"Debased" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... beyond the caprice and the tyranny of corrupt administrations, and secure hereafter the first monarchy in Europe from the possibility of sinking under weak Princes, by whom the royal splendour of France has too often been debased into the mere tool of vicious and mercenary noblesse, and sycophantic courtiers. A King, protected by a Constitution, can do no wrong. He is unshackled with responsibility. He is empowered with the comfort of exercising the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... disingenuous himself, was slow to credit duplicity in others, did not once suspect that the profligates had played him off this trick, rather to annoy the brother than himself. It was, after all, nothing but the discreditable triumph of cunning and debased minds, over the inexperience, or vanity, if you will, of one, who, whatever his foibles might be, would himself scorn to take an ungenerous advantage of confidence reposed in him in consequence of his good opinion ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... saints together in a hut; Young Rustick, where a corner seemed to jut; A bed of rushes for the novice placed, Since sleeping on the floor had her debased, Who, yet unused to hardships, much must feel: 'Twas best that these should on her senses steal. A little fruit, and bread not over fine, She had for supper:—water too for wine. The hermit fasted; but the lady fed, And ate with appetite her fruit ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... composed of degenerate beings, corrupted and enfeebled by the vices of society, without being benefited by its civilization. That proud independence which formed the main pillar of savage virtue has been shaken down, and the whole moral fabric lies in ruins. Their spirits are humiliated and debased by a sense of inferiority, and their native courage cowed and daunted by the superior knowledge and power of their enlightened neighbors. Society has advanced upon them like one of those withering ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... seen a class so deeply demoralised, so incurably debased by selfishness, so corroded within, so incapable of progress, as the English bourgeoisie; and I mean by this, especially the bourgeoisie proper, particularly the Liberal, Corn Law repealing bourgeoisie. For it nothing exists ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... owe but fifty pence. He was probably a rich man, which might appear from the generous entertainment he made. He was a respectable man. The sect to which he belonged was the most celebrated and influential among the Jews; and when not debased by positive crime, a Pharisee was always esteemed for his learning and his piety. He had some interest in Christ, either in his mission or his character,—an interest beyond mere curiosity, or he would not have invited him to dine with him. He betrays a sincere friendliness, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... chapter would have demonstrated what happens to all languages, that some neologisms, which at first are considered forced or inelegant, become sanctioned by use, and in time are quoted as authority in the very language which, in their early stage, they were imagined to have debased. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... and conduct. Even when he copies, he makes the thing his own by caricaturing it. Thus the plot of "Antonio's Revenge" is plainly taken from "Hamlet," but it is "Hamlet" passed through Marston's intellect and imagination, and so debased as to look original. Still, the intellect in Marston's tragedies strikes the reader as forcible in itself, and as capable of achieving excellence, if it could only be divorced from the bad disposition and deformed conscience which direct its exercise. He has fancy, and he frequently stutters ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... enjoyment, ministering to the various excitements of pleasure, wonder, suspense, or pain. And last, and in some respects most serious of all, our popular theology has largely conformed to the spirit of the age. Representative of a debased and emasculated Christianity, it attacks our humanity at its very core. It rings out to us, with wearisome iteration, as our one great concern, the saving of our own souls: degrades the religion of the Cross into a slightly-refined and long-sighted selfishness: and makes our following Him who "pleased ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... not so debased, but that its good points still excel its bad! Just as you see but one real miser in a fixed proportion of men; so, are there, I believe, quite as small a representative set of absolutely heartless persons. I am certain that the "good Samaritans" outvie the "Levites" in our ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... drawn; and dull, thick, silent-looking lips, of purplish red scarce redder than the red skin; pale blue eyes tending to a watery greyness, leaden, vague, sad, but with angry streakings of red; something inexpressibly sad, gloomy, helpless, vacant and debased in the whole face: such was the man who awaited Louise of Stolberg in the Compagnoni-Marefoschi palace at Macerata, and who, on Good Friday the 17th of April 1772, wedded her in the palace chapel and signed ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... government. In my opinion, the welfare of England, in great measure, depends upon what takes place at the hustings. If, in the majority of instances, there were abject conduct there, electors and elected would be alike debased; upright public men could not be expected to arise from such beginnings; and thoughtful persons would begin to consider whether some other form of government could not forthwith ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... Cavendish's sudden and reckless plunge into sodden, open dissipation, two years before, freshly called to Barclay's mind by Natalie's words, had pointed to almost any finale, however debased, however sordid. Barclay mentally invoked the face of his former friend, as he had seen it on the occasion of their last meeting, flushed, swollen-eyed, insolent, the fine patrician mouth hideously contorted and ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... the fashion to strain at effects,— Yes, that's what's the matter with Hannah! Our popular taste, by the tyros debased, Paints each ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
... wholly absorbed in creating the most perfect escape from those surroundings in the person of Amelia. Beside the figure of his 'favourite child,' the vicious criminals of his stage, the malefic My Lord, the loathsome Trent, the debased Justice, the terrible human wrecks in Newgate, are but dark figures in a shadowy back-ground. Still, the great moralist shows no lack of vigour in his delineations of such offspring of vice. The genius that knew how to rouse every reader of Tom Jones to 'lend a foot to kick Blifil ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... say before you leave. I confess, with self-abasement, that I once loved you, and with deep humiliation, amounting to agony, that that love was the cause of my ruin. The vail is now torn from my eyes, and I behold you as you are, a corrupted, debased, unfeeling demon, in the human form; and I would not even touch you with my finger's end, so deep is my detestation and abhorrence of your depravity! Aye, sir, even for me your very touch is defiling! But if ever you whisper ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison
... between England and Ireland assumed its real character; and although huxtering politicians have since endeavoured to set up the honour of the island for sale, they have only been able to dispose of their own characters. The people have not debased themselves. In the lying homage to the Queen of England they took no part. They have preserved through the severest trials the old immortal yearning of their race, and the arms they had provided themselves with in '48 they have guarded religiously, in the hope ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... the constables are excited, the audience are excited to amusement; Messrs. Fetter and Felsh's court rocks with excitement: the only unexcited person present is the criminal, who looks calmly on, as if contemplating with horror the debased condition of those in whose hands an unjust law has ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... taste of his time to desire, if not solicit patronage. In our opinion literature is degraded by patronage, while it is honored by the friendship of the good and great. Nothing is so loathsome in the history of letters as the debased dedications which men of mind some years ago laid at the feet of the so-styled "patron!" Literature in our days has only to assert its own dignity, to be true and faithful to the right, to avoid ribaldry, and preserve a noble and brave independence; and then its importance to the state, as the minister ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... all over the world," we heard him begin. "Deceived, decoyed, inveighed, in order to be made a laughing-stock before the most debased of all mankind, that woman and her associates." This was really a meditation. And then he screamed: "I will kill you all." Once more he started worrying the door but it was a startlingly feeble effort which he abandoned almost at once. He must have been at the end ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... but when we view the brutality of the act—when we think of the hardness of the heart that could not commiserate with the situation of Mrs. Wentworth—that was deaf to the appeals of a mother—blind to the illness of her child—the soul sickens with horror at the knowledge that a mortal so debased—so utterly devoid of the instincts of humanity which govern a brute—should exist on the earth. But the mask of religion is now torn from his face, and we see his own lineaments. Henceforth the scorn of all generous, minds will he receive, and turned from the respectable ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... the warriors, who seemed as they reclined, in native ease and gracefulness, with their half naked bodies exposed to view, rather like statues from some master hand, than beings of a race whom we had heard characterized as degenerate and debased. They were clad in leggins and moccasins of buckskin, and wore blankets, which were thrown around them in the manner of the Roman toga, so as to leave their right arms bare. The youngest among them were painted on their necks, with a bright vermilion color, and had their faces transversely ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... general approval, though some persons, M. des Rameures among them, thought it above the comprehension of the humble class for whom it was intended. M. de Tecle, however, backed by republican Durocher, insisted that the intelligence of the people was underrated; that they were frequently debased by those who pretended to speak only up to their level—and the passages ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... Louve. Three months since, like you, I was a poor, lost, abandoned creature. One day, he, of whom I speak with tears of gratitude,"—Fleur-de-Marie wiped her tears—"came to me; he was not afraid, debased and despised although I was, to speak to me words of consolation—the first I ever heard! I told him my sufferings, misery, and shame, without concealing anything, just as you have now related to me your life, La Louve. After having listened to me with kindness, he did not ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... hurt at all in being called a liar when you know you are not a liar. The accusation has sting only if you are a liar; and indeed it is comforting evidence of some inner self within us that only when we have ourselves debased that inner self become we open to wounds from without. That citadel is never taken by storm; only by treachery. No, the significance of the astounding letter reposed in the fact that her reception of it ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... men who had often been compared because of their common poetic strain and predilection for the examination of mental maladies, differed radically in the affective conceptions which held such a large place in their works; Baudelaire with his iniquitous and debased loves—cruel loves which made one think of the reprisals of an inquisition; Poe with his chaste, aerial loves, in which the senses played no part, where only the mind functioned without corresponding to organs which, ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... base to be so anxious to pluck this fruit of Katharine's unexampled generosity and of his own contemptible baseness. And yet, though he used these words automatically, they had now no meaning. He was not debased in his own eyes by what he had done, and as for praising Katharine, were they not partners, conspirators, people bent upon the same quest together, so that to praise the pursuit of a common end as an act of generosity ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... gratifying the mind with endless diversity. Other poets display cabinets of precious rarities, minutely finished, wrought into shape, and polished into brightness. Shakespeare opens a mine which contains gold and diamonds in unexhaustible plenty, though clouded by incrustations, debased by impurities, and mingled with a mass of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... proud Indian is at the feet of his ensnarer; disease has relaxed his iron sinews; drunkenness has debased his mind; and the myriad crimes and vices of civilized Europe have combined to sweep the aborigines of the soil from the face of the forest earth. The forest groans beneath the axe; but, after a few years, ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... perfect its protection, the more completely will the real character of a people be reflected, as by a mirror, in their laws and government. Political morality can never have any solid existence on a basis of individual immorality. Even freedom, exercised by a debased people, would come to be regarded as a nuisance, and liberty of the press but a vent for licentiousness ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... Debased Taoism.—This view naturally suggested the prolongation of earthly life by artificial means; hence the search for an elixir, carried on through many centuries by degenerate disciples of Taoism. But here we must pass on to consider some of the speculations on God, life, death, and immortality, ...
— Religions of Ancient China • Herbert A. Giles
... that clustered round the camp. But they say the mist must have cleared later on; at any rate they swear they could see London, see it and hear the roar of it. Both say they saw it not as they knew it at all, not debased by hundreds of thousands of lying advertisements, but transfigured, all its houses magnificent, its chimneys rising grandly into pinnacles, its vast squares full of the most gorgeous trees, transfigured and ...
— Tales of Three Hemispheres • Lord Dunsany
... have gorged themselves has opened to them alliances with the most ancient families, whose blood and character are thereby so far debased that their representatives resemble their ancestors no more in the generosity of their motives than they do in the purity ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... End to be attained through an intellectual regimen. The soul being debased by its connection with matter, the aim of human action is to regain the spiritual life. The first step is the practice of the cardinal virtues: the next the purifying virtues. Happiness is the undisturbed life of contemplation. Correspondence ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... piazza, women—saffron and poppy-coloured handkerchiefs tied round their dark heads—washed, with a fine impartiality, soiled linen and vegetables in an iron trough, grated for a third of its length, before a fountain of debased and flamboyant design. Their voices were alternately shrill and gutteral. It was perhaps as well not to understand too clearly all which they said. On the left came a break in the high, painted house-fronts, off which in places the plaster scaled, and from the windows of which ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... that agreement they did not think of that possibility. When they said a pound they thought of what was then a poundsworth of living. The Mint has since been increasing its annual output of gold coins to two or three times the former amount, and we have, as it were, debased the coinage with extraordinary quantities of gold. But we who know and own did nothing to adjust that; we did not tell the working man of that; we have let him find it out slowly and indirectly at the ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... after. Later we quit selling British slaves, but began to buy and trade in African humanity. We silenced conscience by saying, "It's all right—they are incapable of self-government." We were once as obscure, as debased, as ignorant, as barbaric, as the African is now. I trust that the time will come when we are willing to give to Africa the opportunity, the hope, the right to attain to the same blessings ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... not loud, but deep," of the Commons of England, on whom he and his master had effected a complete Parliamentary Reform, by making them, in their slavery and humiliation, the true and adequate representatives of a debased, degraded, and undone people. My merits were in having had an active, though not always an ostentatious share, in every one act, without exception, of undisputed constitutional utility in my time, and in having supported, on all occasions, the ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... industriously weaving throughout the day was torn into tatters. The kindness of Raoul's manner, however, his words, and the explanations of Ithuel, removed a mountain from his breast, and he became quite unmanned. There is none so debased as not to retain glimmerings of the bright spirit that is associated with the grosser particles of their material nature, Clinch had in him the living consciousness that he was capable of better things, and he endured moments of deep anguish—as the image ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... adventurous Coeur de Lion. But in the Crusade, itself an undertaking wholly irrational, sound reason was the quality of all others least estimated, and the chivalric valour which both the age and the enterprise demanded was considered as debased if mingled with the least touch of discretion. So that the merit of Philip, compared with that of his haughty rival, showed like the clear but minute flame of a lamp placed near the glare of a huge, blazing torch, which, not possessing half the utility, ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... mooring, beaten to and fro, And in the throbbing, quick'ning flesh I know The lone desertion of the Shoreless Sea. O Brotherhood! O hope so high, so fair, That would the wreck of this sad world repair Had ye but stood! Can God forget? This Khalsa of his own supreme decree Vanquished, debased, in loss of liberty Has lost its own mysterious entity. And yet, and yet, A strange persuasion fills my breast that He Who wrecked my home, Who bade my people from their mountains flee And friendless roam, Will soon with tenderest pity welcome ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... and upon the lowest scale. To overreach, to deceive, to elude, to shuffle, to fawn, and to lie, were the arts that he confessed to with so naked and cold a grossness, that one perceived that in the long habits of debasement he was unconscious of what was not debased. Houseman seemed to draw him out: he told us anecdotes of his rascality, and the distresses to which it had brought him; and he finished by saying: 'Yet you see me now almost rich, and wholly contented. I have always been the luckiest of human beings; no matter what ill-chances ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... by the way, are not so debased as you might think. Though cannibals, they do not kill for the sake of eating 'long pig,' like the cannibals of the South Seas. Neither do they eat the whole body. Only the hands and feet of their dead enemies are devoured. These are carefully cooked and ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... portions only of the surfaces and leaving the arrises and principal places untouched, as to preserve the original constructive forms given by the mason (Fig. 184). The employment of the drill instead of the chisel, so common in debased Roman work, was retained as a very general practice by the Greek carvers, and very often with excellent effect. The foliage of the acanthus, although imitated from the antique, quite changed its character, becoming more geometrical and conventional in its form. That which particularly distinguishes ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... and spires, is familiar to us in many an engraving and painting, but what these illustrations do not give us on a small scale is the beauty of the carved doorways, the clustering of the ornaments about them, and the statues of bishops, priests, and kings. Later than the cathedral itself, and 'debased in style' (as our severe architectural friends will tell us), the work on these beautiful porches has exquisite grace; the fourteenth-century sculptor gave free scope to his fancy, his hands have ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... are educated and informed, the government will go on, and the community be prosperous, be they decided never so badly,—and if decided badly, the decision will he reversed; but let the people become ignorant and debased, and all the checks and balances and wise regulations which the ingenuity of man could in centuries devise would, at best, but for a short space defer the downfall of a republic. A well-founded republic can, then, be destroyed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... decided me to write a tragedy on my own account; which, while following Shakespeare in his good points, should avoid his weaknesses, which should embody the best features of the nursery rhymes, and which should avoid like poison the shockingly debased style ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... sea, for a long period, the only companions of Oberlus were the crawling tortoises; and he seemed more than degraded to their level, having no desires for a time beyond theirs, unless it were for the stupor brought on by drunkenness. But sufficiently debased as he appeared, there yet lurked in him, only awaiting occasion for discovery, a still further proneness. Indeed, the sole superiority of Oberlus over the tortoises was his possession of a larger capacity of degradation; and along with that, something like an intelligent ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... Georgian. The last includes the work of Chippendale, Heppelwhite, Sheraton, and the Adams, all of whom executed some beautiful designs. The so-called colonial furniture belongs also to the Georgian period, as does the "Debased Empire," corresponding to or following the Empire styles in France. In the latter country the periods of vogue are known as Francis Premier, Henri Deux, Henri Quatre, Louis Treize, Louis Quatorze, Louis Quinze, and Louis ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... being, what sort of a race is this, so despised and ill-treated, so poor and ignorant, that in a brief time on our shores can build the finest temple to God which this country has yet seen? What will the people, to whom we have described this race as sunk in papistical stupidity, debased, unenterprising, think, when they gaze on this absolute proof ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... these pages, recorded the terrifying aspects of the Manchurian campaign, which one could not have foreseen in all of its horror. He has shown in a lasting manner the poor human creature torn from his home, debased to the role of a piece of mechanism. Not knowing where he is being led to, he goes, making murderous gestures, the meaning of which he does not know, without even having the illusory consolation of possible personal bravery, being killed by the shots of an invisible enemy, or, what is worse, being ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... say what it will with reference to our worthy friend Uncle John fighting the battle of Mohamedanism—let it lay at his door the grave charge of degrading himself by seeking to make firm the rotten props of one of the most debased governments that has stained the history of the world with its crimes, John will humanely acknowledge the charge while forwarding to Turkey a copious edition of his "Society ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... of inferior and debased minds, the berserk misunderstood and misjudged his master. He had counted on escaping notice, but the King's eye fell on him the instant he entered the hall, and he was at once summoned before him, and bidden tell his tale. While ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... flood the mind with those unconscious prejudices which make critical thinking difficult. Yet for all its abuse the deliberate choice of issues is one of the high selective arts of the statesman. In the debased form we know it there is little encouragement. But the devil is merely a fallen angel, and when God lost Satan he lost one of his best lieutenants. It is always a pretty good working rule that whatever is a great power of evil may become a great power for ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... Throw up your chin a moment, so that I may catch the profile of your face better. Yes, that's the d'Urberville nose and chin—a little debased. Your ancestor was one of the twelve knights who assisted the Lord of Estremavilla in Normandy in his conquest of Glamorganshire. Branches of your family held manors over all this part of England; their names appear in ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... Shawanoes to superiority over other tribes, and promised to all his followers, who would believe his doctrines and practice his precepts, the comforts and happiness which their forefathers enjoyed before they were debased by their connection with the whites. And finally proclaimed, with much solemnity, that he had received power from the Great Spirit, to cure all diseases, to confound his enemies, and stay the arm of death, in sickness, ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... carried the day, and I decided for war," he said. It was reserved for Harnack and Hauptmann, not to speak of the Kaiser, to cant about the responsibilities of "Kul-tur" (that harlot of the German dictionary, debased by all ignoble uses), about the hastening of the kingdom of heaven, and about the German sword being sanctified by God. But the old German Adam remained, and when, two days before the declaration of war with France, ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... tongue was replaced by a debased Latin, like that spoken in the towns, and in which inscriptions are ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... of the Paseo de Recoletos is a monument to Columbus in the debased Gothic style of Ferdinand and Isabella. It was unveiled in 1885. The sides are ornamented with reliefs and the whole surmounted by a white marble statue. Among the sculptures are a ship and a globe, ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... essentially the school of decline, and, after the time of Francia, very few pictures proceeded from it dignified by noble thought, or exhibiting either purity or power of imagination. Its very method condemned it to inferiority. But debased as it is, it has been during the last two centuries the object of perhaps more real and affected admiration than any other of the schools of Italian art. Fortunately, we have entered upon a better period of criticism, and a change is fast coming over the public taste. But it is a curious fact, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... must use great caution in our intercourse with these people. When we have shown them that we are friends, and desire to do them all the good in our power, we, I hope, shall find them faithful; but they have become so debased by their intercourse with the white people, and especially, I am sorry to say, with my countrymen, who often deal treacherously with them, that they cannot be depended on. They in return, as might naturally be ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... words, the devil. All dogs are not good dogs, though all dogs are good dogs to their respective owners; but no dog can possibly be classed as we find him here, or as the very image and likeness of the most depraved and debased of mankind as we find him elsewhere. He is incapable of these sins; he does not fall ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... Pope debased St. Cecilia in his Ode for Musick on St. Cecilia's Day and glorified a suicide in his Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady. He is not saying, as did The Life of the late Celebrated Mrs. Elizabeth ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted
... good even though it be shown that a bad man may write a poem. As motives short of the purest lead to actions intrinsically good, so frames of mind short of virtuous will produce a partial and limited poetry. But even where it is exhibited, the poetry of a vicious mind will be inconsistent and debased; i. e. so far only such, as the traces and shadows of holy truth still remain upon it. On the other hand, a right moral feeling places the mind in the very centre of that circle from which all the rays have their origin and range; whereas minds otherwise placed command but a portion ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... quality of ingratitude was a very objectionable thing to Lester—the last and most offensive trait of a debased nature, and to be able to discover a trace of it in Jennie was very disturbing. It is true that she had not exhibited it in any other way before—quite to the contrary—but nevertheless he saw strong evidences of it now, and it made him very ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... when to stop talking. Some parties did, but not her; and she having to be up and on the way to Horsefly Mountain by six-thirty in the A.M.! Her last apology was for a longing she had not been able to conquer: She couldn't help a debased wish to know how that last ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... more and more complete sway over the mind of his master and the affairs of the realm. The favourite had been guilty of all those extravagances which constitute the Nemesis of upstarts. He had trafficked in patronage and promotion, he had debased the currency, and he was supposed to influence the King to everything least honourable and advantageous to the country. Last injury of all, he had either asked from the King or accepted from him—at least, permitted himself to ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... to defend her sex of the present generation from the sarcasm of Mr. Plomacy. She had once declared, in one of her warmer moments, "that now-a-days the gentlemen were all women, and the ladies all men." She could not alter the debased character of the age. But, such being the case, why should she take on herself to cater for the amusement of people of such degraded tastes? This question she asked herself more than once, and she could only answer herself with a sigh. There ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... From the days of Mrs. Sarah L. Smith to the present time, Moslem girls have been taught to read and write and sew, and there are many now learning in the various American, British and Prussian schools. But it will be long before any true idea of the dignity of woman enters the debased minds of Arab Mohammedans. The simple fact is that there is no moral purity or elevation among the men, and how can it be expected among the women. The Moslem idea of woman is infinitely lower than the old Jewish idea. Woman in the time ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... had Debased the savage kind, And they this most unhappy lad Before (and eke behind) Designed In colours ...
— Rhymes a la Mode • Andrew Lang
... vessels, and were superior to them in numbers; and, lastly, there were Greek pirates, every island and rock in the Aegean Sea harbouring some of them. Long years of Turkish misrule and tyranny had thoroughly enslaved and debased the great mass of the people; and the more daring and adventurous spirits, finding all lawful exercise of their energies denied them on shore, sought instead for such excitement and profit as piracy could ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... very bottom of my soul, to think that one so naturally capable of true dignity, power and nobility could, by the temptations of this State, and by unfortunate associations and aspirations, be so deeply debased as to find in such brutality anything which he could call satisfaction—but the great hope for us all is in progress and growth, and John B. Winters, I trust, will yet be able to comprehend ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of a subsequent period. A farther number of specimens has therefore been admitted, conducting the series through the style of architecture, commonly termed Gothic, down to the time when that style finally disappeared before an Italian model, more or less debased. ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... groined crypt. St James's church, the burial place of its founder, Robert, earl of Gloucester, dates from 1130, and fine Norman work remains in the nave. The tower is of the 14th century. St Philip's has an Early English tower, but its external walls and windows are for the most part debased Perpendicular. Robert FitzHamon's Norman tower of St Peter, the oldest church tower in Bristol, still presents its massive square to the eye. This church stands in Castle Street, which commemorates the castle of Robert, earl of Gloucester, the walls of which were 25 ft. thick at the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... could inflict.—You want to know why I showed that letter to the old man, and I will tell you. I thought, could I but gain all Herst, I might, through it, win you back to my side. I betrayed you for that alone. I debased myself in my own eyes for that sole purpose. I have failed in all things. My humiliation is complete. I do not ask your forgiveness, Philip; I crave only—your forbearance. Grant me that at least, for the ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... the image of Emily, which, amidst the dissipation of the city had been obscured, but never obliterated from his heart, revived with all the charms of innocence and beauty, to reproach him for having sacrificed his happiness and debased his talents by pursuits, which his nobler faculties would formerly have taught him to consider were as tasteless as they were degrading. But, though his passions had been seduced, his heart was not depraved, nor had habit riveted the chains, that hung heavily on his conscience; and, as he retained ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... bound to feed ITS taste For Literature and Poetry debased; Hither and thither pandering we strive, And one by one our ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Cayenne • Gelett Burgess
... doubtless appertained to the copra gatherer's establishment. But you should have seen how clean, how seemly, how self-respecting were our Leeward Island pigs to realize how profoundly the pig of Christian lands is a debased and slandered animal. These quadrupeds would have strengthened Jean Jacques's belief in the primitive virtue of man before civilization debauched him. And I shall always paraphrase the familiar line to read: "When wild in woods the ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... the suppression of the revolt was mainly due. The change of governors however brought about no change of system. Peace indeed was won from France by the immediate surrender of Boulogne; but the misgovernment remained as great as ever, the currency was yet further debased, and a wild attempt made to remedy the effects of this measure by a royal fixing of prices. It was in vain that Latimer denounced the prevailing greed, and bade the Protestant lords choose "either restitution or else damnation." Their sole aim seemed to be that of building up their own fortunes ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... although they know that they are trying and wishing to lie, they do not succeed, merely because they can say nothing so bad of each other, that it may not, and must not be true, from the atrocity of their long debased ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... of one another, armed for mutual aggression, loaded with taxes to pay armies and leaders, seeking aid against each other from foreign powers, insulted and trampled upon by the nations of Europe, until, harassed with conflicts and humbled and debased in spirit, they would be ready to submit to the absolute dominion of any military adventurer and to surrender their liberty for the sake of repose. It is impossible to look on the consequences that would inevitably follow the destruction of this Government and not feel indignant ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... Regime. There are flies which, by feeding on putridity, become poisonous themselves, as did Marat: but even they owe their vitality and organisation to something higher than that on which they feed; and each of them, however, defaced and debased, was at first a "thought of God." All true manhood consists in the defiance of circumstances; and if any man be the creature of circumstances, it is because he has become so, like the drunkard; because he has ceased to be a man, and sunk ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... the race by economic methods has been impossible. The European immigrants have hitherto excluded the Negroes even from the menial positions. In the midst of the drudgery left for them, the blacks have often heretofore been debased to the status of dependents and paupers. Scattered through the North too in such small numbers, they have been unable to unite for social betterment and mutual improvement and naturally too weak to force the community to respect their wishes as could be done ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson
... but they're not afraid of us—a flying-machine means nothing to them, does not terrify them as it would human savages. They're too debased even to feel fear!"—even as this thought crossed his brain he, too, saw the terrible thing that the girl had cried ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... beneath the tropical sun of the Brazils. The enfeebled white man grows more enfeebled and more degenerate with each succeeding generation, and languishes in a clime which nature never designed him to inhabit. The time will come when the debased and suffering negroes shall possess this fertile land, and when some share of justice shall be awarded to their cheerful tempers and ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... yet it required no second glance to perceive that the coldness was but the cover superinduced to hide passions too warm for revelation. Her eye was downcast; yet did its stolen glances speak things, the secret consciousness of which would have debased the other in her own estimation beyond the hope of pardon. Her tongue was guarded, and her words slow and carefully selected, for her imaginations would have made the brazen face of the world blush for shame could ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... once. Pierce tried to let this one go, too, but ain't you took a look at his hocks!' Then along comes Dean Duke, the ratty old foreman in Pierce's stable, and he don't ogle a bit, either, like you'd expect one of his debased calibre to, but just stops and talks this horse over with 'em and says yes, it was his bad hocks that lost the sale, and he tells 'em how he had told Pierce just what to do to get him shaped up for a quick sale, but Pierce wouldn't listen ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... could still see that she had been a beautiful woman; but for all that her appearance inspired me with terror and disgust. Since the days when I had known her at Pasean, nineteen years of misery, profligacy, and shame had made her the most debased, the vilest creature that can be imagined. She told us her story at great length; the pith of it might be ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Levi Weeks were both confined in this debased prison because of high crimes, and many were incarcerated for debt. There was, nevertheless, an atmosphere of some intellect immolated within its cells; and for the first, and I believe the only time in this country, a newspaper was issued for some months' duration ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... I could ascertain, nothing local in the shape of a Refuge. To propagate the faith may be all very well, and will be only the natural impulse of a man sincere in his own belief; but we must not forget that these Arabs have bodies as well as souls, and that those bodies have been so shamefully debased and neglected as to drag the higher energies down with them; and it is a great question whether it is not absolutely necessary to begin on the very lowest plane first, and so to work towards the higher. Through the ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... Europe. Their ugliness is only different from our accustomed European ugliness. The most crudely ugly mural decorations in the world are to be found all over Italy—the home of sublime frescos. The most atrociously debased architecture in the world is to be found in France—the home of sober artistic tradition. Europe is simply peppered everywhere with sculpture whose appalling mediocrity defies competition. But when the European meets ugly sculpture or any ugly form of art in the New World, his instinct is to exclaim, ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... of the thirteenth to the middle of the fifteenth century the drain of precious metals from Europe was followed by the inevitable appreciation of gold. Prices fell; many communes were bankrupt; kings, in desperate straits, debased the coinage and despoiled the Church. It was in 1291 that Edward I forced his "loan" from the churches; and Philip IV, in 1296 forbidding the export of gold and silver from France, set about with unparalleled cunning and cruelty to destroy ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... sound.—Through paths of the Gizune, they had returned on foot from Spain, heavy with copper coin bearing the effigy of the gentle, little King Alfonso XIII. A new trick of the smugglers: for Itchoua's account, they had exchanged over there with profit, a big sum of money for this debased coin, destined to be circulated at par at the coming fairs, in different villages of the Landes where Spanish cents are current. They were bringing, in their pockets, in their shirts, some forty kilos of copper. They ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... your children your confidants early in life, especially in these things, have frequent talks with them on nature, and you will never, other things being equal, mourn over a ruined daughter or a wreckless, debased son. ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... way each breadth stands alone, the bloated curves and flourishes—a kind of "debased Romanesque" with delirium tremens—go waddling up and down in isolated columns ...
— The Yellow Wallpaper • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... without success. It happened, however, that Mr. Montagu, who had sat with Newton in Parliament, was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1694. Ambitious of distinction in his new office, Mr. Montagu addressed himself to the improvement of the current coin, which was then in a very debased condition. It fortunately happened that an opportunity occurred of appointing a new official in the Mint; and Mr. Montagu on the 19th of March, 1695, wrote to offer Mr. Newton the position of warden. The salary was to be five or six ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... through one or two of these the disreputable letter awaiting her attention worried her. It was something importunate, disagreeable, like a debased face thrust in at her door. With a sigh she turned to it, to get it out of the way before she opened Terry's letter, clean and dandyish, written on the ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... and complimented the elder ones; and finally, having parted at a prodigious profit, with nearly his whole, stock, paid himself out of a large and heavy purse, which the portly father, in his utter inability to comprehend the complicated accounts and the debased currency, with great frankness deposited in the hands of the master of the stall, desiring him ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... have produced another life. In a man we can always trace the woman whom he first loved. Happy would he have been who had met Madame de Warens before her profanation! She was an idol to be adored, but the idol had been polluted. She herself debased the worship that a young and loving heart tendered her. The amours of this woman and Rousseau appear like a leaf torn from the loves of Daphnis and Chloe, and found soiled and defiled on the bed of a courtesan. It' matters not; it was the first love, or the ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... in the ninth and eighth centuries, instead of standing together against the threatening might of Assyria, sought heathen alliances, and wasted their strength in mutual contention. Against these hopeless alliances, and against the idolatry and the formalism which debased the people, the prophets contended with intense earnestness and unflinching courage. Amos, called from feeding his flocks, inveighed against frivolity and vice, misgovernment and fraud, in Israel. Hosea warned Menahem ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... trumpet blare betrayed Their nightly march: but rapidly he seized All needed instruments of blood and war. Of Latian race the most part of his train, Yet to barbarian customs were their minds By long forgetfulness of Rome debased: Else had it shamed to serve the Pharian King; But now his vassal and his minion's word Compel obedience. Those who serve in camps Lose faith and love of kin: their pittance earned (21) Makes just the deed: and for their sordid pay, Not for ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... Taxila, and those bearing the names of such tribes as the Odumbaras, Kunindas, and Yaudheyas. The White Huns overthrew the Kushan Empire in the fifth century. After their own fall in the sixth century, there are more and more debased types of coinage such as the ubiquitous Gadhiya paisa, a degraded Sassanian type. In the ninth century we again meet with coins bearing distinct names, the "bull and horseman" currency of the Hindu kings of Kabul. We have now reached the beginning of the Muhammadan ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie |
