"Corrupt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... there are not so many hyenas in Asia; there are not so many panthers in the forest, as there are transgressions attacking my soul. I will take the best unregenerated man anywhere, and say to him, You are utterly corrupt. If all the sins of your past life were marshaled in single file, they would reach from here to hell. If you have escaped all other sins, the fact that you have rejected the mission of the Son of God is enough to condemn you forever, pushing ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... more corrupt influences than anything else were spread. You fostered the social rottenness without sowing an idea. From this fermentation of vices loathing alone could spring, and if anything were born overnight it would be at best a mushroom, for mushrooms only can spring ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... those petrifactions of bodies which is performed in the mineral regions of the earth, those regions that are inaccessible to man, but to show that what has been wrote by naturalists, upon this subject, has only a tendency to corrupt science, by admitting the grossest supposition in place of just principle or truth, and to darken natural history by introducing an ill conceived theory in place of ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... vote—you only accepted a little trifle, a small token of esteem, for your brother-in-law. Oh, let us come out and be frank with each other: I know you, Mr. Trollop. I have met you on business three or four times; true, I never offered to corrupt your principles—never hinted such a thing; but always when I had finished sounding you, I manipulated you through an agent. Let us be frank. Wear this comely disguise of virtue before the public—it will count there; but here it is out of place. My dear sir, by and by there is going to ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... most fatal influences; that he grew up into manhood with no guide; that there was everything in the classical course of the schools to develop an unhealthy growth of passion, and no moral influence of any kind to restrain it; that the manners of his day were corrupt; that what were now considered vices in society were then spoken of as matters of course among young noblemen; that drinking, gaming, and licentiousness everywhere abounded and that, up to a certain time, ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... was waging within them. There are certain forms of pestilential disease which, in cases like this, always set in to hasten the work which famine alone would be too slow in performing. Accordingly, as was to have been expected, camp fevers, choleras, and other corrupt and infectious maladies, broke out with great violence as the army advanced along the northern shores of the AEgean Sea; and as every victim to these dreadful and hopeless disorders helped, by his own dissolution, to taint the air for all the rest, the wretched crowd was, in the end, ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... censurer of pieces of a light or indecent turn, which had a tendency to corrupt the morals of youth, to convey polluted images, or to wound religion, whether in itself, or through the sides of its professors, and this, whoever were the authors, and how admirable soever the execution. She often pitied the celebrated Dr. Swift for so employing ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... in a chosen way (his mother's influence lay too heavy on him for that), but still to be just and upright, and to be submissive to me. He never loved me, as I once half-hoped he might—so frail we are, and so do the corrupt affections of the flesh war with our trusts and tasks; but he always respected me and ordered himself dutifully to me. He does to this hour. With an empty place in his heart that he has never known the meaning of, he has turned away ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... one lie by another. They are cannibals, and eat each other. Voltaire tried to conquer the lie of a corrupt church by establishing the greater lie of the denial of any church. That is a very unfortunate process, and yet it is common enough. The best way is to set out the truth, plain, and simple, and whole, ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... to furnish them with photographs, marks and measurements of all discharged criminals. Then have them copied and sent to the Immigration Commissioners of our ports. But that would involve a radical change in these boards and their methods. Efficiency there under our corrupt system is, I ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... imagine, nor does he even desire to do good painting, his work mostly differs but little from his imagination, which is generally somewhat worse; for if he knew how to imagine well or in a masterly manner in his fantasy, he could not have a hand so corrupt as not to show some part or indication of his good will. But no one has ever known how to aspire well in this science, except the mind which understands what good work is, and what he can make of it. It is a serious thing, ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... when he himself is at all times guilty of breach of faith and trust, not only in his trading transactions with foreigners, but likewise in familiar intercourse with his own people. Forday is the cause of it, and he displays all the artifice, chicanery, and low cunning of a crafty and corrupt mind. Therefore, after a moment's reflection, I was not much surprised at the step which King Boy has taken, nor can I be very angry with him, and I am resolved to await with composure his return, and consequently my release from this miserable place, though ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... atrocious calumny had been transmitted to the queen; whether she that invented had the front to relate it; whether she found any one weak enough to credit it, or corrupt enough to concur with her in her hateful design, I know not; but methods had been taken to persuade the queen so strongly of the truth of it, that she, for a long time, refused to hear any of those who petitioned for ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... present day, "waps" is considered a vulgar way of pronouncing the word; but it was correct English at the time of which I am writing. "Wasp" is really the corrupt pronunciation. In the same way, they said "claps" ...
— Our Little Lady - Six Hundred Years Ago • Emily Sarah Holt
... given an impetus to gaiety it would not otherwise have known; but this was all. There was little change in the habits and tone of social intercourse. The black shadow of Washington had not yet begun to spread itself, and its corrupt breath had not yet polluted the atmosphere of the good ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... newspaper man has stood him in good stead. He knows the corrupt workings of politicians, the venality of biased courts, the weakness of the human heart when tempted by gold. More, he knows the details by which all these are made manifest in unjust laws, unfair verdicts and treachery to one's ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... Gentiles, did not like to retain God in their knowledge. They wickedly extinguished the light which He had given them, because they were not willing to give up their immoralities. And as their hearts became more corrupt, their intellects also were darkened, and in their senselessness they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the baser image of "birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things." They sank into ...
— The Theology of Holiness • Dougan Clark
... ignominy. You doubtlessly mean to say something, but hide your last word through fear, because you have not the resolution to utter it, and only have a cowardly impudence. You boast of consciousness, but you are not sure of your ground, for though your mind works, yet your heart is darkened and corrupt, and you cannot have a full, genuine consciousness without a pure heart. And how intrusive you are, how you insist and grimace! Lies, ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... preciseness of their enemies, yet Wildrake, well-born and well-educated, and endowed with good natural parts, and a heart which even debauchery, and the wild life of a roaring cavalier, had not been able entirely to corrupt, moved on his present embassy with a strange mixture of feelings, such as perhaps he had never in his ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... price of an elector's vote. Gold, said the sage, perhaps 'twas law, On Dian's lap the snow can thaw; And gold has purchased many a seat Where the "collective wisdom" meet, And many go to represent The weight of cash corrupt which sent Them wandering wickedly astray From honor's seldom trodden way. Where now, is Turner, who of yore, Kept school near the old Ottawa's shore? And Heath who came across the line In able teaching here to shine? ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... vnrest, because euery where we finde our selues: and seek not so much to be others, as to be other wheres. We folow solitarines, to flie carefulnes. We retire vs (so say we) from the wicked: but cary with vs our auarice, our ambition, our riotousnes, all our corrupt affecti[on]s: which breed in vs 1000. remorses, & 1000. times each day bring to our remembrance the garlike & onions of Egipt. Daily they passe the Ferry with vs: so that both on this side, and beyond the water, we are in continual combat. Now could ...
— A Discourse of Life and Death, by Mornay; and Antonius by Garnier • Philippe de Mornay
... speech, for one reason of Miss Benton's popularity is her fun under a dignified manner. In the middle of the cheering after she had finished, the messenger girl appeared with a new bulletin. Somebody read it aloud so that we could all hear. It reported the victory of the corrupt party machine in an important city. Nobody spoke. There was just the faint sound of a big sighing oh-h-h! and ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... while papists were both armed and employed contrary to law; (7) the violation of the freedom of election; (8) the prosecution in the king's bench of suits only cognizable in Parliament; (9) the return of partial and corrupt juries; (10) the requisition of excessive bail; (11) the imposition of excessive fines; (12) the infliction of illegal and cruel punishments; (13) the grants of the estates ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... and what was more, he watched his applicant narrowly, to make sure that Dick did not corrupt Jacob. ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... out of the way, whom they knew they could not corrupt, they could buy under officials to attend to the details of making the water bad and the plant itself a failure—just exactly what has been done. You are not the real victim. You are just an obstruction—something that ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... dynasty. This point settled, I would extend the suffrage as much as facts would justify; certainly so as to include a million or a million and a half of electors. All idea of the representation of property should be relinquished, as the most corrupt, narrow, and vicious form of polity that has ever been devised, invariably tending to array one portion of the community against another, and endangering the very property it is supposed to protect. A moderate property qualification might ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... to the punishment of death. If you threaten a fine of money, they neither fear God nor regard men, knowing that fools will not be wanting to believe in them, and by whom they may be sustained. If you shut them in prison, or send them into exile, they corrupt those near to them with their words, and those at a distance with their books. Therefore, the only remedy is to send them betimes ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... appear from the specimen upon which Dryden himself makes her a compliment; as to the latter, I'm afraid it cannot be so well defended; but let those who are ready to blame her, consider, that her's was the sad alternative to write or starve; the taste of the times was corrupt; and it is a true observation, that they who live to please, must ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... For you, that are proficients in virtue, are not come hither to be dissolute with dainties or to languish in pleasures. You skirmish fiercely with any fortune, lest either affliction oppress you or prosperity corrupt you. Stay yourselves strongly in the mean! For whatsoever cometh either short, or goeth beyond, may well contemn felicity, but will never obtain any reward of labour. For it is placed in your power to frame to yourselves what fortune ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... Gelele, ii. 73). Amongst the wild Arabs, who ignore Socratic and Sapphic perversions, the lover is always more jealous of his beloved's girl-friends than of men rivals. In England we content ourselves with saying that women corrupt women ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... as I had not till long after learned the wisdom of "making a note:" but I had occasion to remark that dignitaries, &c. frequently wore wider scarfs than other clergymen (not however that the narrower one was ever that slender strip so improperly and servilely adopted of late from the corrupt custom of Rome, which has curtailed all ecclesiastical vestments); so that when the discussion upon this subject was revived by others some years ago, it was one to which my mind had been long familiar, independently ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 179. Saturday, April 2, 1853. • Various
... orthography, punctuation, and abbreviation it bears close resemblance to inscriptions of the classical or Roman period. The other group is as manifestly composed of the more recent manuscripts: this may be inferred from the corrupt or barbarous spelling, from the use of abbreviations unfamiliar in the classical period but very common in the Middle Ages, or from the presence of punctuation, which the oldest manuscripts invariably lack. The manuscripts ...
— A Sixth-Century Fragment of the Letters of Pliny the Younger • Elias Avery Lowe and Edward Kennard Rand
... father thinks that I am corrupting you about religion, as though anybody could corrupt you when you have got an idea into your stupid head; at least, on those subjects. Oh! I hate him, worse even than I do my own, worse than you ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... disapproves of the wine, I see," answered Hugh Crombie. "I did but offer them a drop to keep the life in their poor young hearts. My dame advised strong waters; 'But, Dame Crombie,' says I, 'would ye corrupt their youth?' And in my zeal for their good, doctor, I was delighting them, just at your entrance, with a pious little melody of my own against the sin ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... infinite world of thought and righteousness. Fame and wealth and pleasure are good when they are born of high thinking and right living, when they lead to purer faith and love; but if they are sought as ends and loved for themselves, they blight and corrupt. The value of culture is great, and the ideal it presents points in the right direction in bidding us build up the being which we are. But since man is not the highest, he may not rest in himself, and culture therefore is a means rather than an end. If we make it ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... the help of a little child. "My experiments have not succeeded," he said one day, while we were sitting with him at the cafe near the Hotel des Reservoirs; "but that is not my fault. I need an absolutely pure-minded child, and can find none here, for this French race is corrupt from its very infancy." He was fasting at this time, taking apparently nothing but a little eau sucree for several days at a stretch. "The spirits will not move me unless I do this," he said. "To ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... inquiry was held under one Giovanni di Varax in the year 1478. The following extracts from the ordinances then made may not be unwelcome to the reader. The document from which they are taken is to be found, pp. 322-336 of Claretta's work. The text is evidently in many places corrupt or misprinted, and there are several words which I have looked for in vain in all the dictionaries—Latin, Italian, and French—in the reading-room of the British Museum which seemed in the least likely to contain them. I should say that for this translation, ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... that he would then require every heroine to bring a letter from her pastor and would end by interfering with all plays which suggested, for instance, that government had been known, from time to time, to prove corrupt, wealth to become oppressive and law, on rare occasions, to seem just a wee bit unjust. They are minded to resist any supervision of the theatre's manners for fear it might shackle in time the theatre's thought. Today or tomorrow they may be seen temporizing or at least ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... it is enclosed by a wall, filled with European, American, and Japanese troops, and surrounded by a bare space on which the Chinese are not allowed to build. It is administered by the diplomatic body, and the Chinese authorities have no powers over anyone within its gates. When some unusually corrupt and traitorous Government is overthrown, its members take refuge in the Japanese (or other) Legation and so escape the punishment of their crimes, while within the sacred precincts of the Legation Quarter the Americans erect ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... take no heed, and we weep not that all things belonging to us are so defiled. For because all flesh had corrupted itself upon the earth, the great deluge came. Since therefore our inmost affections are very corrupt, it followeth of necessity that our actions also are corrupt, being the index of a deficient inward strength. Out of a pure heart proceedeth the ...
— The Imitation of Christ • Thomas a Kempis
... he has maintained an unblemished character. A short time ago I took down from his own lips the story of his life, or I might rather say of his two lives; so great a contrast does the latter half of his life present to the former. The one is the life of the ignorant and corrupt Pagan, the other that of the humble follower and devoted disciple of the Lord Jesus. All who know Peniamina would concur in this testimony that he is one of the brightest gems that has been won for Christ in Samoa. His praise is in all the churches. As a pastor he has done good ...
— Fruits of Toil in the London Missionary Society • Various
... the extermination of a race, learn to abstain from that sin? A race being destroyed, the eternal customs of that race are lost; and upon those customs being lost, sin overpowers the whole race. From the predominance of sin, O Krishna, the women of that race become corrupt. And the women becoming corrupt, an intermingling of castes happeneth, O descendant of Vrishni. This intermingling of castes leadeth to hell both the destroyer of the race and the race itself. The ancestors of those fall (from heaven), their rites of pinda and ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... of Borneo. They expect an Englishman to be just and generous, brave and firm, and they ground this expectation on their knowledge and experience of Labuan and Sarawak, and the lessons which her Majesty's ships of war have from time to time impressed on the corrupt and faithless Bruni people. I trust this experience will never be reversed by unworthy agents or settlers. The climate is too tropical for colonization, no families of emigrants can be reared in such heat. There are, no doubt, more decided seasons in the north of ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... not like Mrs. Winnie Duval; and the beginning of the conversation was her inquiry why he let that woman corrupt him. Then the good lady went on to tell him what bridge had come to be; how people played it on the trains all the way from New York to San Francisco; how they had tables in their autos, and played ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... thousand dollars worth of land, and lose a thousand dollars worth of stocks or merchandise. Both Katy and her mother, while they were gathering the treasures of this world, were also "laying up treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt." Want had taught them its hard lessons, and they had come out of the fiery furnace of affliction the wiser and the better for the severe ordeal. The mother's foolish pride had been rebuked, the daughter's true pride had been encouraged. They had learned that faith and patience ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... took counsel and cut out the tongues of the women, lest they should corrupt their speech. And because of the silence of the women from their own speech, the men of Armorica are called Britons. From that time there came frequently, and still comes, that language from ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... his glaring eye on the lawyer; 'fight to the last; leave nothing untried; spare not gold; bribe—corrupt—suborn; do any thing; but do not leave the triumph to my enemies. It's that that is tearing away at my heart. It's that which is killing me,' exclaimed he, bitterly, shaking his hands over ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... This is the moral lesson of "Romola." A man has no associate so intimate as his own character, his own career,—his present and his past; and if he builds up his career of timid and base actions, they cling to him like evil companions, to sophisticate, to corrupt, and to damn him. As in Maggie Tulliver we had a picture of the elevation of the moral tone by honesty and generosity, so that when the mind found itself face to face with the need for a strong muscular effort, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... also a tope to Buddha, where a good spirit constantly keeps (all about it) swept and watered, without any labour of man being required. A king of corrupt views once said, "Since you are able to do this, I will lead a multitude of troops and reside there till the dirt and filth has increased and accumulated, and (see) whether you can cleanse it away or not." The spirit thereupon raised a great wind, which ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... hie to such opprobry as that you would pronounce a never thought of action afore you had but asked the question of her that best could tell it? I see well we two be of very different natures, for I vow to God I would not corrupt my tongue with an unknown report of the greatest foe I have; much less could I detract my best deserving friend with a spot so foul as scarcely may be ever outrazed. Could you root the desire of gifts of your subjects upon no better ground than this quagmire, which ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... yards off, I am sure, with a hedge between us, and only looked sideways at them to make notes, but in two seconds they were all up and at attention, and two came running forward for Sahib's orders and cards, so I drove away lamenting. The Red Chupprassies, by the way, or "corrupt lictors," are official messengers wearing red Imperial livery, who are attached to all civil officers in India. See Mr Aberich-Mackay on the subject in ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... pamphlet of Yang Tu (Chapter VIII) which launched the ill-fated Monarchy Scheme and contributed so largely to the dramatic death of Yuan Shih-kai, we have an essentially Chinese mentality of the reactionary or corrupt type which expresses itself both on home and foreign issues in a naively dishonest way, helpful to future diplomacy. In the Letter of Protest (Chapter X) against the revival of Imperialism written by Liang Ch'i-chao—the most brilliant scholar living—we have a Chinese of the New ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... manner, as I do; we must joke with the guards, we must gain the good-will of the soldiers, since we can't corrupt them. Try, Porthos, to please them more than you are wont to do when they are under our windows. Thus far you have done nothing but show them your fist; and the more respectable your fist is, Porthos, the less attractive it is. Ah, I would give ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... evening!' Get into the carriage with them when they go home—and you will find that it means, 'What a bore!' 'Ah, Mr. So-and-so, allow me to congratulate you on your new appointment.' Mr. So-and-so passes out of hearing—and you discover what the congratulations mean. 'Corrupt old brute! he has got the price of his vote at the last division.' 'Oh, Mr. Blank, what a charming book you have written!' Mr. Blank passes out of hearing—and you ask what his book is about. 'To tell you the truth, I haven't read it. ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... are corrupt." With which my lady tapped farewell on his shoulder. Leaning from the carriage window, she said: "I suppose I shall see you at Richford? Merthyr Powys is coming this week. And that reminds me: he would be the man to appreciate your ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Caribbean islands to be colonized by Europeans, due chiefly to the fierce resistance of the native Caribs. France ceded possession to Great Britain in 1763, which made the island a colony in 1805. In 1980, two years after independence, Dominica's fortunes improved when a corrupt and tyrannical administration was replaced by that of Mary Eugenia CHARLES, the first female prime minister in the Caribbean, who remained in office for 15 years. Some 3,000 Carib Indians still living on Dominica are the only pre-Columbian population remaining ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... we had glided down in the canoe. While they were speaking, I thought I detected a few words which sounded like Spanish; and listening more attentively, I found that the eldest of the two was speaking the lingua geral—a corrupt Portuguese, mixed with Indian words, generally used throughout the whole length of the Amazon. It was so like the language Naro and his Indians had employed when speaking to us, that I could make out, with a little difficulty, what was said. I understood the elder Indian to say ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... show me how to correct this hopelessly corrupt passage of Graidiocolosyrtus Tabenniticus, on the cause ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... malefic, malignant, nocuous, noisome; prejudicial; disserviceable[obs3], disadvantageous; wide-wasting. unlucky, sinister; obnoxious; untoward, disastrous. oppressive, burdensome, onerous; malign &c. (malevolent) 907. corrupting &c. (corrupt &c. 659); virulent, venomous, envenomed, corrosive; poisonous &c. (morbific) 657[obs3]; deadly &c. (killing) 361; destructive &c. (destroying) 162; inauspicious &c. 859. bad, ill, arrant, as bad as bad can be, dreadful; horrid, horrible; dire; rank, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... virtues. But we find that Nature, here as every where, has mingled base and noble elements. The lofty mountains, bearing in their steadfastness the seal of their appointed symbol—"God's righteousness is like the great mountains"—look down upon one of the lowest and most corrupt forms of republican government on earth;[32] their snowy summits preach sermons on purity to Quitonian society, but in vain; and the great thoughts of God written all over the Andes are unable to lift this proud capital out of the mud and mire ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... but I mean there are no such things in the world as abstractions. There are only men and women. Thoughts don't seethe; men and women seethe. Principles don't reform or corrupt; men and women do the reforming and corrupting. If you want to do things, don't begin by making the air resound with denunciations of wickedness; but make people believe in you and despise the other fellow. When they like you they'll begin ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... the Caesars and the Antoninuses dare not acquire a single idea without the permission of a Dominican friar. I should be pleased with the liberty which inspires the English genius if passion and party spirit did not corrupt all that is estimable in ...
— Candide • Voltaire
... faith of conventicles, this moral attitude translated itself into a frenzied puritanism of ambition. He nursed it as something secularly holy. To see it thwarted opened his eyes to the true nature of the world, whose morality was artificial, corrupt, and blasphemous. The way of even the most justifiable revolutions is prepared by personal impulses disguised into creeds. The Professor's indignation found in itself a final cause that absolved him from the sin of turning to destruction as the agent of his ambition. To destroy public ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... conceive seemed near and attainable to us. Loosened was every tongue, and men—the aged, the stripling— Spoke aloud in words that were full of high feeling and wisdom. Soon, however, the sky was o'ercast. A corrupt generation Fought for the right of dominion, unworthy the good to establish; So that they slew one another, their new-made neighbors and brothers Held in subjection, and then sent the self-seeking ...
— Hermann and Dorothea • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... change that, to give you a clean heart and renew within you a right spirit. Jesus is a Saviour from sin (He saves none in their sins), and He is able to save to the uttermost, able to take away the very last remains of the old corrupt nature ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... is rebellion; but, as has already been admitted, it is not on that account necessarily unjustifiable. An established government may be so hopelessly iniquitous that it ought to be overthrown; an organized society may be so irremediably corrupt that it merits disruption; duly enacted laws may, when judged by moral standards, be so flagrantly unjust as to demand the resistance of all good men. There is no need to labour the point: actual examples crowd upon the mind. Who would condemn the revolt of the Greeks against Turkish rule? ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... Claverhouse. They had been hunted like wild beasts, they had been scattered when worshipping God according to the fashion of their fathers, they had been shot down without a trial, they had been shut up in noisome prisons—and all this because they would not submit to the most corrupt government ever known in Scotland, and that most intolerable kind of tyranny which tries, not only to coerce a man as a citizen, but also as a Christian. They had many persecutors, but, on the whole, the most active had been Graham, and it was Graham they hated most. It is his ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... and speak of it, whether in proverbs or in their everyday talk. They don't resemble, besides, the ballads encountered in the 'Hsi Hsiang Chi,' and 'Mou Tan T'ing,' to justify us to fear that we might be setting eyes upon some corrupt text. They are quite harmless; so we'd ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... Poet advises the Elder Piso never to read his verses to a man, to whom he has made a promise, or a present: a venal friend cannot be a good Critick; he will not speak his mind freely to his patron; but, like a corrupt judge, betray truth and justice for the ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... day or two of Pentecost, and the 10th, 15th, and 22d of Tisri, were always sabbatical days or days of rest, and it was inconvenient on two sabbaths together to be prohibited burying their dead and making ready fresh meat, for in that hot region their meat would be apt in two days to corrupt: to avoid these and such like inconveniences, the Jews postponed their months a day, as often as the first day of the month Tisri, or, which is all one, the third of the month Nisan, was sunday, wednesday ...
— Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John • Isaac Newton
... process of our love and wisdom To each poor brother who offends against us— Most innocent, perhaps—and what if guilty? 110 Is this the only cure? Merciful God! Each pore and natural outlet shrivell'd up By ignorance and parching poverty, His energies roll back upon his heart, And stagnate and corrupt till changed to poison, 115 They break out on him like a loathsome plague-spot! Then we call in our pamper'd mountebanks— And this is their best cure! uncomforted And friendless solitude, groaning and tears, And ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... teachings desert him, as we trust they some day will. Let him read the "Student," by Bulwer, and he will learn how narrowly Voltaire escaped becoming a "Reformer" in the Church of England, instead of the violent antagonist he was of the corrupt Church of Rome in France. We do not make ourselves; it is the environing circumstances and conditions in which we are placed which oftentimes determine our career for good ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... out of Octavia, a discourse of Seneca's to Nero, would it not be better for you to say nothing than by mixing things of such different natures to make an impertinent tragi-comedy? for you spoil and corrupt the play that is in hand when you mix with it things of an opposite nature, even though they are much better. Therefore go through with the play that is acting the best you can, and do not confound it because another ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... short, even for those who live a long time, and we must live for the few who know and appreciate us, who judge and absolve us, and for whom we have the same affection and indulgence. The rest I look upon as a mere crowd, lively or sad, loyal or corrupt, from whom there is nothing to be expected but fleeting emotions, either pleasant or unpleasant, which leave no trace behind them. We ought to hate very rarely, as it is too fatiguing; remain indifferent to a great deal, forgive often and never ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... sallies of humour, of ebullitions of spleen, making jets-d'eaux, cascades, fountains, and water-works of his idle opinions, he would shut up the wits of others in leaden cisterns, to stagnate and corrupt, or bury them ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... Commissioner had been very interesting. At the very outset Magnus's committee found itself involved in corrupt politics. The primaries had to be captured at all costs and by any means, and when the convention assembled it was found necessary to buy outright the votes of certain delegates. The campaign fund raised by contributions from Magnus, Annixter, Broderson, and Osterman was drawn upon to the extent ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... occasion for the exertions of eloquence and all that might seem requisite would be only to amuse the ear with the harmony of cadence. But if the orator has to deal with light, inconstant, prejudiced, and corrupt judges, and if many embarrassments must be removed in order to throw light upon truth, then artful stratagem must fight the battle, and set all its engines to work, for he who is beaten out of the straight road can not get into it ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... Professors, philanthropists and a general who are with us in this work—they are, of course, the ones who are likely to corrupt the morals of the younger generation. Frau Lund, no doubt, would like to send our young men to the good ...
— Moral • Ludwig Thoma
... he is "much less concerned about theology than about sound common-sense, and only therefore prefer the old orthodox (at bottom tolerant) theology to the new (at bottom intolerant), because the former openly conflicts with sound common-sense, while the latter would fain corrupt it. I reconcile myself with my open enemies in order the better to be on my guard against my secret ones."[157] At another time he tells his brother that he has a wholly false notion of his (Lessing's) relation ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... may have been only fancy—I fancied that YOUR mother was colder than usual in her manner this morning. I hope that the luxuries of this palatial mansion are powerless to corrupt your heart. I cannot lead you to a castle and place crowds of liveried servants at your beck and call; but I can make you mistress of an honorable English home, independent of the bounty of strangers. You can never be more than ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... what not—and Oisin Sarrasin alone explained that it was a revolution against reforms too enlightened and too advanced—a revolution of corruption against healthy civilisation and purity—of stagnation against progress—of the system comfortable to corrupt judges and to wealthy suitors, and against judicial integrity. It was pointed out in Captain Sarrasin's paper that this was the sort of revolution which had succeeded for the moment in turning out the Englishman Ericson—and the other ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... Bataan as a whole seem less mixed with the Malayan than any other group, and fewer mixed bloods are seen among them. Their average stature is also somewhat lower. They speak corrupt Tagalog, though careful study may reveal traces of an original tongue. (See Appendix ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... imagine," she continued, "any human being so utterly bad-hearted, so altogether vile and corrupt, as this man who now calls himself Leon Dudleigh. In pure fiendish malignity, and in all those qualities which are abhorrent and shameful, he surpasses ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... he announced, "has been doing some shadowing for me. Evidently, both Murtha and Kahn having failed, they are resorting to other tactics. It looks as if they had in some way, probably from some corrupt official of the court or employee in charge of the jury list, obtained a copy of the panel which Justice Pomeroy has summoned ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... new pastor, Everard Bogardus, in the same ship with a schoolmaster—the first in the colony—and the new governor, Van Twiller. The governor was incompetent and corrupt, and the minister was faithful and plain-spoken; what could result but conflict? During Van Twiller's five years of mismanagement, nevertheless, the church emerged from the mill-loft and was installed in a barn-like meeting-house ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... concluding the peace, had no intention of laying snares, God would put it into their minds as a punishment to the king. "Now, how fearful a thing it is to fall into the hands of the living God, who is wont not only to chastise the corrupt manners of men by war, but, on account of the sins of kings and people, to dash kingdoms in pieces, and to transfer them from their ancient masters to new ones, is too evident to need to be proved by examples."[1246] When at last the peace of Saint Germain was definitely concluded, ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... have sometimes thought it not improbable that he would be my second son-in-law." The bishop did not whistle: we believe that they lose the power of doing so on being consecrated; and that in these days one might as easily meet a corrupt judge as a whistling bishop; but he looked as though he would have done so, ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... the way to vast public corruption. This is flatly opposed to the experience of America, where local administration has been as little Socialistic and as corrupt as anywhere in the world. Obviously in order that a public official should be bribed, there must be some wealthy person outside the system to bribe him and with an interest in bribing him. When you have a weak administration with feeble powers and resources and strong ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... treasures in Heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... name of the well known Roman knight, to whom Cicero addressed his Epistles, was Titus Pomponius Atticus. Although Satrius was the name of a family at Rome, no connection between it and Atticus can be found, so that the text is supposed to be corrupt. Quintus Caecilius was an uncle of Atticus, and adopted him. The freedman mentioned in this chapter probably assumed his name, he having been the property of Caecilius; as it was the custom for freedmen to adopt ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... queer world, my darling, in which we live. I never knew much about it until lately. It is not so at home, or was not when I was a boy—but here you can take away a man's character, rob him of his home, corrupt his children. You can break your wife's heart, be cruel, revengeful; you can lie and be tricky, and no law can touch you—in fact, you are still a respectable citizen. But if you take a dollar-bill out of another man's cash drawer, ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... belonging to Francisco's mother. Out of this book he learned to read; and, as his education advanced, other books were procured. It may appear strange that the very traffic in which his reputed father was engaged did not corrupt the boy's mind; but, accustomed to it from his infancy, he had considered these negroes as another species—an idea fully warranted by the cruelty of ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... their view, they stopped to rejoice, and gave themselves up, without control, to the intoxication of delight. In so doing they laid themselves open to the snares and attacks of many secret enemies, who availed themselves of their frequent gatherings to sow the seeds of discord and corrupt their minds with false political doctrines. Far better would it have been if they had left to the Sovereign in whom, at first, they placed unbounded confidence, and the wise Ministers whom he called to his counsels, the care of forwarding the cause of reform. It had been most benevolently and ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace ...
— An Explanation of Luther's Small Catechism • Joseph Stump
... these it will be seen that of three of the principal emissaries of Mr. Burr whom the General had caused to be apprehended, one had been liberated by habeas corpus, and two others, being those particularly employed in the endeavor to corrupt the general and army of the United States, have been embarked by him for ports in the Atlantic States, probably on the consideration that an impartial trial could not be expected during the present agitations of New Orleans, and that that city ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 1: Thomas Jefferson • Edited by James D. Richardson
... the paddle, 'you fairly corrupt me with your mendacity. Be off and unlimber yourself in the fog; I see ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... clutch of something racial and inherited—a something which the Northerner hardly knows. She had felt it before on one or two occasions, but not with this intensity. The grace of Chloe Fairmile haunted her memory, and the perfection, the corrupt perfection of her appeal to men, ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... she had been with Nicky. She would be wiser with Michael when he came back from Germany. She would keep them both out of the Vortex, the horrible Vortex that Lawrence Stephen and Vera had let Nicky in for, the Vortex that seized on youth and forced it into a corrupt maturity. After Desmond's affair Anthony and Frances felt that to them the social circle inhabited by Vera and Lawrence Stephen would never be anything ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... his opponents will be better understood if we notice the position of the Church in England at the time. The meridian of her power had been already passed. Her clergy as a class were ignorant and corrupt. Her people were neglected, except for the money to be extorted by masses and pardons, "as if," to quote the words of an old writer, "God had given his sheep, not to be pastured, but to be shaven and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... mourn the fate of Algernon Sidney, who perished on account of his political opinions; and his Discourse on the Government, a manuscript which was discovered by the authorities at his house, furnished his enemies with a good pretext. A corrupt jury, presided over by the notorious Jeffreys, soon condemned poor headstrong Sidney to death. He was beheaded in 1683. His early life, his hatred of all in authority, whether Charles I. or Cromwell, his revolutionary instincts, are well known. A few extracts from his fatal MS. will ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... recent years. His Grace took occasion to complain of the frequency of such bills, and, being a true patriot, charged the French Government with the despatch of agents to this country especially to corrupt our manners. "He considered it a consequence of the gross immoralities imported of late years into this country from France, the Directory of which country, finding that they were not able to subdue us by their arms, appeared as if they were determined to gain their ends by destroying ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... hand holds the ribbons. God grant that McClellan may preserve his western vigor and activity, and may not become softened and dissolved by these Washington evaporations. If he does, if he follows the routine, he will become as impotent as others before him. Young man, beware of Washington's corrupt but flattering influences. To the camp! to the camp! A tent is better for you than a handsome house. The tent, the fumes of bivouacs, inspired the Fredericks, the Napoleons, ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... 1666 active operations on both sides dwindled down, and Charles, anxious to use naval appropriations for other purposes, allowed the fleet to fall into a condition of unreadiness for service. One of the least scandals in this corrupt age was the unwillingness or inability of the officials to pay the seamen their wages. In consequence large numbers of English prisoners in Holland actually preferred taking service in the Dutch navy rather than accepting exchange, on the ground that the Dutch government ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... that which you call the Gold of the Gods, is always fascinating," continued Kennedy. "The trouble with such easy money, however, is that it tends to corrupt. In the early days history records its taint. And I doubt whether human nature has changed much under the veneer of modern civilization. The treasure seems to leave its trail even as far away as New York. It has at least one murder ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... the era in which we live; and maintained such a strong influence, that for century after century the whole land was in darkness and ignorance; and though the Christian religion has remained, it is in a debased and corrupt form. Europe knew nothing of Abyssinia worth the name for ages. Then a princess of Judah, Judith, prosecuted designs upon poor Abyssinia, sought out the members of the reigning family, and would have caused each one to be slain. Fortunately, a young prince ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... portrayed the most licentious attitudes. I cannot believe a woman of perfectly pure mind can delight to look at such pictures in a public gallery. But this nakedness is all of a piece with many other things which characterize French society, and but shows the corrupt state of the morals of ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... some great dread. Men are not anxious to put on the brakes unless they are in fear of being wrecked. Nothing is more dangerous in any government than perfect indifference to public interests. Men in places of public trust always need watching. Irresponsible power, it is said, would corrupt an archangel, and is, doubtless, unknown among the inhabitants of the better land. Among men there is great liability. Every political candidate has his accusations, his promises, and scheme, with which he confronts his rival and agitates the minds of the people. So we have been saved ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 12, December, 1880 • Various
... my compatriot inhabitants of this bush, or my philosophical studies for the benefit of our race in general! for, in politics, what can laws do without morals? Our present race of ephemerae will in a course of minutes become corrupt, like those of other and older bushes, and consequently as wretched. And in philosophy how small is our progress! Alas! art is long, and life is short! My friends would comfort me with the idea of a name, they say, I shall leave behind me; and they tell me I have lived long ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... express testimony of the holy scriptures, that these things are true; and truths, the knowledge of which is essential to your present and future happiness, I must be plain and faithful in declaring them. I ought to be very indifferent what men of depraved morals, and corrupt principles may say, or think of me, if I have the witness of a good conscience, and the approbation of the God whom I serve. My concern is for YOUR welfare and salvation; for I am certain, as I have told you before, and now tell you again, that ...
— An Address to the Inhabitants of the Colonies, Established in New South Wales and Norfolk Island. • Richard Johnson
... revolutions is generally proportioned to the degree of the maladministration which has produced them. It is therefore not strange that the government of Scotland, having been during many years greatly more corrupt than the government of England, should have fallen with a far heavier ruin. The movement against the last king of the house of Stuart was in England conservative, in Scotland destructive. The ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... vanity and folly to deny this, rebels against the law of the Creator, and indisputable order of nature; but there is a worse effect than this, which follows the careless education given to women of quality, its being so easy for any man of sense, that finds it either his interest or his pleasure, to corrupt them. The common method is, to begin by attacking their religion: they bring them a thousand fallacious arguments, which their excessive ignorance hinders them from refuting: and I speak now from my own knowledge and conversation among them, there are more ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... centuries of the Christian era, so wild, enthusiastic and corrupt were the sentiments of some Millenarians, that this book ceased in great measure to be read or studied; and even its divine authority came to be questioned by many learned and pious men. As the "Dark Ages" of Popery resulted from neglect of the sacred Scriptures in general, so even among the first ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... with them as suits his artistic purpose. But what was the purpose to be in this case? Should it be a tragedy of austere patriotism going down against a relatively bad order too strong to be resisted, or a tragedy of corrupt ambition dashing itself to death against a relatively good order too strong to be overthrown? Either conception, if consistently worked out, might have sufficed for the groundwork of a good historical tragedy. ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... us into the security of idiots. We must soften into a credulity below the milkiness of infancy, to think all men virtuous. We must be tainted with a malignity truly diabolical, to believe all the world to be equally wicked and corrupt. Men are in public life as in private—some good, some evil. The elevation of the one, and the depression of the other, are the first objects of all true policy. But that form of Government, which, neither in its direct institutions, nor in their immediate tendency, has contrived to throw its ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... the prisoner can be present with his witnesses, is more likely to protect him against being unnecessarily subjected to the trouble and expense of a trial, than before a grand jury, where complaints are often made by malicious persons, and sustained by the testimony of partial or corrupt witnesses. ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young
... when the bright moon rose, lighting up the great silent court, until yesterday occupied by the terrible queen and her corrupt entourage, Omar and I sat together discussing the events of those fateful hours since midnight. We had eaten from the gold dishes in which the Naya's food had been served; we had quenched our thirst from the jewel-encrusted goblets ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... commit fornication, nor adultery. Neither shalt thou corrupt thyself with mankind. Thou shalt not make use of the word of God, ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... or learnt from commercial intercourse in the Mediterranean, seemed to be invading the furthest regions of the West. Perhaps to the same influence may be attributed the spread of religious heresies. Much of this was provoked by direct antagonism to a powerful and corrupt Church; but the actual form assumed by the positive beliefs of those who organised themselves apart from the Catholic Church were largely Oriental ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... censorship was abolished by decree, but that was of very little importance, for the radical press had thrown off all its restraints, simply ignoring the censorship. The government of Nicholas II was quite as helpless as it was tyrannical, corrupt, and inefficient. The army and navy, demoralized by the defeat suffered at the hands of Japan, and especially by knowledge of the corruption in high places which made that defeat inevitable, were no longer dependable. ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... attention—in the department of government. Government has always been less important in China than in the Western world; it has always been rudimentary in its organisation; and for centuries it has been incompetent and corrupt. Of this corruption Westerners, it is true, make more than they fairly should. China is no more corrupt (to say the least) than the United States or Italy or France, or than England was in the eighteenth century. And much that is called corruption is recognised ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... the night began," continued the gentleman, turning several leaves of his note-book, "with this message: 'Evil communications corrupt good manners.'" ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... South into the scale of Secession. The war, however, has proved that the core of Democracy was sound; that the people, if they had been neglectful of their duties, or had misapprehended them, had not become corrupt. ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... printed during the last decade, said to me: "The main purpose of many of these books is to knock away the underpinning of the marriage relation or of the Bible." If parents give house room to trashy or corrupt books, they cannot be surprised if their children give heart-room to "the world, the flesh, and the evil one." When interesting and profitable books are so abundant and so cheap, this increasing rage for novels is to me one of the sinister signs of ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... be bound in some mysterious deadly pact with evil spirits of the most horrible kind—who could tell? And in such a case it became a duty, a sacred duty, to give up the earthly body which had been once so loved, but which was now the habitation of a soul corrupt and horrible in its evil inclinations. Possibly, terror of death might bring on confession and repentance, and purification. Or if it did not, why away with the evil creature, the witch, out of the world, down to the kingdom of the master, whose bidding was done on earth in ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... occupations is very dramatically presented in the brief description of the 'field of folk,' with incisive passing satire of the sins and vices of each class. 'Gluttonous wasters' are there, lazy beggars, lying pilgrims, corrupt friars and pardoners, venal lawyers, and, with a lively touch of realistic humour, cooks and their 'knaves' crying, 'Hot pies!' But a sane balance is preserved—there are also worthy people, faithful laborers, honest merchants, and sincere priests ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... inclined to speak so of a sculptured drapery, be assured, without more ado, the sculpture is base, and bad. You will merely waste your time and corrupt your taste by looking at it. Nothing is so easy as to imitate drapery in marble. You may cast a piece any day; and carve it with such subtlety that the marble shall be an absolute image of the folds. But that is not sculpture. ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... cried, "that crushes the individual for the happiness of the race, that destroys an enfeebled species to fatten the victorious species. No, no; that is crime. There is in that only foulness and murder. He was right this evening in the church. The earth is corrupt, science only serves to show its rottenness. It is on high that we must all seek a refuge. Oh, master, I entreat you, let me save myself, let ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... the struggle for existence are the worst and the weakest, this does not mean that the Darwinian law does not hold good; it means simply that the environment is corrupt (and corrupting), and that those who survive are precisely those who are the fittest for ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... temptations are either not irresistible, or else are not recognised as alluring to what is wrong. But we all know that training, though never perfect, can make the difference between a decently right and happy life and a bad, corrupt half-life or no life. What does training do for the nimble-footed young beauties of the London ball-room? It makes them nimble-footed, we admit. And ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... them played for sheer love of the gamble. There were rules to regulate the play. But as time passed and voters multiplied, the popular preoccupation increased the temptations and opportunities for gain, inviting the enterprising, the skillful and the corrupt to reconstitute patriotism into a commodity and to organize public opinion into a bill of lading. Thus politics as a trade, parties as trademarks, the politicians, like ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... many, and these poor and needy men sailing in them and so quickly gaining the wealth of the citizens? It is for you, men of Athens, to be enraged against them; (3) for it would be strange if you yourselves, so burdened by taxes, should grant pardon to thieves and corrupt men now, but formerly, when your estates were large as well as the state revenue, you punished with death ...
— The Orations of Lysias • Lysias
... gentry, who hitherto raised the rates for all local services, dispersed patronage and were guilty of many misdeeds and malversations, as well of being prolific in every conceivable form of abuse which a rotten and corrupt system could lend itself to. To this the Local Government Act of 1898 put a violent and abrupt end. The Grand Juries and the Presentment Sessions were abolished. Elected Councils took their place. ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... unsigned, but appears to have been written by Campion. "What epigrams are in poetry," it begins, "the same are airs in music: then in their chief perfection when they are short and well seasoned. But to clog a light song with a long preludium is to corrupt the nature of it. Many rests in music were invented either for necessity of the fugue, or granted as an harmonical licence in songs of many parts; but in airs I find no use they have, unless it be to make a vulgar and ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... his wickedest leer, "what for is my conclusion good? You Americans believe yourselves to be excepted from the operation of general laws. You care not for experience. I have lived seventy-five years, and all that time in the midst of corruption. I am corrupt myself, only I do have courage to proclaim it, and you others have it not. Rome, Paris, Vienna, Petersburg, London, all are corrupt; only Washington is pure! Well, I declare to you that in all my experience I have found no society ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... to know whether she was clever enough to see through the character of Coronado. She was clever enough, but not corrupt enough. Very pure people cannot fully understand people who are very impure. It is probable that angels are considerably in the dark concerning the nature of the devil, and derive their disagreeable impression of him mainly from a ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... could never be put into such dangerous hands as those of persons so qualified; and at least, that the mistakes committed by ignorance, in a virtuous disposition, would never be of such fatal consequences to the public weal as the practices of a man whose inclinations led him to be corrupt, and who had great abilities to manage, to multiply, and defend ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... vitality of our present-day folk, nor any of those industrial establishments which make their profit, and keep themselves going, by causing foolish measures to be adopted which, in the end, are bound to deprave and corrupt our unfortunate masses. I myself am determined never to establish any manufacture, however profitable, which will give rise to a demand for 'higher things,' such as sugar and tobacco—no not if I lose a million by my refusing to do ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... object of the war had been a redress of grievances. The language, that it was a war against a corrupt administration, had been carefully observed; and allegiance to the British crown was universally avowed. The progress, however, of the public mind towards independence, though slow, was certain; and measures were necessarily taken, which apparently ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... counteract this tendency, but a lively and constant sense of religious principle; which enlarges the heart till it can love our neighbour as ourself, which brightens the present with the hopes of the future, which purifies our corrupt nature, and elevates its grovelling earthward tendencies by the contemplation of an eternal state of being dependent upon our conduct in this transient state of trial. Who can tell the extent to which these and similar ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... by the ring, and never accordin' to ability—as if sich a ring could last ten years. He ended up by saying, though he was a Republican, as his father is, he intended to vote Democratic—he's domiciled here—as a protest against the impure and corrupt Boss-system which was disgracin' American political life. 'Twas baby talk. But it's like this. The buildin' of the branch line South has brought a lot of Irish here— they're all Democrats—and there's ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... the less keenly, 'She had her idea of navigating, as the devil of mischief always has, in the direction where there's most to corrupt; and, my lad, she teaches the navigation that leads to the bottom ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... opportunities of exclusive luxury are increased in equal measure; exclusion may bring resentment; resentment may call forth oppression, armed with new weapons, guided by wider understanding, but prompted by the same corrupt spirit as of old. ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston |
