"Demoralised" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... decided the fate of Corsica was struck at the battle of Ponte Nuovo, of which some particulars are given in a former chapter.[24] This defeat entirely demoralised the island militia, and crushed Paoli's hopes of maintaining the nationality of Corsica. Retiring to Corte, and thence, almost as a fugitive, to Vivario, in the heart of the mountains, though he might still have maintained a guerilla warfare ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... or comfort in these matters, until parliament should have returned to its old organisation in two political parties; that at present we were in a false position, and that both sides of the House were demoralised—the ministerial side overcharged with an excess of official men, and the way stopped up against expectants, which led to subdivision, jealousy, and intrigue; the opposition so weak in persons having experience of affairs as to be scarcely within the chances ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... me of one of the great editors of New York, the people did not seem to lose their confidence in the Christian spirit. Both Dr. Parkhurst and myself were the targets of this brilliant man's sarcasm and satire at this time, but neither of us were demoralised or injured in the course of our separate ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... a Roman province and annexed it to the Empire toward the end of 57 B.C.; that is, at the end of his second year as proconsul, unexpectedly, with no warning act to intimate such vigorous intent,—a surprise; and why? Look to Rome and you will understand. In 57 B.C., the democratic party, demoralised by discords, upset by the popular agitation to recall Cicero from unjust exile, discredited by scandals, especially the Egyptian scandals, seemed on the point of going to pieces. Caesar understood that there ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... assert that they are always ill at ease, amidst the general activity, and that they go and settle down in their idleness in Paris, among people like themselves, whose frivolity they end by copying. They are looked upon as "demoralised Americans." But they are few in number. As each man has only himself to reckon on, as he has no hoped-for inheritance to wait for and discount in idleness, seeing the man in possession owes nothing ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... was a walk-over. Psmith clean bowled a man in his next over; and the tail, demoralised by the sudden change in the game, collapsed uncompromisingly. Sedleigh won by thirty-five runs with ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... figure stood before me, a demoralised broom clenched in one claw or fist: it had lean legs cased in shabby trousers, muscular shoulders covered with a rough shirt open at the neck, knotted arms, and a coarse insane face crammed beneath the visor of a cap. The face consisted of a rapid nose, droopy moustache, ferocious watery ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... alone in the back room above the shop, he saw so little what he could do that, consciously demoralised for the hour, he gave way to tears about it. Her taking a stand so incredibly "low," that was what he couldn't get over. The particular bitterness of his cup was his having let himself in for a struggle on such terms—the use, on her side, of the vulgarest ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... shortly before winter, I returned to the same inn for a few days, and found it somewhat demoralised. There had been grand doings of some sort, and, though the doings were over, the moral and material debris were not yet quite removed. The famiglia Bonvicino was gone, and so was Cricco. The cook, the new waiter, and the landlord ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... fought out in a vast confusion by multitudes untrained in arms, led chiefly by acclamation, multitudes dulled by mindless labour and enervated by the tradition of two hundred years of servile security against multitudes demoralised by lives of venial privilege and sensual indulgence. They had no artillery, no differentiation into this force or that; the only weapon on either side was the little green metal carbine, whose secret manufacture ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... extraordinary fortune, the nation, this time, had responded wisely. It was certain that it would not always do so well. It had passions; it had prejudices; it was grossly ignorant; it was not disinterested; and it was demoralised by an evil tradition. The French were accustomed to irresponsible power. They were not likely to consent that the power in their hands should be inferior to that which had been exercised over them, or to admit that an entire people is not above the ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... Directly, in that demoralised crowd, trouble broke out. Two men who had no business there had jumped into the boat under the pretence of unhooking the tackles, while some sort of squabble arose on the deck amongst these weak, tottering spectres of a ship's company. The ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... demoralised if he had seized the safe. He has, therefore, feigned to them that it was not practicable. That has been his reason for our security—not tender mercy for us, you may guess. So we have kept his treasure safe, ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... "When workmen, demoralised by the politics taught at the clubs and the closing of the workshops, will have found a means of ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... ideas," he said, "about what you will do and won't do; this is the only thing you can do; you have got to make a living, and you have got to pay your debts; beggars can't be choosers. The fact is, you have all lived on charity so long that you have got demoralised." ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... In medio ... immissa On the centre the second legion charged (immissa), i.e. into the interstices of the phalanx, which was not preserving its usual close order. —Rawlins. 4-6. fluctuantem ... vires sunt first demoralised the phalanx so as to make it waver, (fluctuantem), and then shattered it. Its (aggressive) force, so long as it keeps close order and bristles with couched (intentis) spears, is irresistible (intolerabiles). 6. ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... an Englishman, Bimba improves the occasion to air all the Anglo-Saxon in his vocabulary for the edification of his friends, who marvel much at Bimba's fluency in a foreign tongue. But whether it is that my residence among Spanish-speaking people has demoralised my native lingo, or whether it is that Bimba's English has grown rusty—it is evident that at least three-fourths of his rapidly spoken words are as incomprehensible to me as they are to ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... confirmed from other sources. We know that the populace was demoralised by payments from the public purse; that the fee for attendance in the Assembly attracted thither, as ready instruments in the hands of ambitious men, the poorest and most degraded of the citizens; that the ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... contemporary writers. Now, if there was a country where an intrigue between a woman noted for her virtue and a poet noted for his eccentricity would, had it existed, have been joyfully laid hold of by gossip, it was certainly this utterly-demoralised Italy of cavalieri serventi: every fashionable woman and every fast man would have felt a personal satisfaction in tearing to pieces the reputation of a lady whose whole character and life had been a censure ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... a curious chance at the end of her piece de resistance, a string broke on the piano; but as a correspondent of Schumann's paper wrote, it came "just at the end, like a cry of victory." After this, Wieck wrote to Behrens protesting against his lending a hand to "a demoralised girl without shame." Clara learned that such of her letters as had gone through the Wieck home were opened, and she received an anonymous letter which she knew must have been dictated by her father. Her suspicions were later proved. The worst of the affair was the diabolical malice that ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... different exits to the town. The officer in command of this regiment saluted Ignosi as king, and informed him that Twala's army had taken refuge in the town, whither Twala himself had also escaped, but he thought that they were thoroughly demoralised, and would surrender. Thereupon Ignosi, after taking counsel with us, sent forward heralds to each gate ordering the defenders to open, and promising on his royal word life and forgiveness to every soldier who laid down ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... properly the Paumotu language. Heavens! what eyes those girls possessed! Like stars they glowed with slumbering liquid fire—the fire of a quick-blooded and passionate race. Any one of these five island girls, our chief mate used to say, would have utterly demoralised even a Trappist monastery, had the holy brothers seen her face peeping in during their devotions. This island, Nukutavake, had but few inhabitants, most of whom had been brought there by Hayes, who, they said, would ...
— Concerning "Bully" Hayes - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... remarks, Pierre had let his newspaper fall and begun to listen. It was now, for the first time, that he fully realised the difference between the two Lourdes—old Lourdes so honest and so pious in its tranquil solitude, and new Lourdes corrupted, demoralised by the circulation of so much money, by such a great enforced increase of wealth, by the ever-growing torrent of strangers sweeping through it, by the fatal rotting influence of the conflux of thousands of people, the contagion of ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... rousing, ringing, menacing sound, their hopes had failed—they thought that the rumour of victory was already in the air. "The thunder growl edged with melodious ire in alt," as Carlyle called it, never did better work. It demoralised ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... could meet his friends there. Even before that time I have a vague impression of having met him, I forget where, certainly at night; and of having been struck, even then, by a look and manner of pathetic charm, a sort of Keats-like face, the face of a demoralised Keats, and by something curious in the contrast of a manner exquisitely refined, with an appearance generally somewhat dilapidated. That impression was only accentuated later on, when I came to know him, and the manner of ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... take me long to pack my books and other treasures: some of them I should be obliged to leave behind, but I must take all Charlie's books and my own, and my favourite pictures and bits of china, and a store of fine linen for my own use. I was somewhat demoralised by the luxury at Hyde Park Gate, and liked to make myself comfortable after my own way. Poor Charlie used to laugh at me and say I should be an old maid, and, as I considered this fact inevitable, I took ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the spirit of that pledge. It would be far better if India herself led the way and declared, as England declared when she passed the Industrial Schools Amendment Act of 1880, that she will not have her little children demoralised in either Temple houses recognised as such, or in any similar houses, such as those which abound in areas where the Temple child nominally is non-existent. But must we wait till India leads the way? Scattered all over the land there are men who are against this iniquity, and would surely be in ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... the bank. Next day he marched into Glasgow with his five men and nine prisoners in column, and the United States flag flying at the front. He scared the citizens of the place and two or three straggling Confederates, who were there, horribly. The flag and blue overcoats demoralised them. ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... have had something to do with my bewilderment. I like, at any rate, to think so; because I have been in corners quite as awkward, yet have never known myself so pitifully demoralised. The uniform might be that of a British officer, but the face was that of Don Quixote de la Mancha, and shone at me in that blue light straight out of my childhood and the story-book. High brow, high cheek-bone, long pointed jaw, lined ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... was too demoralised to cause Darius any grave anxiety. Not only had she renounced all intention of attacking the great king in his own domain, as in the days of the Athenian hegemony, when she could impose her own conditions of peace, but her perpetual discords had yielded her an easy ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... but not ill-natured, hospitable and very fond of coursing with dogs. He was over thirty when he inherited from his father a property of two thousand serfs in capital condition; but he had soon dissipated it, and had partly mortgaged his estate, and demoralised his servants. All sorts of people of low position, known and unknown, came crawling like cockroaches from all parts into his spacious, warm, ill-kept halls. All this mass of people ate what they could ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... Dorsets. All the others were intermingled. Officers had collected little parties, companies and half-companies; here and there larger bodies had formed, but there was no possibility, in the darkness, of gripping anybody or anything. Yet it must not be imagined that the infantry were demoralised. Stragglers and weaklings there were in plenty. But the mass of the soldiers were determined men. One man I found dragging down a box of ammunition quite by himself. 'To do something,' he said. A sergeant with twenty men formed up was inquiring what troops were to hold ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... a country exempt from invasion, and free from revolution. During an invasion note-issuing banks must stop payment; a run is nearly inevitable at such a time, and in a revolution too. In such great and close civil dangers a nation is always demoralised; everyone looks to himself, and everyone likes to possess himself of the precious metals. These are sure to be valuable, invasion or no invasion, revolution or no revolution. But the goodness of bank-notes depends on the solvency ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... we describe the coalition had not taken place, and many of the functionaries of the Hudson's Bay Company in Red River, from the Governor downward, seem to have been entirely demoralised, if we are to believe the reports of ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... only prospect of saving the rest of his army lay in cutting his way homeward through many miles of forest. Mr. Baddeley's description of the retreat is intensely dramatic. After fighting every step of the road the starving and demoralised army was brought to a standstill, and was eventually saved from annihilation by fresh troops that arrived just in time under the Russian commander on the frontier, who had foreseen the emergency, and made forced marches to the ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... answered the man, shrugging his shoulders, "we were in rags. The commissariat was demoralised, and supplies were not forthcoming. We had to take what we could find, ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... standing law in that body that every novice should sing a song or drink a mixture consisting of whisky, ink, and cayenne pepper. He chose the former alternative, and at the end of the first verse the Royal Engineers had all left the room in a demoralised condition! ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... witnessed the cruel, degrading corporal punishments he inflicted upon them, while his eyes were speedily opened to his father's addiction to drinking, gambling, and debauchery. These experiences would most certainly have demoralised and depraved his childish mind had it not been for the powerful influence the refined and cultured mother had from the first exercised upon her son. The contrast between his parents was so startling ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... with increasing speed, the Allies were hurling the enemy northwards. He was becoming more demoralised every day. A victory even greater than ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... defrauded men, who are becoming demoralised by overwork, and being gradually done to death by underfeeding, there are men living who consider themselves Christians; and others so enlightened that they feel no further need for Christianity or for any religion, so superior ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... company had never been sure of himself, and had harassed his subordinates with a constant succession of orders and counter-orders, until they had hardly known whether they were on their heads or their heels. That was why they arrived completely demoralised. ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... a cruel man was Marlanx. He lost no time in issuing a manifesto to the stunned, demoralised citizens of Edelweiss. Scores of criers went through the streets during the long, wretched afternoon, announcing to the populace that Count Marlanx had established himself as dictator and military ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... 80 Irish members at Westminster has demoralised Parliament, therefore we must above all things retain 80 or possibly 103 Irish members at Westminster. He is placed in a hopeless dilemma; he dare not draw the only conclusion to which his argument points, namely, that the ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... place confidence in you, and you could do nothing with them; so, to tell you the truth, I think you are well out of it. Our success is very uncertain. The troops on shore have again been defeated with heavy loss, and I suspect have been so demoralised that they'll take to flight whenever the enemy rush ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... to her own bed thoroughly demoralised. And sleep being pretty well banished by that time, she sat up in bed and thought things over. Before this she had not thought much, only raged and sulked alternately. But now she thought. She thought ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... in spite of all sanitary arrangements they had suffered severely from fever, by which, although only four had actually succumbed, and now lay in the lonely little cemetery close to our tents, the regiment had been demoralised, and was withdrawn from this lonely position completely fever-smitten. I made close inquiries among the natives, and all agreed that the past year, having been unusually wet, had been exceptionally unhealthy, and the inhabitants had suffered almost to the ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... insisting that now indeed was the time to prove a man's loyalty, that they must stand all together and dare all things, that the Prefect and the General, once at Les Chouettes, must never leave it but as prisoners, that the Government would be instantly demoralised, and the insurrection would catch and flame like ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... coming down on us, and our little group was obliged to retreat. 'What had happened to our division of the left wing had taken place all along the line. The movement of the hostile cavalry, which inundated the whole plain, had demoralised our soldiers, who seeing all regular retreat of the army cut off, strove each man to effect one for himself. At each instant the road became more encumbered. Infantry, cavalry, and artillery, were pressing ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... superficially observe that the Jew was unsocial, narrow in his prejudices and obstinate in his superstitions, while the Greek was as devoid of principle as he was brilliantly versatile. The Jew and Greek whom he saw were those of a demoralised period; but in any case the Roman did not understand either; he did not know that each was the representative of a certain important set of principles carried to excess. He would hardly have thought it worth his while to reflect on such a matter. ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... doctor laughed. But Edwin said to himself: "He may have laughed only to cheer me up. They never tell their patients the truth." And every cell of his body was vitiated, poisoned, inefficient, profoundly demoralised. Ordinary health seemed the most precious and ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... in which everything was still locked up. His choked appeal from his own open window had been the sole note of life, and he could but break off at last as for a worse despair. Yet while so deeply demoralised he was capable again of an impulse denoting—at least by his present measure—extraordinary resolution; of retracing his steps to the spot where he had turned cold with the extinction of his last pulse ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James
... and Colman's Polly Honeycombe (1777) were both demoralised by the follies of sentimental fiction, as Biddy Tipkin, in Steele's Tender Husband (1705), had been by romances. It was Miss Austen's purpose in creating Catherine Morland to present a maiden ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... in the road, hoarse with laughter, had exhausted all their adjectives and were repeating themselves. The Ripton score was six goals, a penalty goal, and two tries to nil, and the Wrykyn team was a demoralised rabble. ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... recollect reading an account of the famous retreat of the French troops, under Napoleon, from Moscow. Worn out, tired, and dejected, they at length came to a great river over which there was but one bridge for the passage of the vast army. Disorganised and demoralised as that army was, the struggle must certainly have been a terrible one—every one heeding only himself, and crushing through the ranks and treading down his fellows. The writer of the narrative, who was himself one of those who were fortunate enough ...
— The Conditions Of Existence As Affecting The Perpetuation Of Living Beings • Thomas H. Huxley
... this view explains Malthus's position. To attribute depopulation to luxury was to say that it was caused by the inequality of property. The rich man wasted the substance of the country, became demoralised himself, and both corrupted and plundered his neighbours. The return to a 'state of nature,' in Rousseau's phrase, meant the return to a state of things in which this misappropriation should become impossible. The whole industry of the nation would then be devoted ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... him now," continued Zoie, elated by the demoralised state to which she was fast reducing him. "For Heaven's sake, don't make it any worse," she concluded; "it's bad enough as ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... think to wonder how these men had entered her house, how they had found their way to her presence, past her janitors, and without the usual formalities and ceremonies of introduction which her high rank demanded. She knew that her slaves were demoralised, that men who had been friends of the Caesar were now fugitives, and vaguely thought that the praetorian praefect and his friends had found their way into her house as into a likely haven of refuge, ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... fact as much better as the amusement for him was greater in watching her for the slips that never came. Her account of the mystery didn't suffice: her recall of her birth in Florence and Florentine childhood; her parents, from the great country, but themselves already of a corrupt generation, demoralised, falsified, polyglot well before her, with the Tuscan balia who was her first remembrance; the servants of the villa, the dear contadini of the poder, the little girls and the other peasants of the next podere, all the rather shabby but still ever so pretty human furniture of her early time, including ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... all grown out of the supposed miracle of his balloon ascent, and he could understand that the ignorant masses had been so astounded by an event so contrary to all their experience, that their faith in experience was utterly routed and demoralised. It a man and a woman might rise from the earth and disappear into the sky, what else might not happen? If they had been wrong in thinking such a thing impossible, in how much else might they not be mistaken also? The ground was shaken under their ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... of England. In the North he is a man of altogether higher education and breeding: but he is, even in the South, a much better man than it is the fashion to believe him. No doubt, he has given heavy cause of complaint. He was demoralised, as surely, if not as deeply, as his own labourers, by the old Poor Law. He was bewildered—to use the mildest term—by promises of Protection from men who knew better. But his worst fault after all has been, that young or old, he has copied ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... occurred to them to ask whether their conduct in any juncture might meet with approval; being a law to other people, they were naturally a law to themselves, and an Irish law. Their power was excessive, and demoralised them by its lack of limitation; yet many of the qualities which it bred, made them an element of great value in the country. These qualities are by no means extinct in their kindred, nor is the tradition of their ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... Italy, the counsels of licentious princes and ambitious Popes, were in any measure guided and controlled by such a woman. Alone, and aided by nothing but a reputation for sanctity, she dared to tell the greatest men in Europe of their faults; she wrote in words of well-assured command, and they, demoralised, worldly, sceptical, or indifferent as they might be, were yet so bound by superstition that they could not treat with scorn the voice ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... Maisie's neck. It took her pupil but a moment to feel that she quivered with insecurity, and, the contact of her terror aiding, the pair in another instant were sobbing in each other's arms. Then it was that, completely relaxed, demoralised as she had never been, Mrs. Wix suffered her wound to bleed and her resentment to gush. Her great bitterness was that Ida had called her false, denounced her hypocrisy and duplicity, reviled her spying and tattling, her lying and grovelling to Sir Claude. "Me, ME!" the poor ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... 'the winning cards.' The idea of going on because 'the run of luck' is in your favour, or of leaving off because it has declared itself against you, is logically of course unworthy of Cetywayo. The only modicum of reason that underlies it is the fact that the play of some men becomes demoralised by ill-fortune, and may, possibly, be improved by success. Yet the belief in this absurdity is universal, and bids fair to be eternal. 'If I am not in a draught, and my chair is comfortable, you may put me anywhere,' ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... hoped when in the English Channel to be able to signal for help or get in somewhere. Not having power to work sails, have to run before wind. Dare not lower, as could not raise them again. We seem to be drifting to some terrible doom. Mate now more demoralised than either of men. His stronger nature seems to have worked inwardly against himself. Men are beyond fear, working stolidly and patiently, with minds made up to worst. ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... born again many times, and must torture his body until it shrivels up, is freed from sin, and is without desires. Then the soul is released and is not born again, for Nirvana, the last goal, is reached. Only bad men continue to live. The nations of India had been demoralised by that doctrine for centuries. But it did not satisfy wise men. Balthasar thought: If a man starves through a few dozen lives, then something good must come out of it. Or is evil good enough to continue, and good evil enough to cease? Balthasar sought better counsel. He ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... received the first instalment of my Christmas fare, in the shape of three-quarters of a pint of tea and eight ounces of dry bread. Whether the price of groceries was affected by the Christmas demand, or whether the kitchen was demoralised by the holiday, I am unable to decide; but I noticed that the decoction was more innocuous than usual, although I had thought its customary strength could not be weakened without a miracle. My breakfast being devised on the plainest vegetarian ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... sedulous. Once eliminate the fear of starvation, once eliminate or bound the hope of riches, and we shall see plenty of skulking and malingering. Society will then be something not wholly unlike a cotton plantation in the old days; with cheerful, careless, demoralised slaves, with elected overseers, and, instead of the planter, a chaotic popular assembly. If the blood be purposeful and the soil strong, such a plantation may succeed, and be, indeed, a busy ant-heap, with full granaries ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fought three actions in the space of a single week, losing in killed and wounded about a thousand men, or rather more than one-tenth of its total numbers. Had there been evidence that the enemy were seriously demoralised, the General would no doubt have pushed on at once to Kimberley, which was some twenty miles distant. The information which reached him was, however, that the Boers had fallen back upon the very strong position of Spytfontein, that ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... him, which captivated her fancy, endowing him with an effect of mystery, making him seem to hail from some region of legend and high romance. But the events of the last few days had been far from beneficial to Poppy St. John. They had demoralised her, so that the artistic, maternal, and childlike aspects of her nature were alike overlaid by the bitterness, the cynicism, the recklessness engendered by her unhappy childless marriage and the irregular life she had led. Poppy's feet were held captive in the quicksands of the things of ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... least moralists, who are usually the most complacently demoralised of elderly cynics, are ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... saying is "Al-nr wa l l- r" (Hell-)fire, but not shame. The sentiment is noble. Hasan the Prophet's grandson, a poor creature demoralised by over- marrying, chose the converse, "Shame is better than Hell-fire." An old ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... quarter. I cannot tell you often enough how well Paris is behaving; enthusiasm and unanimity prevail everywhere; the good and the wise have silenced the fools. This will raise up France; it is a balm for many sorrows. I can assure you the country is not demoralised. I do not know how long the trial will last, but we shall be the ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... under the protection of immense shields, supported on posts, they made a ditch around the walls, strengthening it with a palisade. The king constructed also on the east side a fort which he called "Manakhpirri-holds-the-Asiatics." Famine soon told on the demoralised citizens, and their surrender brought about the submission of the entire country. Most of the countries situated between the Jordan and the sea—Shunem, Cana, Kinnereth, Hazor, Bedippa, Laish, Merom, and Acre—besides the cities of the Hauran—Hamath, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... despite, but in at least eighteen other constituencies their plots to replace members under any suspicion of independence with reliables absolutely amenable to the signs and passwords of the Order resulted in their being blown sky-high with their own petards.... Messrs Dillon and Devlin led their demoralised forces back, seventy in place of eighty-three, and for the first time since 1885 they went back a minority of the Nationalist votes actually cast as between the policy of Conciliation and the policy ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... to make the demoralised Italians feel that America was on the spot and helping them. The sending of troops could not have reused their fighting spirit. They were sick of fighting. What they needed was the assurance that the world was not wholly ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... there was a feeble show of resistance, but the thumbscrews were instantly applied, and Ernest, demoralised as he already was, recanted and submitted himself to the powers that were. He told only a little less than he knew or thought he knew. He was examined, re-examined, cross-examined, sent to the retirement of his own bedroom ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... been on the plantation among fellow-slaves. Being a mixture of coloured and white people, the main part were a degraded set; so that, after all the toil and rough adventure of some weeks of travelling, the wonder is that the future benefactor of his race was not utterly demoralised amid his new surroundings. Perhaps it turned out to his advantage that he had to work ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike
... me into a cab, but he saw me home in it. And in the cab he kissed me. I fancy I was a little out of sorts that night. My nervous system was, perhaps, demoralised. Because, when he kissed me, I did a thing which I never do,—I have my own standard of behaviour, and that sort of thing is quite outside of it; I behaved like a sentimental chit. I cried. And it took him all the way to my father's door to ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... to fire, and at the short range into packed masses of men the volley did terrible execution. Completely surprised, the corsairs attempted to board, but were repulsed and driven back with more slaughter. His men becoming demoralised, Hassan withdrew amidst the ferocious taunts of the Spaniards, who had escaped almost unscathed. Sore and angry, the corsairs continued their voyage for another three days, at the expiration of which they arrived at ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... Fordyce on its disposal, declaring the great difficulties and deficiencies of the place, which made it impossible to offer it to any one without considerable private means, and also able to attract and improve the utterly demoralised population. He ended, almost in joke, by saying, 'In fact, I know no one who could cope with the situation but yourself; I wish you could find me your own counterpart, or come yourself in earnest. It is just the air that suits my sister— bracing sea-breezes; the ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to wish to stop. He tried to now and then, and at once exclamations of anger burst forth behind him. Then he lashed his perspiring jades afresh, but indifferent to their jolting, running up against things here and there, not caring if he did, demoralised, and almost weeping with thirst, ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various
... the capture of the ship was a foregone conclusion. The rush of Marshall and his party on the one hand, and the onslaught of Dick Chichester with his whirling handspike on the other so utterly distracted and demoralised the Spaniards that they presently broke and fled, flinging away their weapons, and crying out that their foes were a crew of demons who had assumed for the nonce the outward semblance of Englishmen! The hatches were promptly clapped on over ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... and fired two shots into the spot where the tigress was lying. He did not apparently wound her, but the reports brought her to the charge once more, and the elephant, by this time fairly tired of the game, and thoroughly demoralised with fear, bolted right away, and nearly cracked poor Fullerton's head against the branch ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... the filthy boche propaganda that demoralised them," rejoined Estridge. "I wonder—are women more level headed? Is propaganda wasted on these girl soldiers? Are they really superior to the male ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... hinting that if he could find them it wouldn't be to lend them to her—as to which he consciously did himself injustice, knowing that if he had them he would certainly put them at her disposal. He accused himself, at bottom and not unveraciously, of a fantastic, a demoralised sympathy with her. If misery made strange bedfellows it also made strange sympathies. It was moreover a part of the abasement of living with such people that one had to make vulgar retorts, quite out of one's own tradition of good manners. "Morgan, Morgan, to what pass have ...
— The Pupil • Henry James
... knowledge—aye, of national glory, for which so many valiant generations have fought and toiled—the youth of Britain, how are we treating them in the twentieth century of the Christian era? Are they not being exploited? Are they not being demoralised? Are they not ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... heart contracted with rage rather than pity. Such wrack and waste of human life, moral and physical! for what? For the protection of a hateful sport which demoralised the rich and their agents, no less than it tempted and provoked ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the man seemed dilapidated also: a slovenly, ill-dressed, demoralised figure he looked, even with his face covered. He seemed in a deep sleep. Wild ducks settled on the lake not far from him with a swish and flutter; a coyote ran past, veering as it saw the recumbent figure; a prairie hen rustled by ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... go forward was almost equally difficult, but we struggled on somehow at the rate, I should think, of a mile and a half in the hour. The horses were thoroughly demoralised, as one says of defeated troops, and stumbled recklessly at every obstacle. The driver was a stupid fellow, without an ounce of pluck in his composition, and declared more than once that he would not go on, ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... that chief's own hand. On the 6th of January 1842, after a convention to evacuate the country had been signed, the British garrison, still numbering 4500 soldiers (of whom 690 were Europeans), with some 12,000 followers, marched out of the camp. The winter was severe, the troops demoralised, the march a mass of confusion and massacre, and the force was finally overwhelmed in the Jagdalak pass between ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... never during our acquaintance manifested any sense of the dandified; on our travels he had worn the casual, unnoticeable dress of the peasant, save when he had masqueraded in the pearl-buttoned velveteens; in London a swaggering air of braggadocio had set off his Bohemian garb: but never had the demoralised disreputability of Paragot struck me until I saw ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... the playground gate was reached, amid tremendous cheering, and next moment, driving before them some of their demoralised opponents, the vanguard of ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... Basque provinces and Valencia, and a Carlist expedition of 18,000 men, whose object is to ravage Castile and to carry the war to the gates of Madrid, is shortly expected to pass the Ebro. From what I have seen and heard of the demoralised state of the Cristinos forces, I believe they will meet with no effectual resistance, and that Cristina and her daughter will be compelled to flee from the capital to Cadiz, or to some strong frontier town. Nevertheless, such is the nature ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... was by the loss of a brilliant chance, and demoralised as it became under the fatigues and hardships of a most harassing retreat, never failed to repel attacks on its rear, where Paget handled the cavalry of the rear-guard with signal ability, especially in a spirited action near ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... Cock proved a terribly one-sided game. The House played pluckily, and for the first half kept the score down to eight points; but during the last twenty minutes it was quite impossible to keep out the strong outhouse combination. The side became demoralised, and went absolutely to pieces. Armour did not ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... a spot of rising ground not far from La Haye Sainte, had watched the advance of his Guard. His empire hung on its success. It was the last fling of the dice for him. His cavalry was wrecked, his infantry demoralised, half his artillery dismounted; the Prussian guns were thundering with ever louder roar upon his right. If the Guard succeeded, the electrifying thrill of victory would run through the army, and knit it into energy once more. ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... on the road, and to the sullen natives the bronze eagle would gradually have become as familiar as their own totem-posts. Gradually we know that the British chiefs and their sons and daughters became demoralised by the sensual pleasures of the new civilisation and thus the invaders secured themselves in their new possessions in a far more efficacious manner ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... in front of the church of the Carmine, together with two Neapolitans of noble rank, Giuliano Colonna and Gennaro Serra, and with the poetess, Eleonora Pimentel, a Portuguese by birth but the widow of a Neapolitan officer. All went nobly to their doom amidst the execrations of the demoralised bloodthirsty mob of lazzaroni, yelling at and insulting the "Jacobins," and kept back with no little difficulty by the royal troops from mutilating the corpses of women, bishops and princes. Monsignore Natale himself was hanged, and in ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... consummate moral philosopher. His aethetic sensibility was indeed so great that it led him, perhaps, into a relative error, in that he overestimated the influence which art can have on character and affairs. Homer's stories about the gods can hardly have demoralised the youths who recited them. No religion has ever given a picture of deity which men could have imitated without the grossest immorality. Yet these shocking representations have not had a bad effect on believers. The deity was opposed to their own vices; those it might itself be credited with ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... nation when the private character of public men is regarded as of no account in political and civic life? The prophet had no doubt as to what must be the end of a state of things in which the very courts of law were honeycombed with corruption, and demoralised by the power of drink. His tremendous image of a fierce fire raging across a dry prairie, and burning the grass to its very roots, while the air is stifling with the thick 'dust' of the conflagration, proclaims the sure fate, sooner or later, of every community and individual that 'rejects the law ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... retaining a large force of white men against their wills in the city of Soo-chow, of whom Gordon's rival, Burgevine, was one (see page 60). The Khartoum general gained considerably more than the enemy by this bold yet humane stroke of policy, as he got rid of 10,000 traitors, who would have very soon demoralised his whole force. ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... sold the horse the next day to one of our generals, who forgot to pay for it after my husband was killed. As for the scymitar and pistols, they were stolen from me that night: but what can you expect?—our army is brave, but a little demoralised. The next day we arrived before Constantine, and we had to defile before the enemy's guns. At one portion of the road, men and horses were tumbled over by their fire; the caisson that I was riding upon was upset by a ball, ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat |
