"Degraded" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bide his time. Pym was the only person he called upon. He took Pym out to dinner and conducted him home again. His kindness to Pym, the delicacy with which he pretended not to see that poor old Pym was degraded and done for—they would have been pretty even in a woman, and we treat Tommy unfairly in passing them by ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... me, who, she said, was so excellent in all elegant arts, and was for ever thanking me for the pleasure she had formerly received, from my skill in music and pretty fancy works. The distress I was in, made these complimentary speeches not flatteries, but sweet drops of comfort to my degraded heart, almost broken with ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Gunwar, surnamed the Fair because of her surpassing beauty. The sons of Westmar and Koll, being ungrown in years and bold in spirit, let their courage become recklessness and devoted their guilt-stained minds to foul and degraded orgies. ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... Central India, and remarks upon the absence of death after the operation, and invites the attention of gynecologists and operators to the successful, though crude, methods used. Curran says that, except those who are degraded by practices of sexual perversions, these individuals are vigorous bodily, shrewd, and sagacious, thus proving ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... excuse at all for a minister, who at our desire takes a measure contrary to our safety, that it is our own act. He who does not stay the hand of suicide, is guilty of murder. On our part, I say, that to be instructed, is not to be degraded or enslaved. Information is an advantage to us; and we have a right to demand it. He that is bound to act in the dark cannot be said to act freely. When it appears evident to our governors that our desires and our interests are at variance, they ought not to gratify the former at the expense of ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... light she looked down at her hands and saw that they were trembling violently. She went to the door and shut it. Then she sat down on the sofa at the foot of the bed. She clasped her hands together in her lap, but they went on trembling. Pulses were beating in her eyelids. She felt utterly degraded, like a scrupulously clean person who has been rolled in the dirt. And she fancied she heard a faint and mysterious sound, pathetic and terrible, but very far away—the white angel ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... the certainty, that another hour or two would join us in their horrid fate. To myself, the reckless, wasted past presented itself, in that situation of appalling terrors, in all its enormity. There was I, after throwing away the high advantages of fortune and prosperity, a ruined and degraded man, about to meet an appropriate ending to such a career by a bloody death at the hands of some brutal soldier, in an unknown land, at the ends of the earth, where scarcely a human being knew a word of my native ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... is, in a word, a very good man, even for a L500 bargain—he and his wife were in my house the time I broke open the cask. They keep a country public-house and sell a great deal of foreign spirits, but all along thought that whisky would have degraded their house. They were perfectly astonished at my whisky, both for its taste and strength; and, by their desire, I write you to know if you could supply them with liquor of an equal quality, and what ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... gliding in noiselessly from the neighboring wood. His cheek-bones were unusually high, his lower lip thick and protruding, his eyes deeply sunken, his face drawn, austere, and dismal beyond description. The mis-shapen, degraded features repelled at first sight; but a second glance revealed a great dim sadness in the eyes, a gloomy foreboding on brow and lip that were weirdly fascinating, so sombre were they, so full of woe. There was a wild ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... with the third and the fourth class of people who are assumed as non-moral or purely immoral. There is no person, however morally degraded he may be, but reveals some good nature in his whole course of life. It is our daily experience that we find a faithful friend in the person even of a pickpocket, a loving father even in a burglar, and a kind neighbour even in a murderer. Faith, sympathy, friendship, love, loyalty, and generosity ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... When he got down he found Jog in a very roomy, bright, green-plush shooting-jacket, with pockets innumerable, and a whistle suspended to a button-hole. His nether man was encased in a pair of most dilapidated white moleskins, that had been degraded from hunting into shooting ones, and whose cracks and darns showed the perils to which their wearer had been exposed. Below these were drab, ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... acquainted with the science of anatomy, and often asked myself, Whence did the principle of life proceed? I observed the natural decay of the human body, and saw how the fine form of man was degraded and wasted. I examined and analysed all the minutiae of causation in the change from life to death and death to life, until from the midst of this darkness a sudden light broke in upon me. I became dizzy with the immensity of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... that fresh ardor and energy which is sneered at in the familiar proverb, "A new broom sweeps clean," Felix swept away at the misery, and the ignorance, and the vice of his degraded district. He was not going to spare himself; it should be no sham fight with him. The place was his first battlefield; and it had a ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... once. In broad daylight he seized Conde and shut him up in the Bastille; other noble leaders he declared guilty of treason, and degraded them; he set forth the crimes and follies of the nobles in a manifesto which stung their cause to death in a moment; he published his policy in a proclamation which ran through France like fire, warming all hearts of patriots, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... regarding the character of Southern labor. It was, as you all know, mainly agricultural. Its enforced ignorance, and its legally and morally degraded condition, incapacitated the slave-holding States from diversifying their single industry and limited them to the tillage of the earth. This feature was economically the fatal defect of the slave ...
— Modern Industrialism and the Negroes of the United States - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 12 • Archibald H. Grimke
... at our ease and without restraint," he remarked to Kai Lung. "It will be a distinguished privilege for a person occupying the important public position which you undoubtedly do; for myself, my instincts are so degraded and low-minded that nothing gives me more gratification than to dispense ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... into my political conduct, and blaming me as a person disaffected to government. Sir, you are a husband and a father: you know what you would feel, to see the much-loved wife of your bosom, and your helpless prattling little ones, turned adrift into the world, degraded and disgraced, from a situation in which they had been respectable and respected. I would not tell a deliberate falsehood, no, not though even worse horrors, if worse can be than those I have mentioned, hung over my head, and I say that the allegation, whatever villain ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... fought him when they must; intrigued with or against him when they might; called him barbarian for self-respect's sake—and admired and envied him always. Had he been really a barbarian, in contact with their superior civilization, he would have become degraded by the contact; in such cases it always happens that the inferior sops up the vices only of his betters. But Alexander found the Persians much the same courtly-mannered, lordly-living, mighty huntsmen they ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... support of idolatry were promoted to ecclesiastical offices. [579:2] There was a time when even an apostle laboured as a tent-maker, but as the hierarchical spirit acquired strength, and as the Church increased in wealth and numbers, there was a growing impression that all its office-bearers were degraded by such services. Cyprian speaks with extreme bitterness of a deceased elder who had appointed a brother elder the executor of his will, declaring that the clergy "should in no way be called off from their holy ministrations nor tied down by secular troubles and business." [579:3] But the common ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... and Greeley were obliged to desert it more than a year before the end of Gen. Grant's first administration, as the only means of maintaining their honor and self-respect. My Congressional term expired a little after Grant and Babcock had inaugurated the San Domingo project, and Sumner had been degraded from the Chairmanship of the Committee on Foreign Affairs to make room for Simon Cameron. The "irrepressible conflict" had just begun to develop itself between the element of honesty and reform in the party, and the corrupt leadership which sought to make merchandise of its ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... of the plays in this volume is again almost wholly dialectic. The linguistic difficulties are especially great in The Rats where the members of the Berlin populace speak an extraordinarily degraded jargon. In the translation I have sought, so far as possible, to differentiate the savour and quaintness of the Silesian dialect from the coarseness of that of Berlin. But all such attempts must, from their very nature, achieve only a partial ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... many Indian lovers walking as they had seen the pale faces do. I laughed to myself as I thought what mimics these children were. It was their following the customs of the white man, drinking as they saw him drink, that degraded them so. ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... now installed herself mistress of Norland; and her mother and sisters-in-law were degraded to the condition of visitors. As such, however, they were treated by her with quiet civility; and by her husband with as much kindness as he could feel towards anybody beyond himself, his wife, and their child. He really pressed them, with some earnestness, to ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... the ranks, is deemed honourable; whereas with us, or in England, it would be certain degradation to a man of the smallest pretension to enlist as a soldier, except in moments that made stronger appeals than usual to patriotism. In short, it is prima facie evidence of a degraded condition for a man to carry a musket in a regular battalion. Not so here. I have frequently seen common soldiers copying in the gallery of the Louvre, or otherwise engaged in examining works of science or of taste; not ignorantly, and with vulgar wonder, but like men who had ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Saturday night Tom was again drunk and disorderly. This time he did not escape punishment. Tom never felt so degraded in his life as when he was undergoing that punishment. He had joined the Army under the influence of a noble impulse. He had felt that he was doing a noble thing. Not that he was proud of it, because in reality he could do nothing else; when he came to think of it afterwards he knew ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... Guiana afford a more satisfactory subject for contemplation than the degraded inhabitants. Among them, sin has not entered. They remain in all their perfection and beauty, as they first appeared fresh from the hands of the Creator. A large number are so similar to those found in the Valley of the Amazon, that they need no separate description. ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... go and be beaten too. That 'too' was very nice for Robert, as you can imagine - but it was nothing to what he felt when Anthea rushed in between him and the baker's boy, and caught that unfair and degraded fighter round the waist, imploring him not to ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... angels of mercy can walk unattended and unharmed through our "Reservation" at midnight. She can visit with impunity the most degraded dive in the White-chapel district. At her coming the ribald song is stilled and the oath dies on the lips of the loafer. Fallen creatures reverently touch the hem of her garments, and men steeped in crime to the very lips involuntarily remove their hats ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... said Mrs. Ross, to her husband. "In my opinion, mercy would be misplaced in such a case as this. The boy who is degraded enough to steal is likely to continue in his criminal course, and the sooner ...
— The Tin Box - and What it Contained • Horatio Alger
... he had been conquered in the struggle between them, Corvinus only felt himself withered, degraded, before his late school fellow, crumbled like a clot of dust in his hands. His very heart seemed to him to blush. He felt sick, and staggered, hung down his head, and sneaked away. He cursed the games, the emperor, the yelling rabble, the roaring beasts, his horses ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... two (men or angels) towards Sodom; therefore Jehovah was in them. But He was also in the One before whom Abraham stood. The first great truth enshrined in this part of the story is that the friend of God is compassionate even of the sinful and degraded. Abraham did not intercede for Lot, but for the sinners in Sodom. He had perilled his life in warfare for them; he now pleads with God for them. Where had he learned this brave pity? Where but from the God with whom he lived by faith? How much more surely ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... whom she had had raised to the post of footman, took to drink, began to disappear from the house, and wound up by stealing six of the family's silver spoons, and hiding them—until a convenient opportunity—in his wife's chest. This was discovered. He was again degraded to the rank of cow-herd, and a sentence of disgrace was pronounced upon Agafya; she was not banished from the house, but she was reduced from the place of housekeeper to that of seamstress, and ordered to wear a kerchief on her head, instead of a cap. To the amazement of all, Agafya accepted ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... and his son Diethelm also, who sat next his father in the council, was an acknowledged man of honor. The deputy Rudolph Thumeisen had likewise maintained an unspotted reputation, and George Berger and Hans Effinger, even in Italy, among so many degraded characters, proved themselves incorruptible. Hans Edlebach, the treasurer Werdmueller, the banneret Schweizer, and of the younger men, Ulric Funk and Lavater, landvogt at Kyburg, enjoyed universal esteem. But besides these, there was another party, composed ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... the account of PASTELL,[90] this name is given to a small, degraded division of the Tagakaolo who live in the mountains of Haguimitan on San ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... new company and regretted the prospect that she was losing by breaking with Topolski but at the same time she felt an unbearable shame consuming her at the thought that these people should take her for such a degraded being by daring to make such proposals to her and expecting ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... endurance of the most painful aspects of disease, so that conditions of human suffering, which in any other country would be confined in hospitals, are permitted to be openly exhibited by the wayside; and with this exposure of the degraded human form is farther connected an insensibility to ugliness and imperfection in other things; so that the ruined wall, neglected garden, and uncleansed chamber, seem to unite in expressing a gloom of spirit possessing the inhabitants of the whole land. It does ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... "tall copies," and "large-paper copies," and "first editions," the binding, paper, type, and all the rest of the outside attraction, or the fancy price, which go to make up the collector's trade. The books themselves feel a little degraded, when this sort of conversation is carried on in their presence: some of them know well enough that occasionally they fall into hands which think more "of the coat than of the man who is under it." We must, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... up another lot of masters, such a jolly sight worse than what we've got now. I'd rather be mastered by Gerald Barlow, if it comes to mastering, than by Job Arthur Freer—oh, SUCH a lot! You'll be far less free with Job Arthur for your boss than ever you were with Gerald Barlow. You'll be far more degraded.—In fact, though I've preached socialism in the market-place for thirty years—if you're going to start killing the masters to set yourselves up as bosses—why, kill me along with the masters. For I'd rather die with ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... up and recognized the rustic bacchanalian for the first time. He had always had a peculiar antipathy to this young gentleman; but at this moment it was intensified into a loathing. How could he ask assistance from such a degraded ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... reflections. But instead of calling her "madame" as they had done hitherto, her companions addressed her simply as "mademoiselle," without exactly knowing why, but as if desirous of making her descend a step in the esteem she had won, and forcing her to realize her degraded position. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... noble-minded man whose honesty was his sterling virtue, and whose splendid ability in opening up and extending the country's resources was rewarded with a great fortune and the thanks of his generation. This is utterly false. He who has the slightest knowledge of the low practices and degraded morals of the trading class and of the qualities which insured success, might at once suspect the spuriousness of this extravagant presentation, even if ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... of women, if she is not naturally bad; and Masson had had experiences with the humblest, and also with those a little higher up. This much had to be said for him, that he did not think Jean Jacques contemptible because he had been merciful, or degraded because he had chosen to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... servant, to Buenos Ayres, but his father objected on the score of the danger alone. Many officers in the army can neither read nor write, yet all meet in society as equals. In Entre Rios, the Sala consisted of only six representatives. One of them kept a common shop, and evidently was not degraded by the office. All this is what would be expected in a new country; nevertheless the absence of gentlemen by profession appears to ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... money and a very ordinary exercise of ingenuity, a lawsuit need never end in Italy. "First of all, you could ask the opposite party, Who was his advocate? and on his naming him, you could immediately set to work to show that this man was a creature so vile and degraded, no man with the commonest pretension to honesty would dream of employing him. The history of his father could be adduced, and any private little anecdotes of his mother would find a favourable opportunity for mention. Though a mere ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... brother;—nor could he be her husband. And at this very moment, as she knew, his heart was sore with love for another woman. And yet he hardly knew how not to throw himself at her feet, and swear, that he would return now and for ever to his old passion, hopeless, sinful, degraded as it ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... to which the human race has but too long been the victim. For this purpose reason must be restored to its proper rank,—it must be rescued from the evil company with which it is associated. It has been too long degraded —too long neglected—cowardice has rendered it subservient to delirium, the slave to falsehood. It must no longer be held down by the massive claims of ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... Violent trade fluctuations, and a continuous displacement of hand-labour by new mechanical inventions, keep in perpetual existence a large margin of unemployed or half-employed, who form the most hopeless and degraded section of the city poor, and furnish a body of reckless, starving competitors for work, who keep down the standard of wages and of life for the lower grades of regular ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... reply. "What use would it be? If you discovered her to-morrow, what would it avail? Better let her fate remain forever unknown than find my worst fears realized. False, wicked, degraded, as I know her, I cannot forget how madly I loved her—I cannot forget that I ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... defenders of Loxa? The walls of Ronda were thrown down and the warriors of Loxa had to surrender. Do we hope for succor?—whence are we to receive it? The time for hope is gone by. Granada has lost its power; it no longer possesses chivalry, commanders, nor a king. Boabdil sits a vassal in the degraded halls of the Alhambra; El Zagal is a fugitive, shut up within the walls of Guadix. The kingdom is divided against itself—its strength is gone, its pride fallen, its very existence at an end. In the name of Allah we conjure thee, who art our captain, be ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... It supporters deplore the dolts and the sluggards who either cannot or will not be educated. Its enemies see it as a danger to their comfortable position of eminence and claim bitterly that the honored degree of doctor is being degraded. They refuse to see that it is not the degradation of the standard but rather the exaltation of the norm. Comfortable, they lazily object to the necessity of rising with the norm to keep their position. Nor do they realize that ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... the mimic army as in the real imperial legions. After a man has served, with credit, for a certain number of years in the line, he is promoted to be an officer—an acting officer. If he conducts himself well, he may rise to be a Colonel or a General of Division; if ill, he is degraded to the ranks again; or, worst degradation of all, drafted into a regiment of Cossacks or Austrians. Cossacks is the lowest depth, however; nay, it is said that the men who perform these Cossack ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... altogether overthrown. The best result that had been effected in home politics, the attempt to unite the Powers of the country in Parliament had, after a short and brilliant success, led to the deepest disorder by disregarding the rights of birth. The degraded crown above all had thus become the prize of battle for Pretenders allied with France or Burgundy. But it could not possibly remain thus. The time was come to give the English realm an independent position and internal order corresponding at ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... a lord's call on forays as pitiless, this was the rough school in which the Scotch peasant was trained through two hundred years. But it was a school in which he learned much. Suffering that would have degraded a meaner race into slaves only hardened and ennobled the temper of the Scotchman. It was from these ages of oppression and lawlessness that he drew the rugged fidelity, the dogged endurance, the shrewdness, the caution, ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... possible for human wickedness to invent a doctrine more infernal and poisonous than this? Is there imaginable a baser servitude than it imposes? What slave is so degraded as the slave that is proud that he is a slave? What is the essential difference between a lifelong democrat and any other kind of lifelong slave? Is it less humiliating to dance to the lash of one ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... that we who write and read about those wondrous scenes should have to condemn our own species as the most degraded of all the works of the Creator there! Yet so it is. Man, exercising his reason and conscience in the path of love and duty which his Creator points out, is God's noblest work; but man, left to the freedom of his own fallen will, sinks morally lower than the beasts that perish. Well may ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... supplied: a deep tin box, with earth and moss slightly damped, gave him space for exercise; and then for food—alas! that his tastes should be so degraded—he had to be supplied with cow-dung! This could be done in secret, and judiciously hidden by fair, green moss; but when exhibiting my cherished pet to admiring friends the first question was sure to be, "What does he feed upon?" and ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... Asian Magna Mater and the Greek Mother (Demeter) or Maiden (Kore, Persephone) are identical in function with the corn maiden of modern times, and the latter figure may be a degraded or socialized descendant of an early deity. When we add that ancient local deities all took account of the products of the soil, it will not seem improbable that a great mass of stories should have arisen describing the adventures of ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... proved that Pascherette had been left behind when the schooner sailed after Yellow Rufe. Even Dolores, with all her consummate wisdom, had forgotten the existence of the old woman she had degraded to kitchen drudge; still more utterly had she forgotten the relationship existing between the old woman and the late victim ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... the pianoforte, is almost in a more degraded position than painting. In every family the young ladies play and sing; but of tact, style, arrangement, time, etc., the innocent creatures have not the remotest idea, so that the easiest and most taking melodies are often not recognisable. ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... became changed through means of it. Was there anything in the nature of the truth preached to them and believed by them fitted to do this? We think that there was. They had sins—were guilty. Paul told them of a Saviour who died for them. This met their case. They were degraded, foul; the religion Paul preached appealed to their sense of right, to their gratitude, to their fears and their hopes; and believing it, they became regenerated in their moral nature. They had been won to God by ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace
... regarded as having any such effect, except in so far as it might invigorate the body, which I now find it does not do; but in case of sedentary occupations is positively injurious in its effects. Until mankind can rise above beer and tobacco, the race will remain degraded, as it now ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... as though something of herself, of her person, had been thus exposed and degraded; all that she held sacred pilloried, gibbeted, and exhibited to the world's derision. Tears of anguish sprang to her eyes, a red flame of outraged ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... was the maiden name of the wife, which, in accordance with the northern custom, had been entered as a part of her legal description. The name awoke in me a recollection of a painful incident within my experience. I saw before me the puffed, degraded face of one to whom I had given chance after chance of redeeming himself from thraldom to the whisky bottle, one who had promised again and again to amend his ways. At last, wearied, I had cast him out. He had been looking after an important shipbuilding district, had conspicuous ability and ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... overview: High population density, limited land access, and strict internal and external controls have kept economic conditions in the Gaza Strip - the smaller of the two areas under the Palestinian Authority - even more degraded than in the West Bank. An anticipated Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005 may offer some medium-term opportunities for economic growth. The beginning of the second intifadah in September 2000 sparked an economic downturn, largely ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... lost their girlhood. The rather nauseating atmosphere which enveloped them, the way they were huddled together yet never ceased to drive on their tasks, the slatternly uncorseted figures, stolid faces and furtive glances; by something indefinable in their situation, these girls seemed to have been degraded and dehumanized, to have lost ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... resource but gradual emancipation with suitable training. A resident of this same Liberty county, Rev. C. C. Jones, himself a staunch supporter of slavery, but urgent for giving better religious instruction to the slaves, wrote in 1842; "That the negroes are in a degraded state is a fact, so far as my knowledge extends, universally conceded.... Negro marriages are neither recognized nor protected by law. Uncleanness—this sin may be considered as universal.... They are proverbial thieves." But how could "religious instruction" produce chastity in those for ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... soldier always deteriorates rapidly when his back is turned to the enemy. Confident in his bravery, regarding victory as assured, he is unable to understand the necessity for retreat, and considers himself degraded by being ordered to retire, and regards prudence on the part of his general ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... were the difficulties of gathering together a quorum of the Church Construction Committee, and Mrs. John Day, full of righteous indignation and outraged pride, as president, felt and declared that it was a scandal that the degraded doings of a parcel of low-down whisky-runners should be allowed to interfere with the noble cause which the hearts of the valley were set upon. But, being a woman of considerable energy, she by no means ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... striking, massive wall it is, and how impressive, when seen even at this immense distance. This wall is red only because it is stained by the color washed down by the rain from the red strata above. In reality, it is a rich creamy lime, but only where the red strata above have been degraded and washed away does the natural ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... are respectable; dishonor comes not near them; their countenance has weight and influence; their robes are unstained; the poisonous breath of calumny has never been breathed upon their fair name. How easy it is for them to look down with scorn upon the poor degraded offender; to pass him by with a lofty step; to draw up the folds of their garment around them, that they may not be soiled by his touch! Yet the Great Master of Virtue did not so; but descended to familiar intercourse with publicans and sinners, with the Samaritan ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... and their predecessors have frequently degraded this jewel of the upper bourgeoisie by the habits and inventions of the lesser bourgeoisie. Look at those walnut chairs covered with horse-hair, that mahogany table with its oilcloth cover, that sideboard, also of mahogany, that carpet, bought at a bargain, beneath the table, ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... work." To him work was derogatory; better anything than that. Unfortunately it could not be avoided altogether, but with Eyraud such work as he was compelled at different times to endure was only a means for procuring money for his degraded pleasures, and when honest work became too troublesome, dishonesty served in its stead. When he met Gabrielle he was almost at the end of his tether, bankrupt and discredited. At a pinch he might squeeze a little money out of his wife, with whom he continued to live in ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... birds of prey. After stay of only four days, gambler leaves Bar with over a thousand dollars of miners' gold. As many foreigners as Americans on the river. Foreigners generally extremely ignorant and degraded. Some Spaniards of the highest education and accomplishment. Majority of Americans mechanics of better class. Sailors and farmers next in number. A few merchants and steamboat-clerks. A few physicians. One lawyer. Ranchero of distinguished appearance an accomplished monte-dealer and ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... indestructible optimism that bore him triumphantly through all the hardships of a colonial ministry. No sick bed was too remote for Long, no sinner sunk too low to be helped to his feet. The leprous Chinaman doomed to an unending isolation, the drunken Paddy, the degraded white woman—each came in for a share of his benevolence. He spent the greater part of his life visiting the outcasts and outposts, beating up the unbaptised, the unconfirmed, the unwed. But his church did not suffer. He had always some fresh ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... me degraded from my former rank in life; no longer Captain Booth, but farmer Booth ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... present day there is only one reason which seems to me adequate for the encountering the plague of trying to please a set of conceited performers and a very motley audience,—I mean the want of money."[127] This degraded condition of the London stage Scott thought to be a consequence of limiting the number of theaters. We can hardly suppose, however, that he was pessimistic in regard to the written drama of his day, when he could say of Byron, "There is one who, to judge from ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... a place of quakes, all thunder-scarred, Helpless, degraded, desolate, Peace, the White Angel, comes. Her eyes are as a mother's. Her good hands Are comforting, and helping; and her voice Falls on the heart, as, after Winter, Spring Falls on the World, and there is no more pain. And, in her influence, ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley
... impression on the public in a direction where the despised favourite has produced a strong impression. They are thus thrown upon the alternative of supposing that he has had "the luck" denied to them, or that the public taste is degraded and prefers trash. Both opinions are serious mistakes. Both injure the mind ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... but degraded here. What a number of young folks there seem to be in these parts, a-ridin' about, titivated out real jam, in their go-to-meetin' clothes, a-doin' nothin'. It's melancholy to think on it. That's the effect of the last war. The idleness and extravagance of those times ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... modest enough, far more so even than those of their southern sisters with whom, by the way, they have nothing in common, save their sex. Can it be that this is the primitive Japanese race—that the more enlightened people of Niphon trace their origin to such a degraded source? I should be inclined to say no, if I did not remember that history furnishes us with so many parallel cases of similar degraded origin—our own ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... thank, what had I now, 125 That I, a faithful servant of the Sovereign, Had loaded on myself the people's curses, And let the Princes of the empire pay The expenses of this war, that aggrandizes The Emperor alone—What thanks had I! 130 What? I was offered up to their complaints, Dismissed, degraded! ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... has to rely upon himself, and has to work in comparative solitude, while the city boy is distracted by excitements. Life in the country is full of practical teachings; whereas life in the city may be degraded by frivolities and pleasures, which are too often the foes of work. Hence we have usually to go to out-of-the-way corners of the country for our hardest brain-workers. Contact with the earth is a great restorer of power; and it is to the country folks ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... honour's health in A pot of beer, if you will give me sixpence, But for my part I never love to meddle With politics, Sir. Friend of Humanity. I give thee sixpence! I will see thee d——d first! Wretch! whom no sense of wrong can rouse to vengeance! Sordid! unfeeling! reprobate! degraded! Spiritless outcast! ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... fascinated, at the writhings of Laocooen and his sons in the folds and fangs of the serpents, at the sculptured death of the Gladiator, and even at the ghastly, repulsive pictures of martyrdoms and barbaric mutilations and tortures,—the hideous monstrosities of a diseased and degraded imagination found in the churches and convents of Rome, which made others turn their backs with a shivering of the bones and a creeping of the flesh. On expressing surprise at such a singular exhibition of taste, I received this innocent, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... miserable peasants, or by gangs of slaves, in comparison with whose lot that even of the American negro was light. The great were served in their own households by crowds of slaves, better fed, doubtless, but even more miserable and degraded, than those who tilled the estates. Private profligacy among all ranks was such as cannot be described in these or in any modern pages. The regular clergy of the cities, though not of profligate lives, and for the most part, in accordance with public opinion, ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... or humane occupation, to be derived from the poverty of my village neighbors, I very soon found my expectation equally vain. Our village had no poor—none in the deplorable English acceptation of that word; none in the too often degraded and degrading conditions it implies. People poorer than others, comparatively poor people, it undoubtedly had—hard workers, toiling for their daily bread; but none who could not get well-paid work or find sufficient bread; and the abject element ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... with which the saint of Dunkeld anointed my brows, lost its virtue, that I should shrink before any king in Christendom? I neither tremble at the name of Edward, nor will I so disgrace my own (which never man who bore it ever degraded by swearing fealty to a foreign prince), as to abandon at such a crisis the power with which Scotland has invested me. Whoever chooses to leave the cause of their country, let them go; and so manifest themselves of noble blood! I remain, and ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... "Chronicle" is accurate, so far as it recites his mere words; but the scope of his argument, and the intended sense of his expression, was, that if the Vagrant Act were to receive the extensive construction contended for, the most illustrious subject of the realm might be degraded to the condition of the most abject and worthless, for an act in itself indifferent—and which, until the times had assumed a character of affected rigour, was considered rather as a proof of good society than as an ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... following century recognizes fourteen thousand families of vassals as belonging to the single abbey of Nivelle. Tournay and Tongres, both Episcopal cities, were by that title somewhat less oppressed than the other ancient towns founded by the Romans; but they appear to have possessed only a poor and degraded population. ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... sight of a number of men engaged in ordinary labour, such as he is accustomed to out of doors, will impress him half as strongly as the contemplation of the same persons in the same place and garb would, if they were occupied in some task, marked and degraded everywhere as belonging only to felons in jails. In an American state prison or house of correction, I found it difficult at first to persuade myself that I was really in a jail: a place of ignominious punishment and endurance. And to this hour I ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... though distinguished for intellect and valour, was degraded by the most monstrous villainies that were ever perpetrated, and the most detestable characters who ever existed; and a becoming procreation of such an intellectual and depraved age was that revolting monster in ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... a piquant adventure offered him by Gotzkowsky's hate and cunning, and he did not feel inclined to throw away such an original and interesting chance of excitement. He, the Russian colonel, and Count von Brenda, the favorite of the empress, degraded to a Prussian cannoneer, whose life was in danger! His wilful and foolhardy imagination was pleased with the idea of playing the part of a criminal condemned ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... young sir! Disgraced as he has been, a nobler blood than that of Rattlin flows in his veins. Degraded, disgraced as he is, neither on the side of the father nor of the mother need he blush for his parentage. But you are his sworn enemy—I can now listen more calmly to what you have to say. But, graceless as he is, he should not have ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... Men marry: women are in marriage given The churl or ruffian, that in wealth has thriven, May match his offspring with the proudest race: Thus everything is mix'd, noble and base! If then in outward manner, form, and mind, You find us a degraded, motley kind, Wonder no more, my friend! the cause is plain, And to ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... winds, and tacked with all speed to the north. A few weeks later, Kendrick was compelled to put in for Juan Fernandez to repair the Columbia and rest his scurvy-stricken crew. They were given all aid by the governor of the island, who was afterward reprimanded by the viceroy of Chile and degraded from office for helping these invaders ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... provinces. Every day, the supreme judge causes proclamation to be made, that of any man has been wronged by the viceroy or governor, or by any of his relations or officers, or any other person, he shall receive ample justice. A viceroy or governor is never degraded, except by letters issued from the council, or divan of kings, and this is done only for some flagrant malversation, or for the refusal or delay of justice. The posts of judicature being conferred upon none but men of probity and justice, good ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... group, called Copepoda, become, when adult, so degraded in structure as to have the appearance of mere worms, as Lerneocera and Tracheliastes, and become strangely unlike the typical forms (crabs and lobsters) of ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... lived upon the border of this vast wilderness all my life without learning something regarding the customs of savages. If they spare a woman from stake or knife it is that they may doom her to a fate more horrible, making of her their degraded slave. I know this, and have read the truth anew in those faces glaring upon me to-day. There remains but one faint hope—that woman who seems to exercise control over them may incline the savages ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... who think that they are degraded proclaim their own dishonour. They choose to regard themselves as shackled Conscripts:—we know that we are self-equipped Volunteers. If they cannot be easy without branding themselves as slaves, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... are the mighty reptile tyrants of air, earth and water of the Oolite? * * * These races appeared in the plenitude of their development and power; and, as their dynasty grew old, it was not that the race was improved or preserved in consequence, but they dwindled, and were, so to speak, degraded, as if to make room in the economy of ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 8, August, 1880 • Various
... nothing ever will. If so great a carnage did not make life less dear, none ever will. While in freedom and safety, show your affection for your country; nay, rather do so while it is your country, and you its citizens. Too late you now endeavour to evince your regard for her when degraded, disfranchised from the rights of citizens, and become the slaves of the Carthaginians. Shall you return by purchase to that degree which you have forfeited by cowardice and neglect? You did not listen to Sempronius, your ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... descend so low as to practise those arts which have degraded your unhappy mother. I would impress on you, as a memorial of my parting affection, these simple truths—that coquetry stands next to the want of chastity in the scale of female vices; it is in fact a kind of mental prostitution; it is ruinous ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... Degraded in my own estimation, I longed, yet dreaded to confide to Harrison, that the man he attended with such devotion was capable of such base degeneracy—of entertaining sentiments only worthy of Robert Moncton and ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... questions concerning the condition and capabilities of the blacks, I hardly feel like writing anything at length, my opinion, as far as it is made up, is so short and decided. Every one says that these island negroes are more ignorant and degraded than the great majority of the slaves, and I feel no doubt that, under conditions of peace, three years would find these people, with but very few exceptions, a self-respecting, self-supporting population. Almost everything about them, even ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... in great wrath ordered the shameful offender who had thus degraded the empress and insulted his sovereign ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... self-respect. That I had done nothing to lower my self-respect had nothing whatever to do with it, since self-respect is often more a matter of material things than of moral values. It is possible for a hungry woman to walk with pride, and it is possible for the immoral and utterly degraded woman to hold her own with the best of her sisters, when it comes to visible manifestation of self-respect, if only she is able to maintain her usual degree of cleanliness and good grooming. But unacquainted with soap for two days! and without a collar! How could I ever summon courage to present ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... literally as the other," she suggested, "yet both fragments of an advanced knowledge that found its grave in the sea. The Wisdom of that old spiritual system has vanished from the world, only a degraded literalism left of its undecipherable language. The jewel has been lost, and the casket is filled ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... reflected in the social and political principles of Western Europe. During the fourth and fifth centuries B.C., concubinage disappeared, but, under the new regime, the condition of the wife was degraded. She was regarded as simply an instrument of procreation and a mistress of the household, while a class of foreign women, who devoted themselves to learning and the fine arts, were the admired, and often the ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... together in filthy tenements, breathing foul air, starving on bad food, become a ready prey to infectious diseases. The infectious diseases spread. Men of wealth, from the refined and cleanly quarters, encounter in their business walks representatives from the degraded and disgusting quarter, and take from them the seeds of those diseases; or, on some fatal day, a miasma from the corruption of the degraded quarter is wafted in at the windows of the luxurious dwellings, and the idols of those dwellings are stricken down. So in the body politic. The wise and ...
— A Domestic Problem • Abby Morton Diaz
... removed from the Confucian Temple, to which it had been elevated about three centuries earlier; but the remonstrances of the scholars of the empire soon compelled the Emperor to revoke his decree, and the tablet of Mencius was restored to its place of honor, from which it was never subsequently degraded. It is no matter for surprize that the people have reverenced the "Second Sage," for he it was who has come nearest in China to the enunciation of the somewhat doubtful principle, Vox ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... her as a harlot, pure or impure, and keep her outside the pale of pity and consideration, just so long will our representatives have to resort to murder and intimidation to get to Congress. The strength of any race rests in the purity of its women, and when the womanhood is degraded, the life blood of a race is sapped. Should we be disappointed under this showing because the Negro does not vote with us? You know as well as I that the Negro's vote was at the bottom of all this trouble. And we will always have trouble as ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton |
