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Corruption   Listen
noun
Corruption  n.  
1.
The act of corrupting or making putrid, or state of being corrupt or putrid; decomposition or disorganization, in the process of putrefaction; putrefaction; deterioration. "The inducing and accelerating of putrefaction is a subject of very universal inquiry; for corruption is a reciprocal to "generation"."
2.
The product of corruption; putrid matter.
3.
The act of corrupting or of impairing integrity, virtue, or moral principle; the state of being corrupted or debased; loss of purity or integrity; depravity; wickedness; impurity; bribery. "It was necessary, by exposing the gross corruptions of monasteries,... to exite popular indignation against them." "They abstained from some of the worst methods of corruption usual to their party in its earlier days." Note: Corruption, when applied to officers, trustees, etc., signifies the inducing a violation of duty by means of pecuniary considerations.
4.
The act of changing, or of being changed, for the worse; departure from what is pure, simple, or correct; as, a corruption of style; corruption in language.
Corruption of blood (Law), taint or impurity of blood, in consequence of an act of attainder of treason or felony, by which a person is disabled from inheriting any estate or from transmitting it to others. "Corruption of blood can be removed only by act of Parliament."
Synonyms: Putrescence; putrefaction; defilement; contamination; deprivation; debasement; adulteration; depravity; taint. See Depravity.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Corruption" Quotes from Famous Books



... were highly necessary to be taken for the future prevention of bribery and expense at elections. He urged that for the future, when the majority of voters for any borough should be convicted of gross and notorious corruption before a select committee of the House appointed to try the merits of any election, such borough should be disfranchised and the minority of voters not so convicted should be entitled to vote for the county in which such borough should be situated. He suggested that an addition ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... death, for the state of the body would render it impossible to prove the contrary. But there was one act necessary to be performed, at which Vanslyperken's heart recoiled. The key of the oak chest was about his mother's person, and he must obtain it; he must search for it in corruption and death, amongst creeping worms and noisome stench. It was half an hour before he could make up his mind to the task: but what ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat

... the proudest and most autocratic men in her empire. No man of Rezanov's caliber but accommodates that sort of personal vanity that tenaciously resents a blow to the pride of which it is a part, to the love of power it feeds. As well expect a lover without passion, a state without corruption. Rezanov finally shrugged his shoulders and admitted the impeachment, but at the same time he recognized that the desire for vengeance still held, and that the tenacity of his nature, a tenacity that had been no mean factor in ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton

... now and then." This is nonsense: there can be no such thing as a now and then, nor, of course, a number of now and thens. Now and then is itself bad enough, reversing as it does the sequence of things, but it is idiomatic and there is no quarreling with it. But "every" is here a corruption of ever, meaning ...
— Write It Right - A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults • Ambrose Bierce

... as if every feeling of dignity was lost. "Few noblemen of the French Court," says a writer of the time, "preserved themselves from the general corruption. The Marechal de Brissac was one of the latter. He was bantered on the strictness of his principles of honour and honesty; it was thought strange that he should be offended by being thought, like so many others, exposed to hymeneal disgrace. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... Fleury Duke of Orleans Derangement of the finances Injustice of feudal privileges John Law Mississippi scheme Bursting of the bubble Excessive taxation Worthlessness of the nobility Their effeminacy and hypocrisy Character of the King Corruption of his court The Jesuits Death of the King The reign of court mistresses Madame de Pompadour Extravagance of the aristocracy Improvements of Paris Fall of the Jesuits The Philosophers and their writings,—Voltaire, Rousseau Accumulating ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord

... out evils and healing, more than eighteen centuries ago, disappeared by degrees; both because of the ascension of Jesus, in which it was seen that he had grown beyond the human sense of him, and because of the corruption of [5] the Church. ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy

... present time in Somersetshire. We see that icholle, for I shall, follows the same rule as the contracts 'ch'ud, 'ch'am, and 'ch'ill. It is very remarkable that sholl, for shall, is almost invariably employed in Somersetshire, at the present time. Yuf I am disposed to consider a corruption or mistake for gyf (give), that is, if, the meaning and origin of which have been long ago settled by ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings

... There will be found the Gibbon, whose Decline and Fall when yielding the Palm to some aspiring rival is swifter than that of the Roman Empire; the Barberry Ape, so called from feeding exclusively on Barberries; the Chimpanzee—an African corruption of Jump-and-see, the name given to the animal by his first European discoverers in compliment to his alertness; the Baboon, a melancholy brute that, as you may observe from his visage, always has the blues; to say nothing of a legion ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various

... Helena. It is noteworthy that English man-of-war's-men, and also merchant seamen of these stirring times, should have formed so favourable an impression of Napoleon, especially as the Press of England teemed with hostility against him. Articles attributing every form of indescribable bestiality, corruption, gross cruelty to his soldiers, subordinate officers, and even Marshals, appeared with shameful regularity. In these articles were included the most absurd as well as the most ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman

... of an extensive site for a town. At present Yakutsk is a city of the past, one may almost add of the dead, where ghosts walk in the shape of surly Russian traders clad in the fashion of a century ago, and sinister-looking fur-clad Yakutes. And yet the dead here may be said to live, for corruption is delayed for an indefinite period, so intense is the cold. Shortly before our arrival a young Russian girl was exhumed for legal purposes, and her body was found in exactly the same condition as when it was interred five years before. This however is scarcely surprising in ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... I will not weep For those whose bodies rest in sleep,— I know there is a blessed shore, Opening its ports for me and mine; And, gazing Time's wide waters o'er, I weary for that land divine, Where we were born, where you and I Shall meet our dearest, when we die; From suffering and corruption free, Restored ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell

... the Regent's own daughters, from the Duchesse de Berry, to Louise, Queen of Spain, each has left behind her a record almost as scandalous as that of her father. It was, in fact, an era of corruption in high places, when, in the reaction that followed the dismal and decorous last years of Louis XIV.'s reign, Pleasure rose phoenix-like from the ashes of ruin and flaunted herself unashamed in every guise with which vice could ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall

... evil, and his eyes still delight themselves in wickedness. He is dumb; but he will not let that hinder his foul trade, or perhaps I should say, his yet fouler amusement, and he has pressed a slate into the service of corruption. Look at him, and he will sign to you with his bloated head, and when you go to him in answer to the sign, thinking perhaps that the poor dumb man has lost his way, you will see what he writes upon his slate. He haunts the doors of schools, and ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... cut a poor figure and baulked my horses by flinging your own in front of them, though yours are much worse than mine are; therefore, O princes and counsellors of the Argives, judge between us and show no favour, lest one of the Achaeans say, 'Menelaus has got the mare through lying and corruption; his horses were far inferior to Antilochus's, but he has greater weight and influence.' Nay, I will determine the matter myself, and no man will blame me, for I shall do what is just. Come here, Antilochus, and stand, as our custom is, whip in hand before your chariot and ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... period of friction, a smug and latitudinarian orthodoxy, which Methodism did little to change. In France not only was the Huguenot Church annihilated, but the Jansenist movement was savagely suppressed. The tyranny of the Bourbon State and the corruption of the Gallican Church which was so deeply identified with it caused the rationalist movement to bear the trait of a passionate opposition to religion. In the time of Pascal, Jansenism had a moment when it ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore

... the Christian writers at the end of the first century, so far from being of recent composition, had already a long history behind them, is nothing less than certain. At this date they exhibit a text which bears the marks of frequent transcription and advanced corruption. 'Origen's,' says Dr. Scrivener [Endnote 328:1], 'is the highest name among the critics and expositors of the early Church; he is perpetually engaged in the discussion of various readings of the New Testament, and employs language ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday

... young writers at whom the word muckraker had been thrown in opprobrium, and by whom it had been caught up as a title of honor, Everett was among the younger and less conspicuous. But, if in his skirmishes with graft and corruption he had failed to correct the evils he attacked, from the contests he himself had always emerged with credit. His sincerity and his methods were above suspicion. No one had caught him in misstatement, or exaggeration. Even those ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis

... a flurry of tentacles and a spurt of black corruption, and then the thing, with a disgusting sucking noise, pulled itself and its arms into a hole in the ground. The other let out a series of clacks, staggered around on legs about as thick as golf sticks, and turned suddenly to face me. I held my weapon ready, and the two ...
— A Martian Odyssey • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum

... reigned shadow-like for three months, and during the same year Abdul Hamid was finally selected to fill the throne, and stand forth as the Shadow of God. It was a disturbed and tottering inheritance to which he succeeded, riddled with the dry-rot of corruption, but the inheritor proved himself ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson

... This systematic corruption of the best threatens to assume the proportions of a national disaster. It is the system, not the actors in it, which M. Faguet analyses and invites ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet

... if to a state without sensation, thou wilt cease to be held by pains and pleasures, and to be a slave to the vessel, which is as much inferior as that which serves it is superior: for the one is intelligence and deity; the other is earth and corruption. ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius

... instructions be given to a committee—never again shall even an inquiry be made into the expediency of abolishing slavery and the slave-trade in the District. What stronger evidence can we have, of the growing and spreading corruption caused by slavery, than that one hundred and seventeen republican legislators professed believers in Christianity—many of them from the North, aye even from the land of the Pilgrims, should strive ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... life of this young fool who had disgraced her in the eyes of the world, of the envious French in Cairo, and of that population of the palaces who hated her because Englishmen were the enemies of backsheesh, corruption, tyranny, and slavery? And to what good the attempt? Exists the personal law of the Oriental palace, and who may punish any there save by that personal law? What outside law shall apply to anything ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... wickedness by the evil company of the galleys. But this calling of children into the snares of the devil grieves a father, and—I will own the weakness, if such it be—I am not of a courage and pride to send forth my own flesh and blood into the danger and corruption of war and evil society, as in days when the stoutness of the heart was like the stoutness of the limbs. Give me back, then, my boy, till he has seen my old head laid beneath the sands, and until, by the aid of blessed St. Anthony, ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper

... contended that party patronage, or, in other words, feeding partizans at the public expense, is an essential element in the existence of a government. This is the doctrine of corruption. The Education Department—the highest public department in Upper Canada—existed for more than thirty years without such an element, and with increased efficiency and increased strength in the public estimation, during the whole of that period. Justice and virtue, and patriotism ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... right of inheritance and dowry, and a great amount of freedom; and how this contributed greatly to the fall of Sparta. May it not be that the influence of women in France, which has been increasing since Louis XIII.'s time, was to blame for that gradual corruption of the court and government which led to the first Revolution, of which all subsequent disturbances have been the result? In any case, the false position of the female sex, so conspicuously exposed by ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer

... king, writeth that the Turkes, and Saracenes by an auncient opinion receiued from Machomet: do laughe Christian menne to skorne, that seke thether with so greate reuerence. Sayeng that Christ the prophet of all prophetes endewed with the spirite of God, and voyde of all earthly corruption: had there no sepulchre in very diede, for that he being a spirituall body conceiued by the breathe of the holy ghost coulde not suffre, but should come againe to be iudge of the Gentiles: This saieth Segonius, and many other thinges sounding to like effecte: whiche the Mahometeines ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt

... the elder Elton unemotionally. "I wasn't wet-blanketing—I know things are needed. There's plenty of corruption wanting to be buried, and most of us are content to hold our noses and let it lie. Or perhaps we give an exclamation of disgust when it is served up in the newspapers. Reform if you must, but don't reform all day and Sundays too; ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter

... nourished, ill taught, badly and expensively served at every occasion in life, uncertain even of their insufficient livelihood from day to day, the chapels and churches and public-houses swelling up amidst their wretched homes like saprophytes amidst a general corruption, and on the other, in space, freedom, and dignity, scarce heeding the few cottages, as overcrowded as they were picturesque, in which the laborers festered, lived the landlords and masters who owned pot-banks and forge and ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells

... command of the army. It is thought to be worthy of note that during one of these periods of absence of the general-in-chief the military resources of the country were mostly placed within easy reach of those about to engage in an effort to break up the Union, and that during the other period corruption in the War Department led to impeachment. It is no reflection upon the many eminent, patriotic citizens who have held the war portfolio to say that the very few men who have proved unworthy of that great trust would have been much less likely to do serious harm ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield

... the young lawyer probed into the mass of corruption Bivens had placed in his hands the more profound became his surprise. At first he was inclined to scout the whole story as an exaggeration invented in the ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon

... from these illusions, and, proceeding to another extreme, wandered in the midst of the cheerless mazes of unbelief; but her fancy retained the traces of these early impressions until the hour of her death. Christianity, even when most heavily encumbered with earthly corruption, is infinitely preferable to no religion at all. Even papacy has never swayed so bloody a scepter ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... and revolting nausea rose up within me, and an odour of corruption choked my breath, I remained firm. I was then privileged or accursed, I dare not say which, to see that which was on the bed, lying there black like ink, transformed before my eyes. The skin, and the flesh, and the muscles, and the bones, and the firm structure of the human body ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen

... The word Pferdebuerla is apparently a Silesian equivalent for Pferdebursche, and is represented in this volume by the term "horseherd," after the analogy of cowherd, swineherd, or shepherd. The termination buerla is probably a local corruption of ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller

... of the Seleucidae came to an end through its own internal weakness and corruption. In B.C. 83 their subjects, whether native Asiatics or Syro-Macedonians, were so weary of the perpetual series of revolts, civil wars, and assassinations that they invited Tigranes, the king of the neighbouring Armenia, to step in and undertake the government of the country.[14464] ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson

... said that he himself had bought votes, as many as he wanted, in the city of Providence; and though I could deny the general prevalence of such venality at least in my own stainless state of Ohio, I did not think to suggest that in such a case the corruption was in the buyer rather than the seller of the votes, and that if he had now come to live, as he implied, in a purer country, he had not taken the right way to be worthy of it. But at twenty-four you cannot think of everything at once, and a recreant American is so uncommon ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells

... and sister: the same relations on the grandmother's side, that is to say, her brother and sister: and first cousins male and female, that is, children of brothers and sisters in relation to one another. The children of two sisters, in relation to one another, are properly called 'consobrini,' a corruption of 'consororini'; those of two brothers, in relation to one another, 'fratres patrueles,' if males, 'sorores patrueles,' if females; and those of a brother and a sister, in relation to one another, 'amitini'; thus the sons of your father's sister ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian

... same laws. It is true that after man's transgression he was told that in the sweat of his face he should eat bread, but this does not imply that the disposition to labor is a result of the fall. The disposition to labor that we find in man's constitution is not the fruit of corruption in his nature, but is a part of his original constitution. We find this disposition in the mind of angels. They are ministering spirits. They are doing the will of God. How often we read in the Book that tells of heaven how angels have visited this transitory ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr

... in the day, and at last fell down dead, in what my informer called a 'perplexity fit,' upon a proposal for a composition being made to him in the Outer House. I have chosen to retain my informer's phrase, not being able justly to determine whether it is a corruption of the word apoplexy, as my friend Mr. Oldbuck supposes, or the name of some peculiar disorder incidental to those who have concern in the courts of law, as many callings and conditions of men have diseases appropriate to themselves. The same caddie also remembered ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... boyhood at Woodleigh. There Jack had lived in a cabin in the woods with a quaint old character called Dan. He had always been known as Jack, and people had spoken of him as Dan's boy. By an easy corruption that had been transformed into Danby, and ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters - or Jack Danby's Bravest Deed • Robert Maitland

... Vasquez was now a man of power, for my party had fallen with me, and his own had supplanted it in the royal councils. It was by his work that at last, in '84, I was brought to trial upon a charge of corruption and misappropriation. I knew that my enemies had, meanwhile, become possessed of Enriquez, and that he was ready to give evidence, that he was making no secret of his share in the death of Escovedo, and that the King was being pressed by the Escovedos to bring me to trial upon ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini

... nodded. "One of those struggles against municipal corruption that are such a hopeful sign of the times. It seems strange that in the management of our cities alone our form of government has been a failure. But we have lighted upon a hobby of mine, and I must n't begin to ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... present Nahr el-Kelb is the Lykos of classical authors. The Due de Luynes thought he recognized a corruption of the Phoenician name in that of Alcobile, which is mentioned hereabouts in the Itinerary of the pilgrim of Bordeaux. The order of the Itinerary does not favour this identification, and Alcobile is probably Jebail: ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... He shed His precious blood: to "cleanse us from all sin." It was for this that the word of God, with its wonderful promises, was given: "That by these ye might be partakers of the Divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust" (2 Peter i. 4); by which is meant, escape from inbred sin. It was for this that ministers of the Gospel—Salvation Army Officers—are given, "for the perfecting of the saints" (Eph. iv. 12), for the saving and sanctifying of men (Acts xxvi. 18). It is primarily ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle

... part of his kingdom is there in which His Majesty now needs any other guard than the affection of his loving subjects? There are, indeed, still malecontents; and they may be divided into two classes, the friends of corruption and the sowers of sedition. It is natural that all who directly profit by abuses, and all who profit by the disaffection which abuses excite, should be leagued together against a bill which, by making the government pure, will ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... worship of animals was introduced under the second king of the second dynasty. That is as if we should say that an old custom of which we did not know the origin was introduced into Britain in the days of King Arthur. The priests of Manetho's day wished animal worship to be considered a corruption of the original religion of their country, but they could not specify the time at which it had come in, and placed its origin in the mythical period of history. The story of Manetho therefore goes to ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies

... taught governments to adopt the old maxim of the slave-market, that it is cheaper to buy than to breed, to import defenders from an Opposition than to rear them in a Ministry. He was the first Englishman to whom a peerage was a sacrament of infamy, a baptism into the communion of corruption. As he was the earliest of the hateful list, so was he also by far the greatest; eloquent, sagacious, adventurous, intrepid, ready of invention, immutable of purpose, in every talent which exalts or destroys nations pre-eminent, the lost Archangel, the Satan of the apostasy. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... collapse of an ill-starred experiment. England, struggling for her existence, had had enough of French invasion, civil war, and general anarchy on her flank. The Irish Parliament died, as it had lived, by corruption, and Castlereagh and Pitt conferred upon Ireland the too long delayed boon of equal partnership ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various

... this, and bids the reader turn to Boccaccio, whose description of the scene he cannot hope to rival. Boccaccio writes: 'Nor had she dug long before she found the body of her hapless lover, whereon as yet there was no trace of corruption or decay; and thus she saw without any manner of doubt that her vision was true. And so, saddest of women, knowing that she might not bewail him there, she would gladly, if she could, have carried away the body and given it more honourable sepulture ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats

... know of none; Nor know I you by voice or any feature. I hate ingratitude more in a man Than lying, vainness, babbling, drunkenness, Or any taint of vice whose strong corruption Inhabits our frail blood. ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]

... by which they are seized with reference to intrigues and vices which they suppose around them. It would be a serious error to see always a symptom of moral improvement in the clamors against electoral or parliamentary corruption. Immediately after the ministerial success in the general elections of 1846, this precursory indication of storms appeared on the horizon. Guizot raised the question to its proper point of view. "Leave to countries which are not free," said he, "leave to absolute ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne

... are apt to forget under what Boswellian stimulus the great Doctor uttered many hasty things:—things no more indicative of the nature of the depths of his character than the phosphoric gleaming of the sea, when struck at night, is indicative of radical corruption of nature! In truth, it is clear enough on the whole that both Johnson and Goldsmith appreciated each other, and that they mutually knew it. They were, as it were, tripped up and flung against each ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Mr. Dooley, sadly, "thus is th' vengeance f'r which our beloved counthry has awaited so long delayed be th' hand iv onscrupulious tyranny. Sthrive as our heroes may, no secrecy is secure against th' corruption iv British goold. Oh, Ireland, is this to be thy fate forever? Ar-re ye niver to escape th' vigilance iv th' polis, thim cold-eyed sleuths that seem to read th' very thoughts iv ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne

... consciousness like a key slipping into a lock. It was the seventeenth of December: the date of the day after his arrival at Northridge. He glanced at the first page and read in blazing characters: "Reported Failure of Opal Cement Company. Lavington's name involved. Gigantic Exposure of Corruption Shakes Wall ...
— The Triumph Of Night - 1916 • Edith Wharton

... last time an election of officers will be permitted, for it is liable to many objections, not the least of which are the bribery and corruption by which some have attempted to ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic

... it not a pity to see that honest family ruined and driven out of the country by the villany of Burke on the one hand, and the deliberate fraud and corruption of Fethertonge, on the other. However, now that you are resolved to unmask Fethertonge, I am satisfied. It's a proof that you don't wish to see an honest family oppressed and turned, without reasonable compensation, out of ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... duty as a repentant husband to stay at home; and at home he stayed, cultivating his emotions. Ah, those emotions! If Tyson had been simply and passionately vicious there might have been some chance for him. But sentimentalism, subtlest source of moral corruption, worked in him like that hectic disease that flames in the colors of life, flouting its wretched victim with an extravagant hope. The deadly taint was spreading, stirred into frightful activity by the shock of his ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair

... energy, obstinacy and intelligence. Who would have told a few months ago, when he wrote under my orders, a discreet and humble socius, that he had already conceived the most audacious ambition, and dared to lift his eyes to the Holy See itself? that, thanks to intrigues and corruption, pursued with wondrous ability, these views were not so unreasonable? Nay, that this infernal ambition would soon be realized, were it not that the secret proceedings of this dangerous man have long been as ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... which finds in studied chronicle or laboured dissertation of the period no echo. On the one side, they express that delight in life and physical enjoyment which was a main characteristic of the Renaissance; on the other, they proclaim that revolt against the corruption of Papal Rome which was the motive-force of ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various

... must quit the parental roof, and perhaps entirely bid adieu to the influences of home. If he be then destitute of right principles, if his mind be like a ship without a rudder, he will stand in imminent danger of being swept away by the waves of corruption. ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.

... and corruption upon you; flight and defeat and the hatred of your kin. That shivering fever may stretch you nine times, and that particularly at the time of Easter ('because,' it is explained, 'it was at Easter time our Lord was put to death, and it is the time He can best hear the ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others

... ill-health, believing them to be inevitable, is one of the greatest of sins. The way of life is to walk (think and act) after the Spirit (which is perfect, whole, immortal and incorruptible) and not after the flesh (corruption, disease, sickness, death). By thinking "after the flesh" we dishonour God who is absolute Wholeness and Perfection, and cut ourselves off from the ...
— Within You is the Power • Henry Thomas Hamblin

... has been the indulgence of the officers of the Customs; and we are told that the cause of this indulgence has been that they are quartered upon for more than their legal fees, and that without bribery and corruption ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson

... sources of the corruption of habits, to which religion never opposes anything but ideal and ineffectual obstacles; ignorance and servitude have a tendency to make men wicked and unhappy. Science, reason, liberty, alone can reform them and render them more happy; but everything conspires to blind them and to confirm them ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier

... the cherished or castaways. It fell as thickly upon the gravestones in Trinity's ancient churchyard as upon the freshly turned earth in a corner of the paupers' burying ground; and it set upon black corruption wherever it was in evidence the ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller

... decorate them and lead them to pastures where, tethered to rings attached to a long rope, "they may graze together pleasantly." One of the islands we visited bore the name of the giant radish, Daikon, which is itself a corruption of the word for octopus. The island devoted itself mainly to the growing of peonies and ginseng. The ginseng is largely exported to China and Korea, but there is a certain consumption in Japan. Ginseng is sometimes chewed, ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... some is translated "taken all together," "at most." Perhaps there is some corruption of text, and the writer meant to say that it measured two cubits by ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus

... to read that the saint used to make cases and satchels for books (polaire ocus tiaga), v. Adamnan, I l 5. Cf. Petrie, Round Towers, 336-7. But the late Dr. Whitley Stokes makes polaire or polire, or the corruption folaire, derive from pugillares writing tablets.—Stokes (W.), T. L., cliii. and 655. This interpretation of the word gives us the much more likely reading that Columba made tablets, and satchels ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage

... it on the table. Parma violets, lilacs, white camellias and moss rolled out in slightly faded bunches, spreading a sweet smell in which there breathed already a vague scent of death and corruption. A violet fell on my knees. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... and fraud are common to all the trade of our own time. It was winked at by the gang in power in France, just as similar dirty work is winked at by the gang in power in every other parliamentary country. When the peasants who had suffered so severely by this commercial corruption of our time asked that it should be put a stop to, the old reply, which has done duty half a million times in every case of corruption in France, England, or America for a generation, was given to them: ...
— On Something • H. Belloc

... tell you, mother, that man is so low, so rotten with evil ... I tell you ... at least he has spells when he's that way ... that a man like myself, who is no saint either, feels as if his very bowels were turning in him! There's no end to that kind of corruption. A man may think he knows life inside out, that he's digested some pretty tough bits himself—but things like that—crimes—I tell you, one never gets beyond the elements ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann

... all the knights, and heard in thought Their lavish comment when her name was named. For once, when Arthur walking all alone, Vext at a rumour issued from herself Of some corruption crept among his knights, Had met her, Vivien, being greeted fair, Would fain have wrought upon his cloudy mood With reverent eyes mock-loyal, shaken voice, And fluttered adoration, and at last With dark sweet hints of some who prized him more Than who should prize ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson

... petty despotic principalities, which had started up from some great families, who at first came forward as the protectors of the people from their exterior enemies or their interior factions, at length settled into a corruption of power; a power which had been conferred on them to preserve liberty itself! These factions often shook, by their jealousies, their fears, and their hatreds, that divided land, which groaned whenever they witnessed the "Ultramontanes" ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... them. A detached farm-house, such as are scattered everywhere in England, is hardly to be seen in Corsica, the inhabitants being gathered in these villages and hamlets, invariably built, as already observed, on elevated points. By what corruption these were called paeses, countries, one does not understand; but it sounds rather droll to a stranger, when he is told in Corsica, that he may travel many miles, senza vedère uno paése, ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections. If an election is to be determined by a majority of a single vote, and that can be procured by a party through artifice or corruption, the Government may be the choice of a party for its own ends, not of the nation for the national good. If that solitary suffrage can be obtained by foreign nations by flattery or menaces, by fraud or violence, by terror, intrigue, or venality, ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various

... woman can not manage the great affairs of a nation. Very well. Government is political economy—national housekeeping. Does any respectable woman keep house so badly as the United States? with so much bribery, so much corruption, so much quarrelling in the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... over his principal competitor, General Jackson, was largely through the influence of Mr. Clay; and the subsequent acceptance by the latter of the office of Secretary of State gave rise to the unfounded but vehement cry of "Bargain and corruption," which followed the Kentucky statesman through two presidential struggles of later periods, and died wholly away only when the clods had fallen upon ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson

... the birds have devour'd him: Still to this hour 'mid the tents, by the black-hull'd ship of Peleides, He forsakenly lies: but though morning has dawn'd on him twelve times Since he was reft of his breath, yet the body is free from corruption; Nor have the worms, for whom war-slain men are a banquet, approach'd him. Truly Peleides, as oft as the east is revived with the day-beam, Ruthlessly drags him around by the tomb of his brotherly comrade; But yet he mars not the dead; and with wonder thine eyes would behold him How he ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various

... scrapped and burned if we're to get rid of the stink. Art has got to be made young and new and clean. There isn't any disinfectant that'll do the trick. So long as old masters are kow-towed to as masters people will go on imitating them. When a poet ceases to be a poet and becomes a centre of corruption, ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair

... Biarmii and Amaxobii, who, according to him, were most skilful fascinators, says that they so affected persons with their curse that they lost their freedom of will and became insane and idiotic, and often wasted away in extreme leanness and corruption, and so perished: "ut liberi non sint nec mentis compotes, soepe ad extremam maciem deveniant, et tabescendo dispereant." Olaus Magnus agrees with him in these symptoms; and Hieronymus says, that, when infants suddenly grow lean, waste away, twist about as if in pain, and sometimes ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... continually surrounded by a numerous body-guard, (said to be at least one hundred and twenty-five men,) selected by Watson Freeman, United States Marshal, from the vilest sinks of scoundrelism, corruption, and crime in the city to be Deputy Marshals for the occasion. These men, with every form of loathsome impurity and hardened villainy stamped upon their faces, sat constantly around the prisoner while in the court-room, the handles of pistols and revolvers visibly protruding from their ...
— The Fugitive Slave Law and Its Victims - Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 18 • American Anti-Slavery Society

... point was, that while he was unsparing of his censure on Cavour and the "Piedmontese party," he was no apologist for the old state of things in Italy. So far from it, that he launched out freely in attack of Papal bigotry, superstition, and corruption, and freely corroborated our own Premier's assertions, by calling the Pope's the "worst government in Europe." In fact, he showed very clearly that the smaller states of Italy were well or ill administered in the direct ratio that they admitted or rejected Papal interference,—Modena being ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever

... to diminish instead of swelling his numbers. He devoted himself, at the sacrifice of everything else, to gain the Pope to acknowledge him as king. He appeared the inflexible chastiser of simony and ecclesiastical corruption. The very day of his coronation he had obtained the dismissal of a simoniacal deacon. Everywhere he compelled the nominees of Henry to fly, and filled their places with zealous champions of the canonical discipline. At Constance and Zurich ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles

... the tied house, originally an indigenous corruption of the liquor trade, is being extended to every industry in the land. We can no longer buy the bread we like, but have to eat whatever by-product least interferes ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato

... temptations is the seeming success of the wicked. It requires moral courage to see, without flinching, material prosperity coming to men who are dishonest; to see politicians rise into prominence, power and wealth by trickery and corruption; to see virtue in rags and vice in velvets; to see ignorance at a premium, and knowledge at a discount. To the man who is really calm these puzzles of life do not appeal. He is living his life as best he can; he is not worrying about the problems of justice, ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan

... offering the province? when he bids with the subsidy, will he not be outbid with the kingdom? Or, if the anticipated conquerors of Europe, raising their sense of dignity to the level of their power, should disdain the traffic of corruption; will not the roaring of the French cannon in the ears of kings make them feel, that, to persist in your ill-omened alliance, is to devote themselves to ruin? will they bargain, in sight of the axe? will they dare to traffic ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... objection were made to leaders at Public Meetings, we should, I imagine, have very few meetings. One might be told to keep to his snuff shop, another to his haberdashery, and so on. Indeed, the tools of Corruption are so very nice upon this head, that I have never yet heard of any one trade, or calling, which they did not despise, if a man who came forward against abuses happened to be of that trade or calling; and, on the other hand, there is nothing ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt

... of European courts, notwithstanding the great external and civil wars, yet it afforded at the same time a sad example of laxity of morals, which had a most baneful influence on public habits; so much so that vice and corruption descended from class to class, and contaminated all orders of society. If we wished to make investigations into the private life of the lower orders in those times, we should not succeed as we have been able to do with that of the upper classes; for we have scarcely any data ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix

... of the poet-scholars is due in great part to their own corruption: their type is continually arising again; Goethe and Leopardi, for example, belong to it. Behind them plod the philologist-savants. This type has its origin in the sophisticism of the ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche

... power of the Mesopotamian Empire could not be met without union. On the other hand, the concentration of worship at Jerusalem, under the auspices of the two southern tribes, may have averted dangers that would have arisen from the wider diffusion, and consequent exposure to corruption, of the religious system. The development and promotion of the true religion—the one great historical part appointed for the Hebrews—may have been performed not less effectively, on the whole, ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... but not so dense as wholly to conceal all certainty. It is a story of suffering, of piety, of enthusiasm, of superstition, and of science;—it connects itself in many points with the progress of corruption in the Church, and it has been a favorite subject for Art in all ages. The story is at last finished. Begun sixteen hundred years ago, it has just reached its last chapter. In order to understand it, we must go back almost to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various

... she never! The expressions were not Michael's own vocabulary at all, but corruptions that had crept into his phraseology from associations with other boys, chance acquaintances, who had evolved them among themselves, nourishing them from the corruption of their own hearts. As soon as Michael—deceived by the mendacious dialogue of the Coroner and the Inspector, and under the impression that the particulars he was giving, whether true or false, were not evidence—had told with some colouring about the two men in the garden and ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... conversation she comes closer to me, and her balmy breath reaches my lips, I feel that I could sink into the earth for very joy. And yet, Wilhelm, if I know myself, and should ever dare—you understand me—No, no; my heart is not so corrupt; it is weak, but is not that a degree of corruption? ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... judicial decrees, armed attacks rarely took place, and violence almost never went unpunished. Well known in history is the sad end of Prince Wasil Sanguszko, and of Stadnicki, called the Devil.—The corruption of public morals in the Commonwealth increased the number of forays, which continually disturbed the peace of Lithuania. [The rendering of zajazd by foray is of course inexact and conventional; but the translator did not ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz

... no doubt a corruption of the old Quatre Face, as the house is four sided, agreeing with the cardinal points of the compass. It contains in all some twenty acres, quite surrounded by the solid stone wall above mentioned. There are many trees on it, which make it in places gloomy, and there is a deep, dark-looking ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker

... churches would be promptly met in the abolition of slavery, what "ultimately" must Christianity here wait for before she crushes the chattel principle beneath her heel? Her triumph over slavery is retarded by nothing but the corruption and defection so widely spread through the "sacramental host" beneath her banners! Let her voice be heard and her energies exerted, and the ultimately of the "dark spirit of slavery" would at once give place to the immediately of the Avenger of ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... by the Magyars to the end that the Autonomists and they should have all the amenities of some one else's house, it surely is the acme of ingratitude to call this tottering benefactor "Hote insalue." If the Autonomists did not desire to reap advantages from any Magyar corruption, they might at any time since November 17, 1868, have torn the swindling piece of paper, the "krpitsa," from the Agreement made between the Magyars and the Croats. Then the Croat would not have been kept for all these years a slave in his own home.... But on October 28, 1918, ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein

... a virtue: thus to a moral virtue one vice is opposed by exceeding the virtue, and another, by falling short of the virtue. Secondly, the diversity of vices opposed to one virtue may be considered in respect of the corruption of the various conditions required for that virtue. In this way an infinite number of vices are opposed to one virtue, e.g. temperance or fortitude, according to the infinite number of ways in which the various circumstances of a virtue may be corrupted, so that the rectitude of virtue is forsaken. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... found the source of the infidel opinions which call for suppression. London is a hotbed of corruption;[161] a centre of wealth; and yet, in spite of poor-laws, a place where wretches are dying of starvation, and which could collect a mob capable of producing the most appalling catastrophes. In such a place, men become unbelievers like savages, because removed from all humanising ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen

... discover the substantial purport, the real side of the divine idea, and to justify the so much despised reality of things; for Reason is the comprehension of the divine work. But as to what concerns the perversion, corruption, and ruin of religious, ethical, and moral purposes and states of society generally, it must be affirmed that, in their essence, these are infinite and eternal, but that the forms they assume may be of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... royalty had so much spoiled the nature and envenomed the character of public office, that (of course except those who derived their authority by election—which we for our municipal life conserved amongst all the corruption of European royalty through centuries) no patriot accepted an office in the government: to have accepted one ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth

... reflecting the inability of successive governments to collect sufficient taxes. Russia's transition to a market economy has also been slowed by the growing prevalence of payment arrears and barter and by widespread corruption. The severity of Russia's economic problems is dramatized by the large annual decline in population, estimated by some observers at 800,000 people, caused by environmental hazards, the decline in health care, and the unwillingness of people ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... old stories) between Isabella and Angelo on terms of marriage. Shakespeare's argument is throughout philosophically subtle. The poetic eloquence in which Isabella and the Duke pay homage to the virtue of chastity, and the many expositions of the corruption with which unchecked sexual passion threatens society, alternate with coarsely comic interludes which suggest the vanity of seeking to efface natural instincts by the coercion of law. There is little in the play that seems ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee

... turn our courts, exchanges, and shops into deserts; and would be full as absurd as the proposal of Horace,[3] where he advises the Romans all in a body to leave their city, and seek a new seat in some remote part of the world, by way of cure for the corruption ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift

... opportunity of confirming our letter to you of the 1st September, 1798, by the Barwell. Here we have to contend with the depravity and corruptions of the human heart heightened and confirmed in all its vicious habits by long and repeated indulgences of inbred corruption, each one following the bent of his own corrupt mind, and countenancing his neighbour in the pursuit of sensual gratifications. Here iniquity abounds, and those outward gross sins which in Europe would render a person contemptible in ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery

... of the orgies in petites maisons, the follies of courtesans, the capital tricks played on creditors, the manners, in short, which furnished forth Dancourt's comedies and Beaumarchais' epigrams. And unfortunately, the corruption lurking beneath the utmost polish tricked itself out in Voltairean wit. If the Chevalier went rather too far at times, he always added as a corrective that a man must always behave ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac

... these qualities in me. The youthful manliness of my figure, he said, added to the properties I have mentioned, was admirably adapted for parliamentary oratory. My elocution and deportment were commanding; and principles such as mine might awe corruption itself into respect, and aid to rouse a nation, and enlighten a world. Mr. Evelyn, like myself, was very much of ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... virtuous and be blest. The throne Rears not its state to swell the couch of Lust: Nor dignify Corruption's daring son, To o'erwhelm his humbler brethren ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]

... analysis, dissection, resolution, catalysis, dissolution; corruption &c (uncleanness) 653; dispersion &c 73; disjunction &c 44; disintegration. V. decompose, decompound; analyze, disembody, dissolve; resolve into its elements, separate into its elements; electrolyze [Chem]; dissect, decentralize, break up; disperse ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... winter they are dead, unsightly roots, hidden in the earth. What can come of them? But no sooner does the sun of spring shine on their graves, than they rise into sudden life and beauty, as it pleases God, and every seed takes its own peculiar body. Sown in corruption, they are raised in incorruption; sown in weakness, they are raised in power; sown in dishonour, they are raised in glory; delicate, beautiful in colour, perfuming the air with fragrance; types of immortality, fit for the crowns of angels. Consider the lilies of the field, ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... is the finest face man ever looked at?' 'I could hear Trim talk so for ever,' cried Susanah, 'What is it?' Susanah laid her head on Trim's shoulder—'but corruption!'—Susanah ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... his Enemies gave him two years ago. You know I have long corresponded with him, and a Mans confidential Letters are so sure a Criterion by which to judge of his real Disposition, that I before thought I could not be mistaken. He has shared the Fate of honest Patriots in all Times of Corruption in being persecuted. But I am satisfied the People in the Eastern States entertain an high opinion of his Integrity & Abilities. I hope he will meet with Justice in Congress. ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams



Words linked to "Corruption" :   degradation, rot, incorruptness, putrefaction, inducement, venality, dishonesty, infection, subversion, inducing, putrescence, rottenness, corruptness



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