"Corrupt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... about three thousand pounds per head—they could have bought the whole of that preposterous imitation of a nation for a tenth of that sum—and except for a few substitutions of personalities, this group of partially corrupt officials in the place of that, and so forth, the permanent change was altogether insignificant. (But an excitable young man in Austria committed suicide when at length the Transvaal ceased to be a "nation.") Men went through the seat of that war after it was all over, and found humanity ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... they read in their churches, recited at their tables, quoted in their writings, appealed to in their controversies, translated into many languages, and dispersed into every part of the known world, they neither would, nor could, corrupt or falsify. ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... ("Calc.") Edition, with ten lines of Persian preface by the Editor, Ahmed al-Shirwani (A.D. 1814), was cut short at the end of the first two hundred Nights, and thus made room for Sir William Hay Macnaghten's Edition (4 vols. royal 4to) of 1839-42. This ("Mac."), as by far the least corrupt and the most complete, has been assumed for my basis with occasional reference to the Breslau Edition ("Bres.") wretchedly edited from a hideous Egyptian MS. by Dr. Maximilian Habicht (1825-43). ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... make much impression upon men who had always this to fall back upon, that 'non-resistance is after all too much a doctrine of the Cross, not to meet with great opposition from the prejudices and passions of men. Flesh and blood and corrupt reason will set up the great law of self-preservation against it, and find a thousand absurdities and contradictions in it.'[102] How thoroughly Kettlewell's term was adopted, and how deeply the feeling which it represented was ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... the office this good angel performed was simply to hold a candle to his conscience; for conscience was not by any means dead in him, it only wanted light to see by. When he turned from the gay and corrupt world in which he lived, where the changes were rung incessantly upon self-interest, falsehood, pride, and the various, more or less refined forms of sensuality; and when he looked upon that pure bright little face, so free from selfishness, those clear eyes so innocent of evil, the peaceful ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... impressed some of his wise commands on their hearts, they would have had a more refined and religious influence on the men of Israel. But all their knowledge of the divine commands was second hand and through an acknowledged corrupt medium. ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... the hands of one of those whose foul tongue shews that his heart is corrupt, we would ask him how he would like to have his conversation reported by a short-hand writer, and printed in the "Standard," or "Daily News," with his name attached? But is it not a fact, that his words are being taken ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... virgins, go out singing; Lucifer enters "in a Devil's array without, and within as proud as a gallant," that is, with a gallant's dress under his proper garb; relates the creation of Man, describing Mind, Will, and Understanding as the three properties of the soul, which he means to assail and corrupt. He then goes out, and presently returns, succeeds in the attempt, and makes an exulting speech, at the close of which "he taketh a shrewd boy with him, and goeth his way crying"; probably snatching up a boy from the audience,—an incident designed to ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... dishonoured. The Count of Terlizzi, who ever since he had taken part in the regicide trembled in fear of discovery, had nothing to oppose to the empress's desire, and Dona Cancha, whose head was as light as her heart was corrupt, seized with a foolish gaiety on any chance of taking her revenge on the prudery of the only princess of the blood who led a pure life at a court that was renowned for its depravity. Once assured that her accomplices would be prudent and obedient, Catherine began to spread abroad certain vague ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... been benefited by them, and I make myself happy in the knowledge of that benefit. It is, however, proper for me to add that the mere independence of America, were it to have been followed by a system of government modeled after the corrupt system of the English government, would not have interested me with the unabated ardor it did. It was to bring forward and establish a representative system of government. As the work itself will show, ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... manners, so is your servant hopeful that he might receive instruction in the society of upright men; for he is still a boy, and it is written, that every child is born in the faith of Islam, and his parents corrupt him. The son of Noah, associated with the wicked, lost his power of prophecy; the dog of the Seven Sleepers, following the good, became ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... incongruously in the tales of 1748 reappeared in the direct essays on the drama in 1757 and 1758. We have left nothing undone, he said, to corrupt dramatic style. We have preserved from the ancients that emphasis of versification which was so well fitted to languages of strong quantity and marked accent, to vast theatres, to a declamation that had an instrumental accompaniment; and then ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... with rage, big, prosperous—brandishing cudgel] The Jew—show me the Jew who seduced my daughter! Show him to me, I say! That corrupt scum of society—the man who broke into my house and stole my daughter. [Waves his cane and smites the air] Where is that ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... lady, a little indignant, "in some memoirs the other day, that our court was a corrupt and dissolute court. It was a court of pleasure, if you like; but of pleasure that animated and refined, and put the world in good humour, which, after all, is good government. The most corrupt and dissolute courts on the continent of Europe that I have known," said the lady, "have ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... profit. The miscreants talked of five guineas, for the pretended risk they should run, in giving him a fortnight to sell his effects to the best advantage. They too could recommend a broker, a very honest fellow—By what strange gradations, Oliver, can the heart of man become thus corrupt? ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... and fifty years afterwards, the gigantic attempt had become but the dim record of a past never to return. With the successors of Innocent III. began the decline of the Papacy; it ceased to infuse life into humanity. A hundred years later, and the Church had become scandalously corrupt in the higher spheres of its hierarchy, persecuting and superstitious in the lower. A hundred years later it was the ally, and in one hundred more the servant of Caesar, and had lost ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... stand alone; or if I had not known that more than this was holden and required by the Fathers of the Reformation, and by the Churches collectively, since the Council of Nice at latest, the only exceptions being that doubtful one of the corrupt Romish Church implied, though not avowed, in its equalisation of the Apocryphal Books with those of the Hebrew Canon, and the irrelevant one of the few and obscure sects who acknowledge no historical Christianity. This somewhat more, in which Jerome, Augustine, ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... complaint for the purpose of obtaining the pay due to the soldiers; while they on their side, imputing to his connivance the non-fulfilment of the promise, became thus in part alienated from him. Much of his mischief was brought about by the treacherous intrigues and calumny of a corrupt Greek from Maroneia, named Herakleides; who acted as minister and treasurer ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... and afterwards, his offence being of too ugly a nature, had resolved on cutting off his head. He postponed the execution, however, till after Corpus Domini; and Farnese, getting wind of the Pope's will, summoned Pietro Chiavelluzi with a lot of horses, and managed to corrupt some of the castle guards with money. Accordingly, upon the day of Corpus Domini, while the Pope was going in procession, Farnese got into a basket and was let down by a rope to the ground. At that time the outer walls had not been built around the castle; ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... Without such claim he had no ground for attempting reelection. The frivolity of the Whig machine in the Sangamon region was evinced by their rotation agreement. Out of such grossly personal politics Lincoln had gone to Washington; into this essentially corrupt system he relapsed. He faced, politically, a blank wall. And he had within him as yet, no consciousness of any power that might cleave the wall asunder. What was ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... one can stand against him. With his brandished club, like Giant Despair in the Pilgrim's Progress, he knocks out their brains; and not only no individual but no corrupt system could hold out against his powerful and repeated attacks, but with the same weapon, swung round like a flail, that he levels his antagonists, he lays his friends low, and puts his own party hors de combat. This is a bad propensity., and a worse ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... exacted in kind. In the primitive simplicity of small communities, this method may be well adapted to collect the almost voluntary offerings of the people; but it is at once susceptible of the utmost latitude, and of the utmost strictness, which in a corrupt and absolute monarchy must introduce a perpetual contest between the power of oppression and the arts of fraud. The agriculture of the Roman provinces was insensibly ruined, and, in the progress of despotism which ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... Marquess of Buckingham's government had been strict economy, but when this struggle terminated every source of influence was thrown open in order to prevent future opposition to its measures. This system of corrupt influence was continued after the Earl of Westmoreland was appointed lord-lieutenant, in 1730, notwithstanding strenuous opposition had been made to it by the patriotic party. In order to render their opposition more systematic and strong, this party formed themselves into a Whig club, similar to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Reader, which follows the dedicatory epistle, is unsigned, but appears to have been written by Campion. "What epigrams are in poetry," it begins, "the same are airs in music: then in their chief perfection when they are short and well seasoned. But to clog a light song with a long preludium is to corrupt the nature of it. Many rests in music were invented either for necessity of the fugue, or granted as an harmonical licence in songs of many parts; but in airs I find no use they have, unless it be to make a vulgar and trivial modulation seem to the ignorant strange, ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... in section 3, line 4, the omission of the word "he" after the word "corrupt," which destroys the grammatical construction of the language and was probably a ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... duke and Francis' domains. He made himself master of all the correspondence, conceived the plan to come here himself and intends to carry off the true lord's bride. Indeed, in private, he has acknowledged it all to me, and, failing to corrupt me to his service, last night set ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... upon the stock-watering game and their own immediate enrichment, would crowd the honest men to the wall. Every line of least resistance is with the get-rich-quick type of manager. To hold his power and to corrupt us politically; to appropriate continuous unearned increment through overcapitalization, he must work not for the public good, but largely against it. In most free competitive business there is no such inherent antagonism ...
— The Conflict between Private Monopoly and Good Citizenship • John Graham Brooks
... become more and more unpopular. The army, which had saved England from Stuart despotism, did not relish the spectacle of a small group of men, many of them selfish and corrupt, presuming to govern the country Cromwell found them "horridly arbitrary" and at last resolved to have done with them. He entered the House of Commons with a band of musketeers and ordered the members home. "Come, come," he ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... large, showy foundation of the paper-like flowers of antennaria, or everlasting. The wood thrush frequently weaves a fragment of newspaper or a white rag into the foundation of its nest. "Evil communications corrupt good manners." The newspaper and the rag-bag unsettle the wits of the birds. The phoebe-bird is capable of this kind of mistake or indiscretion. All the past generations of her tribe have built upon natural and, therefore, neutral sites, usually under shelving and overhanging ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... afterwards that it was an accident! So easy to spirit Brown away! So easy to explain everything! Why, Ravengar, you intended to murder me! I saw the whole scheme in a flash. You have corrupted many of my servants to-day. But you didn't corrupt all of them. And because you didn't, because you couldn't, I am alive. You would like to know how I got out. But you will never know, Ravengar. You will ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... long time as utterly inadmissible, as it was so clearly at variance with the chronology of our own sacred books; but, as time went on, large fragments of the original work of Manetho were more carefully studied and distinguished from corrupt transcriptions, the lists of kings at Karnak, Sacquarah, and the two temples at Abydos were brought to light, and the lists of court architects were discovered. Among all these monuments the scholar who visits ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... (Cleopatra, in order that she may betray her husband. On which Appian says that doubting his ability to make himself master of Egypt by force, because of the protection of the Romans, he wished to attempt it by cunning). "He shall wish to corrupt her, but she shall not stand on his side, neither be for him. Then he shall turn his face to other designs, and shall think to make himself master of some isles," (that is to say, seaports), "and shall take ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... and cut out the tongues of the women, lest they should corrupt their speech. And because of the silence of the women from their own speech, the men of Armorica are called Britons. From that time there came frequently, and still comes, that language from ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... of the aristocracy is being swept away. Why it should ever have been a matter of pride with old families to point to the English nobility of the 17th century as the class from which they sprang is not easy to understand. The lords of that day were usually corrupt, unscrupulous and quite unfit to found vigorous families in the "wilderness of America." How much better it is to know that the aristocracy of the colony was a product of Virginia itself! The self-respect, the power of command, the hospitality, the chivalry of the Virginians ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... Fu was good-natured but dissipated and corrupt. He called upon us the evening of our arrival and almost immediately asked if we had any shotgun cartridges. He remarked that he had a gun but no shells, and as we did not offer to give him any he continued to ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... appeal so solemn and a soul so pure a man less corrupt would have faltered; but without a moment's hesitation this depraved, remorseless creature did ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... art of the Renaissance, it did not corrupt it. The art of the Renaissance fell indeed into shameful degradation soon after the period of its triumphant union with the antique; and Raphael's grand gods and goddesses, his exquisite Eros and radiant Psyche of the Farnesina, are indeed succeeded but too soon by the Olympus of Giulio ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... natural dialectic, i. e. a disposition, to argue against these strict laws of duty and to question their validity, or at least their purity and strictness; and, if possible, to make them more accordant with our wishes and inclinations, that is to say, to corrupt them at their very source, and entirely to destroy their worth—a thing which even common practical reason cannot ultimately ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... of the old Navigation System, limiting the coasting trade to British ships, was repealed, and a Bill also passed for preventing corrupt practices at elections. Owing to the war, the Reform Bill was withdrawn, Lord John Russell, on announcing the fact in Parliament, being overcome, and giving way to tears. In the short session, which took place during the latter half of December, a Foreign Enlistment Act was passed, providing ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... consequence to the maintenance of the constitution of this country, that the reputation of Parliament should be maintained. But nothing could prejudice its character so much, as a vote, which should lead the people to believe, that the legislative body was the more corrupt part of it, and that it was ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... notion that Lord B[yron] had any mischievous intention in these publications—and readily acquit him of any wish to corrupt the morals, or impair the happiness of his readers ... but it is our duty ... to say, that much of what he has published appears to us to have this tendency.... How opposite to this is the system, or the temper, of the great author of Waverley!"—Edinburgh Review, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... what not, he should never trouble himself about the evil consequences of the vices. He should be too much of a philosopher and artist to remember that he is a respectable citizen. But this is what Dickens never forgets, and he renounces all beauties requiring so corrupt a soil. M. Taine's conclusion upon the whole nevertheless is, that though those triumphs of art which become the property of all the earth have not been his, much has yet been achieved by him. Out of ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... poet Moore visited America. He wrote home a number of poetical epistles, in which he told his friends that he had found us old in our youth and blasted in our prime. The demon gold was running loose; everything and everybody was corrupt; truth, (p. 089) conscience, and virtue were regularly made matters of barter and sale. A succession of English travelers repeated from year to year the same dismal story, and their statements were caught ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... the end of the perspective, rises a chapel designed with infinite taste and simple elegance by M. A. Buonarotti. Further on, an ancient church, in the corrupt Greek style of the primitive Christians, incrusted with white marble, porphyry, and verd antique. The interior presents a crowded assemblage of ornaments, elaborate mosaic pavements, and inlaid work without end. The high altar, placed ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... this, as in most other cases of conquest throughout the East, success was followed almost immediately by degeneracy. As captive Greece captured her fierce conqueror, so the subdued Assyrians began at once to corrupt their subduers. Without condescending to a close imitation of Assyrian manners and customs, the Medes proceeded directly after their conquest to relax the severity of their old habits and to indulge in the delights of soft and ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... conflict caused me all sorts of other mortifications. For one thing, it gave me no end of hostile publicity. The socialist Yiddish daily, which had an overwhelmingly wide circulation now, printed reports of meetings at which I had been hissed and hooted. I was accused of bribing corrupt politicians who were supposed to help me suppress the strike by means of police clubs. I was charged with bringing disgrace ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... General John E. Wool commanded the Department of California, having succeeded General Hitchcock, and had his headquarters at Benicia; and a Mr. Van Ness was mayor of the city. Politics had become a regular and profitable business, and politicians were more than suspected of being corrupt. It was reported and currently believed that the sheriff (Scannell) had been required to pay the Democratic Central Committee a hundred thousand dollars for his nomination, which was equivalent to an election, for an office of the nominal salary of twelve thousand dollars a year for four years. ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... parts are planned with judgment and adjusted with skill; the length allotted to each incident is just enough; the speeches, though not omitted, are not inserted at the tyrannous length in which later mediaeval and even Renaissance historians indulged from corrupt following of the ancients. But no abstract could show—though the few scraps of actual phrase purposely inserted may convey glimpses of it—the vigour and picturesqueness of the recital. That Villehardouin was ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... cannot at first lay claim to effectual results, because I have to meet too much opposition. The chief thing is that my present works should prove themselves to be taking a firm footing in musical matters, and should contribute something towards doing away with what is corrupt... ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... always the case with those who embrace error. The vice does not lie in assenting to the proofs they see; but in being blind to many of the proofs that offer. So that, though our erroneous opinions be involuntary when formed, yet as we have been wilfully corrupt, or very negligent in forming them, we deserve punishment for our vice, or contempt for our folly.' My wife now kept up the conversation, though not the argument: she observed, that several very prudent men of our acquaintance ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... lubricous, equivocal anecdotes without troubling himself very much as to whether ladies were present or not. He was wont to say Castis sunt omnia casta, "To the pure all things are pure," and whoever blushed had, no doubt, a good reason for blushing, and was therefore corrupt enough already. The ladies, however, pretended not to hear, and began conversing with their neighbours without taking any notice of the hoarse laughter of the young bucks, who held it a point of honour to applaud the witticisms of the ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... each annoyance crowded upon her with redoubled force it was anything but agreeable to listen to the frequent outbursts of uncontrollable anger or to look upon a face made hideous by those degrading exhibitions of a coarse and corrupt nature. ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... that the corrupt lives of Christians in the later centuries of the middle ages, the avarice of the Avignon popes, the selfishness shown in the great schism, the simony and nepotism of the Roman court of the fifteenth century, ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... Mr. Buckalew, "which I have to a large extension of suffrage in this country, whether by Federal or State power, is this: that thereby you will corrupt and degrade elections, and probably lead to their complete abrogation hereafter. By pouring into the ballot-boxes of the country a large mass of ignorant votes, and votes subjected to pecuniary or social influence, you will corrupt and degrade your elections and lay the foundation for ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... the agitation of the European whose susceptibility is offended at a state of things that he finds hard to reconcile with the reverence and purity of Divine worship; but it is the outcry of the reverent Hindu against one of the corrupt and degrading practices that, in the course of centuries, have crept into his religion. In this particular instance the Mysore Government cannot be accused of acting hastily. As long ago as February, 1892, they issued a circular order describing the ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... the little whistling bullets—our love-messengers between nation and nation—have brought pleasant messages from us to many a man before now; orders of sweet release, and leave at last to go where he will be most welcome and most happy. At the worst you do but shorten his life, you do not corrupt his life. But if you put him to base labour, if you bind his thoughts, if you blind his eyes, if you blunt his hopes, if you steal his joys, if you stunt his body, and blast his soul, and at last leave him not so much as to reap the poor fruit of his degradation, but gather that for yourself, and ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... institutions,—that our struggle is that of the people against an oligarchy." We have evidence that this is partially true of the British people. But we know also how much they are influenced by their political and social superiors, and we know, too, what base influences have been long at work to corrupt their judgment and inflame their prejudices. We have too often had occasion to see that the middle classes had been reached by the passions of their superiors, or infected by the poison instilled by traitorous emissaries. We have been struck with this ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... my head men, or the judges I have appointed to hear it; it is their business to make me a true report, and give me their opinion on the merits of the case; and although I am not now supposed to hear it, yet I am so situated as to hear the whole, and can thereby check any corrupt practices in ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... coepere. (i) Tib. Gracchus by his Agrarian Law tried to counteract the selfish land-grabbing of the ruling class (in excess of the 500 iugera limit of the Licinian Laws, 367 B.C.). (ii) C. Gracchus exposed the corrupt Senatorian Courts, transferred their judicial power to the Equites, and carried the Sempronian Law, 'one of the cornerstones of individual liberty.' 5. per socios ... Latinum, by working on Roman jealousy against the Italians, for whom equality was claimed. 6. spes societatis, i.e. ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... Europeans, due chiefly to the fierce resistance of the native Caribs. France ceded possession to Great Britain in 1763, which made the island a colony in 1805. In 1980, two years after independence, Dominica's fortunes improved when a corrupt and tyrannical administration was replaced by that of Mary Eugenia CHARLES, the first female prime minister in the Caribbean, who remained in office for ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... public service, especially the part immediately following the Civil War, a battle to maintain the purity of elections and the purity of administration and government expenditure against corruption. The attempt to get possession of the forces of the Government for corrupt purposes assumed its most dangerous form and had its most unscrupulous and dangerous leader in Massachusetts. It was my fortune to have a good deal to do with maintaining the ancient honor of the Commonwealth and defending and vindicating the purity ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... not true its very boldness and apparent foolishness would be its refutation. And what would be the character of mind that could invent such a thought? What depths of wickedness! What cruelty! What callousness! The spring from which such a statement, if false, could rise must be corrupt indeed. But how different in fact! What severe righteousness! What depths of holiness! What elevated morality! What warmth of tender affection! What clear reasoning! Every word that he has written testifies that he has not attempted to deceive. Paul was no deceiver, and it ...
— Studies in Prophecy • Arno C. Gaebelein
... from the banks led the legislature of 1836 to abolish all taxation for state purposes. This was hardly done, however, before the panic of 1837 wiped out a large portion of the banks' assets; next came revelations of grossly careless and even of corrupt management, and in 1843 the banks were placed in liquidation. After disposing of all their available assets, the state assumed the remaining liabilities, for which it had pledged its faith and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the whole truth," said Spikeman, with rising passion, "and avow that like a thief thou didst steal in to corrupt the affections of my ward, and teach her undutifulness ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... (if it become thus insipid), or unsavoury, it is therefore good for nothing, but to be cast out, and trodden under foot of men. Such jesting which doth not season wholesome or harmless discourse, but giveth a haut gout to putrid and poisonous stuff, gratifying distempered palates and corrupt stomachs, is indeed odious and despicable folly, to be cast out with loathing, to be trodden under foot with contempt. If a man offends in this sort, to please himself, 'tis scurvy malignity; if to delight ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... she had contributed several thousand dollars to the Peoples' Council, and that she intended to contribute more. She had put up bail for a whole bunch of Reds and Pacifists, and she intended to put up bail for McCormick and his friends, just as soon as the corrupt capitalist courts had been forced to admit them to bail. "I know McCormick well, and he's a lovely boy," she said. "I don't believe he had anything more to do with ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... into being, since it annulled all those glorious privileges in which ancient patriots gloried, and prevented that scope for energies which made Rome mistress of the world. It was impossible for the empire to grow stronger and grander. It must needs become weaker and more corrupt, since despotism did not kindle the ambition of the people, but suppressed their noblest sentiments, and confined their energies to inglorious pursuits. Men might acquire more gigantic fortunes under the emperors than in the times of the republic, and art might be more extensively ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... early centuries of the Christian era, so wild, enthusiastic and corrupt were the sentiments of some Millenarians, that this book ceased in great measure to be read or studied; and even its divine authority came to be questioned by many learned and pious men. As the "Dark Ages" of Popery resulted from neglect of the sacred Scriptures ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... villages furnishes in great abundance, and in much too great a proportion, are livery servants and domestics of luxury. Whilst this lasts, the country will be depopulated of all those useful ranks who cultivate the soil, and the towns will be peopled with the idle and corrupt. Many women and young girls, who were only sempstresses and under servants, have found advancement in the great cities, and in the capital. They have become waiting maids, embroiderers, and milliners. One might say that luxury had exhausted ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... that he may deal with them as suits his artistic purpose. But what was the purpose to be in this case? Should it be a tragedy of austere patriotism going down against a relatively bad order too strong to be resisted, or a tragedy of corrupt ambition dashing itself to death against a relatively good order too strong to be overthrown? Either conception, if consistently worked out, might have sufficed for the groundwork of a good historical tragedy. What Schiller did, however, was to vacillate between ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... Bristow, of Kentucky, became Secretary of the Treasury, a man of superior ability, aggressive honesty, and moral firmness. He quickly uncovered a mass of various wrongdoing,—the safe-burglary frauds of the corrupt ring governing Washington, the seal-lock frauds, the subsidy frauds, and, most formidable of all, the frauds of the powerful whiskey ring having headquarters in St. Louis. The administration of the Treasury Department, ...
— Ulysses S. Grant • Walter Allen
... Whan he wax sek, thei woxen seke; For as the man hath passioun Of seknesse, in comparisoun So soffren othre creatures. Lo, ferst the hevenly figures, The Sonne and Mone eclipsen bothe, And ben with mannes senne wrothe; 920 The purest Eir for Senne alofte Hath ben and is corrupt fulofte, Right now the hyhe wyndes blowe, And anon after thei ben lowe, Now clowdy and now clier it is: So may it proeven wel be this, A mannes Senne is forto hate, Which makth the welkne to debate. And forto se the proprete Of every thyng in his degree, 930 Benethe forth among ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... to be startled when I told him that this 'notable fact' appeared to me to be quite in accordance with the nature of things, as set forth in the sound old maxim cited by the Apostle, that 'evil communications corrupt good manners.' So long as thirty years ago, the American Census showed that in the six New England States, in which the proportion of illiterate native Americans to the native white population was 1 to 312, ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... am charged with violating pledges which I never gave, and, because I execute what I believe to be the law, with usurping powers not conferred by law, and, above all, with using the powers conferred upon the President by the Constitution from corrupt motives and for unwarrantable ends. And these charges are made without any particle of evidence to sustain them, and, as I solemnly affirm, without ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... however, Lord Rotherwood burst in to borrow Valetta for a donkey-ride, for which his lady had compounded instead of the paddling and castle-building, and certainly poor Val could not do much to corrupt Fly on donkey back, and in his presence. He further routed out Gillian, nothing loth, from her algebra, bidding her put on her seven-leagued boots, and not get bent double—- and he would fain have seized on his cousin Jane, but she was already gone off for an interview ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... home. He was a sojourner here, a wanderer. His citizenship was in Heaven. He was a pilgrim passing thru a strange and weary land, and the only purpose of the pilgrimage was a preparation for the life to come. The nature of man himself was corrupt. The world around him was evil. Alone and unaided he was powerless. He was lost both for this world and the next. The storms of life were about him, the great waves were ready to engulf him. But ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... he and the overwhelming majority of the British people would not be ready to give support. He again said that resistance would be justified only because the people had not been consulted, and the Government's policy was "part of a corrupt parliamentary bargain." He refused to acknowledge the right of the Government "to carry such a Revolution by such means," and as they appeared to be resolved to do so, Mr. Bonar Law and the party he led "would use any means to deprive them of the power they had usurped, and to ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... There is no refuge or asylum but with the Almighty; from God we came, and to God we must return; but if you put us to death, you will do it wrongfully, for the treacherous vizier hath accused me falsely, and he alone is guilty.' She then informed us of his having endeavoured to corrupt her by rich presents, and that she had put his ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... centuries were not governed by a system of education which would render their students very eminent either as scholars or as gentlemen: and the monasteries, which were used as seminaries, even until the reformation, taught only the corrupt Latin used by the ecclesiastics. The time however was approaching, when the united efforts of Stanbridge, Linacre, Sir John Cheke, Dean Colet, Erasmus, William Lily, Roger Ascham, &c., were successful in reviving the Latin tongue in all its purity; and even in exciting a taste ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... audiens Colcius tempus et horan in tabula describers.—Adamnan, 66. Columba is said to have blessed one hundred polaires or tablets (Leabhar Breac, fo. 16-60; Stokes (M.), 51). The boy Benen, who followed Patrick, bore tablets on his back (folaire, corrupt for polaire).—Stokes (W.), T. L., 47. Patrick gave to Fiacc a case containing a tablet. Ib. 344. An example of a waxed tablet, with a case for it, is in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy. The case is ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... individual in a trial with the crown, would have a much greater chance of obtaining justice than in the supreme court; because the two members of it are to be appointed from the magistracy, and might be selected by the governor from their known zeal and corrupt devotedness to his service. But it is of infinitely greater importance that the decisions of this latter court should be the less exposed of the two to the possibility of bias; because in the former the injury which an ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... it means if your marriage may not be dissolved. It means that you must go on living with this man whose life is so degrading. Year in, year out, as long as your life lasts you must let him humiliate and corrupt you with his company, his companions and his example, until you are dragged down, down, down to the filth he lives in himself, and your very soul is contaminated. Is that what the ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... with the talkative Annette, that this young man was making a change for the worse, and could not forbear silently lamenting, that he should be drawn from the innocence and beauty of these scenes, to the corrupt ones of ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... has disappeared from the life of the capital. To-day the Mexican is not anxious to parade his wealth, nor even to venture it in business. He is much more minded to bury it in the earth, to hide it in his socks, to lay it up in the great republic to the north, where neither presidents corrupt nor ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... means improbable that the order in which such sounds are now repeated in the West, is the original order in which they existed in our language, and that our more polished mode of expressing them is a new and perhaps a corrupt enunciation. Another peculiarity is that of joining the letter y at the end of some verbs in the infinitive mood, as well as to parts of different conjugations, thus, "I can't sewy, nursy, reapy, to sawy, to sewy, to nursy, &c. A further ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings
... his engagement by reason of a drunken brawl, and he was now living with his sister, the wife of a small rancher near by. He was vain, lazy, and unspeakably corrupt, full of open boasting of his exploits in the drinking-dens of the East. No sooner did he fix eyes upon Virginia than he marked her for his special prey. He had the depraved heart of the herder and the insolent confidence of the hoodlum, and something of this the girl perceived. ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... bold, ingenious and quick-witted men, but it is doubtful if Gushing possessed the dash and intrepidity which Butler showed in dealing with the situation at Baltimore. That portion of his military career was certainly a good success, and how far he should be held responsible for the corrupt proceedings of his brother at New Orleans I do ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... House of Correction in Odense. Despised and repulsed by the better class of her fellow-beings, she went to her punishment. No one had dreamed that under so fair a form so corrupt a soul could have been found. She was set to the spinning-wheel; silent and introverted, she accomplished the tasks that were assigned her. In the coarse merriment of the other prisoners she ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... God does that by your children. I say that we cannot watch our children without seeing that, though there is in them, as in us, a corrupt and wilful flesh, which tempts them downward to selfish and self-willed pleasures: yet there is in them generally, more than in us their parents, a Spirit which makes them love and admire what is right, ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... trouble it by such advocacy. If anything could check just or generous expression, it would be the tone adopted by Dr. Lightfoot; but nevertheless I again say, in the most unreserved manner, that neither in this instance nor in any other have I had the most distant intention of attributing "corrupt motives" to a man like Dr. Westcott, whose single-mindedness I recognise, and for whose earnest character I feel genuine respect. The utmost that I have at any time intended to point out is that, utterly possessed as he ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... of some description was necessary, for Richard was neither to go to school nor to college. Sir Austin considered that the schools were corrupt, and maintained that young lads might by parental vigilance be kept pretty secure from the Serpent until Eve sided with him: a period that might be deferred, he said. He had a system of education for his son. How it worked ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... wanted in order to restore unity of action—not an additional general, where there were already generals in plenty. Sir John Norris, valiant, courageous, experienced—even if not, as Walsingham observed, a "religious soldier," nor learned in anything "but a kind of licentious and corrupt government"—was not likely to require the assistance of the new lieutenant-general in field operations nor could the army be brought into a state of thorough discipline and efficiency by the magic of Leicester's name. The rank ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... nothing whatsoever evil: yea, not only to Thee, but also to Thy creation as a whole, because there is nothing without, which may break in, and corrupt that order which Thou hast appointed it. But in the parts thereof some things, because unharmonising with other some, are accounted evil: whereas those very things harmonise with others, and are good; and in themselves are good. And all these things which harmonise not together, do yet with the inferior ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... straightway forgot what he had uttered during his vision. Before he passed away, he spoke once more, saying: "If such be the rest which the righteous obtain after their death, it were better for them to die than live in this corrupt world ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... frightful devastation, advanced upon Halle; from this place he renewed his demands on the Elector, in a tone still more urgent and threatening. The previous policy of this prince, both from his own inclination, and the persuasions of his corrupt ministers had been to promote the interests of the Emperor, even at the expense of his own sacred obligations, and but very little tact had hitherto kept him inactive. All this but renders more astonishing the infatuation of the Emperor or his ministers in ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... occasions, be as impossible as if the sovereign had committed it himself. In all barbarous governments, accordingly, in all those ancient governments of Europe in particular, which were founded upon the ruins of the Roman empire, the administration of justice appears for a long time to have been extremely corrupt; far from being quite equal and impartial, even under the best monarchs, and altogether ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... and four feet in breadth. On the right side of the entrance door is a staircase in the wall, leading to the top of the building, and much resembling in its mode of construction the staircase in the principal temple of Baalbec. The remains of the capitals of columns betray a very corrupt taste, being badly sculptured, and without any elegance either in design or execution; and the temple seems to have been built in the latest times of paganism, and was perhaps subsequently repaired, and converted into a church. The stone with which ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... some passages as the various editions were published, but in the preface to his last edition he wrote: "there appeared indeed no necessity to amplify or in any way to alter the text of the Diary beyond the correction of a few verbal errors and corrupt passages ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... command was, of course, a ludicrous failure. The Rebel officers standing near Barrett laughed openly at his stupidity in giving such an order, but he was furious. He hurled at us a torrent of the vilest abuse the corrupt imagination of man can conceive, and swore until he was fairly black in the face. He fired his revolver off over our heads, and shrieked and shouted until he had to stop from sheer exhaustion. Another officer took command then, and marched ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... break the matter to the other members of the crew. In this they proceeded cautiously, and succeeded so far as to gain over twenty-two of the whole, leaving eighteen who remained faithful to their trust. Every means were used to corrupt the well disposed; both persuasion and threats were resorted to, but without effect, and the leader of the conspiracy, the mate, began to despair of obtaining the desired object. Soto, however, was not so easily depressed. He at once decided on seizing the ship upon the strength ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... Devil take it all! was he still dreaming? A subtle odour came wafting from the rustling silk of her attire, a breath of depravity, as though hailing from the corrupt life of some big city; a bewildering, insinuating atmosphere, that had of a sudden overpowered the delicious freshness of ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... only means of saving Carthage, if there was still time to do so. This opposition was swayed by a strong patriotic and reforming enthusiasm; but the fact cannot withal be overlooked, that it rested on a corrupt and rotten basis. The body of citizens in Carthage, which is compared by well-informed Greeks to the people of Alexandria, was so disorderly that to that extent it had well deserved to be powerless; and it might well be asked, what good could arise from revolutions, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... Jaina will give exactly the same answer as the Buddhist with respect to Buddha. He is originally an erring man, bound with the bonds of the world, who,—not by the help of a teacher, nor by the revelation of the Vedas—which, he declares, are corrupt—but by his own power, has attained to omniscience and freedom, and out of pity for suffering mankind preaches and declares the way of salvation, which he has found. Because he has conquered the world and the enemies in the human heart, he is called Jina "the Victor", Mahavira, "the great ...
— On the Indian Sect of the Jainas • Johann George Buehler
... into a frigate, if necessary, to watch them better. It is by no means obligatory to accept these gross aspersions as significant of anything worse than the suspiciousness prevalent throughout the Navy, traceable ultimately to a corrupt administration of the Admiralty. The latter, like the government of 1756, was open to censure through political maladministration; every one feared that blame would be shifted on to him, as it had been on to Byng,—who deserved it; and not only so, but that blame would be pushed on to ruin, ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... under nearly every possible advantage of influential support. It was presented to the House and to the public as a measure eminently wise and beneficial. It was supported in the House by many powerful and honorable members who had not the remotest suspicion of the corrupt purpose lying at the bottom of it. Apparently it was on the point of adoption when, from among the members belonging to the upper counties, there arose this raw youth, who had only just taken his seat, and who, without any information ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... breed, exist, decay. 'Tis now so huge, that he must be an ass Who thinks it ever can be clear'd away: And the time's quickly coming, to be candid, When funded men will swallow up the landed. 'Then will these debt-bred reptiles, hungry vermin, Fed from the mass corrupt of which I spoke, Usurp your place. A Jew, a dirty German, Who has grown rich by many a lucky stroke, Shall rule the Minister, and all determined To treat your bitter sufferings as a joke. Said I, he shall! It will be nothing new; The Treasury now ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... to give seven or eight hundred pounds in fees, we may be kept waiting a year, with the chance of being put to greater expense to prove our right; for he tells me the court and all about it are so corrupt that no minister is valued if he do not, by straight or crooked ways, draw money into the treasury, and that they will rather impede than aid the course of justice if it be to the king's interest, and that none will stir a hand to the advantage of any one but the king, unless it be secretly ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... but a lively and constant sense of religious principle; which enlarges the heart till it can love our neighbour as ourself, which brightens the present with the hopes of the future, which purifies our corrupt nature, and elevates its grovelling earthward tendencies by the contemplation of an eternal state of being dependent upon our conduct in this transient state of trial. Who can tell the extent to which these and similar ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... road, and suddenly, in a ditch—the dead! They have dragged themselves here from the battlefield—they are all corrupt now. The coming of darkness makes it difficult to distinguish their nationality, but the same great pity envelops them all. Only one word for them: poor boy! The night for these ignominies—and then again the morning. ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... of conscience for the murders he may have committed or hired others to commit. More likely a fear that he himself might some day meet a similar fate; like all despots he dreaded the steel of the assassin. By his corrupt administration, he had encouraged bravoism till it had become a dangerous element in the social life of his country—almost an institution—and it was but natural he should fear the bravo's blade ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... The symbols on banners and shields were carefully attended to. Heraldry was an important branch of knowledge. Precedence was strictly insisted on. And those various salutes of which we now use the abridgments were gone through in full. Even during our own last century, with its corrupt House of Commons and little-curbed monarchs, we may mark a correspondence of social formalities. Gentlemen were still distinguished from lower classes by dress; people sacrificed themselves to inconvenient ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... There are, of course, exceptions to this, as to every rule; for we have known many industrious, and even respectable well-conducted men, as bullock-drivers; but unfortunately they were only the exceptions: the general mass are as corrupt and vicious as it is possible for human beings to be. Why this is so, we are at a loss rightly to understand; though we imagine the primary cause is this: Attendant on bullock-driving are many discomforts; more, possibly, than in any other occupation in the bush. Hence it ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... a request that her mother would receive her eldest daughter, who, though at the early age of five years, she feared would receive injurious influences from the corrupt state of society around her, and accordingly, not long after, sent her to Scotland; but before her arrival, her grandmother had been called to a better world. In reference to this event Mrs. Graham wrote to her bereaved father ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... individual for the happiness of the race, that destroys an enfeebled species to fatten the victorious species. No, no; that is crime. There is in that only foulness and murder. He was right this evening in the church. The earth is corrupt, science only serves to show its rottenness. It is on high that we must all seek a refuge. Oh, master, I entreat you, let me save myself, let me ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... emotions of the soul, should call forth and develop the fiercest, the darkest, and most unrelenting passions of the human heart! Yet so it proved in this instance. Their fierce, fanatical enthusiasm was a powerful element of strength to the Roundheads, which was lacking to the effeminate, corrupt, and godless Cavaliers. With such an auxiliary the struggle could not be doubtful; religious fanaticism ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... And again: "I am sick of the whole damned performance." He was, like the kind little man already quoted, another so-called victim of the bottle. But Mackay was miles from publishing his weakness to the world; laid the blame of his failure on corrupt masters and a corrupt State policy; and after he had been one night overtaken and had played the buffoon in his cups, sternly, though not without tact, suppressed all reference to his escapade. It was a treat to see him manage this: ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... can convey an adequate notion of the corrupt state of the clergy at the time. To form any just appreciation of this, it is necessary to take a peep at some of the documents that have survived—such a document, for instance, as that Bull of this Pope Pius II ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... victim, and with the voice of supplication call upon the augur:—"Master, have mercy on me: vouchsafe unto me a way of escape!" Slave, would you then have aught else then what is best? is there anything better than what is God's good pleasure? Why, as far as in you lies, would you corrupt your Judge, ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... most other very original things they drew after them a flock of imbecile imitations; and up to the present day those who have lived in the remoter parts of Scotland must know, or recently remember, dreary compositions in corrupt following of the Noctes, with exaggerated attempts at Christopher's worst mannerisms, and invariably including a ghastly caricature of the Shepherd. Even in themselves they abound in stumbling-blocks, which are perhaps multiplied, at least at ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... hope and fear their objects find? Shall dull suspense corrupt the stagnant mind? Must helpless man, in ignorance sedate, Roll darkling down the torrent of his fate? Shall no dislike alarm, no wishes rise, No cries attempt the mercy of the skies? Enthusiast[574], cease; petitions yet remain, Which Heav'n may hear, nor deem ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... institutions of religion, and the Bible be neglected and trodden under foot. And when the morality, and religion, and the conscience of the majority of our nation are gone, what but a miracle can save our liberties from ruin? Corrupt the majority, and what security is there in popular elections? Corrupt the majority, and you have collected together the explosive materials that need only the touch of some demagogue's torch to scatter the fair temple of our independence ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society |
