"Degenerate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... have done anything so like a washerwoman as to wring my hands; though I might, like some heroines, have fallen to work in a regular blacksmith-way, by examining the lock of the door, and perhaps have succeeded in picking it; but, alas! I live in degenerate days. Oh that I had been born the persecuted daughter of some ancient baron bold instead of the spoiled child of a good natured modern earl! Heavens! to think that I must tamely, abjectly submit to be married in ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... vitality, renders it fruitful on behalf of its species. I have seen the principle strikingly exemplified in the common tobacco plant, when reared in a northern country, in the open air. Year after year it continued to degenerate, and to exhibit a smaller leaf and shorter stem, until the successors of what in the first year of trial had been rigorous plants, of some three to four feet in height, had in the sixth or eighth become mere weeds, of scarce as many inches. But while the as yet undegenerate plant had merely ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... and create energy in others: to descend to their position is less noble, but practicable with ease. If I may be allowed the metaphor, one partakes of the nature of redemptive power; the other of that self-abased and degenerate will, which 'flung from his splendors' the ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... sponge and pumice-stone for erasures; the horns for black and red ink lay with the scissors and rulers on the little upper shelf of his desk. There were the pigments also there, which he had learnt to grind and prepare, the crushed lapis lazuli first calcined by heat according to the modern degenerate practice, with the cheap German blue beside it, and the indigo beyond; the prasinum; the vermilion and red lead ready mixed, and the rubrica beside it; the yellow orpiment, and, most important of all, ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... an intellect, a soul so calm," says Carlyle, "so lofty, massive, and immovable, has not mingled in philosophic discussion since the time of Luther ... the cold, colossal, adamantine spirit, standing erect and clear, like a Cato Major among degenerate men; fit to have been the teacher of the Stoa, and to have discoursed of Beauty and Virtue in the groves of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... for the defence of religious interests, more especially in the domain of education and relief, the Liberals for the supremacy of a nominally neutral State in all public matters. It is easy to realize how this purely political quarrel could degenerate into a conflict of ideals, some ultramontanes distrusting the motives of "atheists" and ignoring the public spirit of men who did not share their creed, while some agnostics, steeped in the narrow doctrines of Voltaire and Diderot, made the Church the ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... despairs, that even this argument will have any force with our abominable clergy, because, to use his own words, "They are an insensible and degenerate race, who are thinking of nothing but their present advantages; and so that they may now support a luxurious and brutal course of irregular and voluptuous practices, they are easily hired to betray their religion, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... beginning's of these various degenerate and illiterate attempts at book-work we have only to watch the last expiring gleams of classic art beneath the ruthless footsteps of the barbarian invaders ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... religious matters. There is evidence, in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, that his spiritual presentation of Christianity had already been made an excuse for disorderly licence. The usual symptoms of degenerate Mysticism had appeared at Corinth. There were men there who called themselves "spiritual persons[105]" or prophets, and showed an arrogant independence; there were others who wished to start sects of their own; others who carried antinomianism into the ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... threats aloud! the Greeks with longing eyes Behold at distance, but forbear the prize. Then fierce Tydides stoops; and from the fields Heaved with vast force, a rocky fragment wields. Not two strong men the enormous weight could raise, Such men as live in these degenerate days:(147) He swung it round; and, gathering strength to throw, Discharged the ponderous ruin at the foe. Where to the hip the inserted thigh unites, Full on the bone the pointed marble lights; Through both the tendons broke the rugged stone, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... there is no need to fear for the position of a Yugoslav Rieka based solely—omitting Hungary and the Ukraine altogether—on her Yugoslav hinterland. Rieka without Yugoslavia would be ruined and would degenerate into a fishing village, with a great past and a miserable future. This could very well be seen during the spring of 1919 when the communications were interrupted between Rieka and Yugoslavia. At ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... tolerate, things that fill them, therefore, with envy and perplexity—such things as pleasure, beauty, delicacy, leisure. In the cant of modern talk you will find them call everything that is not crude and forcible in life "degenerate." But back to the very earliest writings, in the most bloodthirsty outpourings of the Hebrew prophets, for example, you will find that at the base of the warrior spirit is hate for more complicated, for more refined, for more beautiful ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... advanced season, and on the bathers who had left too soon. They often spoke with visible enthusiasm, and tender and compassionate respect, of a young stranger, a lady, who had remained at the baths in a weak and languid state of health, which it was feared would degenerate into slow consumption. She had lived alone with her maid for the last three months, in one of the most retired apartments of the house, taking her meals in her own rooms; and was never seen except at her window that looked towards the garden, or on the stairs when she returned from ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... calamities ensue. And afflicted with these, people betake themselves to penances. And some celebrate sacrifices, desiring to enjoy the good things of life, or attain heaven. On the coming of the Dwapara Yuga, men become degenerate, in consequence of impiety. O son of Kunti, in the Kali Yuga a quarter only of virtue abideth. And in the beginning of this iron age, Narayana weareth a black hue. And the Vedas and the institutes, and virtue, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... source is far distant among the mountains of Tibet. His return was along the skirts of the northern hills; nor could this rapid campaign of one year justify the strange foresight of his emirs, that their children in a warm climate would degenerate into a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... there being nothing eminent, in that case, to compensate for the want of them, or preserve the person from our severest hatred, as well as contempt. A high ambition, an elevated courage, is apt, says Cicero, in less perfect characters, to degenerate into a turbulent ferocity. The more social and softer virtues are there chiefly to be regarded. These are always good and amiable [Cic. de ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... slippers, on letter cases, on braces, on photograph frames, on luggage straps, on fine pocket handkerchiefs. If she is expert and possesses the true sentiment she will embroider things for him with her hair. In these degenerate days she does not make her own outfit. Formerly, when a German girl left school she began to make stores of body and house linen for future years. But in modern cities the Braut gets everything at one of the big "white" shops, from her own laces and muslins to the saucepan holders for the ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... by a hero, a man whose character is unstained by any low or degenerate vices, or even feelings," said Julia, with a little more than her ordinary enthusiasm; "whose courage is as natural as it is daring; who is above fear, except of doing wrong; whose person is an index of his mind, and whose mind is filled with ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... during his stay at Miss Vane's he had taken much council with himself as to whether he ought not to get a new suit with his first money instead of sending it home. Now he had solved the question, after sending the money home, by the discovery of a place on a degenerate street, in a neighbourhood of Chinese laundries, with the polite name of Misfit Parlours, where they professed to sell the failures of the leading tailors of Boston, New York, and Chicago. After long study of the window of the Parlours, ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... glorious as the rainbow. We have engraven it there, on the blue table of the cold vault, in letters tall enough for the reading of the nations. And why has the far South not read and believed before this? Because a steam has gone up—a fog—from New England's pulpit and her degenerate press, and hidden the beaming revelation from its vision. The Northern hierarchy and aristocracy have ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... of all trouble, when these two interests came into ill-tempered controversy, was the conduct of the coureurs de bois. These roving traders taught the savages all the vices of French civilization in its most degenerate days. They debauched the Indian with brandy, swindled him out of his furs, and entered into illicit relations with the women of the tribes. They managed in general to convince the aborigines that ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... children; and, with their virile outdoor 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
... 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 type goes to ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... verge, men too often overshoot the mark, and frustrate the object they have most at heart, by eagerness to accomplish it. For though to a reasonable extent and in certain circumstances, all enjoyments are harmless, they degenerate into crimes, when excessively indulged, and particularly when the imagination is overstrained to improve their zest, or to refine or exalt them beyond the limits which Nature and sobriety prescribe. But this can no more be alledged as a reason for renouncing the moderate use of the enjoyment, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... do, that sort. ... As though the trouble they took could ever be worth the time they lose! ... There are dozens of men I know who are far less presentable than this highly coloured and robust young human being; and yet they are part of the accomplished scheme of things—like degenerate horses, you know—always pathetic to me; but they're still horses, for all that. Quid rides? Species of the same genus can cross, of course, but I had rather be a donkey than a mule. ... And if I were a ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... cattle seem to be entirely immune. It runs a variable course and usually produces the death of the animal affected with it. It is characterized by the formation of neoplasms, or nodules, of connective tissue, which degenerate into ulcers, from which exude a peculiar discharge. It is accompanied with a variable degree of fever, according to the rapidity of its course. It is subject to various complications of the lymphatic glands, of the lungs, of the testicles, of the internal organs, and ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... were attached on personal as well as doctrinal grounds. Miss Pratt spoke of Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, and observed that the present crisis afforded an occasion for emulating their heroism even in these degenerate times; while less highly instructed persons, whose memories were not well stored with precedents, simply expressed their determination, as Mr. Jerome had done, to 'stan' by' the preacher and his cause, believing it to be ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... by drainage, the floods were much less sudden, because the morasses and swampy grounds gave out water gradually, and thus the river took longer to rise, and continued fuller for a greater length of time than in these degenerate days, to the increased ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... halting steps the little old man came shambling along. He looked neither to the left nor to the right. His eyes were fixed and yet unseeing, his features were pale and bony. There was no gleam of life, not even in the stone-cold eyes. Like some machine-made man of a new and physically degenerate age, he took his exercise under the eye of his doctor, a strange and ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... hypnotic influence of Rasputin, the smart little woman, who often called at the house and whom I sometimes met at the palace, was quickly transformed from a steady tradesman's wife into a giddy, pleasure-loving and intriguing degenerate, perhaps even more vicious than the rest. Indeed, it was this very fact which caused the Empress to look upon her with favour. Thus she soon had the run of the private apartments, and became upon friendly terms with both Stuermer ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... skins and furs for rum and such strong liquors. They kindly received me as well as the English, who were few before the people concerned with me came among them. I must needs commend their respect to authority, and kind behaviour to the English. They do not degenerate from the old friendship between both kingdoms. As they are people proper and strong of body, so they have fine children, and almost every house full: rare to find one of them without three or four boys and as many girls; some six, seven, and eight ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... A lanky and degenerate youth (who before the war had been unlovingly known throughout Europe as the "White Rabbit" and who now was mentioned in dispatches as the "Crown Prince") had succeeded in leading some half-million fellow-Germans into a "pocket" ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... ravings of a maniac. But eccentricity has often provided the best cloak for dark designs, and the outbreak of war proved that there was a method in the madness of the man whom the authorities persisted in regarding merely as an irresponsible degenerate of a non-political kind. To quote the press report of ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... the young lord, no admonition would do him good now; he was thoroughly bewitched by the girl, and though he made a hundred promises to give her up, would never hold one of them. Alas! alas! that the son of good Duke Philip should be so degenerate. ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... circumstances that may cast a stain upon high integrity and spotless innocence, so long as it is possible the proofs I speak of may fail. In the latter case, so far at least as the world is concerned, justice would degenerate into scandal, whilst great evil and little good must be the consequence. I think I am bound in honor not to place old age, venerable and virtuous, on the one hand, and unsuspecting innocence on the other, in a contingency that may cause them irreparable injury. I will now say, that if your ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... that went to St. Helena dwelt in a worn-out body, a fat, degenerate perversion of the Napoleon that conquered ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... improvement of this domain, and the plans of the founder 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 ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... name for myself in the House; she'll be able to read all sorts of nice and horrid things about me in the papers at breakfast-time. I can be brilliantly amusing at times, and I understand the value of silence; there is no fear that I shall ever degenerate into that fearsome thing—a cheerful talkative husband. For a girl with money and social ambitions I should think I was rather a ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... are the three above named; the bad, three others dependent upon these, and each so like that to which it is related, that it is easy to pass imperceptibly from the one to the other. For a Monarchy readily becomes a Tyranny, an Aristocracy an Oligarchy, while a Democracy tends to degenerate into Anarchy. So that if the founder of a State should establish any one of these three forms of Government, he establishes it for a short time only, since no precaution he may take can prevent it from sliding into its contrary, ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... psychology on reactions is that it keeps us "close to the ground", and prevents our discussions from sailing off into the clouds of picturesque but fanciful interpretation. Psychology is very apt to degenerate into a game of blowing bubbles, unless we pin ourselves down to hard-headed ways of thinking. The notion of a reaction is of great value here, just because it is so hard-headed and concrete. Whenever we have any human action before us for explanation, we have to ask what the stimulus ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... speaker and a writer he had no superior among his contemporaries. His varied talents are further shown by his numerous literary labours, of which some small notices remain. His views were large and enlightened, his schemes were vast and boundless. His genius deserved a better sphere than the degenerate republic in which he lived. But the power which he acquired did not die with him. A youth of tender age succeeded to the name and the inheritance of Caesar, and by his great talents and a long career of wonderful success consolidated that ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... wont, it was believed, to visit the earth and mingle with men. But even in Homer's time this familiar intercourse was a thing of the past—a tradition of a golden age that had passed away. Their forms were no longer seen, their voices no longer heard. In these later and more degenerate times the recognized modes of divine communication with men were by oracles, and by casual and unusual sights and sounds, as thunder and lightning, a sudden tempest, an eclipse, a flight of birds,—particularly of birds ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... latter was just saying to his neighbor, Sperber's nephew, "in whom one notices by his walk or his bearing or his speech, even to the slightest degree, that he has taken too much of a good thing—is a degenerate! In man there is a whole world at war. The microcosm is in revolution! Storms are raging in the brain—the world is on fire! He stands unmoved, a god in revolt! What is your opinion? That is the highest self-conquest, the primeval type of manhood, the struggle and victory ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... Thrums, pipe and drum were calling the inhabitants to arms. Scouts rushed in with the news that the farmers were advancing rapidly upon the town, and soon the streets were clattering with feet. At that time Thrums had its piper and drummer (the bellman of a later and more degenerate age); and on this occasion they marched together through the narrow wynds, firing the blood of haggard men and summoning them to the square. According to my informant's father, the gathering of these angry and startled weavers, when he thrust his blue bonnet on his ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... hand felt Out along the wall for support. Was this a dream, some ghastly, soul-terrifying nightmare! Danglar! Those working lips! That callous viciousness, that leer in the degenerate face. It seemed to bring a weakness to her limbs, and seek to rob her of the strength to stand. She could not even hope against hope; she knew that Danglar was in deadly earnest. Danglar would not ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... England's sake, For our dear Sovereign's sake,— We cry all shame on traitors, high and low, Whose word let no man take, Whose love let no man seek throughout the land,— Traitors who strive, with most degenerate hand, To bring ...
— The Song of the Flag - A National Ode • Eric Mackay
... sighed at us as degenerate Winslows, and Emily reserved to herself the right of believing that the daughter was ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... where are they? and where art thou, My Country? On thy voiceless shore The heroic lay is tuneless now— The heroic bosom beats no more![cz] And must thy Lyre, so long divine, Degenerate into hands ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... stings me that this chivalrous king of ours, this degenerate grandson of Henry the Great, should think of selling for a few paltry livres such an heritage as this. Shame to you ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... together. The utriculus is a warped, irregular bag, whose sections have become unrecognizable. The utriculus and sacculus are in wide-open communication with each other and have almost become one. The utriculus opens broadly into the scala tympani, and the nervous elements of the cochlea are degenerate. ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... governor-general of Canada. As a boy in his teens he was sent into the counting-house, an apprentice to commerce, and so he escaped the 'education of a gentleman' in the brutal public schools and the degenerate universities of the time. Business in those days had a sort of sanctity and was governed by punctilious—almost religious—routine. In the interests of the business he travelled, while young and impressionable, ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... spent much time and energy on philosophic study. He claims Philosophy as his mistress in The Fisher, and in a case where he is in fact judge as well as party, has no difficulty in getting his claim established. He is for ever reminding us that he loves philosophy and only satirizes the degenerate philosophers of his day. But it will occur to us after reading him through that he has dissembled his love, then, very well. There is not a passage from beginning to end of his works that indicates any real comprehension of any philosophic system. The external characteristics ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... licentiousness and depravity of Imperial Rome. Looking back to Republican Rome, and considering the state of public morals but fifty years before the emperors, we can with difficulty believe that the descendants of a people so severe in their habits could thus rapidly degenerate, and that a populace, once so hardy and masculine, should assume the manners which we might expect in the debauchees of Daphne (the infamous suburb of Antioch) or of Canopus, into which settled the very lees and dregs of the vicious Alexandria. Such extreme changes would falsify all that we know ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... mesalliances will tell. An American, too—a governess, a poor relation of some common rich people from the States. The best county families, with daughters to marry, shook their heads. It was very sad—very sad, to see a good old name and a good old family degenerate in this way. But there was always a taint of madness in the Catheron blood—that accounted for a good deal. Poor Sir Victor—and ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... enriching of memory, enabling of judgment, and enlarging of conceit, which commonly we call learning, under what name soever it come forth, or to what immediate end soever it be directed, the final end is, to lead and draw us to as high a perfection, as our degenerate souls made worse by their clayey lodgings, can be capable of. This, according to the inclination of the man, bred many formed impressions; for some that thought this felicity principally to be gotten by knowledge, and no knowledge to ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... the graves of Shelley, Keats and Salvator Rosa! The Palace of the Cassars looked even more mournful in the pale, slant sunshine, and the yellow Tiber, as he flowed through the "marble wilderness," seemed sullenly counting up the long centuries during which degenerate slaves have trodden his banks. A leaden-colored haze clothed the seven hills, and heavy silence reigned among the ruins, for all work was prohibited, and the people were gathered in their churches. Rome never appeared so desolate ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... certain set of men until the moment they lost their power, and who never agreed with them in a single instance afterwards? Would not such a coincidence of interest and opinion be rather fortunate? Would it not be an extraordinary cast upon the dice, that a man's connexions should degenerate into faction, precisely at the critical moment when they lose their power, or he accepts a place? When people desert their connexions, the desertion is a manifest FACT, upon which a direct simple issue lies, triable by plain men. Whether a MEASURE of government be right or wrong, IS ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... pay the hotel bill, of a handful of diamonds cast on the fire during an evening of drunkenness in order to see whether they would burn like coal. Little by little her great limbs and her coarse, plebeian way of laughing had gained complete mastery over this elegant, degenerate son of an ancient race. At that time he was risking his all, for he had been so utterly overpowered by his taste for ordure and stupidity as to have even lost the vigor of his skepticism. A week before Nana had made him promise her a chateau on the Norman coast between Havre and Trouville, ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... backwards against the balustrade, and holding him there transfixed, while, with eyes seething with wrath beneath the blanched, and big, umbrageous brows, and showing like a sudden opening of the infernal pit, he cried: "Demon, degenerate dog, where hast thou been walking to and fro in the earth? whom helping to devour? Ah, son of Satan, ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... Europe lose in a few years their distinctive qualities, and degenerate at length into the cur with erect ears, kuyu, vulgarly called the pariah dog. An instance did not occur of any one going mad during the period of my residence. Many of them are affected with a ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... had intended for the others, struck and stirred popular imagination. Some century earlier the last of the minstrels might have fashioned the last of the ballads out of that Homeric fight and chase; but the spirit was dead, or had been reincarnated already in Mr. Sheriff Scott, and the degenerate moorsmen must be content to tell the tale in prose, and to make of the "Four Black Brothers" a unit after the fashion of the "Twelve Apostles" or ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the imperial masters. Religion lost its prestige and the family bond loosened, until from being one of the purest of social institutions in the early days of the republic, the Roman family became one of the most degenerate. This boded ill for the future of the ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... 