"Debase" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... influence. There must be more popular art, more of that art which is unimportant to the universe but important to the individual: for art can be second-rate yet genuine. Also, art must become less exclusively professional. That will not be achieved by bribing the best artists to debase themselves, but by enabling everyone to create such art as he can. It is probable that most are capable of expressing themselves, to some extent, in form; it is certain that in so doing they can find an extraordinary happiness. Those who have ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... 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, ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... 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 by it. Even the officers of this beautiful service have tacitly ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... 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
... will; but let him not stake his all on success in that pursuit, but have a second line to fall back upon if driven from his first. Let him be so reared and trained that he may enter, if he will, upon some intellectual calling in the sustaining consciousness that he need not debase himself, nor do violence to his convictions, in order to achieve success therein, since he can live and thrive in another (if you choose, humbler) vocation, if driven from that of his choice. This buttress to integrity, this ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... wonderful discovery. The God you worshipped was far away 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
... 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 ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... force me, 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 your ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... very arteries of our national life; who have sought to bring the authority and good name of our Government into contempt, to destroy our industries wherever they thought it effective for their vindictive purposes to strike at them, and to debase our politics to the uses of foreign intrigue. Their number is not great as compared with the whole number of those sturdy hosts by which our nation has been enriched in recent generations out of virile foreign stocks; ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... the marble for the present, and save 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... country has shown greater ability under circumstances so hostile to its development. And all this is found here without any of those distressing and revolting alloys which too often debase the native worth of genius, and make him who was gifted with powers to command admiration live to be the object of contempt or pity. The lower the condition of its possessor the more unfavourable, generally, has been the effect of genius on ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... had been taught to maintain, was looked upon as iniquitous extravagance. Nor was this, even in those bloody days, enough to condemn her. Lies of the basest kind were, with care and difficulty, contrived to debase her character—lies which have now been proved to be so, but which were then not only credible, but sure to receive credit from those who already believed that all royal blood was, from its nature, capable of ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... gaze cold as ice, I felt shame for my emotion; I hastened once more to discourse as coldly as I might of suits at law and of the district diets, and even to jest. All this, to be sure, was from pride, in order not to debase the name of the Soplicas, in order not to lower myself before a magnate by a vain request and receive a refusal—for what gossip there would have been among the gentry, if they ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... system. The pleasure derived from this study is unceasing, and so various, that it never tires the appetite. But it is unlike the low gratifications of sense in another respect: it elevates and refines our nature, while those hurt the health, debase the understanding, and corrupt the feelings; it teaches us to look upon all earthly objects as insignificant and below our notice, except the pursuit of knowledge and the cultivation of virtue, that is to say, the strict performance of our ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... thee, howe'er inclined, Will deign to own a kindred care? Who will debase his manly mind, For ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... 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 dictates The wrong and sinful practice ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... such a man debase himself By countenancing loud scurrility Against a queen who cannot make reprise! A power so ponderous needs no littleness— The last resort ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... So let her go, God sent her to debase me, And aggravate my folly who committed 1000 To such a viper his most sacred trust Of secresie, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... India or Europe—what's there in a name? 450 Propensity to vice in both the same, Nature alike in both works for man's good, Alike in both by man himself withstood. Nabobs, as well as those who hunt them down, Deserve a cord much better than a crown, And a Mogul can thrones as much debase As any polish'd prince of Christian race. F. Could you,—a task more hard than you suppose,— Could you, in ridicule whilst Satire glows, Make all their follies to the life appear, 460 'Tis ten to one you gain no credit here; Howe'er well drawn, the picture, after all, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... pedantry and without leaving the tone of familiar converse. Sometimes we read verses, but we never make them; we love the ancients and do not fear the moderns: we only fear those who would lower the mind and debase the heart. We love the past while we render justice to the present; and flatter ourselves at not seeing many things that to you appear beautiful, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... contradictory laws that torture him; the manifold injustice under which he groans; when he turns his mind to the barbarous ignorance in which he is steeped, almost over the whole surface of the earth; when he witnesses those enormous crimes that debase society; when he unmasks those rooted vices that render it so hateful to almost every individual; he has great difficulty to prevent his mind from embracing the idea that misfortune is the only appendage of the human species; ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... substitution, it is a penalty which writers of this description will invariably impose upon them. It is the common trick of the envious, and the mock magnanimity with which they seek to conceal their true nature—to exalt the lowly, while they debase the exalted. Since some idol there must be, let it be one of their raising. Even while helping to raise it, they enjoy, too, the secret consciousness that it is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... Brunow, "I'm not 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. That's enough for ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... French workman usually sits at the cafe table with his wife, and on Sundays with his children, and takes his drink, whatever it may be, under the restraining eyes of those before whom a man is least ready to debase himself. ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... passed at its full value only in the locality where it was minted, a merchant had to be constantly changing his money, as he went from one fief to another, and always at a loss. Kings and nobles for their own profit would often debase the currency by putting silver into the gold coins and copper into the silver coins. Every debasement, as it left the coins with less pure metal, lowered their purchasing power and so raised prices unexpectedly. Even in countries like England, ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... 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 belief ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... clean and polished 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
... 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, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... comfort, but beautiful to the 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 that the whole interior is to become ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... 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 ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... gradation, none of the sixth class, who were not considered as having any fortune, but were capite censi, "rated by the head," were allowed to enlist in the army. The enlistment of the lower order, commenced, it is said, by Marius, tended to debase the army, and to render it a fitter tool for the purposes of unprincipled commanders. See Aul. ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... hope, Hazlet, by centuries of preaching such as yours, to repair one millionth part of the damage done by your bad passions to a single fellow-creature? Such a hateful excuse is verily to carry the Urim with its oracular gems into the very sty of sensuality, and to debase your religion into 'a procuress to the lords of hell.' I have done; but let me say, Hazlet, that your self-justification is, if possible, more ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... observations, to account for the reason why Orange struck me so much; a place of which I had heard and read little or nothing. No attentive and intelligent cicerone anticipated our reflections in this place; nor did the creature-comforts of a good inn debase our Roman reveries, though we could well have pardoned their so doing. Madame Ran, of the Croix Blanche, was as mean and dirty as the hole in which she lived; and looked as malevolent as Canidia, Erichtho, or any other classical ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... 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 earthly epithets ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... the English Ministry, in order to have them restored to them, and having invited the merchants of Rotterdam to join with them in this Deputation, the latter have answered, that with men capable of acting so ruffianlike, they would rather let them keep all that they had robbed, than debase themselves by courting the robbers. This noble answer would be still more so, if Rotterdam had lost as much at St Eustatia as Amsterdam; there being, as for that, a very ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... buried in heathen ignorance. But extensive as was this so-called religious instruction, he did not see how the teaching of the slave to be obedient to his master could exert much power in raising one to the divinity of man. How slavery which tends to debase the mind of the bondman could prepare it for spiritual truth, or how he could comprehend the essential principles of love on hearing it from the lips of his selfish and unjust owner, were questions which no defender of the system ever answered satisfactorily for Channing. Seeing ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... strange 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 ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... not enlarge. It is, however, proper to remark, that as his habitual meekness and command of his passions prevented indecent sallies of ungoverned anger towards those in the lowest state of subjection to him, by which some in high life do strangely debase themselves, and lose much of their authority, so the natural greatness of his mind made him solicitous to render their inferior stations as easy as he could: and so much the rather, because he considered ...
— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge
... while the head of the church itself, whose station, exalted over that of every worldly potentate, should have raised him at least above their grosser vices, was sunk in the foulest corruptions that debase poor human nature. Was it surprising, then, that the tree, thus cankered at heart, with all the goodly show of blossoms on its branches, should have fallen before the blast, which now descended in such pitiless fury from ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... pleased with this request, and gladly gave them his daughter; for in doing so, he does not debase himself, nor diminish his honour in any way. But he says that he had promised her to the Duke of Saxony, and that they would not be able to lead her away unless the emperor should come with a great army, so that the duke would be unable to do him any harm or ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... offered a minority report, and addressed the House in opposition to the proposed amendment of the Constitution. He thus presented his view of the object of the measure proposed: "It appears to have in its body, in its soul, and in its life only one great object and aim; that is, to debase and degrade the white race, and to place upon a higher footing than the white men are placed, under the Constitution, this African race. It is a proposition to change the organic law of the land with regard to one of the fundamental principles which was laid down by ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... abandoned the field for easier employments. I doubt the policy of shooting 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
... though actuated in a measure by enthusiasm for the public weal, was driven into the contest mainly by a necessity to save himself. The calm disinterestedness which marks the career of Washington was wholly wanting in the Swedish king. His readiness to debase the currency, his efforts to humiliate the bishops, his confiscation of Church property, his intimacy with foreign courtiers,—all show a desire for personal aggrandizement inconsistent with an earnest ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... Maides are fearefull; for by mens abuse, Courting is turned to a common vse, How is he held, that cannot in these dayes Fash'on his words to each fantasticke phrase? VVhich makes vs oft with one word to debase Him from our bosomes, whom our hearts imbrace: And, as you men doe for a Prouerbe make it, That which we loue we oft say nay and take it. Delayes breede danger, wherefore what I said, And what agrees with Honour, and ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... character of this self whose closer acquaintance we are making is this: It has an insatiable appetite. It grows hungrier by that on which it feeds. Its capacity is beyond the measuring line. If given free rein it will debase the holiest functions of the body, and degrade the highest powers of the mind to appease its gnawing, passion-bitten hunger. The noblest gifts, the purest emotions, the most sacred relationships, are dragged down to the slimy gutter to tempt and ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... could 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 ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... dominion of the steer, and held its rich agricultural and mineral lands undeveloped. The herbage there, curing in the dry suns of summer as it stood on the upland plains, provided winter forage for their herds. There was no need for man to put his hand to the soil and debase himself to a peasant's level when he might live in a king's estate by roaming his herds ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... a 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 with nobler arms, With more ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... noble society, not based upon blood nor pompous titles, but upon the work and personal merit of each one; a free society, where exist neither egotism nor personal politics which annihilate and crush, neither envy nor favoritism which debase, neither fanfaronade nor charlatanism ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... liberty, who would rather perish than support him. I first make the oath, that either equality shall reign, or I will die contending against protectors and tribunes. Tribunes! they are the worst enemies of the people. They flatter to enchain it. They spread suspicions of virtue, which will not debase itself. Remember who were Aristides and Phocion,—they did not ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... ornament, embellish, deck, bedeck, 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
... beat or imprison clergymen, desiring it to be done with tolling of bell and putting out of candle, because these solemnities had the greater effect on the laity. This statute is a sad proof how much too cheaply sacred things were held, and how habit was leading even the clergy to debase them by over-frequent and frivolous use ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Manners of the present Age, have confounded Purity with Prudery. But, for all this, it may be hoped, that the latter will rather endeavour to raise their Affections to Clarissa's virtuous Standard, than by striving to impeach her Character, effectually debase, if not violently tear up, the decisive Standard of Right ...
— Clarissa: Preface, Hints of Prefaces, and Postscript • Samuel Richardson
... following year the 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 Greenwich on Sunday, the 10th May, and soundly ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... To accuse the Murderers, to right the Stage, And undeceive the long abused Age, Which casts thy praise on them, to whom thy Wit Gives not more Gold then they give drosse to it: Who not content like fellons to purloyne, Adde Treason to it, and debase thy Coyne. But whither am I strayd? I need not raise Trophies to thee from other Mens dispraise; Nor is thy fame on lesser Ruines built, Nor needs thy juster title the foule guilt Of Easterne Kings, who to secure their Raigne, ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher in Ten Volumes - Volume I. • Beaumont and Fletcher
... believed in and the man and the woman who had your passionate love, your absolute faith, have your revenge upon the One—as upon those two others. Degrade, cast down, deface, the image of your Maker in you. Hurl back every gift of His, prostitute and debase every faculty. Cease to believe, denying His Being with the Will He forged and freed. Your Body, is it not your own, to do with as you choose? Your Soul, is it not your helpless prisoner, while you keep it in its cage of clay? Revenge, revenge, through the body and the soul, upon Him who has ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... corruption, we must examine those revolutions of state that remove, or withhold, the objects of every ingenious study or liberal pursuit; that deprive the citizen of occasions to act as the member of a public; that crush his spirit; that debase his sentiments, and ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... themselves confronted by hordes of savages, yet proudly maintained the integrity of their race and asserted its supremacy over the descendants of Shem, in whose tents they had come to dwell. They preferred to encounter toil, privation and carnage, rather than debase their lineage and race. Their descendants of that pure and heroic blood have advanced to the high standard of civilization attainable by that type of mankind. Stability and progress, wealth and comfort, art and science, have followed ...
— Speeches of the Honorable Jefferson Davis 1858 • Hon. Jefferson Davis
... that our 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 ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... appears nowhere in a more clear light. If trade continued under restraint, their territorial revenues must suffer by checking the general prosperity of the country: if they set it free, means were taken to raise the price and debase the quality of the goods; and this again fell upon the revenues, out of which the payment for the goods was to arise. The observations of the Company on that occasion are just and sagacious; and they will not permit the least doubt concerning the policy ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... terrapin," replied Mrs. Birtwell, in a voice out of which she could hardly keep the contempt she felt for her husband's weak rejoinder, "don't confuse the head, dethrone the reason, brutalize, debase and ruin men in soul and body as do wine and brandy. The difference lies there, and all men see and feel it, make what excuses they will for self-indulgence and deference to custom. The curse of drink is too widely felt. ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... alone can point the dart, Whose hidden sting could wound no other heart— These, of all pains the sharpest we endure, The breast which now inflicts, would spring to cure.— No more deserted genius then, would fly To breathe in solitude his hopeless sigh; No more would Fortune's partial smile debase The spirit, rich in intellectual grace; Who views unmov'd from scenes where pleasures bloom, The flame of genius sunk in mis'ry's gloom; The soul heav'n form'd to soar, by want deprest, Nor heeds the wrongs that pierce a kindred breast.— Thou righteous Law! whose ...
— Poems (1786), Volume I. • Helen Maria Williams
... fall a similar fate must have overtaken Yoshisada, had not one of those sacrifices familiar on a 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 ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... the bosom is no longer cheerful and placid; and if the countenance preserve its exterior character, this is no longer the honest expression of the heart. Prosperity and luxury, gradually extinguishing sympathy, and puffing up with pride, harden and debase the soul. In other instances, shame secretly clouds, and remorse begins to sting, and suspicion to corrode, and jealousy and envy to embitter. Disappointed hopes, unsuccessful competitions, and frustrated pursuits, ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... thoughts of 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 his address and experience, and that ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... for our party through scientific considerations. The theoretical bankruptcy of bourgeois economics, and the theoretical superiority of Socialism, must become clear to them. Through their training, also, they must discover that the other social classes continuously strive to debase art and science. Many others are impressed by the fact of the irresistible advance of the Social Democracy. So it is that friendship for labor becomes popular among the cultured classes, until there is scarcely ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... 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, ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... oft received, and yet receives a God; A God victorious of the Stygian race Here laid his sacred limbs, and sanctified the place, 710 This mean retreat did mighty Pan contain: Be emulous of him, and pomp disdain, And dare not to debase your soul ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... and glass Beads will improve the Imperial Purple, or adorn the Crowns of great Monarchs. And therefore we see, with what judicious Care Virgil has avoided this Error; how clear are his celebrated Writings from the least sprinkling of Wit and pleasant Conceits, which corrupt the Purity, debase the Majesty, and sully the Lustre of the greater Species of Poetry? And as the Gravity and Chastness of the sublime Stile, in the Works last mention'd, will not endure the gay Ornaments of Fancy; so does that light ...
— Essay upon Wit • Sir Richard Blackmore
... value of the other money fell, to the mystification alike of the prince and of his people. The reason is now perfectly plain: the number of coins was not kept within the proper limits and they went down to their bullion value. The only way a further profit could be made in this way was to debase the coin again. By successive steps the coinage came to consist almost ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... felt it revive him from faintness. But there are places into which we should not thrust ourselves. It is like—like suicide. One's mind must be perverted before certain things can be done. And that is the true sin—to debase one's soul. All men discover and learn of science and the universe by honest duty and effort is good, is lofty and leads up. Nothing is forbidden to us. But if we turn aside to the low door which only opens to crime and evil purpose, we step outside. I am unskilful; ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... of his thought; you may yoke him to your labour, as an ox which liveth only to work, and worketh only to live; you may put him under any process which, without destroying his value as a slave, will debase and crush him as a rational being; you may do this, and the idea that he was born to be free will survive it all. It is allied to his hope of immortality; it is the ethereal part of his nature, which oppression cannot reach; it is a torch ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... poison. The merchant or dealer who practises this dangerous sophistication, adds the crime of murder to that of fraud, and deliberately scatters the seeds of disease and death among those consumers who contribute to his emolument. If to debase the current coin of the realm be denounced as a capital offence, what punishment should be awarded against a practice which converts into poison a ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum
... born with us; but we are placed here amid so much nakedness, and hunger, and poverty, and want, that we are under a cursed necessity of studying selfishness, in order that we may exist! Still there are, in every age, a few souls that all the wants and woes of life cannot debase to selfishness, or even to the necessary alloy of caution and prudence. If ever I am in danger of vanity, it is when I contemplate myself on this side of my disposition and character. God knows I am no saint; I have a whole host of follies ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... seized on the plea for delinquent taxes and they were forced into the ghetto of towns and cities, as it became a crime punishable by social proscription to sell Negroes desirable residences. The aim was to debase all Negroes to the status of menial labor in conformity with the usual contention of the South that slavery is the normal condition ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson
... talketh with God or men, how doth he debase himself before them! If with God, how does he accuse himself, and load himself with the acknowledgments of his own villanies, which he committed in the days wherein he was the enemy of God! 'Lord,' said Paul, that contrite one, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... 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 ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... brief passion. She was content, it seemed, that her lover should be wise, should be careful for the future, should take her life into his hands with a sort of quiet mastery as if he had a right to do so—a right, not to ruin and debase, such as is usually considered the privilege of that which is called a great passion and admired as such—but a right ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... year. He was naturally desirous to improve his worldly position; but never did it occur to him to do so at the expense of his immaculate character. Veitel Ephraim and his associates, employed by Frederick the Great to debase the coin of Prussia, made him brilliant offers in the hope of gaining him as their partner. He could not be tempted, and entered into a binding engagement with Bernhard. His married life was happy, he was sincerely in love with his wife, ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... 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 ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... the best grounds, that the theatre may be made, by proper established regulations, a school of virtue and manners, we do not wish to conceal our persuasion that there is nothing more potent to debase and corrupt the minds of a people than a licentious stage. But it may be averred with equal truth, that the abuses of every other institution are fraught with no less mischief to the public. At this very moment the abuse of the pulpit is the parent of more ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... 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
... it, feeling its presence and hearing its suggestions, and debase your life in any way, as you might have done, but for its presence. It is so very true that, in the life of the Spirit, looking up means lifting up. As the plant turns to the sun, it grows towards the sun; ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... that a certain book by Zola was immoral and sent the 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
... flower before the wind. She was not naturally of the heroic type either, as Corona d'Astrardente had been, and perhaps was still, capable of sacrifice for the ideal of duty, able to suffer torment rather than debase herself by yielding, strong to stem the torrent of a great passion until she had the right to abandon herself to its mighty flood. Faustina was a younger and a gentler woman, not knowing what she did from the moment ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... "Heretics who persist in their error after a second admonition ought not only to be excommunicated, but also abandoned to the secular arm to be put to death. For, he argues, it is much more wicked to corrupt the faith on which depends the life of the soul, than to debase the coinage which provides merely for temporal life; wherefore, if coiners and other malefactors are justly doomed to death, much more may heretics be justly slain once they are convicted. If, therefore, they persist ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... to remain 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? ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... 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 ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... 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.
... 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 of the silver lyre, and the great poets who are poets for all time. Author ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... success in his writings. Smollett, who is a great poet, though he has written little in verse, and whose rich genius composed the most original pictures of human life, was compelled by his wants to debase his name by selling it to voyages and translations, which he never could have read. When he had worn himself down in the service of the public or the booksellers, there remained not, of all his slender ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... included in the idea of Composite Unity; one involving many, and many collapsed into one. Some such enigma was probable in Reason's guess at the nature of his God. It is the Christian way; and one entirely unobjectionable: because it is the only insuperable difficulty as to His Nature which does not debase the notion of Divinity. But there are ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... accepted without explanation or a change of treatment, an inference might have been drawn that the charge of imposture was well founded; but in any case, having been grossly insulted both in my public and private character, I could not debase the situation I had the honour to hold by a tacit submission. When the aide-de-camp returned from carrying the above reply, he said that the general would invite me when set at liberty; but nothing was offered in ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... speech with dignity. To be icily correct is as silly as to rant. Do neither, but appeal to those world-old elements in your audience that have been recognized by all great speakers from Demosthenes to Sam Small, and see to it that you never debase your powers by ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... and, from that moment to this, I have never been in an English play-house. Besides this, the meanness, the abject servility, of the players, and the slavish conduct of the audience, are sufficient to corrupt and debase the heart of any young man who is a frequent beholder of them. Homage is here paid to every one clothed with power, be he who or what he may; real virtue and public-spirit are subjects of ridicule; and mock-sentiment and mock-liberality ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... zealous Whig, propitiated the City. In the Lords (always the more prejudiced and conservative body than the Commons) the bill met with great opposition. Some noblemen imagined that the Bank was intended to exalt the moneyed interest and debase the landed interest; and others imagined the bill was intended to enrich usurers, who would prefer banking their money to lending it on mortgage. "Something was said," says Macaulay, "about the danger ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... respectable appearance and dress, will be gazing upon these subjects; and now that the art of lithography is become fashionable, the print-shops of Paris will be deluged with an inundation of these odious representations, which threaten equally to debase the art and to corrupt morals. This cheap and wholesale circulation of what is mischievous, and of really most miserable execution, is much to be deplored. Even in the better part of art, lithography will have a pernicious effect. Not ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... 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
... whole question, the mighty problem, would be very easily solved then. But it is not so easy to go to hell as preachers declare it to be. It is as hard a task as to find one's way to the Golden Gate! A man may wreck himself utterly in sense-pleasure,—may debase his whole nature, as it seems,—yet he fails of becoming the perfect devil, for there is still the spark of divine light within him. He tries to choose the broad road which leads to destruction, and enters bravely on his headlong career. But very soon he is checked and startled ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... and dancers of his haram. It is impossible, however, to speak of his occupations after he passes the threshold of his inner palace. He is there surrounded by a scene calculated, beyond all others, to debase and degrade ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 363, Saturday, March 28, 1829 • Various
... art. It is purposed to be the holy dwelling-place of God, but I can so abuse it as to make it the agent of degradation. Instead of hallowing the life it will debase and impoverish it. ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... made for 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 in us enemies rather than loyal and faithful subjects, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... 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
... words. Words are your idols, the bricks out of which your idols and oracles are built. Listen, I will tell you what I have always found in towns. I have found words worshipped as something holy in themselves. Words were used to limit God, debase man. So is it in your town. Once man thought words; now words are beginning to think man. Once man conceived future progress; now your idol Progress is beginning to conceive future man. It is the same as with money; once man made money, but now in your idolatry ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... 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 not subdue."—Letter to ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... are we afraid when we send a young man from the Schools into active life, lest he should indulge his appetites intemperately, lest he should debase himself by ragged clothing, or be puffed up by fine raiment? Knows he not the God within him; knows he not with whom he is starting on his way? Have we patience to hear him say to us, Would I had thee with me!—Hast thou not God where thou art, and having Him dost thou still seek for any ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... 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 ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... 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 down upon the ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... which 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 is ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... ye, friends and brothers," continued Jessamy, "because you be all tabernacles o' the Lord, 'spite o' your beastly ways, and formed in His image, for all your ugly mugs. Why therefore will ye desecrate the tabernacle and debase His image—" ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... this last case, after you have caused them to perform the spiritual exercises for a month together, you shall make a trial of them, in some such manner as may edify the people without exposing them to be ridiculous. Order them, therefore, to serve the sick in the hospitals, and to debase themselves to the meanest and most distasteful offices. Make them visit the prisoners, and teach them how to give comfort to the miserable. In fine, exercise your novices in all the practices of humility and mortification; but permit them not to appear ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... 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 ...
— English Satires • Various
... 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 opposition to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 358 - Vol. XIII, No. 358., Saturday, February 28, 1829 • Various
... 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
... of the indignity of selling the 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 ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... not wish him to proceed. She had esteemed him for so long, she cannot have him debase ...
— Quality Street - A Comedy • J. M. Barrie
... foot, and but protected from the flinty ground by a thin sandal, her step was as firm and unfaltering, her attitude, her bearing as dignified, as calmly, imposingly majestic as when, in the midst of Scotland's patriots, she had placed the crown on the Bruce's head. Edward sought to debase her, but she was not debased; to compel her to regret the part that she had acted, but she gloried in it still; to acknowledge his ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... scrutinising quickens their sagacity, and fits them for a station, where the knowledge of the heart is the great secret of control. Accustomed to behold human nature, stript of all its external trappings, the grade of the prisoner, in their estimation, does not wholly debase the man. Witnesses to the wretchedness of humble life, the squalor of its garrets and its cellars—observant that want, which sometimes forms the felon, much oftener makes the martyr, and crowds the hospital rather than the gaol—they are not ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... part which the clergy of the Anglican church have acted in the late excitement. Catholics have been their principal theological opponents, and we have carried on our controversies with them temperately, and with every personal consideration. We have had no recourse to popular arts to debase them; we have never attempted, even when the current of public opinion has set against them, to turn it to advantage, by joining in any outcry. They are not our members who yearly call for returns of sinecures or episcopal ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... only repeat that the English officers and the English soldiers have shown in this war that the profession of arms does not debase, but rather ennobles man.' ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... duty. This is the way that the British board of admiralty, the transport board, the parliament, and the people are deceived, and their nation disgraced; and this corruption, which more or less pervades the whole transport service, will enervate and debase their boasted navy. We cannot suppose that the British board of admiralty, or the transport board would justify the cruel system of starvation practised on the brave Americans who were taken in Canada, and conveyed in their floating dungeons down the river St. Lawrence ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... 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 ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... consciousness how differently he could have 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, which he so often conjured up, for its substance, he now degenerated into the wholly opposite and perverse ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... 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 Sixth." ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... 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
... rule over thee," expresses the general effect of the apostasy on woman's relations in the married state. The stronger party in this relation, instead of being the guardian and protector of the weaker, did use his superior power to oppress and debase her. Such has always been the case, except so far as the influence of revelation has counteracted the evils of the fall, such is the case to-day. Woman owes her recognition to Christ, and she is indebted for her position in the civilized portions of the world wholly to the gospel. ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... colloquial inelegances; the greatest characters are levelled by the poverty of his style. Warburton, and his imitator Hurd, and other living critics of that school, are loaded with familiar idioms, which at present would debase ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... Spaniard. Was this 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 ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... clear, dark nightfall, from the edge of Hampstead Hill, when in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, the design of the monstrous city flashes into vision—a glittering hieroglyph many square miles in extent; and when, to borrow and debase an image, all the evening street-lamps burst together into song! Such is the spectacle of the future, preluded the other day by the experiment in Pall Mall. Star-rise by electricity, the most romantic flight ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... misapprehension, owing to the curiosity that will not be content to have the gold in the ore, but must needs vainly strive to refine it out, we can well understand how mythology tends to corrupt and debase religion if it be not continually watched and weeded; and how, being, from the nature of the case, ever to the front, ever on men's lips and mingling with their lives, it should seem to the outsider to be not the imperfect garment of religion, ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... a tendency in the democracy of our country to low and vulgar pleasures and pursuits? Does not the contact of those more cultivated in mind and elevated in purpose with those who are less so, and to whom the former look for political favor and power, necessarily debase that cultivated mind and that elevation of purpose? When those are exalted to office who best can flatter the low appetites of the vulgar; when boorishness and ill manners are preferred to polish and refinement, and when, indeed, the latter, if not avowedly, are in reality made an objection, ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse |
