"Degradation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it with you, Maggie—it's a degradation even to speak of him before a good woman. You must rely upon my judgment. Polly must put him out of ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... obtain the prize without a struggle which would shake the world. Nor can we justly blame either for refusing to give way to the other. For, on this occasion, the chief motive which actuated them was, not greediness, but the fear of degradation and ruin. Lewis, in resolving to put every thing to hazard rather than suffer the power of the House of Austria to be doubled; Leopold, in determining to put every thing to hazard rather than suffer the power of the House of Bourbon to be doubled; merely obeyed the law of self preservation. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... about the beauty of flowers and trees—you think them divine. But when it's a question of taking on this divine, fresh, pure, enchanting loveliness yourself, in your own person, it immediately becomes a cruel and wicked degradation. Here we have a strange ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... disposition should call forth the deep commiseration of our souls. Such was the spirit of Christ. Such is the true spirit of missions. It is but a small measure of compassion to aid those who supplicate our assistance. The very blindness, guilt, madness and vile degradation of a people, should be to us a sufficient voice of entreaty. They were so to the heart of the precious Saviour, or he never would have undertaken the work of our redemption. O, when shall it be, that Christians and ministers of the Gospel ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... enlightened countries she regards as her birthright, should be the bearer of these blessings to her less favored sisters in heathen lands. If the Christian religion was a Gospel to the poor, it was no less emphatically so to woman, whom it redeemed from social inferiority and degradation, the fruit for ages of that transgression which "brought death into the world, and all our wo." Never until on the morning of the resurrection "she came early unto the sepulchre," was she made one in Christ Jesus (in whom "there is neither in male nor female") with him who had hitherto ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... on its eastern and northern borders, and its walls and legions at last gave way. It had not been a kind mother to the nations it had conquered—in war it had been cruel, and in peace it had been selfish and stern. The lust of rule became stronger as its arm became weaker. The degradation of slavery and the heavy hand of the tax-gatherer were extending even to Wales. The barbarian invader found the effeminate, luxurious empire an easy prey. In 410 Alaric and his host of Goths appeared before the city of Rome itself; ...
— A Short History of Wales • Owen M. Edwards
... then softened for a moment, while his lips quivered; but his hard, cynical, bitter aspect and tones came back—the manner born of years of misery and degradation, and he ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... he envied also the miserable sallow, thin-faced loafers blinking their obscene eyes and rubbing their greasy shoulders against the doorjambs of the Black Horse pub, because they were too far gone to feel their degradation. ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... The Argus, December 16) informs us that observation and the remarks he has heard made by factory girls have led him to think that there are three serious objections which the seamstresses have to domestic service. One of these is—"The idea of degradation, attached to the position of a 'slavey' in the minds of the lower classes themselves." As we have seen that there is nothing degrading in the work itself which servants are called upon to do, how comes it that its performance is considered less honourable than sewing or serving in a ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... be? What will it leave of things visible? Will it leave a London preserved and beautified, or will it but add abundantly to the lumps of dishonest statuary, the scars and masses of ill-conceived rebuilding which testify to the aesthetic degradation of the Victorian period? Will a great constellation of artists redeem the ambitious sentimentalities and genteel skilfulness that find their fitting mausoleum in the Tate Gallery? Will our literature escape at last from pretentiousness and timidity, our philosophy from ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... tolerance shown them. After that their existence was troubled by riots, and broken in upon by expulsions. The schools, of old so flourishing, fell into a state of utter decay. About 1360 France could not count six Jewish scholars, and the works of the time show to what degree of degradation rabbinical studies had sunk. With the expulsion of 1394 Charles VI dealt the finishing stroke. Thereafter French Judaism was nothing but the shadow of itself. Having received a mortal wound in 1306, its life up to the final expulsion in 1394 ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... from me that night when she told me that she was a contaminated creature, unfit to be the associate of an honest man Oh, Margaret, Margaret! poverty must indeed be a bitter school if it has prepared you for such degradation ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... of guard-houses, at a multitude of town gates, and on every drawbridge, angle, and rampart, of a complete system of fortifications. Fifty times a day, I got down to harangue an infuriated soldiery about the Bottle. Through the filthy degradation of the abject and vile Roman States, I had as much difficulty in working my way with the Bottle, as if it had bottled up a complete system of heretical theology. In the Neapolitan country, where everybody was a spy, a soldier, a priest, or a lazzarone, the shameless beggars of ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... labour, that through her and hers he might be haunted by fears and misfortunes, and at the last die in misery. Looking back upon the past it would certainly seem that there had been virtue in this curse, for already through Lysbeth and his dealings with her, he had suffered the last degradation and the toil, which could not be called light, of nearly fourteen years of daily occupation ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... of Islam was stayed whenever military success was checked. The Faith was meant for Arabia and not for the world, hence it is constitutionally incapable of change or development. The degradation of woman hinders the growth of freedom and ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... that his sense of reality had always remained in a rudimentary state; it was, as it were, diffused over the world and mankind. For instance, his belief in the misery and degradation of earthly life, and the natural bestiality of man, was incurable; but of this or that individual he had no opinion; he was to John Norton a blank sheet of paper, to which he could not affix even a title. His childhood had been one of tumult and sorrow; the different ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... becomes so by the voluntary adoption of the lower forces as the guide of life. Nature has her own decalogue. There is a law written upon our hearts. The wasting of power by anger, jealousy, envy, covetousness and the like, and the degradation following their expression in acts of revenge, concupiscence, and mere rapacity, are known without revelation by all races which have not suffered the downward evolution. The literatures prove this ...
— The Things Which Remain - An Address To Young Ministers • Daniel A. Goodsell
... Should it ever again appear to you to be necessary to use your zeal for the protection of your husband or your child, do not endeavour to dissuade a woman by trying to make her think that she, by her alliance, would bring degradation into any house, or to any man. If there could have been an argument powerful with me, to make me do that which you wished to prevent, it was the argument which you used. But my own comfort, and the happiness of another person whom I value almost as ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... saw the "Star of the West" gradually fade away and disappear into that threatening storm and darkness—unconscious that she was to emerge again to play so important a part in the drama of the nation's degradation,—the same observer saw the same omen at Niblo's not long ago, when the poor Jewess of Miss Bateman's wonderful "Leah" fell back step by step into the crowd, as the curtain was dropping, her last hope withered and her last duty ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... so distasteful, that she would certainly have discarded him upon that one ground of offence, had not her love of power been unconsciously propitiated by the perception of the efforts which he made, and the degradation to which he submitted, in the vain attempt to please her. She liked the homage offered to "les beaux yeux de sa cassette" pretty much as a young beauty likes the devotion extorted by her charms, and for the sake of the incense tolerated ...
— Aunt Deborah • Mary Russell Mitford
... yesterday, when I felt that to be "a pot-hunter"[1] was the lowest step of degradation; and I was quite right, for then I lived at home; my father had an admirable kennel of pointers and spaniels, a couple of well-stocked manors, and a zealous keeper. But, since then, "a change came o'er the spirit of my dream," and my finances ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... is the more dignified word socially, but may express greater moral degradation. Vend is used of the petty (as that which can be carried about in a wagon), and may suggest the pettily dishonest. "That man would his country." "We shall a million dollars' worth of goods." "The hucksters ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... and my soul is filled with shame, when I think of the degradation of French patriotism contained in the utterances of . . . ., of those words which, to our lasting sorrow, evoked in the Centre of the Chamber an outburst of enthusiasm. May our patriots never forget this cowardly session of the French Parliament! Thus, then, twenty-seven ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... in 1859, was a step in the work of lifting up woman to her true position. Formerly, marriage had been deemed something too unholy for a bishop; and the consequence was the general degradation of the sex. The entrance of the gospel corrected public sentiment on this point; and that act of the bishop only gave expression to the popular conviction that marriage is honorable in all, even the highest and holiest, nurturing some of the loveliest graces of the Christian character. The ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... that no human eye beheld her in this deep degradation of woe! For in the madness of her anguish, she rolled on the floor, and tore the clothing from her shoulders and the dark hair from her head! She uttered such groans and cries as are seldom heard on this earth—such as perhaps fill the ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... in my power!" he thought exultantly. "Through what sloughs of degradation will I drag her before I deliver her ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... sense, found a single convert among the nations: Christianity means nothing to the masses but a sensational public execution which is made an excuse for other executions. In its name we take ten years of a thief's life minute by minute in the slow misery and degradation of modern reformed imprisonment with as little remorse as Laud and his Star Chamber clipped the ears of Bastwick and Burton. We dug up and mutilated the remains of the Mahdi the other day exactly as we dug up and mutilated ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... had not half so much disfigured as that which she herself had applied inwardly, had begun to remind him of the face he had long ago loved a little, but this only made him, if possible, yet more determined that not one shilling of his father's money should go to the degradation of his mother. That she lusted and desired to have, was the worst of reasons why she should obtain! A compelled temperance was of course in itself worthless, but that alone could give opportunity for the waking of what soul was left her. Puny as it was, that might then begin to grow; it ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... know that thin Malacca cane in the hall? Yes, you do. Well, my dear, the law says it is an assault to thrash a boy, and that he ought to be left to the law to punish, which means prison and degradation. I'm going to take that cane, my dear, and defy ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... the ramparts of a modern rule frowned down upon the solitary tower, as if in the vain insolence with which present power looks upon past decay,—the living race upon ancestral greatness. And indeed, in this respect, rightly! for modern times have no parallel to that degradation of human dignity stamped upon the ancient world by the long sway of the Imperial Harlot, all slavery herself, yet all tyranny to earth; and, like her own Messalina, at once ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... They sacrifice to Mari, as the goddess who sends and takes away cholera and all epidemic diseases. There is good ground for the opinion that these outcasts are the descendants of the original inhabitants of the country, and that they have been subjected to degradation by a succession of conquerors. Their invaders found them with a creed, and certain customs to avert diseases, with which they have never interfered. Hence the present practice. After the Goobbe procession had waited a long time, fifteen buffaloes ...
— Old Daniel • Thomas Hodson
... to woman was one common in antiquity. In the Hindoo laws of Manu it is said regarding woman: "The source of dishonor is woman; the source of strife is woman; the source of earthly existence is woman; therefore avoid woman." Beside this degradation of woman, fear of her ever and anon reappears naively. Manu further sets forth: "Woman is by nature ever inclined to tempt man; hence a man should not sit in a secluded place even with his nearest female relative." Woman, accordingly, is, according to the Hindoo as well as the Old ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... time, in the wrong place, and the daughters because he may be personal about them, as the time before. ERNEST is annoyed that there should be this speech at all when there is such a much better one coming, and BROCKLEHURST foresees the degradation of the peerage. All are thinking of themselves alone save CRICHTON, who knows his master's weakness, and fears he may stick in the middle. LORD LOAM, however, advances cheerfully to his doom. He sees ERNEST'S stool, ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie
... to find herself despised by this young man, who would, in all probability, very speedily learn, or who had perhaps already learned, the story of her degradation. ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... indifference with which he alluded to his former situation in life, struck me with astonishment, and created a curiosity to know more of his adventures; he had, I found, brought himself to his present degradation by a passion for gaming and driving, which had usurped every just and moral feeling. His father, I have since learned, felt his conduct deeply, and had been dead some time. His venerable mother having advanced him all her remaining property, was now reduced to a dependence upon the benevolence ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... first they might have considered custom as a tyrant; but when they have obeyed her for a certain time, they do her voluntary homage ever after, as to a sovereign by divine right. To prevent this species of intellectual degradation, we must in education be careful to rank mere mechanical talents below the exercise of the mental powers. Thus the ambition of young people will be directed to high objects, and all inferiour qualifications may be attained without ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... soft, sweet repose among the cottage homes, felt like cold death beneath these ashy walls. To Joan, the workhouse was a word of shame unutterable. Those among whom she lived would hurl the word against enemies as a prophecy of the utmost degradation. She shivered as she passed, and was sad, knowing that a whole world of poverty, failure, sorrow, regret, was hidden away in that cold, still pile. But the hand of sleep lay softly there; only a sick soul or two stirred, the paupers were the equal of princes ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... she should be spared the degradation you propose. She is a girl of culture, highly educated. You cannot condemn her ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... a constant struggle there is going on here below. Some aim at "fortune's gaudy show," while others strive to catch the wreath of fame, and crown themselves with that. Few are so indifferent, unless besotted by ignorance and degradation, as not to aspire, in some shape or other, to something more or better than they ever had, or better than others have; and, in this age of the world—at any rate in this country—money seems to be esteemed the chief good. Not the miser's money, for, while that is locked up, and he hoards, and hoards, ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... connection, is that while the law of Conservation is doubtless true, so far as it goes, there is also in operation another law, well known to physicists, called the law of the Degradation of Energy, which asserts that energies of a higher order are constantly being converted into energies of a lower order. This law maintains that energies of a lower order cannot be reconverted into energies of a higher order. All other energies are ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... What will become of her? She will not be able to sustain this degradation ... No! Death is a thousand times better than these hellish tortures of ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... Triangles—unless he is a professional scientist, when he can begin to specialise in mathematics at the same age as the lawyer begins to specialise in law or the surgeon in anatomy—than for him to be an expert in Choctaw, the Cabala or the Book of Mormon. I look back with feelings of shame and degradation to the days when, for the sake of a crust of bread, I prostituted my intelligence to wasting the precious hours of impressionable childhood, which could have been filled with so many beautiful and meaningful things, over this utterly futile and inhuman subject. It trains the mind—it teaches ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... their tops are now a dome, now a flat table or a spire, as harder or softer strata are reached in their slow degradation, while the sides, with all their fine moldings, are being steadily undermined and eaten away. But no essential change in style or color is thus effected. From century to century they stand the same. What seems confusion among the rough earthquake-shaken crags nearest one ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... The degradation of the Jewish rulers was even greater. With all their knowledge of the moral law, they who professed to be special representatives of God put to death his Son, and chose a murderer instead of the Saviour. To the tragedy of such a choice Luke refers with ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... precedence are by marriage, age, and profession. Lastly, in placing your guests, regard is rather to be had to birth than fortune; for, though purse-pride is forward enough to exalt itself, it bears a degradation with more secret comfort and ease than the former, as being more inwardly satisfied with itself, and less apprehensive of neglect ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... which she had believed to be Spanish, but which she could now trace to such a different origin. In a moment, and for ever, her girlish vanity fell from her. She felt as if her beauty were but the badge of degradation and misery. And then there came the keen instinct of resentment—it was to her mother, whom she loved, that she owed this intolerable suffering. Crouching down and shivering, as if with cold, she yielded to the storm of thought which swept ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... most devoted daughter and sister, an unwearied watcher by lingering deathbeds; that to prolonged and unrelaxing attendance on the sick the malady that now poisoned her own life owed its origin; that to one wretched relative she had been a support and succour in the depths of self-earned degradation, and that it was still her hand which kept him from utter destitution. Miss Helstone stayed the whole evening, omitting to pay her other intended visit; and when she left Miss Mann it was with the ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... this system is treading no new road, it is only proceeding on the old. Its central law is that of destroying any value, however great, for the sake of any gratification, however small. Accustomed to battening on the hopes of humanity,—accustomed to taking stock in human degradation, and declaring dividends upon enforced ignorance and crime,—existing only while every canon of the common law is annulled, and every precept of morals and civilization set at nought,—could it be expected to pause just when, or rather just because, it had apparently found the richest possible ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... trying. Mrs. Miller was also encouraged by the intense feeling of her father on the question of woman's dress. To him the whole revolution in woman's position turned on her dress. The long skirt was the symbol of her degradation. ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... these vaults that were still in position were utilized by the adjoining farmer as shelter for his calves, the floor being spread with straw, amid which the young creatures rustled, cooling their thirsty tongues by licking the quaint Norman carving, which glistened with the moisture. It was a degradation of even such a rude form of art as this to be treatad so grossly, she thought, and for the first time the family of Fitzpiers assumed in her imagination the hues ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... protection of the traveller, but mainly for the protection of the Magistrate; for, should a traveller provided with a passport receive any injury, the Magistrate of the district would be liable to degradation. It was arranged, therefore, with the convert that, on our arrival in Tak-wan-hsien, I was to give the chairen, if satisfied with his services, 200 cash (five pence); but, if he said "gowshun! gowshun!" (a little more! a little more!) ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... aunt in her terrible voice, and freed herself from his hold like an offended goddess. "O heaven, I might have known that you, George, would have abetted my poor, wilful boy in his dirt and bodily viciousness, and that you, Jervas, would have condoned his turpitude and moral degradation. None the less, though you both desert me in this dreadful hour, shirking your duty thus shamelessly, this woman's hand shall pluck my dear, loved nephew from the abyss, this hand—" Here, turning to behold me, my poor aunt shivered, gasped ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... gave up expostulation or complaint in this matter. "I will hold my tongue," she had said, and she kept her word. For more than two years she held an utter silence to him; living under the same roof, witnessing day by day his ever-deepening degradation, no syllable crossed her lips to him. Since she could not (for the sake of those she loved and might comfort) refuse the loathsome daily touch and presence of sin, she endured it, but would have no fellowship therewith. She had no right over it, it none over her. She looked ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... to wander along the coast, when formed of moderately hard rocks, and mark the process of degradation. The tides in most cases reach the cliffs only for a short time twice a day, and the waves eat into them only when they are charged with sand or pebbles; for there is good evidence that pure water effects nothing ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... the degradation of the religious idea was in popular practice complete. But under the confused accents of superstition the science of our age is succeeding in catching from afar the vibrations of a sublime utterance. In the ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... political neighbors. In the ancient world, slaves were constantly being educated, freed, and made equal to their masters; but in the confederacy, everything is done to crush them lower and lower; and in these facts lie perdu the future further degradation of every poor white in the South, the constant increase of power and capital in the hands of a few, and the diminution in number even of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... and sifted throughly let them stoop and fawn at pleasure, Little reck I to revenge me better for their former spite As I mark their degradation falling on them in full measure When they humble themselves vilely, thus, to ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... distinguished from former methods, either of discipline or recreation, the present tenor of our general teaching fosters in the mind of youth;—teaching which asserts liberty to be a right, and obedience a degradation; and which, regardless alike of the fairness of nature and the grace of behavior, leaves the insolent spirit and degraded senses to find their only occupation in malice, and ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... the tendency to impurity in young men; and although I cannot tell them what I do not believe, I hanker sometimes after the old prohibitions and penalties. Physiological penalties are too remote, and the subtler penalties—the degradation, the growth of callousness to finer pleasures, the loss of sensitiveness to all that is most nobly attractive in woman—are too feeble to withstand temptation when it lies in ambush like a garrotter, and has the reason ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... with the course of these Poems, it will be superfluous; and will, I fear, be thrown away upon that other class, whose besotted admiration of the intoxicated despot hereafter placed in contrast with him is the most melancholy evidence of degradation in British feeling and intellect which the times ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... beauty and harmony of inanimate Nature with the human degradation and deformity before me, I felt, as I confess I had never done before, the truth of a remark of a rare thinker, that "Nature is loved as the city of God, although, or rather because, it has no citizen. The beauty of ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... read some of it, and felt a profound pity for the corpse that had to submit to such degradation. Here are four specimens, the first of which was marked, 'Especially suitable for a numerous family, who have lost an aged parent, gold ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... consummating the darling project of his uncle. The terror of invasion has induced her to change the nature of her foreign policy. She will cling to the French alliance until the French emperor has satiated his national craving for her degradation; and not until he strikes her a blow, which will resound throughout the world, will England be prepared to battle with the Gaul. No future accession of territory would make France more formidable for the invasion of England than she is now. Her army of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... you have the eye to see and the mind to appreciate, you will behold an illuminated canvas whereon is depicted, within the limited area of your vision, everything that a great city holds of wealth and poverty, beauty and ugliness, joy and sorrow, luxury and squalor, purity and degradation, truth and falsehood. It is all there, in this narrow environment, with the lights and the shadows meeting and blending, as the noise from below merges with the ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... she was so ugly; and you know there is something terribly, miserably pathetic in a certain smile, a certain sodden aspect of invitation on such faces. It is so terrible, that it is in a way sacred; it means the outside of degradation and (what is worst of all in life) false position. I hope you understand ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... loud as Musset is said to have done when she upbraided him with his ungratefulness to her, who had been devoted to him to the utmost bounds of self-abnegation, to the sacrifice of her noblest impulses, to the degradation of her ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... figure than her heart sank at once to an unknown depth unknown before and unfathomable now. She was cowering over the fire her head sunk in her hands, so crouching, that the line of neck and shoulders instantly conveyed to Fleda the idea of fancied or felt degradation there was no escaping it how, whence, what, was all wild confusion. But the language of mere attitude was so unmistakable the expression of crushing pain was so strong, that, after Fleda had fearfully made her way ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... these evils are more closely connected with the mind than with the body. The term "flesh" is obviously used in a sense coextensive with the tendencies and means by which we are exposed to guilt and degradation. These personifications, it will therefore be seen, are employed with general rhetorical looseness, not with definite ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... Nefert's brother had gambled away the mummy of his father, how enormous was the sum he had lost, and that degradation must overtake Katuti, and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of the Negro is the symptom of an animus which has its roots imbedded in the past. It does not mark a revival, but rather the supreme desperate effort of the spirit of tyranny to compass the political subjection and consequent social degradation of the black man. Its provocation does not consist in any abnormal or perilous condition in southern communities arising from a numerical preponderance of Negroes. It is not made to meet a merely temporary emergency with the intent to return to the principles of republican government upon ...
— The Disfranchisement of the Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 6 • John L. Love
... In three years, four years at most, it would be all over. And then would come debts and desperate expedients, the ragged gowns and old shoes of poor artists' households. Or else the lover, the keeper, that is to say slavery and degradation. ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... married martyrdom, would never have sought that first meeting with her cousin. Yet she was not to be judged upon that fact alone. She was a devoted mother. She had been a faithful wife to a man who had lowered his manhood to a level beneath that of the very beasts. She had borne with him through degradation, insult, once or twice physical violence; and this not only because Russian orthodoxy gives no quarter to a rebellious wife, whatever the provocation. But when that time arrived when her duty to her children ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... the streets, elbowed him against the wall, or humorously insisted on his company, discomposed and frightened him. He had known rude companionship before, but it was serious, practical, and under control. There was something in this vulgar degradation of intellect and power—qualities that Clarence had always boyishly worshiped—which sickened and disillusioned him. Later on a pistol shot in a crowd beyond, the rush of eager men past him, the disclosure of a limp and helpless figure ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... the caprice of the master, he was treated to various applications of the lash, and restricted allowances of his miserable rations. His slavery was the most abject, his misery the most consummate, and his degradation the most venal and depraved: he was the image of the man without the mental spark; the human being in semblance, but the brute ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... ignorant multitude? They scorn our people's ignorant observance; but the most accursed ignorance is that which has no observance—sunk to the cunning greed of the fox, to which all law is no more than a trap or the cry of the worrying hound. There is a degradation deep down below the memory that has withered into superstition. In the multitudes of the ignorant on three continents who observe our rites and make the confession of the divine Unity, the soul of Judaism is not dead. Revive ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... predecessor have been inserted. Pendent from it is the fine Chandelier of wrought iron and brass, presented to the church in 1680 by Dorothy Applebee, who was buried within the sanctuary two years later. This chandelier had been transferred to the choir during the degradation of the old church, in which position it was by no means without precedent in ancient churches, but its original place here was in the tower, to which it ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley
... did not appoint the expedition, but merely allowed it: Scipio did not obtain half the resources which had formerly been placed at the command of Regulus, and he got that very corps which for years had been subjected by the senate to intentional degradation. The African army was, in the view of the majority of the senate, a forlorn hope of disrated companies and volunteers, the loss of whom in any event the state had no ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... really faces the fact of the evil," said Father Payne; "but he must not believe in a muddled sort of way, with a sort of abject timidity, that God may have brought about his weakness or his degradation. He ought to be quite clear that God wishes him to be free and happy and strong, and grieves, like Himself, over the miserable limitation. He must have no sort of doubt that God wishes him to be healthy or clean-minded. Then he can pray, he can strive for patience, he can fight his ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the white people of Apia lay in the worst squalor of degradation. They are now unspeakably improved, both men and women. To-day they must be called a more than fairly respectable population, and a much more than fairly intelligent. The whole would probably not fill the ranks of even an English half-battalion, yet there are a surprising ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pages. Accordingly, though he was no chartist or radical, I consider Carlyle's by far the most indignant comment or protest anent the fruits of feudalism to-day in Great Britain—the increasing poverty and degradation of the homeless, landless twenty millions, while a few thousands, or rather a few hundreds, possess the entire soil, the money, and the fat berths. Trade and shipping, and clubs and culture, and prestige, and guns, and a fine select class of gentry and ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... to her home, to her husband, as for refuge. Now she perceived that there was no refuge for her, no comfort in her despair, but rather another ordeal to be faced. She would have to tell her husband the truth, so far as she knew it. Good God! Why could she not shake off from her soul the degradation, the burning shame of this fair flesh of hers, and return to him with some other body, however homely, which should be hers and hers alone? She remembered that the man she loathed had said that Ian would not be back in England until ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... presence of all his officers Poniatowski wrote to the King as plainly as he dared: "News is here going through the camp which surely must be spread by ill-disposed men who wish evil to Your Majesty, as though Your Majesty would treat with the betrayers of our country. The degradation of cringing to the betrayers of our country would ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... love, and charity, becomes unholy to the world and unbearable to her. The holiest of all work for a mother is to care for her child. That child, so helpless now, is to reward her by acts of love and deeds of valor. Take away from woman her faith, let her feel that her work is a degradation, and there is nothing more beautiful in her attentions to a child than there would be in her attentions ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... though I feel it was both desperate and foolish, is not so very foolish, nor my safety here so utterly unprotected, as at first sight—and in this strange dress, it may appear to be. I have suffered enough, and more than enough, by the degradation of having been seen in this unfeminine attire, and the comments you must necessarily have made on my conduct—but I thank God that I am so far protected, that I could not have been subjected to insult unavenged." When this extraordinary explanation had proceeded thus far, the warder appeared, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... distance, because the upper atmosphere is less dense and clouded with vapour: and hence it is that mountains of great elevation appear much nearer than they really are. From all these circumstances, it is evident that a simple scumbling or uniform degradation of local colours will not effect a true perspective—for this will be the arial of light and shade only—but such a subordination of hues and tints, as the various powers of colours require, and as is ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... correspondence it was decided that I should begin the work at Beren's River among the Saulteaux Indians who lived there, and in little bands scattered along the eastern shores of that great lake, and in the interior, most of them in extreme poverty and superstitious degradation. A few of them, as the result of acquaintance with our Christian Indians of other places, were groping after the great Light, and trying to lift themselves up socially ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... afterwards he regrets his folly," she said. "He clamors for the beautiful woman as a child might cry for the moon, and when he at last possesses her, he tires. Satisfied with having compassed her degradation, he exclaims: 'What shall I do with this beauty, which, because it is mine, now palls upon me? Let me kill it and forget it; I am aweary of love, and the world is full of women!' That is the way of your sex, ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... coffee advertising, as in publicity for other lines of trade and industry, began in the United States. Here too, it has been brought to its lowest degradation and to its highest efficiency. The entire process has taken ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... upon slavery in South America are very forcible, and also illustrate his own sympathetic nature. Here is one incident which struck him more than any story of cruelty, as showing the degradation of slavery. "I was crossing a ferry with a negro, who was uncommonly stupid. In endeavouring to make him understand, I talked loud, and made signs, in doing which I passed my hand near his face. He, I suppose, thought I was in a passion, and was going to strike him; for instantly, ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... nobility) of a Norman house, and his Grace shall not be able to say nay to the infamous alliance. There is not an atom of Tom's slime, not a cubic inch of any pestilential gas in which he lives, not one obscenity or degradation about him, not an ignorance, not a wickedness, not a brutality of his committing, but shall work its retribution through every order of society up to the proudest of the proud and to the highest of the high. Verily, what with tainting, ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... boarding and lodging houses which single men frequent, a competition which, owing to the more healthful social environment of the Army hotel, is to be welcomed and approved of as a preventive of vice and degradation. The latter is often the result of crowded, uncleanly, workingmen's lodgings, which drive their occupants to the saloon. But the majority of the Army hotels are filled with the lowest class of men, out of any ...
— The Social Work of the Salvation Army • Edwin Gifford Lamb
... look at the vastness of this degradation. If I had been speaking of the population of a city, or town, or even a village, the tale would be a sad and melancholy one. But I have brought before you the condition of millions of women. And when you think that the masses ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. XLII. April, 1888. No. 4. • Various
... as he was ordered; and it was not till we had got to such a distance that there was little fear of his being hit, that I saw him jump down to release his companions. It was with a sense of misery and degradation I have never before experienced, that I watched till we lost sight of the ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... in fact practically all the qualifications necessary for a good practitioner of our art. He had, eminently, that gift which the Romans called facundia and the French can translate, if with a slight degradation of meaning, by faconde; but for which we, though the adjective "facund" has, one believes, been tried, possess no noun, "Eloquence" being too much specified to "fine" writing or speaking. "Facility of expression" perhaps comes ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... N. deterioration, debasement; wane, ebb; recession &c 287; retrogradation &c 283 [Obs.]; decrease &c 36. degeneracy, degeneration, degenerateness; degradation; depravation, depravement; devolution; depravity &c 945; demoralization, retrogression; masochism. impairment, inquination^, injury, damage, loss, detriment, delaceration^, outrage, havoc, inroad, ravage, scath^; perversion, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... was not a very hard life to bear, while I was a thief. It was only when they had taught me at the reformatory to feel my own degradation, and to try for better things, that the days grew long and weary. Thoughts of the future forced themselves on me now. I felt the dreadful reproach that honest people—even the kindest of honest people—were to me in themselves. A heart-breaking sensation ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... as she might to avoid it, the alms-house, with its debased and debasing society, was ever before her eyes as her ultimate destiny. It was in vain that she endeavored to prepare her mind for this result. She could endure any degree of privation, but not degradation and infamy. ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... maintain decent appearances upon an income below that enjoyed by many artisans—what goes, in the one case, for the decent appearances, being enjoyed in substantial comforts in the other, or else misapplied, to the degradation of body ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 445 - Volume 18, New Series, July 10, 1852 • Various
... hopes and fears. The condition of women improves, undoubtedly, as a people advances towards civilization; but there is a period in the process, at which voluptuousness, more cruel than indifference, and often maddened by jealousy, subjects her to greater degradation than her original insignificance, and destroys all hope of her amelioration in the tyranny of her own licentiousness. It is only where the principle alluded to, is publicly recognised in the civil institutions of a country, and conscientiously reverenced by the piety of its citizens, that ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... observers. All those creeping things that riot in the decay of nobler natures hastened to their repast; and they were right; they did after their kind. It is not every day that the savage envy of aspiring dunces is gratified by the agonies of such a spirit, and the degradation of such a name. The unhappy man left his country forever. The howl of contumely followed him across the sea, up the Rhine, over the Alps; it gradually waxed fainter; it died away; those who had raised it began to ask each other, what, after all, was the ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... relation." To the same purpose are the pertinent words of Alford: "To endeavor to evade the work which he has appointed for each man, by refusing the bounty to save the trouble of seeking the grace, is an attempt which must ever end in degradation of the individual motives and in social demoralization, whatever present apparent effects may follow ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.
... from[72]" the Saxon queens. We have no instance of a female coronation in England until so late as the year 978, in the reign of Ethelred II.[73]: that of Judith, therefore, was no revival of a discontinued custom. But a degradation of the consorts of the kings of Wessex in regard to the title of queen, and the right to sit in equal dignity with the king upon a throne, in consequence of the crime of Eadburga, is, perhaps, sufficiently established. Mr. Lingard, whose accuracy as an historian ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... as I have said, grown disgusted with the consular name, and desiring either that men of plebeian birth should be admitted to the office or its authority be restricted, the nobles, to prevent its degradation in either of these two ways, proposed a middle course, whereby four tribunes, who might either be plebeians or nobles, were to be created with consular authority. This compromise satisfied the commons, who thought they would thus get rid of the consulship, ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... strove to acquire that resignation to inevitable evils which alone could reconcile him to forego the promises of his youth, and enable him to view with patience a humiliation of Scotland, which blighted her honor, menaced her existence, and consigned her sons to degradation or obscurity. The latter was the choice of Wallace. Too noble to bend his spirit to the usurper, too honest to affect submission, he resigned himself to the only way left of maintaining the independence of a true Scot; and giving up the world at once, all ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... at a better perspective one of the leaning walls. Down the steps of the building came a young man who seemed to epitomize its degradation, squalor and infelicity—a narrow-chested, pale, unsavory young man, puffing at ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... as if she had told him, that it had been done in one of her father's fits of drunken passion. He had seen this sort of thing before during his sojourn in the mining districts. But, shamefully repulsive as it had been to him, he had never felt the degradation of it as fiercely as ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... to be supposed that slavery, at this stage, is so oppressive even to those who have been deprived of their freedom. The feeling of moral degradation which slavery, abstraction even made of its abuses, awakens in us, is unknown in a very uncivilized age.(406) The child willingly obeys the orders of strangers, and is hired out to service by his parents etc. The want or craving for liberty keeps pace with the intellectual ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... Mississippi, and her great city with an unrivalled location, what an imperial destiny lies before her, with the Union preserved? Oh! if she would only fully realize these great truths, and spurn from her embrace the wretched traitors who, while falsely professing peace, mean the degradation of the North and the dissolution of this Union, who can assign limits to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... attachment which aroused it: and she was conscious that she had but shown obedience to his wishes throughout the day, not sympathy with his feelings. Under cover of a patient desire to please she had nursed irritation and jealousy; the degradation of the sense of jealousy increasing the irritation. Having consented to the ride to Dr. Shrapnel, should she not, to be consistent, have dismounted there? O half heart! A whole one, though it be an erring, like ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... girls in this reform school as compared with the one thousand boys, proved clearly that women, there as elsewhere, are either the best or the worst of the human race. When a girl cuts loose from the angel she was intended to be, she usually descends to the lowest possible pit of degradation; as soon as this girl in question found there was nothing to be gained by her fiendish outbursts of fury, she cunningly changed her tactics with her pious teacher, and pretended to "be born again." She ostensibly chose the Bible for her favorite reading, prayed fervently, ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... her new-born infant upon her bosom, should be the object of trembling care and sympathy wherever she bears her tender burden, or stretches her aching limbs. The very outcast of the streets has pity upon her sister in degradation, when the seal of promised maternity is impressed upon her. The remorseless vengeance of the law, brought down upon its victim by a machinery as sure as destiny, is arrested in its fall at a word which reveals her transient claim ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... and paused, while the enemy within whispered words of seduction hard to be withstood. But now a second voice spoke in him also: a voice of mingled authority and pleading. Why not fling away both box and pellets, foregoing the final degradation, the final rapture, that every nerve in him clamoured for more imperatively than he ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... in the land to which they had been able to appeal for some sort of redress amid their grievances was the law courts. Now it was decreed that the courts should be dependent on the Volksraad. The Chief Justice protested against such a degradation of his high office, and he was dismissed in consequence without a pension. The judge who had condemned the reformers was chosen to fill the vacancy, and the protection of a fixed law was withdrawn ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... what it had done for him, but the old shame held his tongue. He did not want to bring up the old story. The fact that it had existed, and had written itself out in human passion, remained with him still as a personal and humiliating degradation. It was like a scar on his own body, a repulsive sore which he wished to keep out of sight, even from the eyes of the man who had been his salvation. The growth of this revulsion within him had kept pace with his physical improvement, and if at the end of these ten days Father Roland had spoken ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... possibilities of our lives. To a certain extent we are slaves to our heredity, but not by any means to any such extent as to make us hopeless, unless our heredity is miserably bad. To the great mass of us come larger potentialities than we ever develop, and such possibilities of degradation as, fortunately, few of us ever reach. Within an enormously wide range, man is the architect of his own fortune. Only such traits develop as find a stimulus in the environment. Accordingly, a very large proportion of ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... violin, while Dummer led off a procession which solemnly capered round the room in sundry stages of conscious awkwardness. Mr. Bultitude shuffled along somehow after the rest, with rebellion at his heart and a deep sense of degradation. "If my clerks were to see ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... men are excited about the crews gone to Paris, for fear they should be forcibly detained by the Sultaneh Franzaweeh, I assured them that they will all come home safe and happy, with a good backsheesh. Many of them think it a sort of degradation to be taken for the Parisians to stare at like an anteeka, a word which here means what our ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... arrangement. The English government had issued an order that officers holding the king's commission should rank provincial officers, and that provincial generals and field officers should have no rank when a general or field officer holding a royal commission was present. The degradation of being ranked by every whipper-snapper who might hold a royal commission by virtue, perhaps, of being the bastard son of some nobleman's cast-off mistress was more than the temper of George Washington ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... which the world has sustained in the degradation of the helpful serpent. If the serpent had not been degraded, every Israelite would have been attended by two of kindly disposition, one of which might have been sent to the north, and the other to the south, to bring for its owner ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... summary of their results. The arguments recently advanced by the Duke of Argyll (33. 'Primeval Man,' 1869.) and formerly by Archbishop Whately, in favour of the belief that man came into the world as a civilised being, and that all savages have since undergone degradation, seem to me weak in comparison with those advanced on the other side. Many nations, no doubt, have fallen away in civilisation, and some may have lapsed into utter barbarism, though on this latter head I have ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... Tabard Inn with its good cheer and merry company, Langland goes to another inn on the next street; there he looks with pure eyes upon sad or evil-faced men and women, drinking, gaming, quarreling, and pictures a scene of physical and moral degradation. One must look on both pictures to know what an English inn was like in ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... might himself be enabled to pursue other conquests; but Dara refused to go, although advised by his nobles to accept the invitation. "I am willing to put myself to death," said he with emotion, "but I cannot submit to this degradation. I cannot go before him, and thus personally acknowledge his authority over me." Resolved upon this point, he wrote to Faur, one of the sovereigns of Ind, to request his assistance, and Faur recommended that he should pay him a visit for the purpose ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... as if in fact she had been in reality an Indian. She had imbibed in childhood the feelings of her mother, who had taken the first step and repented it—of one who had deserted, but had not been adopted—who became an exile and remained an alien—who had bartered her birthright for degradation and death. It is natural that regret for the past and despair for the future should have been the burden of the mournful ditties of such a woman; that she who had mated without love, and lived ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... arrangements, they set off for Southampton, and took passage in the Trent, which was destined subsequently to play a prominent part in the tangled role of Diplomacy, and to furnish the most utterly humiliating of many chapters of the pusillanimity, sycophancy, and degradation of the Federal government. ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... adventurous spirits from Europe, what might we not hope to achieve, uncontrolled by these monarchs, whose dignity throws us at present into the shade—and, were they to remain here, and succeed in this expedition, would willingly consign us for ever to degradation and dependence?" ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... or esoteric meaning of the swastika-cross; why Aum is always typified by a circle; ancient forms of oath-taking and why; the source of sex-energy spiritual; how and where the idea of "blood-atonement" and vicarious sacrifice originated; the beginning of sex-degradation. ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... in life to think for long or seriously about these curious Things drifting by like cattle and sheep. Yet her brow contracted, and she drew herself together as they passed—a sort of shiver, to think that there should be such degradation in the world. Twice when they came along her side of the road she dropped pennies in front of them, which they picked up in a listless way, just glancing over the ear in the direction the money fell, and went on without so much as ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... overwhelming. A certain number of men would have still stood by Mr. Ward, either from friendship or sympathy, or from independence of judgment, or from dislike of the policy of the Board; but they would have been greatly outnumbered. The degradation—the Board did not venture on the logical consequence, expulsion—was a poor and even ridiculous measure of punishment; to reduce Mr. Ward to an undergraduate in statu pupillari, and a commoner's ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... though a man of sixty, to appear on the stage in the contest of wit. This knight was a composer of mimes—a light kind of comedy, somewhat to be compared to the "entertainments" given by humorists at the present day. Julius Caesar obliged him to perform in person—an act of degradation—but afterwards gave him 500,000 sesterces, and restored him to his rank. This act of Caesar's has been regarded as having a political significance, but it may merely have shown his love of humour. He may have wished to bring out the talent ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... According to the Muslim version, Solomon's temporary degradation was in punishment for his taking as a concubine the daughter of an idolatrous king whom he had vanquished in battle, and, through her influence, bowing himself to "strange gods." Before going to the bath, one day, he gave this heathen beauty his signet to take care of, and in ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... play,[7] "The Editor," grapples with an equally modern and timely subject, viz., the license of the press. With terrible vividness he shows the misery, ruin, and degradation which result from the present journalistic practice of misrepresentation, sophistry, and defamation. It is a very dark picture he draws, with scarcely a gleam of light. The satire is savage; and the quiver of wrath is perceptible in many a sledge-hammer phrase. You feel that Bjoernson himself ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... was in a very disturbed state, bordering upon rebellion. In the early part of this year many provincial banks stopped payment, in consequence of a demand on them for gold, and, to complete the climax of this country's degradation and disgrace, an act of national bankruptcy was declared on the twenty-seventh day of February; an order in council being issued on that day, by virtue of which the Bank of England stopped payment ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... being. Confucius he considers to have held a lower religious position than his countrymen had already attained to. He also regards the worship of spirits and of ancestors as a later perversion and degradation of the original religion of one god. In these positions he is followed by Professor Giles, Oxford Proceedings, vol. i. p. ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... too, how his poverty, the degradation of his earlier life, attracted her. There was something insipid and tasteless to her, in the idea of a gentleman, a man who had gone the usual course through school and university. A certain violent sympathy, however, came up in her ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... judging only by Punch's pictures, and that a little narrowly, has thought otherwise. Punch "has never in a single instance," says he in his "Art of England," "endeavoured to represent the beauty of the poor. On the contrary, his witness to their degradation, as inevitable consequences of their London life, is constant and, for ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann |