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 rights which had devolved upon her by inheritance. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... most specious arguments, that the republic summoned them to break the bonds of hereditary servitude; and, by the choice of an active and vigilant prince, to reward the same virtues which had raised the ancestors of the degenerate Constans from a private condition to the throne of the world. As soon as the conspiracy was ripe for execution, Marcellinus, under the pretence of celebrating his son's birthday, gave a splendid entertainment to the illustrious ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... and princesses made the grande tournee through the rooms, and then mingled with the guests; all formal etiquette was now laid aside, and a gay and unembarrassed conversation might be carried on till the beginning of the concert. This seemed to degenerate, on the part of the French officers, to an indiscreet, frenzied levity. They laughed and talked boisterously—they walked arm in arm before the ladies, and remarked upon them so boldly, that crimson blushes, or frightened pallor, was the result. Even the ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... 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
... the curious observation that the beavers of the present day seem to be a degenerate race, as they neither fell huge trees not construct great dams, while their progenitors cut down trees two feet in diameter and dammed up rivers a hundred feet in width. The change in the habits of the beaver is probably ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... were, of course, aware that in the insect world the ocelli served the same purpose that the degenerate pituitary body once served in the occiput ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... we to believe and do? Shall we degenerate into a lazy scepticism, which believes that everything is a little true, and everything a little false—in plain words, believes nothing at all? Or shall we degenerate into faithless fears, and unmanly wailings that the flood of infidelity ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... of Washington as the greatest man on earth. The war, he said, was the King's war, ministers were his tools, the press was bought. He denounced later the King's reception of the traitor Arnold. When the King's degenerate son, who became George IV, after some special misconduct, wrote to propose his annual visit to Holkham, Coke replied, "Holkham is open to strangers on Tuesdays." It was an independent and irate England which spoke in Coke. Those who paid taxes, he said, should control those who governed. ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... comedy—may degenerate, and become subservient to licentiousness and profligacy; yet the shafts of ridicule judiciously aimed, like a well-directed artillery, do much execution. With what becoming severity does the bold Caricature lay ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... and unambitious. Meaner men, their contemporaries or successors, raved of high art with incoherent passion; arrogated to themselves an equality with the masters of elder time, and declaimed against the degenerate tastes of a public which acknowledged not the return of the Heraclidae. But the two great—the two only painters of their age—happy in a reputation founded as deeply in the heart as in the judgment of mankind, demanded no higher function than that of ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... plantations of late, and the opinion of many grave divines concerning the gospel's fleeting westward. Sometimes I have had such thoughts, Why may not that be the place of the New Jerusalem? But you have handsomely and fully cleared me from such odd conceits. But what, I pray? Shall our English there degenerate, and join themselves with Gog and Magog? We have heard lately divers ways, that our people there have no hope of the conversion of the natives. And, the very week after I received your last letter, I saw a ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... that this activity, generally first noticed in the use of the hands, might be trained into right and ennobling habits, rather than be allowed to degenerate into wrong and often degrading ones, Froebel arranged his charming set of finger-games for the mother to teach her babe while he is yet in her arms; thus establishing the right activity before the wrong one can assert itself. In such little songs ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... 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 thieving, which they ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... globe, they gradually fall into old age; then the more developed Egos—those incarnated in these races during their maturity—come down into the advanced nations, living on the continents animated by the "life-wave," whilst the less evolved go to form the so-called degenerate races vegetating in obscure parts of the world. Look now at the adolescence of Russia, the youth of America, the old age of France, and the decrepitude of Turkey. Look backwards at the glorious Egypt of bygone ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... power, the other typifies the sordid ignorance and fearful superstition of the credulous masses which maintains the power of the first. High in the streets of Moscow, where one may see the pallid, long-haired, degenerate-looking venders of holy lies and pious impositions shuffle along like spectres from a remoter age, there hangs a woven streamer of scarlet hue with huge white lettering, which defiantly proclaims that religion is the ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... 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
... sir? [Exit. Caes. O, that profaned name!—- And are these seemly company for thee, [To Julia. Degenerate monster? All the rest I know, And hate all knowledge for their hateful sakes. Are you, that first the deities inspired With skill of their high natures and their powers, The first abusers of their useful light; Profaning ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... had returned upon him; something instinctive and inherited had reappeared; and the gentlemanly, easy-going father, who yet, as Doris remembered, when matters were serious "always got his way," was there—strangely there—in the degenerate son. ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... of St. Clair-sur-Epte, on the borders of Neustria, as the place of meeting for the purpose of receiving his homage and oath of fealty. It was a strange meeting which there took place between the degenerate and almost imbecile descendant of the great Charles, with his array of courtly followers and his splendor and luxury, and the gigantic warrior of the North, the founder of a line of kings, in all the vigor of the uncivilized native of a cold climate, and the unbending ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... engaged in a career much too lively and interesting to himself to admit of his allowing himself to be bored by an unwanted and entirely superfluous child. The elder son, who was Lord Tenham, had reached a premature and degenerate maturity by the time the younger one made his belated appearance, and regarded him with unconcealed dislike. The worst thing which could have befallen the younger boy would have been intimate association with ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... you have degraded yourself, you shall be scourged. For a subsistence, therefore, betake yourself to cultivation; or other drudgeries for which alone you are now fit, and do not bring a disgrace on the character of the sacred order.” In these degenerate days perhaps there is not one Brahman out of fifty who either does not do what he ought to shun, or who does not omit to do what he ought to perform; and all will admit that degraded Brahmans are unworthy of holding such possessions. If the Brahmans, however, were to be ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... and interchange our ideas of books and by personal discussions is indeed the mightiest factor of modern improvement. But the mere meeting to talk about things unless it is combined with the disposition and the apparatus for studying things is but barter without production, and may degenerate to a barren exchange of words, as unprofitable as that described in the Yankee proverb, "swapping jackknives in a garret." This aspect of the truth Mr. Cooper doubtless came to appreciate; but at the outset, habituated as he was ...
— Peter Cooper - The Riverside Biographical Series, Number 4 • Rossiter W. Raymond
... exhibit the superstitions known as "animism." It has been argued that these characteristics, taken together, indicate a primitive condition of humanity. On the other hand, many writers regard them as degenerate offshoots of negro-like races of larger stature and ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... 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 ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... have international arbitration in the near future, we must have it in spite of this spirit of war rather than by destroying the spirit. In fact, the only practical way to destroy it is to let it, like vestigial organs of which biologists tell us, degenerate from disuse. This inherited emotional tendency remains as a threat with which we, as exponents of arbitration, must reckon before we are justified in saying that the world ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... all such legislation except in war is to an over degree to strike at the roots of individual initiative. We have secured its execution during the war as to the willing co-operation of 95 per cent of the trades of the country, but under peace conditions it would degenerate ...
— Socialism and American ideals • William Starr Myers
... reference is plainly to degenerate civilized men frequenting the forests, such as bandits or outlaws, not to what we ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... 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, ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... Like tepid airs of Spring, their genial influence! Such is thy boast, Refinement. But deep dyes Oft mar the splendour of thy noontide skies: 230 Then Fancy, sick of follies that deform The face of day, and in the sunshine swarm; Sick of the fluttering fopperies that engage The vain pursuits of a degenerate age; Sick of smooth Sophistry's insidious cant, Or cold Impiety's defying rant; Sick of the muling sentiment that sighs O'er its dead bird, while Want unpitied cries; Sick of the pictures that pale Lust inflame, And flush the cheek of Love with ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... under the banner of the cross, they went forth to conquer infidels, to establish the true faith, to recover the blessed land, hallowed by the Redeemer's footsteps, from the power of the cruel followers of the false prophet of Mecca. How degenerate are we Christians of the present generation! Who among us dreams of expelling the Turks from Syria? On the contrary, our statesmen devote their energies to keep them there. I really believe that were Peter the Hermit ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... 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 Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... the animus of the assembly, and of its orators. It was delivered by M. Saint Just:—"To the men strong, courageous, and valiant in the cause of humanity. To those whose names serve as a guide, a support, and an example to the degenerate beings—to all those whom history calls heroes!... To Brutus, to Catiline, to Jesus Christ, to Julian the Apostate, to Attila!... To all the thinkers of the middle age.... To unfortunate thinkers!... To Jean Jacques Rousseau, and his pupil, Maximilian ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... admire most, the man or his muscle. One doesn't often see such vigor, size and comeliness in these degenerate days," said Randal, mentally booking the fine figure ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... the action of the rays so that the varying densities of bodily organs will enable them to be photographed, will bring all such morbid growths as tumors 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 thereby, how much ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... September, 1809, Governor Harrison called all the tribes that claimed certain lands between the White and Wabash rivers to a council. Only a few of the weak and degenerate tribes answered the summons. Nevertheless, he went through the ceremony of making a treaty by which the United States government claimed three ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... she came back, accompanied by the two old people. There was an expression of anxious watchfulness and aimless attention in both faces, such as deaf people often have, and which is apt to degenerate into a look of inanity and distrust. It is a very true saying that when a husband and wife have lived many years together, and have shared each other's thoughts and interests, they at last grow to be like one another in ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... are full of eloquence and pathos. The "great law" has become old, and has lost its force. Its authors have passed away, and have carried it with them into their graves. They have placed it as a pillow under their heads. Their degenerate successors have inherited their names, but not their mighty intellects; and in the flourishing region which they left, naught but a desert remains. A trace, and not a slight one, of the mournful ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... love and pride, and the father was a gentleman, like Falstaff, a pure gentleman. The daughter-in-law also peered out to look at Il Giovann', who was evidently a figure of repute, in his sordid, degenerate American respectability. Meanwhile, this figure of repute blew himself red in the face, producing staccato strains on his cornet. And the crowd stood desolate and forsaken in the cold, ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... are the persons we trust? we answer, those persons whose feelings and actions are congruous with themselves and with the feelings and actions of others. And, on the contrary, it is in the worthless, in the degenerate creature, that we note moods which are destructive to one another's object, ideas which are in flagrant contradiction; and it is in the idiot, the maniac, the criminal, that we see thoughts disconnected ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... 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 Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... generous victor, a great-grandson of the brother of Saladin, sent a robe of honor to his royal captive, and his deliverance, with that of his soldiers, was obtained by the restitution of Damietta [98] and the payment of four hundred thousand pieces of gold. In a soft and luxurious climate, the degenerate children of the companions of Noureddin and Saladin were incapable of resisting the flower of European chivalry: they triumphed by the arms of their slaves or Mamalukes, the hardy natives of Tartary, who at a tender age ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... ages and countries. Man every where does best, nationally and individually, other things being equal, on a well-chosen diet of vegetables, fruits, and water. In proportion as individuals or families, or tribes or nations, depart from this—other things being equal—in the same proportion do they degenerate physically, ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... and blind as to think that good can come of it? Nothing but evil upon evil can accrue from such a system,—and those who have prophetic eyes to see through the veil of events can perceive, even now, the not far distant end—namely, the ruin of the country that has permitted itself to degenerate into a mere nation of shopkeepers, —and something worse ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... that saw everything except the small modicum of good which is in all human things, and to this they were persistently blind. Taking into consideration the small, set mouth, it was eminently a pugnacious face—a face that might easily degenerate to the coarseness of passion in the trough of a losing fight. But, fortunately, Luke's lines were cast upon the great waters, and he who fights the sea must learn to conquer, not by passionate effort, but by consistent, cool resolve. ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... is said, by Ruffhead, to have told Warburton, that "Young had much of a sublime genius, though without common sense; so that his genius, having no guide, was perpetually liable to degenerate into bombast. This made him pass a foolish youth, the sport of peers and poets: but his having a very good heart enabled him to support the clerical character when he assumed it, first with decency, and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... seen them. The vilest inclinations, the basest actions, succeeded my amiable amusements and even obliterated the very remembrance of them. I must have had, in spite of my good education, a great propensity to degenerate, else the declension could not have followed with such ease and rapidity, for never did so promising a Caesar so quickly become ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... take a long breath, and rest a minute. O, Abou Inau Faris! we envy the blessed people that were gathered under thy wing; we weep for our degenerate age, wherein thy like is nowhere to be found. No wonder that Ibn Batuta declares that he lays aside forever his pilgrim's staff—that, after traversing the Orient, he sits down under the full moon of the Occident, preferring it to all other regions, 'as one prefers gold-dust to the sands ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... where ornamentations envelop and conceal line as in late Renaissance, the Italian Rococo, the Portuguese Barrocco (baroque), the curving and contorted degenerate forms of Louis XIV and XV and the Victorian—all examples of the same thing, i.e.: perfect line achieved, acclaimed, flattered, losing its head and going to the bad in extravagant exuberance ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... well; there is cogency in a good supper; a good supper in these degenerate days bespeaks a good man; but much more is wanted to make up an Athenian. Athenians, indeed! where is your theatre? who among you has written a comedy? where is your Attic salt? which of you can tell who was Jupiter's great- grandfather? ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... so gratifying to the fusionists, George Opdyke defeated Fernando Wood by a small plurality for mayor of New York. Wood had long been known as a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He talked reform and grew degenerate; he proclaimed patriotic views and held disloyal sentiments; he listened respectfully to public opinion, and defied it openly in his acts. He did not become a boss. It was ten years later before William M. Tweed centralised Tammany's ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... final days of his life and reign the hapless Austrian prince exhibited a courage and nobility of character which showed that the blood of Maria Theresa was not degenerate in his veins. He faced death with more than reckless daring; he shared in all the privations of his faithful adherents, and he was preparing to cut his way out through the host of besiegers, at the head of his men, when treachery betrayed ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... rehearsal of "Lohengrin" in time, he was not sorry to see his table relieved of the dull pomposity and brilliant watch-chain of the pillar of Prague society. How mean to hide one's Judaism! What a burden to belong to such a race, degenerate sons of a great but long-vanished past, unable to slough the slave traits engendered by centuries of slavery! How he had yearned as a boy to shake off the yoke of the nations, even as he himself had shaken off the yoke of the Law of Moses. Yes, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... all languages spoken by the human tongue, from the powers of his mind, which occupied a pure and healthy physique. In a word he was well made and fully endowed with all the physical and mental forces necessary to the whole journey of his life. Now a question arises: "When did he begin to degenerate physically and mentally?" Let us reason some on this line, which seems to be a rather solid foundation, and as history is young itself, and has imperfectly recorded only such events as have transpired during a few ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... Mr. Frederick Locker vouches for a light-hearted old Tom who, at the close of a long and ill-spent life, actually squandered his last breath in the pursuit of his own elusive tail. But there are few of us who would care to see the monumental calm of our fireside sphinx degenerate into senile sportiveness. Better far the measured slowness of her pace, the superb immobility of her repose. To watch an ordinary cat move imperceptibly and with a rhythmic waving of her tail through a doorway (while we are patiently ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... a belief in Germany that the French nation was degenerate and corrupt and unprepared for war. This belief became conviction when, in the debates of the French Senate, Senator Humbert, early in 1914, publicly exposed what he claimed to be the weakness and ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard
... and customs, a man may spend half his life in the insane asylum or in the penitentiary, and still be the father of a dozen children with degenerate tendencies. There should be no reproduction from convicted criminals, insane persons, and other degenerates. Thieves, grafters, bribers and bribe-takers all belong in the same class, and it should not be left possible for them to reproduce ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... succeeds the rags of conquest: The lust of gold, unfeeling and remorseless! The last corruption of degenerate man. 132 DR. JOHNSON: Irene, Act i., ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... raised to a higher level. In this way then, in successful cases, the worthless men become workmen. Worthless men are changed into economic assets. The dependents become independent. Working by means of the laws of environment and association, the Army elevates the degenerate from a pseudo-social and anti-social class to a higher level and to social position. Where individuality was lost, independence of character ...
— The Social Work of the Salvation Army • Edwin Gifford Lamb
... Scotch doctor, a Jacobin and a free-thinker, who could only be got to attend church by the positive orders of the Governor-General, cried over the last volume until he was too ill to appear at dinner. [Degenerate readers of our own day have actually been provided with an abridgment of Clarissa, itself as long as an ordinary novel. A wiser course than buying the abridgment would be to commence the original at the Third volume. In the same way, if anyone, after obtaining the outline of Lady Clementina's ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... background. A picture of Spanish society does emerge from the dramas, indeed. It is a society in which there are great extremes of wealth and poverty, in which the old titled families are generally degenerate and slothful, and the middle classes display admirable spiritual qualities, but are too often unthrifty and inefficient. Of the laboring classes, Galds has little to say. Bitter religious and political intolerance creates an atmosphere of hatred which a few ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... observed the partiality of his Sovereign for his fascinating young daughter, and being a man anxious, after the manner of a true Florentine, even in those degenerate days, to better himself and his family, he saw that something more than mere romance could be made out of the situation. The commercial assets of his daughter's person loomed large in his estimation, for if the Duke took a serious fancy to Eleanora, it was conceivable that she might ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... about such things!" observed Chia Cheng with a listless smile. "By my bringing up such a degenerate child of retribution I have myself become unfilial! Whenever I've had to call him to account, there has always been a whole crowd of you to screen him; so isn't it as well for me to avail myself of to-day to put an end to his cur-like existence ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... insolent, and needlessly rich. He had a passion for gambling, horse-racing, dog-fighting, and indulged in the churchly habit of doing that which he ought not and leaving undone that which he should have done. He was worse than that degenerate scion of a proud ancestry, who a-kneiping went with his lady friends in the Cincinnati fountain, after the opera, on a wager. He whipped a man who admitted he did not have a copy of the "Iliad" ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... their utmost attention, it is natural to conclude, that, should they once become established, leisure and peace will make them dangerous to the tranquillity of all Europe. Other governments may be improved by time, but republics always degenerate; and if that which is in its original state of perfection exhibit already the maturity of vice, one cannot, without being more credulous than reasonable, hope any thing better for the future than what we have experienced from the past.—It is, ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... savages were strictly consistent and logical in their theories. But they are not. They admit that their remote ancestors, in other words, that they themselves in former incarnations, possessed certain marvellous powers to which in the present degenerate days they can lay no claim; and in this significant admission we may detect a rift, a real distinction of kind, between the living and the dead, which in time might widen out into an impassable gulf. In other words, we may suppose that the Central Australians, if left to ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... with Presbyterian traditions behind her, could not achieve union the other way about; and Abby's sanctioned defection was a matter of rather shame-faced reference by her family. Advena and Lorne had fallen into the degenerate modern habit ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan |
