; they are no longer restricted by military laws, nor overawed by the authority of officers; in a word, they degenerate into a species of lawless buccaneers. From such a total relaxation of morals and discipline, what can ensue but riot, confusion, dishonour, and defeat? All the advantage that can be expected from these sudden starts of invasion, will scarce overbalance the evils ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... at the time—and am so still— that we might have obtained considerably more than we did of the last, but for the eagerness with which we prosecuted our search for the larger gems, which caused our search for the smaller seed pearls to degenerate into a very ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... irrevocable decisions. And though Locke admits that monarchy, from its likeness to the family, is the most primitive type of government, he denies Hobbes' assertion that it is the best. It seems, in his view, always to degenerate into the hands of lesser men who betray the contract they were appointed to observe. Nor is oligarchy much better off since it emphasizes the interest of a group against the superior interest of the community ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... great battles! you whom twenty-five years of warfare did not satiate: rise from your graves and shame your degenerate successors. Up! up! Bid some remember that they have a revenge to take, and tell others that they ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... essential in its place and its degree. The life of the spirit languishes if it is not fed. But except these things issue in the practical service of Christ in daily life they are worse than futile. They degenerate either into formalism and hypocrisy, or into spiritual self- indulgence. "Herein is My Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit." "By their fruits ye shall know them." And the "fruits" of Christian living are to be discovered, not in the hours spent in ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... Wykehamist took his degree with no examination but that of his own college, both under the Laudian Statute and after the great statute of 1800, which set up the modern system of examinations. What the founder had intended as an encouragement for industry was made by his degenerate disciples ...
— The Oxford Degree Ceremony • Joseph Wells
... life, the instinct of procreation was strong within them. True, the assignable lands in Japan continued to grow smaller, but what reason was there for stifling the reproductive instincts of a vigorous people in a great unused world half populated by a degenerate humanity? ...
— In the Clutch of the War-God • Milo Hastings
... Generally three or four degenerate looking dirty East Indians slunk about, very crafty, very insinuating, very ready and skilful to take what advantages they could. I felt a strong desire to kick every one of them out from these joyful concourses of happy people. Generally we sat down for a while ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... has 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. ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... tongue that bids this general joy! Can they be friends of Antony, who revel When Antony's in danger? Hide, for shame, You Romans, your great grandsires' images, For fear their souls should animate their marbles, To blush at their degenerate progeny. ...
— All for Love • John Dryden
... is the degenerate son of the conquering warriors of a thousand years ago. Once his name carried terror to the shores of the Midland Sea. Now those who do not like him can say with some truth that he lives the life of an animal, mating rather than marrying, his warlike spirit ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... have run cold at the calm pride of this degenerate fiend, had it not been boiling at the reference to Helene. He crept nearer to them, along the wall. He lay down on the floor, below the level of the first bullet paths. Then he drew his automatic and the bulb light, ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... they see people pleased with, so do our young men only study and apply themselves to those subjects which are praised and commended by you." He used also to beg of them, if they had become great by virtue and self-restraint, not to degenerate; and if, on the other hand, their empire had been won by licentiousness and vice, to reform themselves, since by the latter means they had become so great as not to need any further assistance ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... had hardly dared to lift her eyes in Mary Pidwall's presence. For Mary knew not only the sum of her lies, but also held—or so Laura believed—that she came of a thoroughly degenerate family; thanks to Uncle Tom. And the early weeks spent at close quarters with her bore out these fears. The looks both M. P. and her friend bent on Laura said as plainly as words: if we are forced to tolerate this obnoxious ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... origin by its amazing adaptation to man's nature, and by its almighty 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
... contend for the articles of faith and truths of religion, and could never think of parting with one hoof, or the least grain of truth, being persuaded, that Christian concord must have truth for its foundation, and holiness for its attendant, without which it will decline into a defection, and degenerate into a conspiracy against religion. As to the duties of Christianity, he enforced the performance of these with all the arguments of persuasion, so that, through the blessing of God, his pulpit discourses became the power of God to the illumination ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... dwelling in Iran; two of these have become noted in history—the Medes and the Persians. The Medes at the west, nearer the Assyrians, destroyed Nineveh and its empire (625). But soon they softened their manners, taking the flowing robes, the indolent life, the superstitious religion of the degenerate Assyrians. They at last were confused ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... with a country Sunday, and think, if keeping holy the seventh day were only a human institution, it would be the best method that could have been thought of for the polishing and civilizing of mankind. It is certain the country people would soon degenerate into a kind of savages and barbarians, were there not such frequent returns of a stated time, in which the whole village meet together with their best faces, and in their cleanliest habits, to converse with one another upon ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... father, Herbert de Huse, were land-owners of some importance in Kerry in 1307. Stirring times they must have been, of which we have no fiction under the guise of history, though then men had to fight hard to preserve their lives and maintain their dignity. We can imagine the tussle, even in these degenerate days when no challenge follows the exchange of insults, even in the House of Commons, and when the perpetration of the most cowardly outrage in Ireland has to be induced by preliminary potations of whisky. Of course, those old times were bad times, but the badness was at least above board ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... the interesting page. There was nothing new to me in the fact that I didn't esteem her, but there was relief in my finding that this wasn't necessary at Homburg and that I could like her in spite of it. She struck me, in the oddest way, as both improved and degenerate; the two processes, in her nature, might have gone on together. She was battered and world-worn and, spiritually speaking, vulgarised; something fresh had rubbed off her—it even included the vivacity of her early desire to do the best thing for ...
— Louisa Pallant • Henry James
... from the Old World to the New is an ideal of human brotherhood, high purpose and dissatisfaction with the old, degenerate world. In the State of Espirito Santo, where the German colonists are dominant, he plans a simple life that shall drink inspiration in the youth of a new, virgin continent. He falls in with another German, Lentz, whose outlook upon life is at first the ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... feeling something of the joy of the old Syracusan in life. His human nature is of the kind that makes the nymphs and swains of Alexander Pope dull and artificial. There are flies in this delicious ointment, one must admit, touches of corruption which a degenerate paganism condoned and palliated, but we must remember, as an extenuation of the Greek attitude, that the oracle of Delphi protested against them. The cyprus plains of Theocritus yet echo with the call of the cicada, and the anemones still bloom. The pipes of Pan ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... 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 may, there is something in the tone of Massinger not altogether ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... Mercy, has been regarded as something in contrast or conflict with justice. It is not really so. Mercy resembles the prerogative of the judge to temper the law to suit individual cases. It must be of a kindred temper with justice, or it would degenerate into mere weakness or folly. A man wants to be certain of his own just inclination before he can dare to handle mercy. But the quality of mercy is, perhaps, not so common in the human heart as to require this caution. It is a quality that has to be acquired. ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook
... but his orders were totally disregarded; many of the unhappy English settlers fled from the country and returned to England; the barons supplied their places with native retainers. Thus the Ersefication of the degenerate Normans became complete; they "donned the saffron"—that is, they adopted the yellow dress of the Celts—abandoned their original language, and gave themselves up to a life ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... except the cardiac or median space, which, in 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 ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... truth there must be moral equality or else no respect; and hence between parent and child intercourse is apt to degenerate into a verbal fencing-bout, and misapprehensions to become engrained. And there is another side to this, for the parent begins with an imperfect notion of the child's character, formed in early years ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the "intensity" of the war strain, of which he himself had acute experience. "Under such conditions," he wrote, "marksmen may achieve no more than the most erratic shots; the smartest corps may quickly degenerate into a rabble; the easiest tasks will often appear impossible. An army can weather trials such as those just depicted only if it be collectively considered in that healthy state of mind which the term moral implies." ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick
... might be carried out by his successors; but, as it is, the present worthy possessor once laid beneath the turf, the object of all his pains-taking and labour will, in all probability, be cut up into small farms, or be allowed once more to degenerate into forest, as may appear most profitable to ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... doubted that her sister had often been with Burke Lawson in the Hollow. When he disappeared, she believed Nella-Rose was with him, but she had supported and embellished her father's story concerning them because it secured her own self-respect and covered the tracks of the degenerate pair with a shield that they in no wise deserved, but which put their defenders ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... Kieff was divorced from Russia, under Polish and Lithuanian rule, assumed forms which lack the purity and grace of those in Russia proper. Octagonal cupolas supported on thick, sloping bases involuntarily remind one of the cup-and-ball game. Not content with this degenerate beginning, they pursue their errors heavenward. Instead of terminating directly in a cross, they are surmounted by a lantern frescoed with saints, a second octagonal dome, a ball, and a cross. These octagons constitute a feature in all ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... certainly be so. We moderns bedeck and bedrape us in all sorts of meretricious togas, till a pair of fine eyes and a dashing manner pass for beauty; but when life tries the metal—when nature applies her inevitable test—the degenerate or neurotic ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... understand not the latest experiments in electric lighting, and yield themselves to the flames with scarce a struggle. Our forefathers were content with hangings to keep out the draughts and open fireplaces to keep them warm. They were a hardy race, and feared not a touch or breath of cold. Their degenerate sons must have an elaborate heating apparatus, which again distresses the old timbers of the house and fires their hearts of oak. Our forefathers, indeed, left behind them a terrible legacy of danger—that beam ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... theories, but no government had been previously established for the great purpose of their preservation and enforcement. That which was experimental in our plan of government was the question whether democratic rule could be so organized and conducted that it would not degenerate into license and result in the tyranny of absolutism, without saving to the people the power so often found necessary of representing or destroying their enemy, when he was found in the person of a ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... harmony of twain making one. That love should be capable of ending in such vermiculate results as too often appear, is no more against the loveliness of the divine idea, than that the forms of man and woman, the spirit gone from them, should degenerate to such things as may not be looked upon. There is no plainer sign of the need of a God, than the possible fate of love. The celestial Cupido may soar aloft on seraph wings that assert his origin, or fall down on the belly of a snake and ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... 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 had quartered with the ancient coat of Waverley. ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... peace and goodwill is the very spirit which we desire to foster. And finally its customs—or at any rate, its main customs—are well designed to symbolize that spirit. If we have allowed the despatch of Christmas cards to degenerate into naught but a tedious shuffling of paste-boards and overwork of post-office officials, the fault is not in the custom but in ourselves. The custom is a most striking one—so long as we have sufficient imagination to remember ...
— The Feast of St. Friend • Arnold Bennett
... to find something "worth doing," therefore had settled on this one definite duty. She had wrestled in a determined silence with the many incompetent and degenerate negresses, with the few impertinent Americans, with the drunken Irish and insolent Swedes, who had filed in and out of her kitchen ever since her marriage. Suburban life was a new thing in Endbury, and "help" could see no advantages ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... slept, two events took place eminently germane to the further unfolding of this history.—The weather changed, and the local degenerate, Abram Sclanders' half-idiot son—the poor "lippity-lop" who, according to Jennifer, had far better been "put away quiet-like ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... fortunes of Mr John Shanks. That rather vacant and somewhat degenerate youth, having his precious bag slung from his shoulders, and his left arm round it for further security, sauntered forth, and began to view the town. His viewing it consisted chiefly in looking long and steadily ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... travelling. Sometimes Jerry and I rode together, sometimes with the doctor or Mr Renshaw, and at others with our two English friends, from whom we gained a good deal of information. From all I heard, I should not at all like to live in Mexico. The descendants of the fierce conquerors have become a most degenerate race, without religion, without morality—each man ready to destroy his neighbour for the sake of getting into his place. That object seems to be the only end and aim of all their politics. As to patriotism, it does not exist. The nearest approach ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... true," said the Armenian, "that even on the confines of Ararat there are a great number who consider that mountain to be lower than the hillocks of Rome; but the greater number of degenerate Armenians are to be found amongst those who have wandered to the west; most of the Haik churches of the west consider Rome to be higher than Ararat—most of the Armenians of this place hold that dogma; I, however, have always stood ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... "Degenerate girl!" he said, in accents that vainly struggled for calm, "if thou hast admitted to thy heart one unworthy thought towards a Moorish infidel, dig deep and root it out, even with the knife, and to the death—so wilt thou save this hand from ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... government. These precautions are strictly enforced.] The current opinion of the Indian character, however, is too apt to be formed from the miserable hordes which infest the frontiers and hang on the skirts of the settlements. These are too commonly composed of degenerate beings, corrupted and enfeebled by the vices of society, without being benefited by its civilization. That proud independence which formed the main pillar of savage virtue has been shaken down, and the whole moral ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... their most boasted institutions appeared in my eyes; it seemed to me as if I saw the kingdoms of the earth through an inverted spy-glass, or rather that, being myself grown and elevated, I looked down on the rest of my degenerate race with the eye of ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... us, as well as trouble us, because in 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 ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... the exertion of soldiers, policemen, magistrates, and society generally; and he is almost invariably fond of dangling a sword or other weapon, and wearing some kind of uniform, for the assumption of militarism without severe toil delights him. But it is in a degenerate travesty of the ancient labour of hunting where, at terrible risk to himself, and with endless fatigue, his ancestors supplied the race with its meat and defended it from destruction by wild beasts) that he finds his greatest satisfaction; ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... can you bring me," began Mr. Arp, deliberately, "that we folks, modernly, ain't more degenerate than the ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... method; and from this fallacy arise the tedious minuteness of George Eliot in her more pedestrian moments, the interminable tea-cups of Anthony Trollope, and the mire of the imitators of Zola. Realism latterly, especially in France, has shown a tendency to degenerate into so-called "naturalism," a method of art which casts the unnatural emphasis of photographic reproduction upon phases of actual life which are base in themselves and unsignificant of the eternal instinct which leads men more naturally to look ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... recognised by statute as vested in certain powers of examination and inquiry. But though a mere name be but a small matter, we are inclined to regard the term Board as somewhat too formidable and stiff. Let us, at least for the present, substitute the term Committee; and as large committees are apt to degenerate into little mobs, and, as such, to conduct their business noisily and ill, let us suppose educational committees to consist, in at least country districts or the smaller towns, of some eight or ten ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... dirty hotels, filthy friars, superstition, unthrift, Jesuitism, which stare ordinary tourists in the face, and all the other disgusting realities which philanthropists deplore so loudly in that degenerate but classical and ever-to-be-hallowed land. For, come what will, in spite of popes and despots it has been the scene of the highest glories of antiquity, calling to our minds saints and martyrs, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... now. Before they left for the Murchison Pass they had laid in a comfortable supply, but apparently Allister had cached a quantity of the stuff at the Twin Eagles shack. Of one thing Andrew was certain, that four such practiced whisky drinkers would never let their party degenerate into a drunken rout; and another thing was even more sure—that Scottie Macdougal would keep his head better than the best of the others. But what the alcohol would do would be to cut the leash of constraint and dig ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... are found they love to roam in undisputed possession of the forest, and lead an indolent life. Of course I do not assign this as a valid reason for their not being identified with the Mound-builders. An ancient race may have a degenerate offspring. ...
— Mound-Builders • William J. Smyth
... of his right, perchance unfitted, And if recover'd, prove no source of joy, But one of deep regret, that a young stock Which culture and the graft of education Would now have loaded on each bough with fruit, Neglect hath left degenerate and worthless. How should I joy, yet dread to meet my cousin, Should ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... likely would die on the gallows or be strapped in an electric chair before he got his deserts. His mind had passed through innumerable phases since he left his sister's house in Washington, and now as he shamelessly flirted with Miss Seebrook he knew himself for an unmoral creature, a degenerate who was all the more dangerous for being able to pass muster among decent folk. He had always imagined that citizens of the underworld were limited in their social indulgences to cautious meetings in the back rooms of low saloons, but this he had found to be a serious mistake. ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... he lit a fresh Cigar himself and leaned back with the obvious enjoyment of the cultivated smoker. "In every country of the world, the animal world as well as the human world, the male resents his female being taken from him. Directly he ceases to resent it, he becomes degenerate. Surely you must ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... we performe obedience then? As wee are bound by law of God and nature, Yealding true harts affection unto men, Ordain'd to rule and gouerne euery creature: Why then of all on earth that liue and moue, We should degenerate and monsters proue. ...
— The Bride • Samuel Rowlands et al
... judge who tried that case (not being a good Bible student) actually sent that good, pious man to the house of correction —that man who not only believed in his Bible, but lived by it! And just as likely as not that judge will be elected again. Truly we have fallen on degenerate times! ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... at funerals soon ceased. Puritan opinions spread; no longer did the clerks lead the singing and processions at funereal pageants, and a few boys from Christ's Hospital or school children took their places in degenerate days. ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... great burnished mirror, wrought about With cunning imagery of twisted vines. He scarcely knew those sunken, red-rimmed eyes, For his who in the flush of manhood rode Among the cliffs, and followed up the crags The flying temptress; and there fell on him A horror of her beauty, a disgust For his degenerate and corrupted life, With irresistible, intense desire, To feel the breath of heaven on his face. Then as Fate willed, who rules above the gods, He saw, within the glass, behind him glide The form of Venus. Certain of her power, She had laid by, in fond security, The ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... individual. It is a greatness ill constituted, in which all the material elements are combined, and into which no moral element enters. If a people, like a star, has the right of eclipse, the light ought to return. The eclipse should not degenerate into night. ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... avoided) {44} you must take the greatest care that no scrupulous trimness, or artificial finessess appear: For, as Quintilian teaches, in some cases diligence and care most most troublesomly perverse; and when things are most sweet they are next to loathsome and many times degenerate: Therefore as in Weomen a careless dress becomes some extreamly. Thus Pastoral, that it might not be uncomely, ought sometimes to be negligent, or the finess of its ornaments ought not to appear and lye open to every bodies view: so that it ought to affect a studied carelessness, ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... many-complexioned brood of children,—they seemed a very dozen,—and in the doorway, with arms akimbo and hands on massive hips, gaped Jap's mulatto wife, for of such measure was the man. Graves crossed the alley, suppressing such of his five senses as he could shift without, and ascertained that the degenerate Jasper, true to prophecy, was fishing from the dock ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... Thess. 5:18. "Giving thanks always for all things." Eph. 5:20. Thankfulness is a grace easily improved and developed if cultivated. Likewise, it will very soon degenerate if neglected. In order to keep a deep sense of thankfulness in our hearts, we must be mindful of the gracious dealings of God. It is well to take time as often as circumstances will permit to meditate in some quiet place upon the goodness of God to you. We should ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr
... resist the power of Rome. The Pope was ready to spend enormous sums of money on this petty war; the Duke's purse was shorter, and the mercenary troops he was obliged to use, proved worthless in the field. Spaniards, for the most part, pitted against Spaniards, they suffered the campaigns to degenerate into a guerilla warfare of pillage and reprisals. In 1517 the duchy was formally ceded to Lorenzo. But this Medici did not live long to enjoy it, and his only child Catherine, the future Queen of France, never exercised the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... likely to degenerate into a petty jealousy that is bred of fear. This is how Mr. H. G. Wells wrote of our attitude towards Germany ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... 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 him, and there are no people ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... distribution of functions the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state he is Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... is a danger that, in his first enthusiasm, he may not recognize the proportions or limitations to which his truth is subjected; he does not see how far he has given birth to a truism, or how that which is a truth to him is a truism to the rest of the world; or may degenerate in the next generation. He believes that to be the whole which is only a part,—to be the necessary foundation which is really only a valuable aspect of the truth. The systems of all philosophers require the criticism of 'the morrow,' when the heat of imagination which forged them has cooled, and ...
— Philebus • Plato
... so-called classical art, historical, genre and landscape painting, all showing the same conventional black grease. The works reeked of uniform mediocrity, they were characterised by a muddy dinginess of tone, despite their primness—the primness of impoverished, degenerate blood. And the friends quickened their steps: they ran to escape from that reign of bitumen, condemning everything in one lump with their superb sectarian injustice, repeating that there was nothing in the place worth looking at—nothing, nothing ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... dead and buried. Anger and hate and prejudice are not wise counselors in peace or in war. Generosity, forgiveness and charity are great qualities of the human heart, but, like everything else that is good, they may be carried to excess, and may degenerate into faults. They must not lead us to forget the obligations of duty and honor. While we waive the animosities of the war, we must never fail to hold on, with courage and fortitude, to all the results of the war. Our soldiers fought in no holiday contest, not merely ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... 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 filled with images of glory; that's ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... which they build their system. Pray let them suppress this glorious spirit, until they show to the world what piece of solid ground there is for their assignats, which they have not preoccupied by other charges. They do injustice to that great mother fraud, to compare it with their degenerate imitation. It is not true that Law built solely on a speculation concerning the Mississippi. He added the East India trade; he added the African trade; he added the farms of all the farmed revenue of France. All these together unquestionably ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... diffident and too close, but midst their wine, like frankincense, exhale and open at the heat. Besides, wine expels all fear, which is the greatest hindrance to all consultations, and quencheth many other degenerate and lazy passions; it opens the rancor and malice, as it were, the two-leaved doors of the soul, and displays the whole disposition and qualities of any person in his discourse. Freedom of speech, and, through that, truth it ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... Helen looked at her through half-closed lids. "You are quite freakish. I suppose you must be a moral degenerate, or something of the sort." She waited for the insult to sink in, but Dorothy was fairly dazed and bewildered. "Do you want me to call things ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... these places meet, and where the policeman stands, all the traffic of Dublin converges in a constant stream. The trams hurrying to Terenure, or Donnybrook, or Dalkey flash around this corner; the doctors who, in these degenerate days, concentrate in Merrion Square, fly up here in carriages and motor cars, the vans of the great firms in Grafton and O'Connell streets, or those outlying, never cease their exuberant progress. The ladies ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... confess—this makes one think that they may be the modern descendants of some Norman knightling who took Verbicaro for himself one morning in the old days, and kept it; or perhaps even the far-off progeny of one of those bright-eyed, golden-locked Goths who made slaves of the degenerate Latins some thirteen centuries ago or more, and treated their serfs indeed more like cattle than slaves until almost the last of them were driven into the sea with their King Teias by Narses. But a few were left in the southern fastnesses and in the ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... of women, When Breffni's good sword would have sought That man, thro' a million of foe-men, Who dared but to wrong thee in thought! While now—oh degenerate daughter Of Erin, how fallen is thy fame! And thro' ages of bondage and slaughter, Our country shall bleed for ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... the monk and priest, at least feared the "scholar," who held, so the vulgar believed, the keys of that magic lore by which the old necromancers had built cities like Rome, and worked marvels of mechanical and chemical skill, which the degenerate ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... January. This is really a curious way of employing you; however, you will gain something by it; you will acquire a particular exactness in knowing the days of the month, a science too much neglected in these degenerate days, but a science which was cultivated with a glorious ardour in Greece and Rome, and was no doubt the cause of their flourishing ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... lessons from two undistinguished professors named Gegenbauer and Finsterbusch. But it all amounted to very little. There was the regular drilling for the church services, to be sure: solfeggi and psalms, psalms and solfeggi—always apt to degenerate, under a pedant, into the dreariest of mechanical routine. How many a sweet-voiced chorister, even in our own days, reaches manhood with a love for music? It needs music in his soul. Haydn's soul withstood ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... of India's gaudy zone, And plunder piled from kingdoms not their own, Degenerate trade! thy minions could despise Thy heart-born anguish of a thousand cries: Could lock, with impious hands, their teeming store, While famish'd nations died along the shore; Could mock the groans ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... him difficult to conquer or control. The Mexican leads a 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 usual, dominates ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... to the wall, and showed by the gleam of our lanterns upon his yellow face that he inwardly cursed us all for Giaours, and wondered that Allah in His providence permitted us to exist. In fact, the Anatolian Turk is still a good Mohammedan of the time of Solyman, and not one of the degenerate race of Stamboul. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... get a commission, the weak ones go to the wall. We must be like wolves to make anything we can save for a rainy day. But any girl or man who'll consent to act the spy on others—there's a way to earn money, lots of it. A few are tempted. They must degenerate more and more, I think! And there are other things that drive some of us—the women, I mean—to desperation. But I can't tell you about them. You must find out for yourself—if ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... depends upon his physical powers and wealth. A number of wild tribes still roam over the country between the western Argentine states and the Andes. There they live free and independent, though barbarous. When they venture into the neighbourhood of large towns, they soon degenerate into thieves and drunkards. Here they come to carry on a trade in furs and panther skins, or to collect meat at the saladeros, which they dry and carry off with them. They make money by selling Indian ornaments, and foraging for the settlers' cattle; or by ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... question of questions; the one thing needful to be understood both by the leaders of thought and the rulers of men. Unless correct and rational views are entertained on this subject, internal legislation will be perpetually at fault, external policy in a false direction. Reform will degenerate into revolution, conquest into desolation. The greatest calamities, both social and foreign, recorded in the history of the last half century, have arisen from a neglect of the maxims of Montesquieu, as to the indelible influence ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... the few survivors was broken, and they made little resistance to the invaders. Mongrel bands from the interior and the coast settled in the valley after the lapse of years; and, mixing with the surviving Willamettes, produced the degenerate race our own pioneers found there at their coming. These hybrids were, within the memory of the white man, overrun and conquered by the Yakimas, who subjugated all the Indians upon Wappatto Island and around the ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... inhabitants of all the countries in that district are fierce and warlike, and they are so fond of war and battle that he who is slain in battle is accounted the happiest of men, while those who die a natural death are reproached as degenerate and cowardly. ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... are commonly of a palish blue, or rather of a colour somewhat approaching to livid, and are surrounded by an erysipelatous inflammation. These pustules, unless a timely remedy be applied, frequently degenerate into phagedenic ulcers, which prove extremely troublesome[2]. The animals become indisposed, and the secretion of milk is much lessened. Inflamed spots now begin to appear on different parts of the hands of the domestics employed in milking, and sometimes on the wrists, which quickly ...
— An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae • Edward Jenner
... varying densities of bodily organs will enable them to be photographed will bring all such morbid growths as tumours and cancers into the photographic field, to say nothing of vital organs which may be abnormally developed or degenerate. How much this means to medical and surgical practice it requires little imagination to conceive. Diagnosis, long a painfully uncertain science, has received an unexpected and wonderful assistant; and how greatly the world will benefit ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... British railway porter if you gave him a shilling. He said he was glad to leave England, it was demoralising to live there; you lost your sense of the dignity of labour, and in the course of time you were almost bound to degenerate into a swell. He expressed a good deal of sympathy with the aristocracy on this account, concentrating his indignation upon those who, as it were, made aristocrats of innocent human beings against their will. It was more than he would have ventured to say in public, but in talking to me poppa ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... lay creation of St. Francis had become, in spite of himself, an ecclesiastical institution: it must soon degenerate into a clerical institution. All unawares, the Franciscan movement had been unfaithful to its origin. The prophet had abdicated in favor of the priest, not indeed without possibility of return, for when a man has once reigned, I would say, thought, in liberty—what other kingdom is there ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... sons of the bolder barbarians of the North; and, contaminated by the craft of Italy, rather than imbued with its national affections, they retained the disdain of their foreign ancestors for a conquered soil and a degenerate people. While the rest of Italy, especially in Florence, in Venice, and in Milan, was fast and far advancing beyond the other states of Europe in civilisation and in art, the Romans appeared rather to recede than to ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... speronara was approaching, three or four of the Zodiac's crew were collected by the foremost gun, watching her progress with no little interest. Two of them were regular salts of the old school, who still delighted in ear-rings and pigtails, though, in compliment to the degenerate taste of the times, they wore the latter ornaments much smaller than they had done in their younger days. They were prime seamen, and fellows who were ready to go down with their colours flying rather than strike to ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... Quixote nose that rose out of it like a monolith above a plain. It was the kind of nose, as Cervantes must surely have explained somewhere, which denotes an inborn enthusiasm for all things great, a tendency which is apt to degenerate into credulity. ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... the illegitimate bantling is a very little one. Its parents may think themselves hardly treated when they are called lineal successors of Tony Fire-the-faggot: {263} but, degenerate though they be, such is their ancestry. Let every allowance be made for them: but their unholy fire must be trodden out; so long as a spark is left, nothing but fuel is wanted to make a blaze. If this cannot be done, let the flame be confined ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan |
