"Degrading" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... none of which they could read, and the larger part of which (those written in Latin) they could not translate, or understand when they heard them read, is equivalent to supposing the nation sunk in the most degrading slavery, instead of enjoying a liberty of their ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... ice, half hysterical, partly from the sense of the degrading, ludicrous plight I was in, partly from intense yet painful delight at being thus once more with him, seeing some recognition in his eyes again, and hearing some ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... of daily living, of ordinary usage of the machine in hourly intercourse, there occurs sometimes a phenomenon which is the cause of a great deal of trouble, and the result of a very ill-tended machine. It is a phenomenon impossible to ignore, and yet, so shameful is it, so degrading, so shocking, so miserable, that I hesitate to mention it. For one class of reader is certain to ridicule me, loftily saying: 'One really doesn't expect to find this sort of thing in print nowadays!' And another class of reader is certain to get angry. Nevertheless, ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... that grew boastful as it grew distrustful of its claims and could bring less proof in support of them; the energy degenerated into impudence, evading the shame of spendthrift bankruptcy to-day by shifts that were sure to bring a more degrading exposure tomorrow; and the whole ended at last in a suicide whose tragic pang is deadened to us by the feeling that so much of the mixed motive that drove him to it as was not cowardice was a hankering after melodramatic effect, the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... ring. This changed the editor's opinions as to the propriety of boxing—at any-rate pugilism was repudiated by the Dispatch about 1829; and boxing, from the Dispatch point of view, was henceforward treated as a degrading and brutal amusement, unworthy of ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... "Chain," which Pelham promptly agreed to join, declaring that it was just the thing to suit his case. He was in a rebellious frame of mind; and though he could not feel that the enterprise would be a complete success, it would afford him an opportunity to annoy and punish the principal for his degrading and tyrannical regulation, as the recreant officer chose to ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... acknowledgment of the marriage, and of the child, stating that you, sir, hold the certificate or rather the license warranting the marriage, and that you will espouse and aid in prosecuting her iniquitous claims. My son is now a reformed and comparatively happy man, but should this degrading and bitterly repented episode of his collage life be thrust before the public, and allowed to blacken the fair escutcheon we are so jealously anxious to protect, I dread the consequences. Only horror of a notorious scandal prevented me long ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... pictures of the saints which adorn these shrines were probably intended to remind people of their religious duties; but, like other unwise human inventions, which do not take into consideration the evil tendencies of the human mind, they have led to a system of degrading idolatry, while the simple truths of Christianity have been superseded by a flimsy tissue of falsehoods. Although the members of the Greek Church are iconoclasts, or image-breakers, and allow no actual images to be set up on their altars, it must be owned that they pay ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... the remark, for to become an article of vegetation, were it sure of continuance, would be one of the most irksome, as well as degrading situations to which a man could be reduced. But you should recollect, that the generality of persons who study in this College expect an early termination of their privations, by which hope is kept alive; and when the cherished hope is realized, of escaping from these ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... should be coldly discouraged, and the nationalist movement allowed to proceed unchecked, until every colonist of British blood had surrendered the hope of remaining a citizen of the Empire for the degrading necessity of securing for himself and his children a tolerable position in the United States of South Africa by a timely alliance with the more progressive Dutch. From the presence of this danger Lord Milner was now relieved, since, as he instantly foresaw, the whip-lash of this frank ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... before. They thought, of course, that I was still some distance off and had not seen them, but to their consternation I shouted to them that they were too late, as I had been watching them for some time. I fined every man present heavily, besides summarily degrading the Headman, who had thus shown himself utterly unfit for his position. I then proceeded to my hut, but had scarcely arrived there when two of the scoundrels tottered up after me, bent almost double and calling Heaven to witness that I had shot them ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... exhibit this latter falsehood in its miserable consequences, when received into a heart of insight and determination sufficient to follow out all belief to its ultimate practice, is the main object of my Poem. That a most degrading and agonising contradiction on these points must have existed in the mind of Elizabeth, and of all who with similar characters shall have found themselves under similar influences, is a necessity that must be evident ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... every thing that can be mentioned with regard to me,—goes against the supposition of my ever becoming the slave of a vice so debasing; and this pledging myself to avoid it is something altogether needless—nay, by implication, it is degrading. As to what you say of my influence, I am inclined to the opinion, that if every man will look to himself, every man will be looked to. This modern notion of tacking the whole responsibility of society on to every individual is one I am ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... going on with his attack, and without him disaffection at home was powerless. We should be particularly careful not to judge this act of John's by the sentiment of a later time. There was nothing that seemed degrading to that age about becoming a vassal. Every member of the aristocracy of Europe and almost every king was a vassal. A man passed from the classes that were looked down upon, the peasantry and the bourgeoisie, into the nobility by becoming a vassal. The English kings ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... child. It had been neglected and seemed almost starved. Those around apparently took pleasure in tormenting it and rendering it miserable, and vied with each other in applying to it insulting and degrading epithets. The little articles that Cecil gave to it, in the hope that the Indians seeing him manifest an interest in it would treat it more tenderly, it put to its mouth eagerly; but not finding them eatable, it ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... deemed rather a degrading weapon of warfare; but now the term has grown to be a familiar one in trade circles. Even the great railway companies do not scruple to use the boycott in fighting their battles. One might imagine that both the thing and the name filled ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... saying; but that is the result of disputing with shoemakers. Besides, it is degrading to compare women to wine! He is a coarse fellow who sets his wife on the same ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... the schools of Greece were still pursuing the beaten paths, and teaching the doctrines of Plato and Aristotle. It is the peculiar and prodigious advantage of travelling, that it counteracts this woful and degrading tendency, and by directing men's thoughts, as well as their steps, into foreign lands, has a tendency to induce into their ideas a portion of the variety and freshness which characterize the works of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... that it is a degrading thing to churn, and he further knows that to wear a green-checked gingham apron is odious beyond description; however, if the disgusting thing is tied under a boy's arms, from whence it may be slipped down over the hips and the ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... robe of truth, I worship it for what it covers," replied Philothea; "but I love not the degrading fables which poets have made concerning divine beings. Such were not the gods of Solon; for such the wise and good can never be, in ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... laws," exclaims Mr. Seward, "convert hospitality to the refugee from the most degrading oppression on earth into a crime, but all mankind except you esteem that hospitality a virtue." Not content with thus denouncing the "Constitution and laws," he has elsewhere exhorted the people to an open resistance to their execution. "It is," says ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... and then hurried off to his friend's office, while Ned entered the hotel. A large portion of this building was rented by gamblers, who paid the enormous sum of 60,000 dollars a year for it, and carried on their villainous and degrading occupation in it night and day. The chief games played were monte and faro, but no interest attached to the games as such, the winning or losing of money was that which lent fascination ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... time Rhoda came back to comment upon the fact that Grant Adams had quit working in the printing office—a genteel trade, and had stopped delivering papers for Mr. Brotherton's newspaper stand—a rather high vocation, and was degrading himself by learning the carpenter's trade, when Mary Adams cut into the current of the stream ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... sex. He believes in spirit. He is timid and womanly, his mind is pure and inexpressibly shocked at the carnal desires which disfigure the otherwise fair picture of humanity. Love, marriage, procreation, cannot these be purged from the base and degrading obsessions of sex? By abstinence, by concentration, we may eliminate them. Surely the story of the Fall makes it quite clear that we were never meant to perpetuate such gross mistakes.... Here is the woman who believes sex to be the source of all good, ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... but there is a wide difference between the judgment of the present and that of future ages. The favour of the great, the passions of the multitude, the efforts of reviewers, the interest of booksellers, a clique of authors, a coterie of ladies, accidental events, degrading propensities, often enter largely into the composition of present reputation. But opinion is freed from all these disturbing influences by the lapse of time. The grave is the greatest of all purifiers. Literary jealousy, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... those numerous violations of the marriage vow which she feels certain he has committed. It is a cruel resort, but the law which permits a man to outrage a woman in almost every other way frowns upon that one, and she is driven to it as the sole method of release from an intolerable and degrading bondage. In such cases as this might perhaps be found some justification for the existence of private detectives; but they themselves do not appear to know that they stand in need of extenuation, and so neglect the opportunity ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... necessity for the country, while the Clericals were even more enthusiastic. But there was hardly a trace of anti-Turkish feeling; it was simply that the people, rejoiced at having awakened from the long nightmare of political apathy and international servility, had thrown off the grinding and degrading yoke of Socialist tyranny, and risen to a dawn of higher ideals of national dignity. Italy had at last asserted herself. The extraordinary efficiency, speed, and secrecy with which the expedition was organized, shipped ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... something unclean and degrading about this humble side of Christianity. Ursula suddenly revolted ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... by the sacred bond of marriage to your virtuous and beloved mother, it was necessary that I should confess. This I did with extreme reluctance, feeling that nothing could be at once more absurd, more tyrannical, or more degrading, than to oblige a man to prostrate himself at the feet of a priest, a mortal, a sinner, a child of corruption like himself, and there to make confessions to him, which offended Deity alone could have a right ...
— The Village in the Mountains; Conversion of Peter Bayssiere; and History of a Bible • Anonymous
... regretting to state that this infringed no statute, deprecated all violence, and while it extolled the forbearance of the people, yet declared that an education which educated backward, and an institution which sought to elevate an inferior race by degrading a superior, would compel the people to make laws they would rather not enact. The Black-and-Tannery's effort for a union revival meeting lay at the door of "our church," said Garnet smilingly to Sister Proudfit, "as dead as Ananias." ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... and degrading impulses which had lately controlled me were, in some degree, removed. New dejection succeeded, but was now produced by contemplating my late behavior. Surely that passion is worthy to be abhorred which obscures our ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... turbid elements of that sort in God. His retribution is a great deal more analogous to the unimpassioned, impersonal action of public law than it is to the 'wild justice of revenge.' When we speak of His 'vengeance' we simply mean—unless we have dropped into a degrading superstition—the just recompense of reward which divinely dogs all sin. There is one saying in Scripture which puts the whole matter in its true light, 'Vengeance is Mine; I will repay,' saith the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the Spirit of Evil on one occasion entering into swine, but, if possible, a stranger sight is that of the Spirit of Poesy finding a similar incarnation. Certainly the connexion of genius in the Earl of Rochester with a life of the most degrading and desperate debauchery is one of the chief marvels ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... of Mahomet is an unskilful calumny of the Christians, [63] who exalt instead of degrading the merit of their adversary. His descent from Ismael was a national privilege or fable; but if the first steps of the pedigree [64] are dark and doubtful, he could produce many generations of pure and genuine nobility: ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... joined with real willingness and hearty earnestness the band of abstainers, as he sat in all boyish sincerity at Mr Bernard Oliphant's table, eager to make the trial and bear the cross, were fresh upon his memory now. And all the bitter past, with its shameful, degrading, sinful records, gathered its thick shadows round his soul. What should he do? He sank upon his knees and prayed—prayed to be forgiven, prayed that he might do better—and then he rose, and was in part comforted. ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... with sorrow and rage, she thus addressed her lord in anger, looking at him, 'Knowing everything, O monarch, how canst thou, like an inferior person, thus say that thou knowest it not? Thy heart is a witness to the truth or falsehood of this matter. Therefore, speak truly without degrading thyself. He who being one thing representeth himself as another thing to others, is like a thief and a robber of his own self. Of what sin is he not capable? Thou thinkest that thou alone hast knowledge of thy deed. But knowest thou not that the Ancient, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... which is the universal dinner time in the east, I went to dine with the Governor Mohammed 'Abdu'l Hadi; it was a miserable degrading scene of gorging the pilaff with the hands and squeezing the butter of it through the fingers, without even water for drink supplied by the servants. The guests were about a dozen in number, and they were crowded so closely round the tinned ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... won't tell you that the world matters nothing, or the world's voice, or the voice of society. They matter a great deal. They matter far too much. But there are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life, fully, entirely, completely—or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands. You have that moment now. Choose! Oh, my ...
— Lady Windermere's Fan • Oscar Wilde
... contending with difficulties. At first I offered her the same help which I had always found it necessary to confer on the others; I began with unloosing for her each knotty point, but I soon discovered that such help was regarded by my new pupil as degrading; she recoiled from it with a certain proud impatience. Hereupon I appointed her long lessons, and left her to solve alone any perplexities they might present. She set to the task with serious ardour, and having quickly accomplished one labour, ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... importunity, painful to me, and, all circumstances considered, degrading to Sir George, whose honor is very dear to me, though I am obliged to refuse him that hand which he surely cannot wish to receive without my heart, I am compelled to say, that, without an idea of ever being united to Colonel Rivers, I will ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... organisation of society some geisha play a legitimate role. They gain in the career for which they have laboriously trained an outlet for the expression of artistic and social gifts which would have been denied them in domestic life. At the same time the degrading character of the life led by many geisha cannot be doubted. Apart from every other consideration the temptation to drink is great. The opening of new avenues to feminine ability, the enlarged opportunities of education and self-respect and the increasing opening for women on the stage—from which ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... As he did so, every eye, suddenly released from his imposing figure, flashed towards the immovable Clifford, to find him still absorbed by the action and attitude of the man who had just undergone what to him doubtless appeared a degrading ordeal. Pale before, he was absolutely livid now, though otherwise unchanged. To break the force of what appeared to be an open, if involuntary, self-betrayal, another guest stepped forward; but no sooner had he raised his hand to his vest-pocket than Clifford ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... say impossible, that the man in whom the habit of vice had formed should be able to cast off his degrading weakness, like a shameful garment, by sheer force of will, and be sane and strong and masterful again? I say, possible with this man. You see him plucked from the slough by the strong hand of manly ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... officers of his majesty's navy were directed to act as custom-house officers on the coast of America, as well as in the British Channel, but, from the complaints made, the Admiralty released them from a service which they considered as degrading to ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... the greatest number possible of his brothers should participate in the succor offered. He addresses himself, in the first place, to honest, industrious workmen, with families, whom the want of work often reduces to the most cruel extremities. It is not a degrading alms which he gives to his brothers but a gratuitous loan which he offers. May this loan, as he hopes, prevent them often from resorting to those cruel pledges which they are forced to make (while awaiting the return of work), for ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... discovering the trust-unworthiness of one's most intimate friends, the necessity of insincerity and concealment sometimes where one feels that one ought and would desire to be most open; then the degrading nature of the occupation, mixing with the lowest of mankind, and absorbed in the business for the sole purpose of getting money, the consciousness of a sort of degradation of intellect, the conviction of the deteriorating effects upon both the feelings and the understanding ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... as plainly as can be: he wants me to find out gold, or tin and precious stones, and other things for his benefit. It is degrading to ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... all such sentiments. Mr. Freeland had many of the faults peculiar to slaveholders, such as being very passionate and fretful; but I must do him the justice to say, that he was exceedingly free from those degrading vices to which Mr. Covey was constantly addicted. The one was open and frank, and we always knew where to find him. The other was a most artful deceiver, and could be understood only by such as were skilful enough to detect his cunningly-devised frauds. Another ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... Hindoo neighbours; and that, in particular, the redelivery to India of these very gates of Somnauth, were, in negotiations of recent date, demanded by Runjeet Singh as an inestimable boon, and deprecated by Shah Soojah as a degrading humiliation. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... presents him to the worshipper. She holds him forth with a pensive joy as the predestined offering. If the profound religious sentiment of the early masters was afterwards obliterated by the unbelief and conventionalism of later art, still this favourite subject could not be so wholly profaned by degrading sentiments and associations, as the mere portrait heads of the Virgin alone. No matter what the model for the Madonna, might have been,—a wife, a mistress, a contadina of Frascati, a Venetian Zitella, a Madchen of Nuremberg, a buxom Flemish Frau,—for ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... vital question upon which so much of human life and happiness depends, the weak and degrading answer must suffice; to the effect that the last vestige of public respect for the sciences would be shaken, and many wise theories would fail of their imaginary virtues and succumb, before humanity's best birthright—the quality of healthy blood, ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... the performance of any menial or degrading task, as well as for hazing, was court-martial and possible dismissal, the yearling generally succeeded in getting the work done without giving orders or making demands, so the plebes could not say they had been coerced into doing ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... Spanish territory was that of Moors and Jews. When in the course of time those races had been subjugated, massacred, or driven into exile, not only was Spain deprived of its highest intellectual culture and its most productive labour, but intelligence, science, and industry were accounted degrading, because the mark ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... demoralizing mode of amusement to our country! Degrading to the greatest degree, it is nevertheless pursued with avidity by all classes of people; and large bets are often depending on these brutal exercises. Gentlemen, noblemen, and even ladies, are, on such occasions, mixed with the most degraded part of the community. ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb
... to live in some degree of comfort and security is nothing but the taking shape of these ideas and emotions; for the end of all civilisation is to ensure that there shall be freedom for all from debasing and degrading conditions, and that is perhaps as far as we have hitherto advanced; but the further end in sight is to set all men and women free to some extent from hopeless drudgery, to give them leisure, to provide them with tastes ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... therefore, sentenced to the severest and most degrading punishment known in the institution—to the so-called "monk's penalty." That is to say, the future young soldier, in the coarse woollen garment of a mendicant friar, was on his knees, to devour his meal from an earthen vessel in the middle of the dining- room, while all ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... accents that vainly struggled for calm, "if thou hast admitted to thy heart one unworthy thought towards a Moorish infidel, dig deep and root it out, even with the knife, and to the death—so wilt thou save this hand from that degrading task." ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book I. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... life must be senselessly wasted unless he applied it to some kind of work and again played an active part in life. He did not even remember how formerly, on the strength of similar wretched logical arguments, it had seemed obvious that he would be degrading himself if he now, after the lessons he had had in life, allowed himself to believe in the possibility of being useful and in the possibility of happiness or love. Now reason suggested quite the opposite. After that journey to Ryazan he found the ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... of reading the letters; even to unfold Mrs. Haffen's dirty newspaper would have seemed degrading. But what did she intend to do with its contents? The recipient of the letters had meant to destroy them, and it was her duty to carry out his intention. She had no right to keep them—to do so was to lessen whatever merit lay in having secured their possession. But how destroy them so effectually ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... Texas. Cut aloof from your degrading habits and associates here, and, in fighting for the freedom of the Texans, ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... education, children are subjected to a mild despotism for the good of themselves and of society; and their confidence in the wisdom and goodness of those who ordain and apply this despotism, neutralizes the bad passions and degrading feelings, which under less favourable conditions are its ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... you been from answering my expectation in any of your letters; that on the contrary you are loading our carrier every week with libels, and keys, and reflections, and memoirs, and second parts; wherein I see myself accused of reflecting upon great state folk; of degrading human nature (for so they have still the confidence to style it), and of abusing the female sex. I find likewise that the writers of those bundles are not agreed among themselves; for some of them ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... from power plant emissions results in acid rain; acidification of lakes and reservoirs degrading water quality and threatening aquatic life; Japan's appetite for fish and tropical timber is contributing to the depletion of these resources ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... that hill-top as a dancing-master in a hay-field. He smoked cigarettes and read the sporting page of the paper in the garage, where gasoline rather deadened the country smells of flowers and hay, and tried to forget his degrading surroundings, but he was overjoyed when the day to start for home arrived. I did not share his feelings, and yet I was ready to go. It had been a great success, and the only time I had felt lonely was in a crowded restaurant in San Diego, where J—— and I had ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... complete security. There never can be danger that the judges, by a series of deliberate usurpations on the authority of the legislature, would hazard the united resentment of the body intrusted with it, while this body was possessed of the means of punishing their presumption, by degrading them from their stations. While this ought to remove all apprehensions on the subject, it affords, at the same time, a cogent argument for constituting the Senate a court for the trial of impeachments. Having ...
— The Federalist Papers
... minister, he ceased to be a dissenter, I know not. He certainly retained an unnecessary and outrageous zeal for what he called, and thought, liberty; a zeal which sometimes disguises from the world, and not rarely from the mind which it possesses, an envious desire of plundering wealth or degrading greatness; and of which the immediate tendency is innovation and anarchy, an impetuous eagerness to subvert and confound, with very little care what shall ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... nature instinctively recoiled. She loathed that sort of person, the fallen women off the accommodation walk beside the Dodder that went with the soldiers and coarse men with no respect for a girl's honour, degrading the sex and being taken up to the police station. No, no: not that. They would be just good friends like a big brother and sister without all that other in spite of the conventions of Society with a big ess. Perhaps it was an old ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... nature, and if killed, I could not help it. "Several men have run away," said I, "since I came into the ship and before, and the officers under whose charge they were only received a reprimand, while I, who have just come to sea, have been treated with the greatest and most degrading severity." ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... was the display of military incompetency at Carwar and on subsequent occasions, it is hardly surprising when the condition of the Company's soldiers is considered. The Company's policy was to keep officers and men in a state of degrading subjection; to prevent the officers from having any authority over their men, while pledges as to pay were ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... my handiworks, I tell you," said Shanty, decidedly, "for none of your heathenish fancies and follies. The time was when I lent myself to these sort of follies, but, thank my God, I have learned to cast away, aye, and to condemn such degrading thoughts as these. Believe me, young man, that if God is on your side, neither witch nor warlock, or worse than either, ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]
... Godhead; so that they are without excuse" (Rom. i. 20): and we believe that a considerable insight into the nature of God, and the probable character of His dealings with us may be obtained in the manner to which we have referred. Still we have only to look at the ever varying and degrading notions which have, at all times, prevailed in many parts of the world respecting the Divine Being, to perceive that a more clear method of obtaining knowledge about Him would, to say the least of it, be a most valuable ...
— Thoughts on a Revelation • Samuel John Jerram
... in the history of the Hebrews: When their great men were good men, virtue was respected, and the nation rejoiced; but "the wicked walked on every side, when the vilest men were exalted," and the degrading, and even desolating judgments of heaven followed. "These things happened unto them for ensamples; and are ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... no eyes for this disgusting fanfarronade of a degrading superstition. Sick of the sight, wearied with the sounds, I had given orders for my horse to be saddled, intending to ride forth and seek repose for my spirit amid the silent ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... temper became ungovernable and as each annoyance crowded upon her with redoubled force it was anything but agreeable to listen to the frequent outbursts of uncontrollable anger or to look upon a face made hideous by those degrading exhibitions of a coarse and ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... price upon the labor of an overseer and the work of a hod-carrier. A reduction in the price of the day's work, then, is necessary: so that the laborer, after having been afflicted in mind by a degrading function, cannot fail to be struck also in his body by the meagreness of his reward. This is the literal application of the words of the Gospel: HE THAT HATH NOT, FROM HIM SHALL BE TAKEN EVEN THAT WHICH HE ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... or using it for the welfare of the state. Then it was subverted, as Napoleon rode into absolute dominion over the bridge which the Revolution had built. And the Roman constitution was remarkable, not only because it prevented a degrading subjection of the masses, even while it refused them the rights of government, but because it maintained a balance among the governing classes themselves, and restricted the usurpations of powerful families, as well as military heroes. For nearly five ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... no protest in her mind, because it was a cruelty to which she was accustomed. If the sport had been unknown in Dinwiddie, and she had read of it as the peculiar activity of the inhabitants of the British Islands, she would probably have condemned it as needlessly brutal and degrading. But with that universal faculty of the human mind to adjust its morality to fit its inherited physical habits, she regarded "the rights of the fox" to-day with something of the humorous scorn of sentimental ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... This degrading humiliation of his rival must certainly be turned to account. With Allis Porter still believing in Mortimer's innocence the gain to him was very little; he must bring the crime absolutely home to the accused man, but in a manner not savoring ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... gestures. On examination of this document by the friends and relatives of the girl, it was recognized and identified as her handwriting; and it established the fact that the father had died innocent of every crime, except that of trying to save his child from a degrading marriage. ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... go off, the General detained him: "Wait a moment, Monsieur Massot," said he. "How disgusting all that parliamentary cooking is! You ought to point it out in an article, and show people how the country is gradually being weakened and rotted to the marrow by all such useless and degrading discussions. Why, a great battle resulting in the loss of 50,000 men would exhaust us less than ten years of this abominable parliamentary system. You must call on me some morning. I will show you a scheme ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... plain, then, why they do so, who oppose and hate the influence and ideas of New England? If anything could measure the utter vileness of slavery and its degrading effect on the mind, it would be the consideration of the unblushing assurance with which its lovers defend it, and at the same time assail those sacred principles which lie at the root of our national life, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... more than to any other is due the persistent investigation and disclosure which aroused the public mind to the prevailing conditions in mine and factory where hours of labor were excessive, and where women and children were subjected to degrading tasks and brutal treatment. The Factory Law and kindred legislation since 1830 are the fruits of the beneficent and ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... behalf of the outcasts of their sex readily exposed the English women to misrepresentation and degrading remarks from the quarter of narrow-minded men, the women did not allow themselves to be held back from energetically opposing the introduction of the law that was an insult to their sex. In newspaper articles and pamphlets the "pros" and "cons" were discussed by men and ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... lonely wanderer amid the porticoes, and groves, and temples of this classic city, we attempt to conceive the emotion which stirred his heart as he beheld it "wholly given to idolatry;" or whether we contrast the sublime, majestic theism proclaimed by Paul with the degrading polytheism and degenerate philosophy which then prevailed in Athens, or consider the prudent and sagacious manner in which the apostle conducts his argument in view of the religious opinions and prejudices of his audience, we can not but feel that this event is fraught with lessons of instruction ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... what may be the prospect before them. Aware too that (in quiet times), they are always behaving badly, they will cheerfully submit to the severest punishment—provided, always, that it is not of a degrading nature. They can not endure harsh and insulting language, or any thing that is humiliating. In this respect they show the traits which characterize all of their Southern brethren—the Irish are of a similar disposition. I have frequently known the efficiency of fine companies greatly ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... do," confessed the Mayor. "What a dreadful and degrading scene! That upsetting fragment of a pantomime enacted in the open air, too, which is only a specimen of the stuff I was compelled to listen to for so ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... defining duties; therefore, wherever religion comes, even the mind that was sunken in weakness is raised to renewed life. It is in this way that religion counterbalances the influence of division of labor. While this takes away the last incentive to thought on the part of the workman, degrading him to a cunning but expensive machine, religion gives to him a new spring of thought, vivifies his blunted mind by the power of transformed affections, and makes him ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... common with other animals, simply on the bounty of nature; artless, and apparently as much afraid of us, and as shy, as other animals of the forest. It seemed strange, that in a climate the most resembling that of Milton's paradise, the circumstances of man's existence should be the most degrading. Latitude of our camp, 29 deg. 19' 26" S. Thermometer, at sunrise, 55 deg.; at noon, 100 deg.; at 4 P. M., 101 deg.; at 9, 70 deg.;—with wet bulb, 65 deg.. The mean elevation above the sea of our camps thus far on the Narran, seven in ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... she answered sadly. "But nothing could alter the fact that you wish to be treacherous, and throw me over—and just for money! It's simply degrading. It's all nonsense to say it will be ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... nephew, with much periphrastic eloquence, in part his passion for the daughter of a mere merchant to his aunt, than a vehement torrent of indignant rebuke broke from her lips. She would die rather than consent to so degrading a mesalliance; and should he persist in yielding to such gross infatuation, she would not only disinherit, but banish him her house, and cast him forth a beggar on the world. Language like this, one can easily understand, provoked language from the indignant young man which in less ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... we have loaded this great natural process of human labor with a mass of superstitions and degrading lies. The lazy old orientals called it a curse! Work, a curse! Work; which is the essential process of human life; man's natural function and ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... protested Lady Lydiard. "Mr. Tollmidge was Lord Lydiard's cousin; and Mrs. Tollmidge is related to his Lordship by marriage. It would be degrading to my husband's memory to have the begging-box sent round for his relations, no matter how distant they may be. Cousins!" exclaimed her Ladyship, suddenly descending from the lofty ranges of sentiment to ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... (To the same.) The Author's Arrival at Agadeer or Santa Cruz.—He opens the Port to European Commerce.—His favourable Reception on landing there.—Is saluted by the Battery.—Abolishes the degrading Custom that had been exacted of the Christians, of descending from on Horseback, and entering the Town on Foot, like the Jews.—Of a Sanctuary at the Entrance of the Town, which had ever been considered Holy Ground, and none but Muhamedans ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... others in their places." What an idea does this give as to the labor of a candidate in Rome! I can imagine it to be worse even than the canvassing of an English borough, which to a man of spirit and honor is the most degrading of all existing employments not held ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... brought up to do that kind of work," replied Richard, whose pride, quite as much as his self-will, prompted him to refuse to do the degrading office. ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... had yet united the guilty Caroline to Vargrave was broken,—a woman forgives sin in her lover, but never meanness. The degrading, the abject position in which she had seen one whom she had served as a slave (though, as yet, all his worst villanies were unknown to her), filled her with shame, horror, and disgust. She rose abruptly, and quitted the room. They did ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book XI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... of these, or the theoretic faculty, is concerned with the moral perception and appreciation of ideas of beauty. And the error respecting it is the considering and calling it aesthetic, degrading it to a mere operation of sense, or perhaps worse, of custom, so that the arts which appeal to it sink into a mere amusement, ministers to morbid sensibilities, ticklers and fanners ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... is come to an end as such, so it is rejected by Paul as a ministration no ways capable of abiding in the church now, since the ministration of the Spirit also hath taken its place (2 Cor 3). Wherefore instead of propounding it to the churches with arguments tending to its reception, he seeks by degrading it of its old lustre and glory, to wean the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... jetty. The military force numbered about sixty men, who, with convict-warders and constables, took charge of more than three hundred and fifty prisoners. These miserable wretches, deprived of every hope, were employed in the most degrading labour. No beast of burden was allowed on the settlement; all the pulling and dragging was done by human beings. About one hundred "good-conduct" men were allowed the lighter toil of dragging timber to the wharf, to assist ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... amiable and so much beloved by the princess, that she easily yielded; and casting down her eyes, confessed that she loved one who regarded her with contemptuous indifference; and what rendered her choice still more degrading was, its object being equally ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... one being disgusting, the other horrible; and the pardon and marriage of Angelo not merely baffles the strong indignant claim of justice—(for cruelty, with lust and damnable baseness, cannot be forgiven, because we cannot conceive them as being morally repented of); but it is likewise degrading to the character of woman. Beaumont and Fletcher, who can follow Shakespeare in his errors only, have presented a still worse, because more loathsome and contradictory, instance of the same kind in the Night-Walker, in the marriage of Alathe to Algripe. ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... other division of the human family been subjected to the influences of the same depressing climate, for an equal length of time, as were the Hamites, and surrounded by the same degrading circumstances, having no light without the assistance of divine counsel, their degeneration would have been equally as great as these descendants of Ham, when first began their involuntary migration into this country. The subsequent training ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... intimately connected with the safety, honor, and welfare of the state, and with the interests of religion and morality, is a general resolution of the inhabitants to establish a voluntary monthly contribution, and strictly prohibit the abominable and degrading practice of street-begging; the unlimited exercise of which, notwithstanding its fatal and disgraceful consequences, is perhaps more glaringly indulged in Munich than in any other ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... before; and now, in silence and sadness, she was wondering what she had to hear more; but certainly not expecting to hear the degrading revelation her visitor had ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... he wished be elected to the national House of Representatives from the Plymouth district. The gentleman who threw out this tentative proposition remarked that in his opinion the acceptance of this position by an ex-President "instead of degrading the individual would elevate the representative character." Mr. Adams replied, that he "had in that respect no scruple whatever. No person could be degraded by serving the people as a Representative in Congress. Nor in my opinion would an ex-President of the United States be degraded by serving ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... civilization which any race has attained by the proportion of its energy which is devoted to free and generous pursuits, to the adornment of life and the culture of the imagination. For it is in the spontaneous play of his faculties that man finds himself and his happiness. Slavery is the most degrading condition of which he is capable, and he is as often a slave to the niggardness of the earth and the inclemency of heaven, as to a master or an institution. He is a slave when all his energy is spent in avoiding suffering and death, when all his action ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... riding switch towards Diana and myself, "O Sir Jervas, is it with such dreadful creatures as these that you have doomed my poor, delicately nurtured Peregrine to consort? Aye, well may you grow purple, George, and you turn your back in shame, Jervas, to behold thus the degrading company—" ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... small garden back of the ranch house, in which he had been raising cabbages, devoting all his spare time to them and good-naturedly taking the joshing the boys gave him. They were of the opinion that a cow-puncher was degrading himself by ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... quarters, of outrages on the part of the troops, some too true, but many of them false or frivolous; and when Wellington ordered courts-martial for the trial of the accused, the magistrates refused to attend as witnesses, because Portuguese custom rendered such attendance degrading, and by Portuguese law a magistrate's written testimony was efficient in courts-martial. Wellington in vain assured them that English law would not suffer him to punish men on such testimony; in vain he pointed out the mischief which must infallibly overwhelm the country, ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... Does a license to preach transform a man into a higher order of beings and endow him with a natural quality to govern? Are the laity an inferior order of beings, fit only to be slaves and to be governed? Is it good policy for mankind to subject themselves to such degrading vassalage and abject submission? Reason, common sense, and the Bible, with united voice, proclaim to all mankind that they are all born free and equal; that every member of a church or Christian congregation must be on the same footing in respect of church government, and that ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of Mongolia, however, insisted upon the observance by the ambassador of certain ceremonies which were considered by the latter degrading to his dignity; and neither being disposed to yield, Golowkin set out with his suite to return to St. Petersburg. Klaproth, not caring to retrace his steps, preferred to visit hordes still unknown to him, and he therefore crossed the southern districts of Siberia, and collected during a journey ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... said Des Hermies, "a veritable prostitution. To advertise a thing for sale is to accept the degrading familiarities ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... that "He desired one Service, because he thought it was most degrading that certain man, although they were doing the same work should be classed in a Provincial Service, while others should be classed in an Imperial Service. The prospects of the members of the Provincial Service were not ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... Mr. Strong, then came forward; he made a speech of some length, and one that was very impressive. Nothing could be more clear, more just, more true, than the picture he drew of the manifold evils of intemperance; a vice so deceitful in its first appearance, so treacherous in its growth; so degrading, so brutalizing in its enjoyments; so blasting and ruinous in its effects—ruinous to body and mind, heart and soul—blasting all hopes for this life and for the next, so long as it remains unconquered. ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... profession, resolved to combine with it that of dog-stealing. He was, by ill-fortune, detected in several offences of this description, and was in consequence brought before two justices, who, in virtue of the powers given them by an act of parliament, sentenced him to a whipping for each theft. The degrading punishment inflicted on the pastor naturally thinned the flock; and the poor man was in danger of wanting bread. He accordingly put forth a handbill solemnly protesting his innocence, describing his sufferings, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... come-down to be a cab-horse, and was disgusted at standing in the rank, but he confessed to me at the end of the week that an easy mouth and a free head made up for a great deal, and after all, the work was not so degrading as having one's head and tail fastened to each other at the saddle. In fact, he settled in well, and Jerry ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... this would be considered a degrading and dangerous view of human beliefs and responsibility for them," the Reverend Doctor replied. "Prove to a man that his will is governed by something outside of himself, and you have lost all hold on his moral and religious nature. There is nothing bad men want to believe so much ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... some men in whom rare virtues have been closely allied, if not to positive vice, to degrading weakness. Columbus' character presented no such humiliating incongruity. Whether we contemplate it in its public or private relations, in all its features it wears the same noble aspect. It was in perfect harmony with the grandeur of his plans and their results, ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... could reconstruct a people or a society." Its principal, not only, means, are metaphor and allegory. It lends itself equally to methods that degrade or ennoble existing words, but with a very marked preference for the worse or degrading meanings. ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... this I hear About the new carnivora? Can little plants Eat bugs and ants And gnats and flies? A sort of retrograding: Surely the fare Of flowers is air Or sunshine sweet; They shouldn't eat Or do aught so degrading!" ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... object of her suspicion to another place; for even if she had the power to do so, she might not be able to accomplish it without such open disturbance that the whole social world of Rome would learn the degrading fact that she had been jealous of her own slave. Not—as she was sometimes almost tempted—that of forgetting her pride, and humbling herself before her enemy, to beg that she would not rob her of all that affection ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... completely the slave of my vices that I had lost every vestige of natural feeling. I continued my drunken habits as long as I had money to spend on liquor; and when finally I had exhausted my own resources I stole from my parents the means to still continue in the indulgence of my degrading vice. It broke my poor mother's heart, and she died; and on the day of her funeral I was unable to follow her body to its last resting-place, because I was too drunk to stand or speak! That was the crowning ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... many of which formed part of the most ancient sacred hymns;" then he comes to this conclusion: "Egypt, in possession of an admirable fund of doctrines respecting the essence of God, and the immortality of the soul, did not for all that defile herself the less by the most degrading superstitions; we have in her, sufficiently summed up, the religious history of all antiquity."[12] As regards the civilization which flourished in India, M. Adolphe Pictet, in his learned researches on the subject of the primitive Aryas, arrives, in what concerns the religious idea, ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... remotely; but listen. I was about to add that women admire reckless courage and excessive animal spirits. But let that courage lead a man to shed another's blood for a jest, or let that animal spirit draw a man into degrading and bestial advice—presto! ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... Nero hesitated between the influence of Agrippina and the sentiment of duty, on the one hand, and the enticements of Poppaea on the other. In addition to the influence of her blandishments and smiles, she attempted to act upon Nero's boyish pride by taunting him with what she called his degrading and unmanly subjection to his mother. How long, she asked, was he to remain like a child under maternal tutelage? She wondered how he could endure so ignoble a bondage. He was in name and position, she said, a mighty monarch, reigning ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott |
