"Debase" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... though, on the other hand, they do not go so far as to substantiate the full extent of the opposite view entertained by many writers—that all money contracts indiscriminately were rescinded—against which there is also a further reason, that if the fact had been so, Solon could have had no motive to debase the money standard. Such debasement supposes that there must have been some debtors at least whose contracts remained valid, and whom nevertheless he desired partially to assist. His poems distinctly mention three things: 1. The removal of the mortgage-pillars. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... difficulties, and do not satisfy them by telling us what is really the case. I have heard you charged with disrespect to the King of Prussia; and above all, to King William and the Revolution. My own objections are little more essential: they relate chiefly to inaccuracies of style, which either debase the expression or obscure the meaning. As to your argument@ most of the principal parts are made out with a clearness and evidence that no one would expect, where materials are so scarce. Yet I still suspect Richard of the murder of Henry the ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... language, the great truths of Christianity, as opposed to the false teaching of Rome. He showed how the one must, when received, elevate and ennoble the human mind; while the other was calculated in every way to lower and debase it. He then, in eloquent language, called upon his countrymen to unite in overthrowing that fearful system, supported by the Pope and his cardinals, to which King Philip had completely subjected himself. "He who is a slave to such a system is unfit to rule his fellow-men!" he exclaimed. "Already ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... at all times; no chewing, spitting, gazing about, or raising of hands in ranks—he should know his drill, his orders and his duties—he should always be ready and willing to learn all he can about his profession—he should never debase himself with drink. ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... state of the city was rendered worse by a proposal of Warwick to debase the currency yet more. As soon as the proposal got wind up went the price of provisions, in spite of every effort made by the lords of the council to keep it down. They sent for the mayor (Sir Andrew Judd) to attend them at ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... adopted, the gold plank asserted: "We are unalterably opposed to every measure calculated to debase our currency or impair the credit of our country. We are, therefore, opposed to the free coinage of silver, except by international agreement with the leading commercial nations of the world, which we pledge ourselves to promote, and ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... is the man;" but the social and rhetorical influences adulterate and debase it, until not one man in a thousand achieves his birthright, or claims his second self. The fire of the soul burns all too feebly, and warms itself by the reflected heat from the society around it. ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... garnish, bedizen, beautify. Decorous, demure, sedate, sober, staid, prim, proper. Deface, disfigure, mar, mutilate. Defect, fault, imperfection, disfigurement, blemish, flaw. Delay, defer, postpone, procrastinate. Demoralize, deprave, debase, corrupt, vitiate. Deportment, demeanor, bearing, port, mien. Deprive, divest, dispossess, strip, despoil. Despise, contemn, scorn, disdain. Despondency, despair, desperation. Detach, separate, sunder, sever, disconnect, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... garbled versions of it, from which so much of its nobler and finer elements are of hard necessity omitted in such a process as my reading of them. I persisted in this system for my own "soul's sake," and not to debase my work more than was inevitable, to the very considerable detriment of ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... Demon,[187] who is vexing me With pilfering pranks and petty pains, below The feeling of the healthful and the free; But much to One, who long hath suffered so, Sickness of heart, and narrowness of place, And all that may be borne, or can debase. I thought mine enemies had been but Man, But Spirits may be leagued with them—all Earth Abandons—Heaven forgets me;—in the dearth 200 Of such defence the Powers of Evil can— It may be—tempt me further,—and prevail Against the outworn creature they assail. Why ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... to demand this meaning, that is, "those who debase coin of the realm," rather than "beggars" from the ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... which I have thoroughly learnt is, that though men may become unbelievers through other causes than vice, they cannot continue unbelievers without spiritual and moral loss. The inevitable tendency of infidelity is to debase men's souls. And here I speak not on the testimony of others merely, but from extensive observation and personal experience. I have known numbers whom infidelity has degraded, but none whom it has elevated. We do ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... you didn't remember, either, that your husband is a Christian of the old stock, and a well-born Spaniard, and that he knows how to fight the enemies of his faith, of his country, and of his queen; but that he will never dishonor himself by killing a defenceless man, nor debase himself by putting to death a man who has surrendered, nor make a tiger of himself by refusing his life to a man who asks it, not even ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... here briefly what the service will not do. It will not change the nature of men, but it will mollify it into much that is exalted, that is noble, and that is good. It almost universally raises individual character; but it can never debase it. The world are too apt to generalise—and this generalisation has done much disservice to the British navy. It forms a notion, creates a beau-ideal—a very absurd one truly—and then tries every character ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... left its control. He had been a Democrat. But he had seen the importance of the protective policy to American interests, as would naturally be expected of a descendant of that high protectionist, Thomas Jefferson. He had no sympathies with any measures that would debase or unsettle the currency, and set his face and gave his powerful influence against all forms of fiat or irredeemable paper money, and the kindred folly of the free coinage of silver by this country alone, without the concurrence of the commercial ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... should not interfere in these matters. You simply debase you husband's high office. The distaff were more fitting for you. My lord, good morning." And before either of them could speak again, he was out of the room, and through the hall, and beyond the gate, and standing beneath the towers ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... my passions mix with earth, And thus debase my heavenly birth? Why should I cleave to things below, And let my God, ...
— Hymns and Spiritual Songs • Isaac Watts
... sisterly pride in him that he should, even by implication, debase himself, noting inequality of station between himself and her. She held the worldly aspects of the matter in contempt. They angered her, so that she impulsively banished reserve. Leaning forward, she bent her head, putting ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... the systematic and calculating man of dissipation, whose joys, regrets, pains, and pleasures, are all of self, and who would seem to retain nothing of the intellectual faculty but the power to debase himself, and to degrade the very nature whose outward semblance he wears—the reflections of Sir Mulberry Hawk turned upon Kate Nickleby, and were, in brief, that she was undoubtedly handsome; that her coyness MUST be easily conquerable by a man of ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... vengeance. I might give reasons for this, in Punic comprehension, most foolish act of mine. I might speak of those eternal principles which make death for one's country a pleasure, not a pain. But, by great Jupiter! methinks I should debase myself to talk of such high things to you; to you, expert in womanly inventions; to you, well-skilled to drive a treacherous trade with simple Africans for ivory ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... she's[318] opinion's darling, Philip, Wise in repute, the crow's bird. O my friend, Some judgments slave themselves to small desert, And wondernise the birth of common wit, When their own[319] strangeness do but make that strange, And their ill errors do but make that good: And why should men debase to make that good? Perhaps ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... Were not the disadvantages of slavery too obvious to stand in need of it, I might enumerate and describe the tedious train of calamities inseparable from it. I might show that it is fatal to religion and morality; that it tends to debase the mind, and corrupt its noblest springs of action. I might show that it relaxes the sinews of industry and clips the wings of commerce, and works misery and indigence in every shape."—HAMILTON, Works, ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... much per volume. And it is an authentic fact, that a bookseller to the Czar of Russia one Klostermann, actually sold books at fifty to one hundred roubles by the yard, according to the binding. The force of folly could no farther go, to debase the aims and ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... multitudes in Nepaul, Thibet, Birmah, Ceylon, China, Siam, Japan; and in all these states its monasteries are to-day the chief sources of knowledge and centres of instruction to the people. It is idle to class such a religion as this with the superstitions which debase mankind. Its power lay in the strength of conviction which inspired its teachers; and that, again, must have come from the sight of truth, not the ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... the man who seeks to make personal capital out of the passions of his fellow-men. He has lost the touch and ideal of America, for America was created to unite mankind by those passions which lift and not by the passions which separate and debase. We came to America, either ourselves or in the persons of our ancestors, to better the ideals of men, to make them see finer things than they had seen before, to get rid of the things that divide ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... allowed, that a profusion of animal food has a tendency to vitiate and debase the nature and dispositions of men; notwithstanding, the lovers of flesh urge the names of many of the most eminent in literature and science, in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 358 - Vol. XIII, No. 358., Saturday, February 28, 1829 • Various
... of Briton's col'ny here. (Enter Quezox) Francos: But Bonset, list! 'Twere well to let them wait: To quick respond will lower dignity. The British mind doth breed a rev'rence deep For form and etiquette which swift cognition Might debase, and thus we on their mental Vision might mayhap but feeble impress Make as envoys by most noble Caesar sent To rule these Isles with gravity and state. Quezox: Most noble Sire! If I might but suggest, 'Twere well for Bonset to inquire each name And mental picture stamp upon ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... troubled, ever since I saw you had gone to your circuit, with apprehensions that you would be assassinated, or at least subjected to some gross outrage, and cannot express my admiration of the serene heroism with which you went to your post of duty, determined not to debase the dignity of your exalted position by wearing arms for your defense, notwithstanding you were fully conscious of the danger which menaced you. It didn't surprise me, however; for I knew the stuff ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... thousand miles away there is another fool hitched to the other end of it, it makes me frantic with rage; and then I am more implacably fixed and resolved than ever to continue taking twenty minutes to telegraph you what I might communicate in ten seconds by the new way if I would so debase myself. And when I see a whole silent, solemn drawing-room full of idiots sitting with their hands on each other's foreheads "communing" I tug the white hairs from my head and curse till my asthma brings me the blessed relief of suffocation. In our old day such a gathering ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... the expense of workmen. And then she described to me the beautiful marbles she had seen abroad, where the artist's inspiration was so chastely uttered by the purity of his material, declaring that a subject which coloring would debase might be worthily treated by the chisel. And when I exclaimed, that Autumn, with her glowing palette, was as pure an artist as the old sculptor Winter, chiselling in unvaried white, she reminded me that Nature was infinite, handling all themes with equal ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... of Hell, insatiate power! Destroyer of the human race, Whose iron scourge and maddening hour Exalt the bad, the good debase; When first to scourge the sons of earth, Thy sire his darling child designed, Gallia received the monstrous birth, Voltaire informed thine infant mind. Well-chosen nurse, his sophist lore, He bade thee many a year explore, He marked thy progress firm though slow, And statesmen, princes, ...
— English Satires • Various
... give proof that they are not of Judah and Jerusalem, but of Sodom and Egypt. More than this, these strange children are enemies. They would break up the self-denying worship of the true God and rob the sanctuary of all its sacred garniture. They would corrupt the morals, debase the manners, and deprave the tastes of the young. "Their mouth speaketh vanity." They boast of their liberty. Their sinful indulgences are not restrained by law. They are free to do whatever the lust of the flesh and the eye may incline them to do. "Their right hand is the right hand of ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... gained ground everywhere. This does not mean that the mass of the employees upon daily papers understand what they are talking about when they use the word "profiteer," any more than they understand what they are talking about when they use the words "servile state." They commonly debase the word "profiteer" to mean some one who gets an exceptional profit, just as they use my own "Eye-Witness" phrase, "The Servile State," to mean strict regulation of all civic life—an idea twenty miles away from the proper signification of the term. But my point is ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc
... even in a predominant faction in the legislative body. If the case should only be, that he MIGHT lay it down, unless continued by a new choice, and if he should be desirous of being continued, his wishes, conspiring with his fears, would tend still more powerfully to corrupt his integrity, or debase his fortitude. In either case, feebleness and irresolution must be the characteristics of the station. There are some who would be inclined to regard the servile pliancy of the Executive to a prevailing ...
— The Federalist Papers
... the Negro element in its civil service. In the first issue of La Sentinelle, he wrote, "From day to day the Maurician Press develops a system entirely dangerous and which seems to have this for a foundation—to discredit and debase English institutions and the English Government in the eyes of all. Here are the consequences of this system—the government believing that the opinions of the press are those of all the inhabitants of Maurice, has seen ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... it purifies—it is the lamp of naphtha in the alabaster vase, glowing with fragrant odorous, but shining only through the purest vessels. No; it is not love, and it is not friendship, that Arbaces feels for Ione. Give it no name—earth has no name for it—it is not of earth—why debase it with ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... minister said: "Mr. Lincoln, may I say one thing to you before we separate?" "Certainly; anything you please," was the response. "You have just spoken," said Mr. Gulliver, "of the tendency of political life in Washington to debase the moral convictions of our representatives there, by the admixture of considerations of mere political expediency. You have become, by the controversy with Mr. Douglas, one of our leaders in this great struggle with slavery, ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... going to debase myself with quarrelling with a man like you! You have my opinion of you, and you know how you have earned it. ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... all that was worst in both of them. It is a mistake to suppose love only elevates; it can debase. It was a mean struggle for what to an onlooker must have appeared a remarkably unsatisfying prize. The loser might well have left the conqueror to her poor triumph, even granting it had been gained unfairly. But the old, ugly, primeval passions had been stirred ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... gets up, and sniffs, And therewith wags her head; And warns me in between the whiffs That I shall soon be dead; And says excessive smoking must Debase and bring me low, She makes herself offensive, just Because she ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 29, 1890 • Various
... seeks the field;— False glare of glory, what hast thou to yield? How long, deluding phantom, wilt thou blind, Mislead, debase, unhumanize mankind? Bid the bold youth, his headlong sword who draws, Heed not the object, nor inquire the cause; But seek adventuring, like an errant knight, Wars not his own, gratuitous in fight, Greet the gored field, then plunging thro the fire, Mow down ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... man. It never talks, for the sake of some secular, or treacherous purpose, of seeking the Lord.—It judges not its neighbour's heart.—It boasts not of its early provocations and present acceptance, nor does it debase the doctrine of Providence, by low and familiar applications of Almighty interposition to its own trivial concerns; applications which argue, not religious thankfulness, but self-importance. It is careful never to anathematize its opponents, by a misapplication of Scripture-texts ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... state. I'm a railroad man myself, though I have no interest in this affair. My turn may come later. Will come later, I suppose. Isaac D. Worthington has a very little heart or soul or mercy himself; but the corporation which he means to set up will have none at all. It will grind the people and debase them and clog their progress a hundred times more than Jethro Bass has done. Mark my words, Carry. I'm running ahead of the times a little, but I can see it all as clearly as if ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... why should you kill me? It has pleased the gods to debase my House and to set up yours. Have I ever lifted up my heel against you because my forefathers were kings, or plotted with the discontent to overthrow you! See, I am satisfied with my station, which is that of a noble and a soldier in your army. Therefore let me and my half-sister, ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... laboriously collected from the flowers of the field. It is not so recorded; but doubtless the nameless one in question was by profession a maker of opium pipes, for this person has observed from time to time how that occupation, above all others, tends to degrade the mental faculties, and to debase its followers to a lower position than that of the beasts of labour. Learn therefrom, O superficial Wang Yu, that wisdom lies in an intelligent perception of great principles, and not in a slavish imitation of details which are, for ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... recompenses than of those wherein there was gain and profit, is not without very good ground and reason. If with the reward, which ought to be simply a recompense of honour, they should mix other commodities and add riches, this mixture, instead of procuring an increase of estimation, would debase and abate it. The Order of St. Michael, which has been so long in repute amongst us, had no greater commodity than that it had no communication with any other commodity, which produced this effect, that formerly there was no office or title whatever to which the gentry pretended with so ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... of the controversionalists, on this occasion, I certainly had no disposition to debase my mind, or to descend from the level of a gentleman who was compelled to bow before no political master, in order to retort in kind; but as is apt to be the case under provocations of this sort, the charge induced me to look about, in order to see ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... mode of giving assistance to his country friends, that it savored of mercenariness, amounting to villainy, it is to be said, on his behalf, that he was simply practicing the morals that Mr. Belcher had taught him. Mr. Belcher had not failed to debauch or debase the moral standard of every man over whom he had any direct influence. If Talbot had practiced his little game upon any other man, Mr. Belcher would have patted his shoulder and told him he was a "jewel." So much of Mr. ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... for thee, howe'er inclined, Will deign to own a kindred care? Who will debase his manly mind, For friendship ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... portion of the population of the earth could have endured the privations, sufferings and horrors of slavery, without having become more degraded in the scale of humanity than the slaves of African descent. Nothing has been left undone to cripple their intellects, darken their minds, debase their moral nature, obliterate all traces of their relationship to mankind; and yet how wonderfully they have sustained the mighty load of a most frightful bondage, under which they have been groaning for centuries! To illustrate the effect of slavery on the white man,—to show that he ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... forced her way, and she set the fashion: fashion, which converts the ugliest dress into what is beautiful and charming, governs the public mode in morals and in manners; and thus, when great talents and high rank combine, they can debase or elevate ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... that moment when, spirit mingling with spirit through the medium of what we call love, all our baseness is driven out of us, we are nearest heaven. But our vocabulary being only fitted for the needs about us, we have no words to express the elevation. Debase love and we can speak of it; let it rush upwards to its apotheosis and we must ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... docile and suffer this hybrid monster of Frankenstein, under guise of governing, to squat on our necks, bind our Titan limbs, bandage our awakening eyes, gag our free voices, sterilize our civic manhood, and debase us from sons of divine liberty into the ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... the stranger said, laying his hand gently on hers. "Debase not the dignity of man by imagining for one instant that there is anyone who would lend himself so readily to act the odious part you impute to me. I am ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... deserters in this war—better shoot the traitors in high positions. The indigent men of the South will fight, shoulder to shoulder with the wealthy, for Southern independence; but when the attempt is made to debase them to a ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... it only a jocular supposition of our being something a good deal worse than we are—something, above all, to stir the hearty laugh, which proves its being good for us by the very help it gives to digestion—is required at frequent intervals—all free from what tends to debase and corrupt. Such is the theory of Amusement; and nothing which does not fulfil that theory will be effective for its ends. Here is a perquisition somewhat more startling than that of Xerxes, putting a prize upon a new pleasure. Happy will be the man who can devise truly available ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... and visible sign was the creation of the Irish Home Rule party, which constituted itself separate and distinct from the rest of the House of Commons, the standard of which the new gang was to debase. Nor did they rest content until it became the scene of faction fights and organised obstruction in combination with the flagrant violation of all decencies of language ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... in early life; he had been his admirer and his biographer; he grieved to find him receiving such an insult from the classic pencil of his friend. "It is unworthy of you," said he to Sir Joshua, "to debase so high a genius as Voltaire before so mean a writer as Beattie. Beattie and his book will be forgotten in ten years, while Voltaire's fame will last forever. Take care it does not perpetuate this picture to the shame of such a man as you." This noble and high-minded ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... the imagination has its use, it has its abuse also. If visions of truth and beauty can exalt, visions of vice can debase and degrade. In that picture where Faust and Satan battle together for the scholar's soul, the angels share in the conflict. Plucking the roses of Paradise, they fling them over the battlements ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... wish him to proceed. She had esteemed him for so long, she cannot have him debase himself ...
— Quality Street - A Comedy • J. M. Barrie
... the National Assembly does not ask the King to grant to the Assembly liberty of speech, as is the case with the English House of Commons. The constitutional dignity of the National Assembly cannot debase itself. Speech is, in the first place, one of the natural rights of man always retained; and with respect to the National Assembly the use of it is their duty, and the nation is their authority. They were elected by the greatest ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... grandeurs. Its spirit walks the earth and haunts the institutions of to-day, in the great corporations, with the control of the National highways, their occupation of great domains, their power to tax, their cynical contempt for the law, their sorcery to debase most gifted men to the capacity of splendid slaves, their pollution of the ermine of the judge and the robe of the Senator, their aggregation in one man of wealth so enormous as to make Croesus seem a pauper, their picked, paid, and skilled ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... in the heavens, so far that he could not come to you and save you from your baser self in the hour of temptation. But the true God has been miraculously revealed to me. He dwells within; one who has found Him, will never debase His temple. ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... your proclaiming virtue over the vice we acknowledge belongs to the institution. We know its defects-we fear them; but, in the name of heaven, do not defend them at the cost of virtue, truth, honesty. Do not debase us by proclaiming its glories over our heads;-do not take advantage of us by attempting to make wrong right." The deacon's feelings have become earnest; his face ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... teaching of song and dance and beauty. In short, the dance may bring both treacherous perils and wonderful gifts to our community. It depends upon us whether we reenforce the dangerous elements of the dance, or the beneficial ones. It will depend on ourselves whether the dance will debase the nation, as it has so often done in the history of civilization, or whether it will help to lead it to new heights of beauty and harmony, as it has not seldom done before. Our social conscience must be wide ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... brought me for my lady's weal, Thy grief, my Queen, is grief to me: Thy gain my greatest gain would be. Proud daughter of a princely line, The rights of consort queen are thine. How art thou, born of royal race, Blind to the crimes that kings debase? Thy lord is gracious, to deceive, And flatters, but thy soul to grieve, While thy pure heart that thinks no sin Knows not the snares that hem thee in. Thy husband's lips on thee bestow Soft soothing ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... master in the least, that is Joe, Dr. Jenkins' coachman. I call him Joe, but at the party everybody called him Jenkins; for in that circle the stable folk among themselves call one another by their employers' names, plain Bois-l'Hery, Monpavon and Jenkins. Is it to debase the superiors, to exalt the servant class? Every country has its customs; nobody but a fool ought to be astonished by them. To return to Joe Jenkins—how can the doctor, who is such an amiable man, so perfect in every respect, keep in his service ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... Japanese field of battle been made for his sake. Oyamada Takaiye gave his horse to the Nitta general and fell fighting in his stead, while Yoshisada rode away. At first sight these sacrifices seem to debase the saved as much as they exalt the saver. But, according to Japanese ethics, an institution was always more precious than the person of its representative, and a principle than the life of its exponent. Men sacrificed themselves in battle not so much to save the life of a commanding officer, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... men and women who would go insane after spending an innocent night in a cell. In the dryest, the largest, the best of them there is everything to debase the manhood and nauseate the soul. The tin cup on the grated window-sill, half-filled with soup which the last occupant left; the cot to the right of the hopeless door, made of two boards and one straw mattress; and that necessity which is the nameless horror of such a narrow ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... monastic duties he had no vocation, and the irregularities of his behaviour caused scandal even in that age of cynical indulgence. It can scarcely be doubted that the schism between his practice and profession served to debase and vulgarise a genius of fine imaginative quality, while the uncongenial work of decorating choirs and painting altar-pieces limed the wings of his swift spirit with the dulness of routine that savoured ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... agreeable mixture, which made the moderns affect to give that of christianity a place also in their poems; but the true religion was not found to become fictitious so well as the false one had done, and all their attempts of this kind seemed, rather to debase religion than heighten poetry. Spenser endeavoured to supply this with morality, and to make instruction, instead of story the subject of an epic poem. His execution was excellent, and his flights of fancy very ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... the end of the act triumphant.) If you knew how happy your rage is making me! How proud I am that you should humble me by every means in your power! You debase me as deep—as deep as a woman can be debased, for you hope you can then jump over me easier. But you have suffered unspeakably yourself from everything you just said to me. I see it in you. Already you are near ...
— Erdgeist (Earth-Spirit) - A Tragedy in Four Acts • Frank Wedekind
... Romans had, as thou findest, and have still, more taste for murder than morality, and, as they could not find heroes among them, looked for gladiators. Their only very high poet employed his elevation and strength to dethrone and debase the Deity. They had several others, who polished their language and pitched their instruments with admirable skill; several who glued over their thin and flimsy gaberdines many bright feathers from the widespread downs of Ionia, and the ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... performing. The Duke of Wellington proudly declared that truth was the characteristic of an English officer, that when he was bound by a parole he would not break his word; for the gentleman scorns to lie, in word or deed; and is ready to brave all consequences rather than debase ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... imagination! be dissolved Like a chance snowflake in a sea of fire. Let the poor-spirited children of Despair Hang on the sepulchre of buried Hope The fadeless garlands of undying song. Though such gift turned on its pearly hinge Sweet Mercy's gate, I would not so debase me. Shut out from heaven, I, by the arch-fiend's wing, As by a star, would move, and radiantly Go down to sleep in Fame's bright arms the while Hard by, her handmaids, the still centuries Lilies and sunshine braided for my brow. ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... youth whose anxious heart Labours with love's unpitied smart? Though now he stray by rills and bowers, And weeping waste the lonely hours, Or if the nymph her audience deign, Debase the story of his pain With slavish looks, discolour'd eyes, And accents faltering into sighs; 80 Yet thou, auspicious power, with ease Canst yield him happier arts to please, Inform his mien with manlier charms, Instruct his tongue ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... question of the quality of jealousy, whether being wife of a man and mother of his children does not almost necessarily give a woman a feeling of exclusive possession in him, and whether, therefore, if we are earnest in our determination not to debase her, our last shred of polygamy does not vanish. From first to last, of course, it has been assumed that a prolific polygamy alone can be intended, for long before we have plumbed the bottom of the human heart we shall know enough to imagine ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... books.' 'I will,' says th' la-ad, 'if he don't swing on me,' he says. The editor thin addhressed th' staff. 'Gintlemen,' he says, 'I find that th' wurruk ye've been accustomed to doin',' he says, 'is calc'lated f'r to disthroy th' morality an' debase th' home life iv Topeka, not to mintion th' surroundin' methrolopuses iv Valencia, Wanamaker, Sugar Works, Paxico an' Snokomo,' he says. 'Th' newspaper, instead iv bein' a pow'rful agent f'r th' salvation iv mankind, has become something ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... to itself. Such critiques bring no profit to the reviewed. He feels that he has been written up or written down by a literary hireling who has possibly been paid to praise or abuse him secondarily, and primarily to exalt or debase ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... DeVere. "I never would consent to acting in the moving pictures. I would not so debase my profession—a profession honored by Shakespeare. I never would consent to it. ...
— The Moving Picture Girls - First Appearances in Photo Dramas • Laura Lee Hope
... questions. This is a mischief which has reached, already, an alarming height. The principle of republican governments, we are taught, is public virtue; and whatever tends either to corrupt this principle, to debase it, or to weaken its force, tends, in the same degree, to the final overthrow of such governments. Our representative systems suppose, that, in exercising the high right of suffrage, the greatest of all political rights, and in forming opinions on great ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... table of this kind is as agreeable as a party whose habits, education, and sympathies, being on a level, render intercourse a matter of mutual pleasure: what I would show is, that in this mingling of classes, which is inevitable in travelling here, there is nothing to disgust or debase man or woman, however exclusive; for it would really be impossible to feed a like multitude, of any rank or country, with slighter breaches of decency or decorum, or throw persons so wholly dissimilar together with less personal inconvenience either ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... teaches man to stand on his own feet, instills confidence in his reasoning powers, and forces him to conquer his environment. It teaches him not to subject himself and debase himself before mythical superhuman powers, for his reason is his power. The march from faith to reason is the march on which dwells the future hope of a really ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... winnowed and sifted his phraseology with a care which seems hardly consistent with the simplicity and elevation of his mind, and of which the effect really was to debase and enfeeble his style, he was little on his guard against those more serious improprieties of manner into which a great orator who undertakes to write history is in danger of falling. There is about the whole book a vehement, contentious, replying manner. Almost ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to legitimate temptations, they either compromise the honest women, and on this point we re-enter on the subject of this book, or else they debase themselves by a horrible intercourse with the five hundred thousand women of whom we spoke in the third category of the first Meditation, and in this case, have still considerable chance of visiting Switzerland, drinking milk ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... THEM ALONE, except to care for them when care is needed, and they may prove the greatest blessing you have ever known. They were given you that you might become a mother, the highest office to which God has ever called one of His creatures. Do not debase yourself and become lower than the beasts of the field. If this habit has fastened itself upon any one of our readers, stop it now. Do not allow yourself to think about it, give up all evil associations, seek ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... many fortunes, and rule the world right and left as they do, they could also sound their H's properly, and knew a little orthography, if they could not be changed into such queens of grace, of intellect, of sovereign mind and splendid wit as were their prototypes when she whose name they debase held her rule in the City of the Violet Crown, and gathered about her Phidias the divine, haughty and eloquent Antipho, the gay Crates, the subtle Protagorus, Cratinus so acrid and yet so jovial, Damon ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... speak in that way, Charlotte. Of course I married her. Did you wish me to ruin and debase her? That, I suppose, you could have forgiven. My sin against the Sandals and society is, ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... pernicious, Wicked and degraded rule, Tending to debase the vicious, And corrupt the harmless fool; If there is a hateful habit Making man a senseless tool, With the feelings of a rabbit And the wisdom of a mule; It's the rule which inculcates, It's the habit which ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... set up, so can they throw down, and those that shall debase Phorenice are even now appointed. The old rule is to be re-established; but not till you who have sinned are sufficiently chastened to cry to it for relief." He waved the mysterious glowing Symbol before him. "See," he cried in his high old quavering voice, "you know the unspeakable ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... told Mrs. Stevens that the schoolroom would be a good place to test Clinton's strength. And he was right. In no other place does a young person's strength develop or debase itself so readily, for honor or dishonor. Of course the doctor had referred to physical strength; but moral strength ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... to the other sex? Do we not deprive them of the brightest and most angelic portion of their character, degrade them from the rank of intelligence which they are formed to hold; and instead of making them the partners of our souls, attempt to debase them into mere objects ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... religious man does not exist for them. They love liberty, not because it ennobles human nature; exercises free will, the most sublime of man's vital functions; cultivates his highest faculty,—conscience; purifies religion, the fundamental idea of mankind, from the superstitions that debase and dishonor it; sanctifies human society, by leading it to the knowledge and worship of God;—they love it because it abolishes Custom House duties! All legislation, all civilization, all religion, is reduced by them to a well-balanced account! To have and ...
— Atheism Among the People • Alphonse de Lamartine
... which the Greenlanders transport their families, are always rowed by women; for a man will not debase himself by work, which requires neither skill nor courage. Anningait was therefore exposed by idleness to the ravages of passion. He went thrice to the stern of the boat, with an intent to leap into the water, and swim back to his mistress; but, recollecting the misery which ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... publisher to prison. Another English jury, for all practical purposes, decided that Dorian Gray was not immoral, and so on. The verdicts may be accepted. Twelve men, picked from an alphabetical list, may not be judges of art, but they will not debase morality. ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... created by God, and to see him happy and great and powerful she would have given her whole life and even a part of the life to come. The maternal sentiment is the only one which, because of its nobility and its sanctity, will admit of exaggeration; the only one which the delirium of passion does not debase. Nevertheless it is a singular phenomenon, frequently observed, that this exaltation of maternal affection, if not accompanied with absolute purity of heart and with perfect uprightness is apt to become perverted and transformed into a lamentable frenzy, which may lead, like any other ungoverned ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... smote him, and made him sit down among them. And after the meeting was ended, and the Friends departed to their several homes, addressing himself to Mary Penington, as the mistress of the house, he could not enough magnify the bravery and courage of the Friends, nor sufficiently debase himself. He told her how long he had been a professor, what pains he had taken, what hazards he had run, in his youthful days, to get to meetings; how, when the ways were forelaid and passages stopped, he swam ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... former relationship of tutor and pupil was at an end, but that friendship for his person was incompatible with the respect due to his superior station, I can neither so far degrade the dignity of letters, nor, above all, so meanly debase the sanctity of my divine profession, as any longer to remain beneath your hospitable roof,—a guest not only unwelcome to, but insulted by, your relation and apparent heir. Suffer me to offer you my gratitude for the favours you have hitherto bestowed on me, ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... will play the devil with thee indeed! But that I mean to hear thee howl on the rack, I would debase this sword, and lay thee prostrate At this thy paramour's feet; then drag her forth 310 Stained with adulterous blood, and— —mark you, traitress! Strumpeted first, then turned adrift to beggary! ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... utmost point consistent with due subordination to the objects displayed. To enter a room in the Louvre is an education in itself; but two steps on the filthy floor and under the iron forks, half scaffold, half gallows, of the big Norwood glass bazaar, debase mind and eye at once below possibility of looking at anything with profit all the day afterwards. I have just heard that a French picture dealer is to have charge of the picture gallery there, and ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... weight of woe we owe to thee, Accurst comparative degree! Thy paltry step can never give Access to the superlative; For he who would the wisest be, Strives to make others wise as he, And never yet was man judged best Who would be better than the rest; So does comparison unkind Dwarf and debase the ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... lesson from this great statesman, this enlarged, this liberal philosopher:—'I hope I shall not depart from the simplicity of official language, in saying that the Majesty of Justice ought to be approached with solicitation, not descend to provoke or invite it, much less to debase itself by the suggestion of wrongs and the promise of redress, with the denunciation of punishment before trial, and even before accusation.' This is the exhortation which Mr. Hastings makes to his counsel. This is the character which he gives of ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... loathsome, leading to gross idolatry, and much vice perpetrated in the name of religion. Mythology always degenerates with the popular character, and then, so far as the character is formed by the religious faith, the mythology helps to debase it further, until the undying moral sense of conscience awakens again in some man, or band of men, and a new morality arises; sometimes grafted upon philosophic reasoning, sometimes upon a newly-invented or ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the method of escape from that labyrinth. And now appeared unexpectedly before him two powers, the interest of the state, which he had not felt thus far, though he was heir to the throne; and the priesthood, which he wished to debase and then make ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... felt formerly. It was, indeed, wholly beyond the power, even of an imagination like his, to go on investing with its own ideal glories a sentiment which,—more from daring and vanity than from any other impulse,—he had taken such pains to tarnish and debase in his own eyes. Accordingly, instead of being able, as once, to elevate and embellish all that interested him, to make an idol of every passing creature of his fancy, and mistake the form of love, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... answered Don Quixote, "and he will do what is best for her, but do thou have a care not to debase thy mind so low as to content thyself with being ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... this nobility and simplicity of manner, do they owe it to education? Not at all; it is the gift of nature. In some respects nature has been very liberal to the Turkish people; but all the gifts she has bestowed upon them, their institutions tend to debase and invalidate. And in proportion as we carry our observations above the classes which so happily preserve their primitive characteristics, to the bourgeoisie, or into regions higher still, so shall we find ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... smitten us so That for us is no healing? Hoped we for peace—no good! For a season of healing—lo panic! We acknowledge, O Lord, our wickedness, 20 The guilt of our fathers; to Thee have we sinned. For the sake of Thy Name, do not spurn us, 21 Debase not the Throne of Thy Glory, Remember, break not Thy Covenant with us! 'Mongst the bubbles of the nations are makers of rain, 22 Or do the heavens give the showers? Art Thou not He for whom we must wait? Yea, Thou ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... and at the same time literally compel them to sell it to us upon our own terms: We send agents and missionaries to reclaim them from the error of their ways—to bring them from the hunter to the pastoral life; and yet permit our citizens to debase them by spirituous liquors, and cheat them out of their property: We make war upon them without any adequate cause—pursue them without mercy—and put them to death, without regard to age, sex or condition: And, then deliberately proclaim ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... through dissembling I should thrive, Or, in praising you, myself of truth deprive! Let not your high thoughts debase A simple truth in me; Great is Beauty's grace, Truth is yet ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... sense of duty, and was a stranger to self-command; and though she boasted refinement of mind, yet it was of that spurious sort which, far from elevating and purifying the heart, tends only to corrupt and debase the soul, while it sheds a false and dazzling lustre upon those perishable graces which ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... money," and added: "No man is now so wise and gifted that he can save this Nation from bankruptcy. * * * No borrowing system can save us. The scheme of making greenbacks a legal tender, which enabled the debtor to cheat his creditor, thereby playing the old game of kingcraft, to debase the currency in order to aid the designs of despotism, may float us for a while amidst the fluctuations and bubbles of the day; but as no one possesses the power to repeal the Law of the Almighty, which decrees (and as our Constitution has established) ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... Josephina in Venice and made a short trip to Paris to see its famous Salon. He came back transfigured, with a new fever for work and a determination to transform his existence which filled his wife with astonishment and fear. He was going to break with his impresario, he would no longer debase himself with that false painting, even if he had to beg for his living. Great things were being done in the world, and he felt that he had the courage to be an innovator, following the steps of those modern painters who made such a ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... and poor parentage, but absence of good manners is also often found among children and youths who have had fair common and high school advantages. This license has led directly and unerringly to the formation and cultivation of habits more likely to debase than elevate them. To venture criticism of parental laches or of the conduct of the young, to admonish or advise different manners and conduct from that which the inclination of the young seems to suggest, would be to run ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... myself indeed that, with respect to law, Turl's reasoning was much too severe and absolute. It was true I could not but own that law was inclined to debase and corrupt the morals of its practitioners; but surely there were exceptions, and if I pursued the law why should not I be one of them. If therefore the happiness at which I aimed were attainable by this means, I asserted to myself that I had heard no reasons which ought ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... children of his soul. The incongruity is much as though we might go to Portland Road and buy an angel, just as we buy a parrot. The transactions of poetry and of sale are on two different planes. But so soon as, shall we say, you debase poetry by bringing it down to the lower plane, it becomes subject to the laws of that plane. An unprinted poem is a spiritual thing, but a printed poem is subject to the laws of matter. In the heaven of the poet's imagination there are ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... an undaunted victor, Doederlein became serious; he stared into space and did some hard thinking. Recalling the now superannuated feud, he preserved the appearance of inapproachability, and said: "We will not debase ourselves ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... power to teach new things to the one who hath erred, for every one who errs hath but missed the appointed path and wandered away. Reflect, and thou wilt discover that no one of these with whom thou art annoyed hath done aught to debase thy mind, and that is the only real evil ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... have been born and educated a Gentleman, and desire you will make the public sensible that the Christian Priesthood was never thought, in any Age or country, to debase the Man who is a member of it. Among the great services which your useful Papers daily do to Religion, this perhaps will not be the least: and it will lay a very ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... because of her beauty? he wondered. He thought not altogether. Mercedes was a woman. She represented something in life that men of all races for thousands of years had loved to see and own, to revere and debase, to fight ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... one does not seek inspiration in order to debase himself and lie. One writer has been imprisoned for having put a very obvious truth into verse. They may have called me a poet but they sha'n't ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... in its greatest altitudes, fitted to stand the day? Do not the lovers, when mutual consent awaits their wills, retire to coverts, and to darkness, to complete their wishes? And shall such a sneaking passion as this, which can be so easily gratified by viler objects, be permitted to debase the noblest? ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... sometimes captivate the mind of their master to such an extent that they obtain from him very important favours in behalf of the persons they protect, and the consequence is that they are often courted by the highest families. Where is the man who will not debase himself if he be in want? Does not Agamemnon say, in Homer, that in such a case man must necessarily be guilty of meanness? And Agamemnon and Homer lived long before our time! It evidently proves that men are at all times moved by the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... in a nobler cast than his; it was founded in the school of Christianity, which was, that all men are by nature equal; that they are wisely and justly endowed by their Creator with certain rights which are irrefragable, and no matter how human pride and avarice may depress and debase, still God is the author of good to man; and of evil, man is the artificer to himself and to his species. Unlike Plato and Socrates, his mind was free from the gloom that surrounded theirs. Let the name, ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... well!" said he, mutteringly. "I am worthy of this,—very, very worthy! Generous, noble girl! had I been an emperor, I would have bowed down to you in worship; but to debase, to degrade ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... recovering herself after the first instant of consternation, "you are degrading the greatest noble in the land! You, the head of the house of Lorraine, the chief of the League, the commander of the allied armies, debase yourself in stooping to ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... danger may arise from playmates or school-fellows. This applies equally to children of either sex. Danger may also arise from adults, not only through systematic seduction on the part of grown persons who deliberately debase the mind of youth, but also in other ways. The conversations of adults often lead to sexual acts on the part of children, who understand far more of what is said in their presence than grownups commonly believe. While the child ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... sweet youths to wait upon me, Sweet bred-up youths, to be a credit to me. There's your delight again, pray take him to ye, He never comes near me more to debase me. ...
— The Spanish Curate - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... Part of Womankind, and for the Use of those who are rather indiscreet than vicious. But, Sir, there is a Sort of Prostitutes in the lower Part of our Sex, who are a Scandal to us, and very well deserve to fall under your Censure. I know it would debase your Paper too much to enter into the Behaviour of these Female Libertines; but as your Remarks on some Part of it would be a doing of Justice to several Women of Virtue and Honour, whose Reputations suffer by it, I hope you will not think it improper to give the Publick ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... eradicate abuses and bring out our strength. A fatality, however, seems pursuing us. The blockade-runners drain the country of the little gold which is left in it; the forestallers run up prices, and debase the currency beyond hope; the able-bodied and healthy men who ought to be in the army, swarm in the streets; and the bitter foes of the President poison the public mind, and infuse into it despair. It is this, colonel, not our weakness, ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... certain circles and openly avowed in others that Bansemer's business was not the kind which elevates the law; in plain words, his methods were construed to debase the good and honest statutes of the land. Once inside the door of his office—and a heavy spring always closed it behind one—there was quick evidence that the lawyer lamentably disregarded the virtues of prosperity, no matter how they had been courted and won. Although his transactions ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... ignorance of the people is so great that printed charms and incantations against Satan and his host and against every kind of misfortune are publicly sold in the shops and are in great demand; such are the results of Popery, a delusion which more than any other has tended to debase and brutalise the ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... sir, is much unworthy you, [Smiling scornfully. And, when you would, impossible to do. If force could bend me, you might think, with shame, That I debase the blood from whence I came. My soul is soft, which you may gently lay In your loose palm; but, when 'tis pressed to stay, Like water, it deludes ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... throne where Henri great and good, In glory sat—now sits this man of blood; Yet let not prejudice debase my line, As warrior, as statesman, let him shine,— Through all the world his mighty name resound, For arts of peace and deeds of arms renown'd: Mark with what steady hand he rules the State! Yet wants the stamp ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 566, September 15, 1832 • Various
... family and her estates. Any stranger would consider her a silly being, whose head was turned by her pretensions to rank and property; but she is in reality even more ridiculous, the daughter of a mere magistrate's clerk from this neighbourhood. I cannot understand how human beings can so debase themselves. ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... mortify the self-love of the expected proselyte? I ask further, when such attempts have been made, whether they have not failed of success? The indignant heart repels the conviction that is believed to debase it.... Let me expostulate with gentlemen to admit, if it be only by way of supposition, and for a moment, that it is barely possible they have yielded too suddenly to their own alarms for the powers of this house; that the addresses which have been made with such variety ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... national conscience has at length been touched regarding women, and we venture to hope that in proportion as women have been used to debase industrial standards, so in like degree as the nation insists upon better treatment being accorded her, the results may so react upon the whole field of industry that men too may be sharers ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry
... Consequently those writers stray pretty far from beauty for whom, as it were, all nature plays the ham to the point that they say nothing in an ordinary way, imagine nothing in the way in which it is perceived outside of poems, but instead elevate, debase, alter, and clothe everything in a theatrical mask. For this reason we have excluded from this anthology a number of epigrams as too metaphorical: for example, these two by Daniel Heinsius, a man otherwise eminent in scholarship ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole
... landscape lives, earth unfolds its fruits, ocean rolls in its magnificence, the heavens display their constellated canopy, and the grand animated spectacle of nature rises revealed before him, its varieties regulated, and its mysteries resolved! The phenomena which bewilder, the prejudices which debase, the superstitions which enslave, vanish ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... moan or plead or show no plea: O spurner of my love I ne'er of thee so hard would deem * That I of thee should be despised, of thee my property. I wont at lovers' love to rail and for their passion chide, * But now I fain debase myself to all who rail at thee: Yea, only yesterday I wont all amourists to blame * But now I pardon hearts that pine for passion's ecstasy; And of my stress of parting-stowre on me so heavy weighs * At morning prayer to Him I'll cry, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... corporal punishment should be inflicted, and the reason I am against it is this: I am opposed to any punishment that cannot be inflicted by a gentleman. I am opposed to any punishment the infliction of which tends to harden and debase the man who inflicts it. I am for no laws that have to be carried ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... the vicissitudes of society? Sequestered from the world, neither its pageants nor its mortifications could have reached me there. I have seen thee, matchless Constantine! Like a bright planet, thou has passed before me!—like a being of a superior order! And I never, never can debase my nature to change that love. Thy image shall follow me into solitude—shall consecrate my soul to the practice of every virtue! I will emulate thy excellence, when, perhaps, thou hast forgotten ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... multiplication commences with a mechanical rupture, and with the passage of time and the influence of outside elements, the sects thus born undergo visible modifications. By turns sublime or outrageous, simple or depraved, they either aspire heavenwards or debase the human spirit to the level ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... of these were caused by illicit love! With that lack of logic which sometimes, under similar circumstances, characterizes the actions of men to-day, these Italians of the sixteenth century were not willing that their sisters and wives should debase themselves by dishonorable conduct, no matter what they might do themselves, and when the women were found guilty there was no punishment too severe for them. Thus, Eleanora di Toledo was hacked to pieces by her husband Pietro de' Medici, and his sister Isabella was strangled ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... be the Basis of almost all their Tragedies. Nay, the Education of the People under such a Government, prevents their delighting in such Performances as pleased an Athenian or a Roman, and now delight us Britons. Thus every Thing conduces to debase Tragedy among them, as every Thing here contributes to form good Tragick Writers; yet how few have we! And what is very remarkable, each Nation takes Delight in that, which, in the Main, they the least excel in, and are the least fit for. The ...
— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous
... to realize the power of my life. I feel ashamed and alarmed when I think of the grievous wrongs I may have done for greed. May I have delight in the struggles I have made for the ways of righteousness. Make me careful to avoid the things that debase life. May I aspire for the highest and ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... doth in its flight debase Whate'er it finds? our fathers' race, More deeply versed in ill Than were their sires, hath born us yet More wicked, destined to beget A ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... period, if he could be brought even to consider such a horrible proposition, would point out that the sphere of woman was to make home happy by those gentle insipidities which education would destroy; that by participating in conversation with men they would debase their natures, and men would thereby lose that ameliorating influence which still leaves them unfit to associate with women. He would point out that "nature" had determined that women should be secluded; that their sphere was to raise and educate the man-child, and that any change ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... a poor man from his birth, and an exciseman from necessity; but—I will say it!—the sterling of his honest worth, poverty could not debase; and his independent British spirit oppression might bend, but could ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... away until he felt sufficient courage to face it once more. And not even his wife dared to question him on his return—indeed, she was only too happy to see him back again after her anxious waiting. At such times he madly scoured Paris, especially the outlying quarters, from a longing to debase himself and hob-nob with labourers. He expressed at each recurring crisis his old regret at not being some mason's hodman. Did not happiness consist in having solid limbs, and in performing the work one was built for well and quickly? He had ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... visits and letters; the more the better, so that you keep it a sentiment, not debase it by animal passion. It is still establishing its rootlets, like young corn, instead of growing. Allow no amatory excitement, no frenzied, delirious intoxication with it; for its violence, like ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... Should some obscure inferior fellow, Like Julius, or the youth of Pella,[4] When all your list of Gods is out, Presume to show his mortal snout, And as a Deity intrude, Because he had the world subdued; O, let him not debase your thoughts, Or name him but to tell his faults.— Of Gods I only quote the best, But you may hook in all the rest. Now, birth-day bard, with joy proceed To praise your empress and her breed; First of the first, to vouch your lies, Bring all the females of the skies; The Graces, and their mistress, ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... Felix. See to it that you never make your music the servant of the power of evil—never debase it to unworthy ends. For your responsibility is as your gift, and God will exact the accounting of it from you. Speak to the world in your own tongue through it, with truth and sincerity; and all I have hoped for you ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery |
