"Debase" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... overtaken Yoshisada, had not one of those sacrifices familiar on a Japanese field of battle been made for his sake. Oyamada Takaiye gave his horse to the Nitta general and fell fighting in his stead, while Yoshisada rode away. At first sight these sacrifices seem to debase the saved as much as they exalt the saver. But, according to Japanese ethics, an institution was always more precious than the person of its representative, and a principle than the life of its exponent. Men sacrificed themselves ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... and apathy, even females, of respectable appearance and dress, will be gazing upon these subjects; and now that the art of lithography is become fashionable, the print-shops of Paris will be deluged with an inundation of these odious representations, which threaten equally to debase the art and to corrupt morals. This cheap and wholesale circulation of what is mischievous, and of really most miserable execution, is much to be deplored. Even in the better part of art, lithography will have ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... moulded in a nobler cast than his; it was founded in the school of Christianity, which was, that all men are by nature equal; that they are wisely and justly endowed by their Creator with certain rights which are irrefragable, and no matter how human pride and avarice may depress and debase, still God is the author of good to man; and of evil, man is the artificer to himself and to his species. Unlike Plato and Socrates, his mind was free from the gloom that surrounded theirs. Let the name, the worth, the zeal, and other excellent qualifications of this noble man, ever ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... army, the duke of Argyle having harangued with equal skill and energy on military affairs, proposed that the forces should be augmented by adding new levies to the old companies, without increasing the number of officers; as such an augmentation served only to debase the dignity of the service, by raising the lowest of mankind to the rank of gentlemen; and to extend the influence of the minister, by multiplying his dependents. He therefore moved for a resolution, that the augmenting the army ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... one of them, without in any degree improving the other. Therefore the prison, considered without reference to the elevating influence of the pardoning power, has but little ability to reform the bad, and yet possesses a sad tendency to debase the comparatively good. ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
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