"Debased" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... down by a taxi last year," he says fiercely. "But nobody took no notice of that! Are they going to stop here all the blank morning for a blank tyke?" And for all his respectable appearance, his features become debased, and he emits a jet of disgusting profanity and brings most of the Trinity into the thunderous assertion that he has paid his fare. Then a man passes wheeling a muck-cart. And he stops and talks a long time with the other uniforms, because he, ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... religious culture we have beggared matter that we might exalt spirit; we have bankrupted earth that we might enrich heaven; we have debased the body that we might glorify the soul. But science has changed all this. Mankind can never again rest in the old crude dualism. The Devil has had his day, and the terrible Hebrew Jehovah has had his day; the divinities of this world ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... common mirth and sportful divertisement are mean and petty matters; anything at least is by playing therewith made such: great things are thereby diminished and debased; especially sacred things do grievously suffer thence, being with extreme indecency and indignity depressed beneath themselves, when they become the subjects of flashy wit, or the entertainments of frothy merriment: to sacrifice ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... or courtyard. He died too soon to complete his project, and left only the western wing of the new courtyard, but his work was carried on by his successor, Sherlock. The design was distinctly good, particularly for that age of debased taste. Engravings of Sherlock's palace show battlemented angle towers, and a recessed main building which is very picturesque. In the southern wing he placed the library and dining-room, and on the eastern ...
— Hammersmith, Fulham and Putney - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... the entire of the abominable crew, whose evil doings and merited fates have only been recorded when it became necessary to our story. It is better to leave the debased and the profligate in oblivion than drag their doings before the day; and it is with happy consciousness an Irishman may assert, that there is plenty of subject afforded by Irish character and Irish life honourable to the land, pleasing to the narrator, and sufficiently ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... your chin a moment, so that I may catch the profile of your face better. Yes, that's the d'Urberville nose and chin—a little debased. Your ancestor was one of the twelve knights who assisted the Lord of Estremavilla in Normandy in his conquest of Glamorganshire. Branches of your family held manors over all this part of England; their names appear in ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... past misdeeds haunted him. His nature was too prosaic to admit the existence of such phantoms. Sylvia, in her purity and excellence, was so far above him, that in raising his eyes to her, he lost sight of all the sordid creatures to whose level he had once debased himself, and had come in part to regard the sins he had committed, before his redemption by the love of this bright young creature, as evil done by him under a past condition of existence, and for the ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... eased the hot forehead of fever and pain; I have made the parched meadows grow fertile with grain. I can tell of the powerful wheel of the mill, That ground out the flour, and turned at my will. I can tell of manhood debased by you, That I have uplifted and crowned anew. I cheer, I help, I strengthen and aid; I gladden the heart of man and maid; I set the wine-chained captive free, And all are better ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... little Bill empowering the Mint to manufacture coins worth something less than their weight in silver aroused the wrath of Professor OMAN. The last time, according to his account, that the coinage was thus debased was in the days of HENRY VIII., whose views both on money and matrimony were notoriously lax. Other Members were friendly to the project, and Mr. DENNIS HERBERT, in the avowed interest of churchwardens, urged the Government to seize the opportunity to abolish the threepeeny-bit, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 25th, 1920 • Various
... is very graceful; the body of the church, in the latest and most debased style of Gothic architecture, stands signally contrasted with St. Stephen,—St. Stephen the simple vigor of the prime, St. Pierre the florid ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... literature, in the drama. With some falling off in spontaneity, the impulse to great dramatic production lasted till the Long Parliament closed the theaters in 1642; and when they were reopened at the Restoration, in 1660, the stage only too faithfully reflected the debased moral tone of the ...
— All for Love • John Dryden
... pathetically ordinary that most of us are debased by acquaintance with similar, to this girl was fresh, and striking her in all its inexcusable barbarity without any extenuating gloze, made her furious with pained ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... summoned, as is wont, His troops to arms; nor trumpet blare betrayed Their nightly march: but rapidly he seized All needed instruments of blood and war. Of Latian race the most part of his train, Yet to barbarian customs were their minds By long forgetfulness of Rome debased: Else had it shamed to serve the Pharian King; But now his vassal and his minion's word Compel obedience. Those who serve in camps Lose faith and love of kin: their pittance earned (21) Makes just the deed: and for their sordid pay, Not for themselves, they threaten Caesar's life. Where finds ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... His satires represent the final development the form underwent in achieving the definite purpose of exposing and chastising in a systematic manner the entire catalogue of vices, public and private, which were assailing the welfare of the state. They constitute luridly powerful pictures of a debased and shamelessly corrupt condition of society. Keen contemptuous ridicule, a sardonic irony that held nothing in reverence, a caustic sarcasm that burned like an acid, and a vituperative invective that ransacked the language for phrases of opprobrium—these were the agents enlisted ...
— English Satires • Various
... deserving of our esteem! The German, forgetful of what is due to himself and to his country, is our only foe." An anonymous but well-known proclamation also declared: "Austria beheld—a sight that drew tears of blood from the heart of every true-born German—you, O nations of Germany! so deeply debased as to be compelled to submit to the legislation of the foreigner and to allow your sons, the youth of Germany, to be led to war against their still unsubdued brethren. The shameful subjection of millions of once free-born Germans will ere long be completed. Austria exhorts you to ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... thy object: whether revenge or the natural bent of a cruel and degraded mind, I know not; but if any be curst because of the Outlaw of Torn, it will be thou—I had almost said, unnatural father; but I do not believe a single drop of thy debased blood flows in the veins of him thou ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... insurrection has consequently begun, of science, talents, and courage, against rank and birth, which have fallen into contempt. It has failed in its first effort, because the mobs of the cities, the instrument used for its accomplishment, debased by ignorance, poverty, and vice, could not be restrained to rational action. But the world will recover from the panic of this first catastrophe. Science is progressive, and talents and enterprise on the alert. Resort may be had to the people of the country, a more governable power from ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... write a tragedy on my own account; which, while following Shakespeare in his good points, should avoid his weaknesses, which should embody the best features of the nursery rhymes, and which should avoid like poison the shockingly debased style of Aeschylus. ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... subject for me!" Iris broke out bitterly. "Hugh! you are an angel, by comparison with that man—how debased I must be to love him—how unworthy of your good opinion! Ask me anything you like; have no mercy on me. Oh," she cried, with reckless contempt for herself, "why don't you beat ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... beautiful language, and, except for the clicks, not very difficult to learn. Almost everybody here speaks it a little, and it is the first thing necessary for a new-comer to endeavor to acquire; only, unfortunately, there are no teachers, as in India, and consequently you pick up a wretched, debased kind of patois, interlarded with Dutch phrases. Indeed, I am assured there are two words, el hashi ("the horse"), of unmistakable Moorish origin, though no one knows how they got into the language. Many of the Kafirs about town speak a little English, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... American visitor to the master of the college, pointing to its dark front. "Oh, no," was the master's reply, "the colour deceives you; that building is not more than two hundred years old." In invidious contrast to this mass, debased but imposing in its style, the pedantic mania for pure Gothic which marks the Neo-catholic reaction in Oxford, and which will perhaps hereafter be derided as we deride the classic mania of the last century, has led Mr. Gilbert Scott to erect a pure Gothic library. This building, moreover, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... exists in stouter souls, although there may have been, along with fear, motives of a less debased order. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... people talk about me carried the day, and I decided for war," he said. It was reserved for Harnack and Hauptmann, not to speak of the Kaiser, to cant about the responsibilities of "Kul-tur" (that harlot of the German dictionary, debased by all ignoble uses), about the hastening of the kingdom of heaven, and about the German sword being sanctified by God. But the old German Adam remained, and when, two days before the declaration of war with France, the German soldiers were flying to the Belgian frontier there ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... she told me that she had read the Scriptures misunderstandingly all her life; that she had taken their truths to her in affright; that their majesty had, instead of raising her up to their height, debased her even below herself. I saw in all from the first, even had friend Afton not told me, that what is called religion had wrecked her mind, and in my own manner of understanding the Lord's way I ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... among themselves in worship and all higher interests, rent by conflicting parties, the theocratic principle which was the true bond of union could not assert itself with effect. The people were corrupt; their religious life debased. The example of the kings was usually prejudicial to political healthiness. Contact with foreigners as well as with the older inhabitants of the land, hindered progress. In these circumstances the ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson
... for the honor of Massachusetts, nor because you are Boston boys, but because you are men, and because honorable and generous men always love fair play." The mob was conquered. Free speech and fair play were secured. Public opinion can do what it has a mind to in this country. If it be debased and demoralized, it is the most odious of tyrants. It is Nero and Caligula multiplied by millions. Can there then be a more stringent public duty for every man—and the greater the intelligence the greater the duty—than to ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... an age for a man to follow the strict morality of better times, yet sure mankind is not yet so debased but that there will ever be found some few men who will scorn to join concert with the public voice when it is not ...
— A Lecture on the Study of History • Lord Acton
... frown the nobleman looked up as he reached the end of the ultimatum, in which one nation, for its pride, demanded that another should hand over its honour, debased ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... cultivate the soil, and will thrive beneath the tropical sun of the Brazils. The enfeebled white man grows more enfeebled and more degenerate with each succeeding generation, and languishes in a clime which nature never designed him to inhabit. The time will come when the debased and suffering negroes shall possess this fertile land, and when some share of justice shall be awarded to their cheerful tempers and ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... himself; the spirit of combat succeeded to the spirit of organization, bitterness to cordiality, hatred of one another to the benevolence of the founder towards all; the threads which M. Madeleine had set were tangled and broken, the methods were adulterated, the products were debased, confidence was killed; the market diminished, for lack of orders; salaries were reduced, the workshops stood still, bankruptcy arrived. And then there was nothing more for ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... of international statesmanship. [Applause.] Let us be fair—German merchants, German traders, have the reputation of being as upright and straightforward as any traders in the world, ["Hear, hear"] but if the currency of German commerce is to be debased to the level of that of her statesmanship, no trader from Shanghai to Valparaiso will ever look at a German signature again. [Loud applause.] This doctrine of the scrap of paper, this doctrine which is proclaimed ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... left unannexed, but no planet inhabited by Terro-humans could be trusted to remain permanently peaceful and isolated. There is a spark of aggressive ambition in every Terro-human people, no matter how debased, which may smoulder for centuries or even millennia and then burst, fanned by some random wind, into flame. To shift the metaphor slightly, the Empire could afford to leave no unwatched pots ...
— A Slave is a Slave • Henry Beam Piper
... an impressive sermon the new and admonitory lesson that architecture is the exponent of the national characteristics of a people,—the higher and nobler sort exemplifying the religious life and moral virtue in a nation, the debased variety, on the other hand, expressing the ignoble qualities of national vice and shame. The text of "The Stones" is Venice, and the design of the volumes, in the author's words, is to show that the Gothic architecture of Venice "had arisen out of, and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... in the mines, with the faint light of my miner's lamp falling on his hideous face, the cool, deliberate manner in which he related his atrocious doings, the fiendish spirit he displayed, led me to regard him as one among the most debased and hardened criminals I had met in the mines—a human being utterly devoid of moral nature—a very devil in ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... real knowledge might expect to be treated with scorn and anger by the whole theological and metaphysical tribe, the masters and the scholars; he would be despised as a plebeian philosopher, and railed at as an infidel. It would be sounded high that he debased human nature, which has a "cognation," so the reverend and learned Doctor Cudworth calls it, with the divine; that the soul of man, immaterial and immortal by its nature, was made to contemplate higher and nobler objects than this sensible world, and even than itself, since it was made to contemplate ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... regard to religion, continue such as at present; but it must be admitted, on the other hand, that their habits, as to the way of spending Sundays, re-act powerfully on their sentiments; and that the minds of the lower orders, in particular, are much debased by the want of what have been emphatically called "these precious breathing times for the labouring part ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... the dominating power, mankind was ruled by militant tyrants. The non-elect were slaves,—uneducated, uncivilized, debased and diseased. The elect were licentious and indolent. Neither class practised any domestic virtues, or respected the institution of motherhood. The process of the selection of the fittest for survival for the purpose of parentage, and for the consummation of ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... that his constituency should resent his having proper house service. American politics were, then, more debased than even we ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... I belonged emphatically to the Sixties. We had never been debased by trade, and a mesalliance was not known in our family. To be sure, my father had lost a fortune instead of making one in any way; but that did not alter his position or mine. We belonged to the aristocracy of Guernsey, and noblesse ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... duration. Disregarding, one is forced to say wilfully, the fact that every single one of their own arguments in favor of anthropoid descent for man would equally support a theory that the anthropoids are debased offshoots of human stocks,[45-*] biology still demands such a lapse of time for its physical evolution that its adherents oppose and belittle to the utmost every bit of evidence of any antiquity even for the physical frame of man. We have, ...
— Commentary Upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex - with a Concluding Note Upon the Linguistic Problem of the Maya Glyphs • William E. Gates
... has so long kept poor men out of Parliament, has been broken down. They point out that if the Irish are allowed to pay their own members, and even to send to America for money for that purpose, the pernicious system will soon spread to England, and the House of Commons will be utterly debased. Some irritation against America is also expressed. Of course, the Tories say, they could expect nothing better from the Irish in America; but of those Americans who promoted or patronized the fund, they speak in terms of both sorrow and anger. The St. James's Gazette, after ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... dreary and cheerless public houses appeared, with lighted windows conspicuous in a lightless waste. From time to time, as they hurried on, they encountered, and made wide detours to escape contact with knots of wayfarers—men debased and begrimed, with dreary and slatternly women, arm in arm, zigzaging widely across the sidewalks, chorusing with sodden voices the burden of some popularized ballad. The cheapened, sentimental refrains ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... who, in the custom of the country, bade them welcome. A small sea of faces was lifted to her. Such faces!—none beautiful; all stamped with crime; some scarcely human, only physical apparitions of debased Nature. ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... base descendant of the most complete and first known form of Aryan speech, the Sanskrit; and the Weddas are set down as descendants of the Sanskritic Aryans, who conquered India. There are no savages of a more debased type. They do not count beyond two or three; they have no idea of letters; of all the animals the dog alone is domesticated; their art consists in making bows and arrows and constructing rude huts; they are dwindling and threaten to become extinct. See "Report of the British Association ...
— The Christian Foundation, March, 1880
... special endeavours to save the life of the young squaw. According to the savage Indian custom, she would be barbarously tortured before being put to death. It seems strange that human beings can take a pleasure in thus treating their fellow-creatures; it shows how debased, how diabolically cruel, men can become when they have once gone away from God. At present, however, the braves were too much occupied in recounting their deeds of valour to think of their prisoners, who were ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... Singh was assassinated by his rival. The murder of the favourite was rapidly followed by the deposition of Kurruck Singh, and the elevation to the throne of the prince, his son. The court of Lahore was now convulsed by dark intrigues, and debased by brutal sensuality. The ineradicable spirit of hatred against every thing British, vented itself harmlessly in the bravadoes of the tyrant; but was more dangerously inflamed among many of the native powers ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... have sometimes attempted to intimate some of the affinities between hay fever and genius by attributing it (in the debased form of literary parody) to those of great intellectual stature. Upon the literary vehicles of expression habitually employed by Rudyard Kipling, Amy Lowell, Edgar Lee Masters, and Hilaire Belloc I have wafted a pinch of ragweed and goldenrod; ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... are we," said Morton, "that our best and most praiseworthy feelings can be thus debased and depraved—that honourable pride can sink into haughty and desperate indifference for general opinion, and the sorrow of blighted affection inhabit the same bosom which license, revenge, and rapine, have ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... raise up the fallen, to do our duty to the erring, to throw what influences can be about these disturbers of society to lead them to become upright citizens? Or, will it fall upon the crushing, cruel, vindictive course, the process of making them more debased, sordid, revengeful? Do you prefer manhood-producing with its benign effects, or money-making attended with the blighting of the higher aspirations of the soul? This subject has been taken up in the narrative ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... already, while all this was unknown, taken this woman to her heart as pure and good. It now appeared that the woman had not been pure, had not been good!—And then she took her to her heart again! Criminal as the woman was, disgraced and debased, subject almost to the heaviest penalties of outraged law and justice, a felon against whom the actual hands of the law's myrmidons would probably soon prevail, a creature doomed to bear the scorn of the lowest of her fellow-creatures,—such ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... nation. This idea possessed me, and I travelled over the world for two years seeking for what I desired. At last I almost despaired of finding it. There was no hope of regeneration in the slave-dealing Soudanese, the debased Fantee, or the Americanised negroes of Liberia. I was returning from my quest when chance brought me in contact with this magnificent tribe of dwellers in the desert, and I threw in my lot with them. Before doing so, however, my old instinct of revenge prompted me to make one last visit to the United ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a people are ignorant, stupid, debased, corrupt, exposed to violence within and danger without, the power necessary for a government to possess in order to preserve society against anarchy and destruction becomes greater and greater, and individual liberty, less and less, until the lowest condition is reached, when absolute and despotic ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... made them serve, was with rigour." The argument, therefore, of Moses was simply this:—"Ye knew well, when ye were strangers in Egypt, the nature of your own feelings. Were you not made miserable by your debased situation there? But if so, you must be sensible that the stranger, who has the same heart, or the same feelings with yourselves, must experience similar suffering, if treated in a similar manner. I charge you, then, knowing ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... of this country should not be debased. It is vital that we should keep high the standard of well-being among our wage-workers, and therefore we should not admit masses of men whose standards of living and whose personal customs and habits are ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... habits in some respects are more brutish than those of any brute, for there is no limit to man's moral descent or ascent, and the observer might well be excused for doubting whether such a stock ever had a history in the past, or the possibility of one in the future. Yet these debased creatures speak a related dialect, and are beyond a doubt largely of the same blood as the famous Aztec race, who founded the empire of Anahuac, and raised architectural monuments rivalling the most famous structures of the ancient world. This great family, ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... newspapers of the day were filled with histories and observations upon it. No subject engrossed the conversation of the polite and play-going part of the community but Lord Byron, The Doge of Venice, and Mr. Elliston. They were all bepraised and beplastered—exalted and debased—acquitted and condemned; but it was generally allowed on all hands, that the printed Tragedy contained many striking beauties, notwithstanding its alleged resemblance to Venice Preserved. We are, however, speaking of the acted ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... permanent and circumspect board of superintendence for the public finances in these difficult times. It may have done what it could; but the state of things was such as to baffle all financial sagacity. At the very beginning of the war the Romans had debased the silver and copper coin, raised the legal value of the silver piece more than a third, and issued a gold coin far above the value of the metal. This very soon proved insufficient; they were obliged to take supplies from ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... tortured and flogged them; Out of the streets where they chased them, Taxed them, and then bayonetted them; Out of the homes where they spied on them (Using their daughters and wives); Out of the church where they fretted them, Rotted their souls and debased them, Trained them to answer with knives, Then cursed them all at their prayers!— Out of cold lands, not theirs, Where they exiled them, starved them, lied on them; Back they come like a wind, in vain Cramped ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... perpetrated than to discover a good or just action that he ever performed. He is so notorious a villain that even the infamous National Convention expelled him from its bosom, and since his Ministry no man has been found base enough, in my debased country, to extenuate, much less to defend, his past enormities. In a nation so greatly corrupted and immoral, this alone ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... punishment has been heavier than any I could inflict.—You want to know why I showed that letter to the old man, and I will tell you. I thought, could I but gain all Herst, I might, through it, win you back to my side. I betrayed you for that alone. I debased myself in my own eyes for that sole purpose. I have failed in all things. My humiliation is complete. I do not ask your forgiveness, Philip; I crave only—your forbearance. Grant me that at least, for the ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... had mixed with the crowd, and Salve's neighbours on either side were now playing eagerly with dice, diving from time to time for small silver pieces into heavy leathern purses, that seemed to have been destined for sums very different from what their present meagre contents represented. So many debased, avaricious countenances as he saw around him he had never imagined that it would be possible to collect in one spot, and he made up his mind to have no more to do with them than he could possibly help. He might congratulate himself, he thought, if he escaped from ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... learns from her the full meaning of maternity, its sacrifices and suffering and the great love that gladly endures all, suffers all, for the sake of the precious child who is to come to her arms,—for the young life, his life, that she is to guide and cherish,—can never enshrine a debased image of womanhood in his heart of hearts. With some children—and some mothers—this might well be the child's first introduction to the subject. Afterwards he could be shown the flower and its seeds, the fish and its eggs, the egg of ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... render power most intolerant combined in the Spartan in his relations to the Helot—viz., 1st, necessity for his services, lost perhaps if the curb were ever relaxed—2dly, consummate contempt for the individual he debased. The habit of tyranny makes tyranny necessary. When the slave has been long maddened by your yoke, if you lighten it for a moment he rebels. He has become your deadliest foe, and self-preservation renders it necessary that him whom you provoke ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and constrained him in all his seeking of the lost. He had come to be the Saviour of all who would believe and follow him. Therefore he was interested in every merest fragment or shred of life. No human soul was so debased that ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... young people attend the five-cent theatres every night, including Sunday, receiving the constant effect of vulgar music and a debased and often vulgar ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... Sow Iron will yield coib annis, although now debased by the late mispending of the Stock, but wil bee brought up ...
— Iron Making in the Olden Times - as instanced in the Ancient Mines, Forges, and Furnaces of The Forest of Dean • H. G. Nicholls
... was confounded with a multitude of debased and foreign superstitions; and the Emperor in his judicial capacity, if he ever encountered Christians at all, was far more likely to encounter those who were unworthy of the name, than to become acquainted with the meek, unworldly, retiring virtues ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... wish you had been spared this sight; but look at him, child, since you are here; look at God's image, so debased. And you, young man (TO KIT), you have proved that I was right. Are you the ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... making money hampered him in his work. Unselfishly he wrought as editor, writer, and lecturer for the good of his country and the uplifting of mankind. "He who by voice or pen," he said, "strikes his best blow at the impostures or vices whereby our race is debased and paralyzed, may close his eyes in death, consoled and cheered by the reflection that he has done what he could for the emancipation and elevation ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... deuced handsome girl than any man I ever saw." At this the men all laughed, and were very impertinent in the free and easy manner of such gentry, most of whom were professional adventurers, with every finer sense dulled and debased by ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... grotesque and degraded way; than that the notion of God was taken first from such poor forms and applied afterwards to objects better suited to it. Religion and civilisation go hand in hand, and if civilisation can decay (and leading anthropologists declare that the debased tribes of Australia and West Africa show signs of a higher civilisation they have lost) then religion also may decay. A lower race may borrow religious ideas from a higher and adapt them to their own position, i.e. degrade them. And the progress of religion may ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... variation, with an insistence which became cruel, and then unbearable, it went on. Lee Randon, after an uneasiness which culminated in an exasperated wrath, found a degree of exactness in his description: it was, undoubtedly, the jungle, Africa, debased into a peculiarly harrowing travesty of later civilized emotions. Finally he lost the impression of a meaninglessness; it assumed a potency, a naked reality, more profound than anything in his previous knowledge. It was the voice of a crazed and debased passion. To Lee, ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... [swam in a gondola] That is, been at Venice, the sweat at that tine of all licentiousness, where the young English gentlemen waited their fortunes, debased their morals, and sometimes ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... invariably so carved, by sinking portions only of the surfaces and leaving the arrises and principal places untouched, as to preserve the original constructive forms given by the mason (Fig. 184). The employment of the drill instead of the chisel, so common in debased Roman work, was retained as a very general practice by the Greek carvers, and very often with excellent effect. The foliage of the acanthus, although imitated from the antique, quite changed its character, becoming more geometrical and conventional in its form. That which particularly distinguishes ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... fill the theatres with a crowd of citizens and strangers eager to listen to new tragic masterpieces. There was no humorous democracy to laugh at all the world, and at itself, with Aristophanes. The very religion of Sophocles and Aeschylus was debased. A vulgar usurper had stripped the golden ornaments from Athene of the Parthenon. The ancient faith in the protecting gods of Athens, of Sparta, and of Thebes, had become a lax readiness to bow down in the temple of ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... two opposing nations known respectively as Nephites and Lamanites. The former cultivated the arts of industry and refinement, and preserved a record embodying both history and scripture, while the latter became degenerate and debased. The Nephites suffered extinction about 400 A.D., but the Lamanites lived on in their degraded course, and are today extant upon the land as ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... the window; and the bright, dark eyes of his debased time seemed to look at him. Her heart told her who he was; she came to the door quickly, ...
— The Seven Poor Travellers • Charles Dickens
... payment in the more convenient form of gold, or where the paper currency of a country is reduced below the bullion which it professes to represent, an agio is payable on the appreciated currency. (c) Lastly, in some states the coinage is so debased, owing to the wear of circulation, that the real is greatly reduced below the nominal value. Supposing that this reduction amounts to 5%, then if 100 sovereigns were offered as payment of a debt ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... certainly were teules. Our allies also advised them to beware of practising any thing against us, as we could read their hidden thoughts, and recommended them to conciliate our favour by a present. They accordingly brought us several ornaments of much debased gold, and gave us four women to make bread, and a load of mantles. Near some of the temples belonging to this place I saw a vast number of human skeletons arranged in such exact order that they might easily be counted with perfect accuracy, and I am certain there were above an ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... "theologic trance" and their subsequent hallucinations, illusions, and delusions gave to them what they deemed to be a transcendental insight into the construction of the universe and what was expected between "fallen" and debased man and his omnipotent creator. These men keenly apprehended what some today, in a gentler age, have ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... in The Canterbury Tales, or who may expect to find here the Troilus, the Cressida, and the Pandarus of Shakspeare's play. It is to no trivial gallant, no woman of coarse mind and easy virtue, no malignantly subservient and utterly debased procurer, that Chaucer introduces us. His Troilus is a noble, sensitive, generous, pure- souled, manly, magnanimous hero, who is only confirmed and stimulated in all virtue by his love, who lives for his lady, and dies for her falsehood, in a ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... not corrupted by the exercise of power or debased by the habit of obedience; but by the exercise of power which they believe to be illegal, and by obedience to a rule which they consider to be usurped ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... or debased himself. In addition to manifesting his servant form in becoming man and faring as an ordinary human being, he went farther and made himself lower than any man. He abased himself to serve all men with the supreme service—the gift of ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... what is low, to be always pedantic and affected. It is clear you cannot use a vulgar English word if you never use a common English word at all. A fine tact is shown in adhering to those which are perfectly common, and yet never falling into any expressions which are debased by disgusting circumstances, or which owe their signification and point to technical or professional allusions. A truly natural or familiar style can never be quaint or vulgar, for this reason, that it is of universal force and applicability, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... ideas, what great facts serve as a foundation to our history and that of the modern world! We have first royalty, which, weak and debased under the Merovingians, rises and establishes itself energetically under Pepin and Charlemagne, to degenerate under Louis le Debonnaire and Charles le Chauve. After having dared a second time to found ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... Perfect truth in the midst of error; perfect love in the midst of ingratitude and coldness; perfect rectitude in the midst of perjury, violence, fraud; perfect constancy in the midst of contumely and desertion; perfect innocence, confronting every debased form of depravity and guilt; perfect patience, encountering every species of gross provocation—"oppressed and afflicted, He opened not His mouth!" "For my love" (in return for my love), "they are mine adversaries; ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... murdering the traders who cross the plains, if they are not well armed, and in sufficiently large companies to keep them in check. Now the Americans had never this cause of complaint against the Africans, for, although like all heathen, they were debased, and were cruel and warlike among each other, they never annoyed us in America. And the Americans had not, therefore, even this insufficient excuse for enslaving them. The Indians were robbed of their lands, and driven from their homes; ...
— A Child's Anti-Slavery Book - Containing a Few Words About American Slave Children and Stories - of Slave-Life. • Various
... rafters serve to suspend the fish, which are dried by the smoke in its lengthened course through the interstices of the roof and walls. In their superstitions, theatricals, dances, and songs they have much similarity to the natives of Polynesia. Debased now, and degraded even beneath their former portrait—fast fading away before the more genial sun of the fortunes of the White man—the Indians on the southern coast are no longer free and warlike, and being in subjection to the Hudson's ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne
... colorful life with austere intelligence and rigid practical improvement, did not appear. He walked steadily on. As he passed the low arched door of the mission church and saw a faint light glimmering from the side windows, he had indeed a weak human desire to go in and oppose in his own person a debased and idolatrous superstition with some happily chosen question that would necessarily make the officiating priest and his congregation exceedingly uncomfortable. But he resisted; partly in the hope of meeting some idolater on his way to Benediction, ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... against a fire, shutting off its draft. Does the fire then continue to digest the coal? Clog up the receptacle for ashes and the coal grows cold. Dam up the colon or sigmoid and digestion is disturbed, diminished and debased, as evidenced by the local and general discomfort, and later by the train ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... little deformed prisoner, even Robin Hays, of the Gull's Nest Crag, was incarcerated. Again he spoke: "Complimented by the subtle Frenchman, feared by the cunning Spaniard, caressed by the temperate Dutch, knelt to by the debased Portuguese, honoured by the bigoted Pope, holding the reins of England—of Europe—of the world, in these hands—the father of many children—have I so true-hearted a friend, as to suffer the scale of his own interests to turn in the air, ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... unfits us to enjoy when the means for it are obtained. The general, popular idea, that an Italian is quarrelsome, and ill-tempered, and that the best are only bandits in disguise, is quite a mistake; and when studied as they exist out of the track of travel, where they are often debased and denaturalized, they will be found to be ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... was left for me I do not now wonder. Was it well, or ill, what you did when you bid me go? In God's time I have learned to think it well. That hour is to me now like a blurred dream. To-day I can bless the anger and the sense of duty to our children which drove me forth—too debased a thing to realize my loss. I have won again my self-control, thank God! am a man once more. You have, have always had, my love. You have to-day again a dozen times the fortune I meanly squandered. I shall never touch it; it is yours and your children's. And now, Alice, ...
— Mr. Kris Kringle - A Christmas Tale • S. Weir Mitchell
... things, at all times; they are always fawning on the great Arabs, and always cruel to those unfortunates brought under their yoke. If I saw a miserable, half-starved negro, I was always sure to be told he belonged to a half-caste. Cringing and hypocritical, cowardly and debased, treacherous and mean, I have always found him. He seems to be for ever ready to fall down and worship a rich Arab, but is relentless to a poor black slave. When he swears most, you may be sure he lies most, and yet this is the breed which ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... New Zealanders place no value on the continence of their unmarried women, the arrival of Europeans among them does not injure their moral characters in this respect; but we doubt whether they ever debased themselves so much as to make a trade of their women, before we created new wants by shewing these iron tools, for the possession of which they do not hesitate to commit an action, that, in our eyes, deprives ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... for repentance; here, too, the image of Emily, which, amidst the dissipation of the city had been obscured, but never obliterated from his heart, revived with all the charms of innocence and beauty, to reproach him for having sacrificed his happiness and debased his talents by pursuits, which his nobler faculties would formerly have taught him to consider were as tasteless as they were degrading. But, though his passions had been seduced, his heart was not depraved, nor had habit riveted the chains, that hung ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... have its proper stage, their sentiments the proper objects,—and their imaginations the undisturbed right to revel in the supposititious grievances of the far-off wretched and oppressed. The poor black man! the tortured slave! the benighted infidel! the debased image of his maker! the sunken bondsman! These terms must be the "Open sesame" for the breasts from whence spring bibles, bribes, blankets, glass beads, pocket-combs, tracts, teachers, missions, and missionaries. Oppression is what they ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... questions, in order that one should have a higher commercial value later on? She was sick with this long service at the inner commercial shrine. Yet what else was there? Was life all this, and this only? Everywhere, everything was debased to the same service. Everything went to produce vulgar ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... and music became more lively; but they were by no means attractive. After he had watched them a short time, Martin left the festive scene with a feeling of pity for the poor savages; and as he thought upon their low and debased condition he recalled to mind the remark of his old friend the hermit,—"They want ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... of the Supernatural Birth; and the story, true as it is pitiful, of the fish that turned to woman, and then back again to fish, in which he that runs may read an example from the Mermaid Cycle. They are to be found to-day, often in debased and barely recognisable guise, in the hands of the peripatetic ballad-mongers who still haunt fairs and sing in the streets, and in the memories of multitudes of country folks who know scarce any other literature bearing the magic trademark of ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... ourselves the thousands of exiles she will find waiting there herded together like brute beasts. She will not turn from them, even though typhoid be raging amongst them—one can see her moving in and out among these miserable, debased human beings, who lie tossing on those terrible wooden shelves, helping them according to their needs; for she carries with her remedies for pain and disease of body, and her simple faith will find means of comforting ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... back to our camp. As we went he discoursed to me of these Amahagger, of whom it seemed he was himself a developed specimen, one who threw back, perhaps tens of generations, to some superior ancestor who lived before they became debased. In substance he told me that they were a wild and lawless lot who lived amongst ruins or in caves, or some of them in swamp dwellings, in small separate communities, each governed by its petty headman who was generally a priest ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... self-government and so must be looked after. Later we quit selling British slaves, but began to buy and trade in African humanity. We silenced conscience by saying, "It's all right—they are incapable of self-government." We were once as obscure, as debased, as ignorant, as barbaric, as the African is now. I trust that the time will come when we are willing to give to Africa the opportunity, the hope, the right to attain to the same blessings ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... In Rome, under the emperors, we find gold used as a mere setting for precious stones, and finally the collection terminates with examples of workmanship of the time of Charlemagne, when the workmen had lost their cunning, and the noble metal had been altogether debased to secondary uses. ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... after the time of Claudius affected archaisms crept in, and the value both of inscriptions and MSS. is impaired, on the one hand, by the pedantic endeavour to bring spelling into accord with archaic use or etymology, and, on the other, by the increasing frequency of debased and provincial forms, which find place even in authoritative documents. In spite of the obscurity of the subject several principles of orthography have been definitely established, especially with regard ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... Achmet Zek, riding to the summons of his lieutenant's letter. With him came his horde of renegade Arabs, outlawed marauders, these, and equally degraded blacks, garnered from the more debased and ignorant tribes of savage cannibals through whose countries the raider passed to ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Madame Descoings, with Joseph, and with his mother; gloomy, on the contrary, when he had lost, his brusque, rough speech, his hard glance, and his depression, frightened them. A life of debauch and the abuse of liquors debased, day by day, a countenance that was once so handsome. The veins of the face were swollen with blood, the features became coarse, the eyes lost their lashes and grew hard and dry. No longer careful of his person, Philippe ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... infamy with their eyes open, and gazing with horror on their fate. I have known men of the strongest and clearest intellect and of vigorous resolution, whom it has made weaker than children and fools—gentlemen of refinement and taste whom it has debased into brutes—poets of high genius whom it has bound in a bondage worse than the galleys, and ultimately cut short their days. I have known statesmen, lawyers, and judges whom it has killed—kind husbands and fathers whom it has turned into monsters. I have ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... the mysterious has, in these pages, recorded the terrifying aspects of the Manchurian campaign, which one could not have foreseen in all of its horror. He has shown in a lasting manner the poor human creature torn from his home, debased to the role of a piece of mechanism. Not knowing where he is being led to, he goes, making murderous gestures, the meaning of which he does not know, without even having the illusory consolation of possible personal bravery, being killed by the shots of an invisible ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... debased currency of his affection was in circulation where Hannibal was concerned, and he eyed the river-man askance. He was prepared to give him the lie should he set up any ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... tried to let this one go, too, but ain't you took a look at his hocks!' Then along comes Dean Duke, the ratty old foreman in Pierce's stable, and he don't ogle a bit, either, like you'd expect one of his debased calibre to, but just stops and talks this horse over with 'em and says yes, it was his bad hocks that lost the sale, and he tells 'em how he had told Pierce just what to do to get him shaped up for a quick sale, but Pierce wouldn't listen to ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... method has Aristophanes discredited it? By the obscene allurements of the Lysistrata! . . . Thus she takes him through his works, and finally declares that only in "more audaciously lying" has he improved upon the earlier writers of comedy. He has genius—she gladly grants it; but he has debased his genius. The mob indeed has awarded him the crowns: is such ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... in a state of thraldom, they imagine that their souls are cooped and cabined in, unless they have some man, or some body of men, dependent on their mercy. The desire of having some one below them descends to those who are the very lowest of all,—and a Protestant cobbler, debased by his poverty, but exalted by his share of the ruling church, feels a pride in knowing it is by his generosity alone that the peer, whose footman's instep he measures, is able to keep ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... to owe but fifty pence. He was probably a rich man, which might appear from the generous entertainment he made. He was a respectable man. The sect to which he belonged was the most celebrated and influential among the Jews; and when not debased by positive crime, a Pharisee was always esteemed for his learning and his piety. He had some interest in Christ, either in his mission or his character,—an interest beyond mere curiosity, or he would not have invited him ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... the faith described by Tertullian was transmuted into one more fashionable and more debased. It was incorporated with the old Greek mythology. Olympus was restored, but the divinities passed under other names. The more powerful provinces insisted on the adoption of their time-honored conceptions. Views of the Trinity, in accordance with Egyptian traditions, were established. Not only ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... That all of you, the highest as the lowest, May learn there is no power against the Lord. There stands a man, once of so high degree, Chief prelate of our Church, archbishop, first In Council, second person in the realm, Friend for so long time of a mighty King; And now ye see downfallen and debased From councillor to caitiff—fallen so low, The leprous flutterings of the byway, scum And offal of the city would not change Estates with him; in brief, so miserable, There is no hope of better left for him, No place for worse. Yet, Cranmer, be thou glad. ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... was in the desperate robber's mind. He saw and weighed the chances that were against him, but he was ready to risk life itself for liberty, and, in that desperate moment even Dick and Jack, debased as they knew the man to be, could not ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters - or Jack Danby's Bravest Deed • Robert Maitland
... freedom, being governed still to a certain extent by the laws of instinctive and automatic procedure. When, finally, intellect assumes to carry on the work independently of these laws, decoration tends to become debased. ...
— A Study Of The Textile Art In Its Relation To The Development Of Form And Ornament • William H. Holmes
... convinced that he was not mistaken. Instantly a number of thoughts crowded into his mind. Was he there alone, or had he brought with him his wife and reputed daughter? Robber and outlaw as he might be in England, Deane still thought he was not debased enough to place them in so dangerous a position; and yet if they were not with him, where could he have left them? The one redeeming quality of the man was his devotion to his wife and the affection with which he seemed to regard the ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... is current here, is either that of Portugal, consisting chiefly of thirty-six shillings pieces; or pieces both of gold and silver, which are struck at this place: The pieces of silver, which are very much debased, are called petacks, and are of different value, and easily distinguished by the number of rees that is marked on the outside. Here is also a copper coin, like that in Portugal, of five and ten ree pieces. A ree is a nominal coin of Portugal, ten of which are equal ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... exclaimed, "it is frightful to murder this young man, whose only offence is resistance to insult from his debased half-breed keeper. Is there nothing ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... reference to the sculpture, one piece, of debased character, has been found—a Minerva with a breast-plate, helmet, and shield in ...
— The Excavations of Roman Baths at Bath • Charles E. Davis
... expressions. 'Substance' may be used in our translation in its philosophical meaning as the supposed reality underlying appearances, but if we observe that in the parallel following clause we find 'treasures,' it seems more likely that in the text, it is to be taken in its secondary, and much debased meaning of wealth, material possessions. But the prize held out here to the lovers of heavenly wisdom is much more than worldly good. In deepest truth, the being which is theirs is God Himself. They who love and seek the wisdom of this book possess Him, and in possessing Him become possessed ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... first time, I consider that I have seen the Indians in their primitive state; for till now all that I had fallen in with have been debased by intercourse with the whites, and the use of spirituous liquors. The Winnebagos at Prairie du Chien were almost always in a state of intoxication, as were the other tribes at Mackinaw, and on the Lakes. The Winnebagos are considered the dirtiest race of Indians, ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... imagining him competent to understand them at all, would be able to accept the tenets of Augustine without changing more than a few accents and punctuation marks. Every Sunday his raucous ecclesiastics batter his ears with diluted and debased filches from De Civitate Dei, and almost every article of his practical ethics may be found clearly stated in the eminent bishop's Ninety-third Epistle. And so in politics. The Bolsheviki of the present not only poll-parrot the balderdash of the French demagogues ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... effect, seen, as it was, from any part of the city. Next came the nave, whilst the transepts straggled about wildly, and a gigantic fortress-like tower reared itself from the middle. Correct judges will tell us that all this is debased work, and 'corrupt style;' but, nevertheless, I confess to being both ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... "A man that flattereth his neighbour spreadeth a net for his feet." The melancholy results of flattery are patent before the world, both on the page of history and in the experience of mankind. How many thousand young men who once stood in the uprightness of virtue are now debased and ruined through the flattery of the "strange woman," so graphically described by Solomon in Prov. vii., "With her much fair speech she caused him to yield, with the flattering of her lips she forced him. He goeth after her straightway, as an ox goeth to the slaughter, or as a fool to the ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... army, fought against the Turks in Hungary, and with his wife's money raised a regiment for the wars in Bohemia. A second marriage with a rich countess added to his wealth; he purchased, at a fifth of their value, about sixty estates of the exiled Bohemian nobility, and paid for them in debased coin; the emperor, in recognition of his services, made him Duke of Friedland, in which alone there were nine towns and fifty-seven castles and villages; his wealth, through these marriages, purchases, and gifts, steadily increased till he became enormously rich, and the wealthiest man in ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... the regions of immortal truth! How many dallied with the sirens of the wine cup, until all power to grapple with great subjects was lost irrevocably! How many are the instances in the world's history of great minds debased and ruined by alcohol! Look back and around you at the lives of the brightest literary geniuses and see how many are under the spell of this Circe's baleful power! Think of the rich intelligences ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... England and Ireland assumed its real character; and although huxtering politicians have since endeavoured to set up the honour of the island for sale, they have only been able to dispose of their own characters. The people have not debased themselves. In the lying homage to the Queen of England they took no part. They have preserved through the severest trials the old immortal yearning of their race, and the arms they had provided themselves with in '48 they have guarded religiously, in the hope of using ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... My life was a burden to me. It was terrible. It was a comfort to me even to be deserted and to be left. Then came this Englishman in my way; and it seemed to me, on a sudden, that the very nature of mankind was altered. He did not lie when he spoke. He was never debased by drink. He had other care than for himself. For himself, I think, he never cared. Since he has been here, in the school, have you found any cause of ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope |
