"Degeneracy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his degeneracy, and thrice shame!" said the young Cimon, sternly. "I love the Spartans so well, that I blush for whatever degrades them. And all Sparta is dwarfed by the effeminacy of ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... come, when a Bribe shall remove the most excellent Man from Office for the Purpose of making Room for the worst. It will be called an Error in Judgment. The Bribe will be concealed. It may however be vehemently suspected & who, in Times of great Degeneracy will venture to search out and detect the corrupt Practices of great Men? Unless a sufficient Check is provided and clearly ascertained for every Power given, will not the Constitution and the Liberties of the Citizens for want of such Checks be ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... later and more degenerate times, it became very common. The husband had the right to divorce his wife for the slightest cause, or for no cause at all. In this disregard of the sanctity of the family relation, may doubtless be found one cause of the degeneracy and failure of the ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... I never caught the maudlin look of his reeling eyes, nor listened to some exquisite inanity from his besotted lips, but that my thoughts flew instantly back to the Sir Charleses and the Sir Roberts of my race, and I comforted myself with the hope that the present degeneracy should pass away. Hence, Julia, my family pride; hence, too, another feeling you dislike in me,—disdain! I first learned to despise my father, the host, and I then despised my acquaintances, his guests; for I saw, while they ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... West, and that earthly nectar to which the East contributes its arrack, and the West its limes and its rum. In the language of men it is called Punch; I know not what may be its name in the Olympian speech. But tell not the Englishmen of George the Second's age, lest they should be troubled for the degeneracy of their grandchildren, that the punchbowl is now become a relic of antiquity, and their beloved beverage almost as obsolete as metheglin, ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... oscillate alternately between the two,—in seasons of ease and prosperity living "without God in the world," and in seasons of distress or danger betaking themselves for relief to the rites of a superstitious worship. The apostle describes at once the secret cause and the successive steps of this sad degeneracy, when, speaking of the Gentiles, he says that "when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened; professing themselves wise, they ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... seized upon by those who are eager to put the worst possible construction on human nature and human conduct, as evidence of extreme degeneracy. How often are we to be told that our present troubles are sent upon us in order to lift the whole community out of the mire of money-getting propensities, where every thing like public spirit was in danger ...
— The Spirit Proper to the Times. - A Sermon preached in King's Chapel, Boston, Sunday, May 12, 1861. • James Walker
... amongst ourselves. The women there mainly attend to business—serving the BOUTIQUE, or presiding at the COMPTOIR—while the men lounge about the Boulevards. But the result has only been homelessness, degeneracy, ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... cow, with an American tax-collector at the horns, a foreign-born assessor at the heels, forcibly selling the birthright of an American citizen, while Julia and Abby Smith, in the background, with veiled faces, weep over the degeneracy of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... know that I ever remember seeing a sight more pathetic in its way than that of this beautiful and high-spirited young woman weeping in the presence of her Council over the utter degeneracy of the race she was called upon to rule. Being old and accustomed to these Eastern expressions of emotion, I remained silent, however; but Oliver was so deeply affected that I feared lest he should do something foolish. ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... the Teuton invaders in themselves. They incessantly preached peace as a religious necessity to those tribes which had been as ready to consume each other as to divide the spoils of their Roman subjects. This united phalanx of bishops in Gaul conquered in the end even the excessive degeneracy, self-indulgence, and cruelty of the Merovingian race. Thanks to their perpetual efforts, while the policy of a Clovis made a France, the wickedness of his descendants did not destroy it, but only themselves, and caused a new family to be chosen wherein the same tempered ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... 50. Family Degeneracy.—Several impressive illustrations have been published of degenerate families that show the far-reaching effects of heredity. In contrast to these pictures, has been set the life story of families who have won renown ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... age to dwell on the degeneracy of the times and lament the good old days and their superiority, but Yale is infinitely greater and broader than when I graduated sixty-five years ago. The New York Legislature and State executives are governing an empire ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... struggle with his heritage makes him nervous and ill-balanced. He conceives the idea, fostered both by observation and by the study of his own family history, that unchastity is the chief curse of humanity, and the primal cause of the degeneracy of races. He believes that the false modesty which leaves young people in ignorance of one of the most important natural functions is largely responsible for the prevailing immorality, and he advocates, as a remedy, fearless and searching physiological study. His inaugural address as ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... before the days of modern science. The spirits of animism, however, were not discarded, but were modified, co-ordinated, and worked into a system as servants of the Most High. Polytheism may mark a stage in this process; or, perhaps, it was a result of mental degeneracy. ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... and preparing for the final measures of the great conspiracy. Having discarded the rational and humane views of their own fathers—Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and others—it was but the natural sequel that they should signalize their degeneracy by aiming to overthrow the work in which those sages had embodied their generous ideas—the Constitution of the United States and the whole fabric of government resting ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... promoters wanted quality in the eggs of their hens as well as quantity. Quantity rests with the hen, but quality—like the "sluttishness" of Touchstone's sweetheart—may come hereafter. In order that there might be no excuse for and no degeneracy on the part of the hens, shops were ransacked for nest eggs of proper proportions. These were placed in spots conspicuous to the hens, who, of course, understood that they were expected to lay up to them. In other words, these were patterns for the hens to lay ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... vice flourished because the aims of our rulers and teachers were low and selfish, and that slavery was a monstrous evil supported by the greed of traders. Brown's Estimate, he said, was thoroughly right as to our degeneracy, though Brown had not perceived the deepest root of the evil. Cowper's satire has lost its salt because he had retired too completely from the world to make a telling portrait. But he succeeds most admirably when he finds relief from the tortures of insanity by giving play to the exquisite ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... particular form of leprosy or a condition resembling it. Thus would arise the confusion between Christians and Cretins. To-day their descendants are not more subject to goitre and cretinism than those dwelling around them, and are recognized by tradition and not by features or physical degeneracy. It was not until the French Revolution that any steps were taken to ameliorate their lot, but to-day they no longer form a class, but have been practically lost sight ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... animals. Climate, or chance, produced a change in certain individuals, and the sagacity of man, or, perhaps, mere chance, founded on these accidental varieties numerous breeds possessed of certain distinct characteristic properties. The degeneracy of the dog, also, in different countries, cannot ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... eyes, too big, too blue; the same lashes, too long, too dark; the same ears, too small and a trifle too far forward. In addition he had the same full upper-lip, the same cleft in the chin, the same features refined almost to the point of degeneracy. But the ensemble was charming—too charming, as was his voice, which he had acquired at Oxford where, at the House, he had studied, though what, except voice culture, one may surmise and never know. Men generally disliked him and accounted the way he spoke, or the way ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... believe that I was on the point of cheating myself," he said, soberly. "That argues a shameful flabbiness of the moral fibre, doesn't it? A 'brace' game of solitaire! What a hideous picture of degeneracy!" ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... The two peas were fired by his second son John, who had been delivering this invisible artillery all the evening from the other end of the identical pew in which the Rev. Dr. was seated. He groaned in the spirit, and muttered something to Mrs. Rev. Dr. A—— about the degeneracy of other people's children, which made that lady chuckle low, under cover of the night; for she knew that her second son John was the pea-shooter, and had made vain efforts to stop him, by pinching his leg, though the good matron ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... the dialogue called 'Critias,' in which he describes, partly from real tradition, partly in ideal dream, the early state of Athens; and the genesis, and order, and religion, of the fabled isle of Atlantis; in which genesis he conceives the same first perfection and final degeneracy of man, which in our own Scriptural tradition is expressed by saying that the Sons of God intermarried with the daughters of men, for he supposes the earliest race to have been indeed the children of God; and to have corrupted themselves, until 'their spot was not the spot of his children.' ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... that state requires, or perhaps can admit of. In other cases, the state of the society does not place the greater part of individuals in such situations; and some attention of government is necessary, in order to prevent the almost entire corruption and degeneracy of the great ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... other sorts of writing. There is perhaps no better weapon for the scourging of vice and folly than this potent literary embodiment of wit and irony, and certainly no author ever wielded that weapon more nobly than Lucilius. His aera was characterised by great degeneracy, due to Greek influences, and the manner in which he upheld failing Virtue won him the unmeasured regard of his contemporaries and successors. Horace, Persius, and Juvenal all owe much to him, and it is melancholy to reflect that all his work, save a fragment or two, is lost to the world. Lucilius, ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... inferior-looking Flamandes, including two or three examples of that deformity of person and imbecility of intellect whose frequency in the Low Countries would seem to furnish proof that the climate is such as to induce degeneracy of the human mind and body; these, I soon found, were completely under her influence, and with their aid she got up and sustained a swinish tumult, which I was constrained at last to quell by ordering her ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... people have talked so ever since the morning when Hengist and Horsa, Limited, landed from their three keels in the Isle of Thanet. Gildas is the oldest historian of these islands, and his work consists entirely of a good old Tory lament in the Ashmead-Bartlett strain upon the degeneracy of the times and the proximate ruin of the British people. Gildas wrote some fourteen hundred years ago or thereabouts—and the country is not yet quite visibly ruined. On the contrary, it seems to the impartial eye a more eligible place of ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... the signs of the Lord's blessing. It is a fanaticism which puts forth no good fruit; instead of blessing, it has brought forth cursing; instead of love, hatred, instead of life, death—bitterness and sorrow, and pain; and infidelity and moral degeneracy follow its labours." There is no shirking of the question here. Slavery is proclaimed to be the GOD-appointed means for the regeneration of the African race, and those who seek to bring about the emancipation of the slaves are branded as apostles ...
— Narrative of the Life of J.D. Green, a Runaway Slave, from Kentucky • Jacob D. Green
... nature. It was suspected, that the whole creation languished, that neither trees nor animals had the height or bulk of their predecessors, and that every thing was daily sinking by gradual diminution[49]. Milton appears to suspect that souls partake of the general degeneracy, and is not without some fear that his book is to be written in "an age too ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... attendant and shadow of transcendent sanctity: and moreover, since such sanctity was not of every day's occurrence, nay further, since one period of Church history differed widely from another, and, as Joseph Milner would say, there have been generations or centuries of degeneracy or disorder, and times of revival, and since one region might be in the mid-day of religious fervour, and another in twilight or gloom, there was no force in the popular argument, that, because we did not see miracles with our own eyes, miracles had not ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... by the misshapen bodies, by marks of degeneracy, recognizable to your practised eyes everywhere on the streets, by the agony of the mother who bore you, and later wept over you, I conjure you men to live up to your high and holy privilege, and tell all men that they can be ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... such an idea should prevent the American nation from contributing its influence to the establishment of a peaceful system in Europe, America, and Asia, such a refusal would be a decisive stop toward American democratic degeneracy. It would either mean that the American nation preferred its apparently safe and easy isolation to the dangers and complications which would inevitably attend the final establishment of a just system of public law; or else it would ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... rule without exception, and is a reassuring reflection in view of the talk about the degeneracy of the House of Commons, and the decadence of its standard of manner. It would not be difficult to show that the House at present in Session will, from the point of view of manners, favourably compare with any that have gone before—though, to be just, the comparison should be sought with Parliaments ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... exhibition, so as to make it capable of conveying the whole breadth of the philosophic conception. For it is the scientific doctrine of MAN that is taught here; and that is, that man must be human in all his relations, or 'cease to be.' It is the violation of the ESSENTIAL humanity. It is a DEGENERACY which is exhibited here, and the 'SEQUENT EFFECTS' which belong naturally to the violation of a law that has the force of the universe to sustain it. And it is not by accident that the story of the illegitimate Edmund begins the piece; it is not for nothing that we are ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... position of the occiput—all vary considerably. (1/55. F. Cuvier in 'Annales du Museum' tome 18 page 337; Godron 'De l'Espece' tome 1 page 342; and Col. H. Smith in 'Nat. Library' volume 9 page 101. See also some observations on the degeneracy of the skull in certain breeds, by Prof. Bianconi 'La Theorie Darwinienne' 1874 page 279.) The difference in size between the brains of dogs belonging to large and small breeds "is something prodigious." "Some dogs' brains are high and rounded, while others ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... understanding, to act as a country justice of peace, a man who has scarce ever travelled beyond the excursion of a fox-chase, whose conversation never rambles farther than his stable, his kennel, and the barnyard; who rejects decorum as degeneracy, mistakes rusticity for independence, ascertains his courage by leaping over gates and ditches, and founds his triumph on feats of drinking; who holds his estate by a factious tenure, professes himself the blind slave of a party, without knowing the principles that gave it birth, or the motives ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... which, on the whole, is nothing but an artificial collection of letters relating only indirectly to the main story. Joseph takes us with him through the Western lands, and then to Russia, whither he returns. In France and in England, he deplores the degeneracy of Judaism, attributing it to the ascendency of the Mendelssohnian school, and he foresees the approach of anti-Semitism. In Russia, he notes the prevalence of economic misery in frightful proportions, especially in the small ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... Englishman, war is to the Prussian." Nietzsche, one of the greatest of modern apostles, has based many of his theories upon "a violent repudiation of any faith or tradition which recognizes a power of right and justice lying beyond our impulsive nature; an identification of self-restraint with degeneracy and of self-assertion with health; a search for happiness in the conquest of others rather than in self-conquest; a substitution of the Will to Power for the Darwinian Will to Live, with the consequent intensification of the unconscious and instinctive ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... is of the decorated species of the early fourteenth century, with its arcaded triforium glazed, whereas in the nave it is without glass. The lady-chapel, of the time of Louis XI., shows that inevitable mark of degeneracy, the "fleur-de-lys," in the elaborated tracery of the window framing. The glass here is, however, excellent, in effect at any rate, with its gorgeous figures of knights, angels, and peers of France, drawn ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... that stone implements are an index to man in the beginning of his existence is an unwarranted conceit; they may point to a degeneracy. The lost arts are indicative of that which might have been repeated many times. Stone implements might have been used, as we know they have been, in times of great civilization. They are an uncertain index of civilization among the tribes who used them, and no index of the civilization ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume 1, January, 1880 • Various
... the giddiness of their daughters, and the ceaseless murmurs of their wives, while they in their turn unite in complaining of parental parsimony and meanness. Social intercourse I have long since given up, for I am tired of tedious narratives of the delinquencies of servants and the degeneracy of the times. I prefer large parties, where, although you know the smile hides the peevish temper, the aching heart, the jealous fear, and the wounded pride; yet it is such a great satisfaction to know there is a truce to complaints, that I prefer ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... of these people, men and women, were foreign in aspect—round, bushy heads with no backs to them were everywhere; muddy skins, unhealthy skins, loose mouths, shifty eyes!—everywhere around her Palla saw the stigma of degeneracy. ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... out from the centre, leaving quite an interval; and the attempt made to penetrate this gap and isolate the van was the only tactical move of the French. We find in them at Malaga no trace of the cautious, skilful tactics which Clerk rightly thought to recognize at a later day. The degeneracy from the able combinations of Monk, Ruyter, and Tourville to the epoch of mere seamanship is clearly marked by the battle of Malaga, and gives it its only historical importance. In it was realized that ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... which act her body became degenerate and subject to death. Adam realized the disparity that had been brought between him and his companion, and with some measure of understanding followed her course, thus becoming her partner in bodily degeneracy. Note in this matter the words of Paul the apostle: "Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... repeating the names of the abstract virtues that its better advocates had in mind. These people will say "So far from aiming at slavery, the Eugenists are seeking true liberty; liberty from disease and degeneracy, etc." Or they will say "We can assure Mr. Chesterton that the Eugenists have no intention of segregating the harmless; justice and mercy are the very motto of——" etc. To this kind of thing perhaps the shortest answer ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... alone has many degenerate spermatozoa. Some follicles have none, others a number varying perhaps from one-fourth to three-fourths of the whole number. No evidence of degeneracy was detected among the young spermatids up to the stage shown in figures 154-155, where a few like figure 162 were found. Most of the degenerate forms occur among the nearly ripe spermatozoa or in the sperm-ducts. Such are shown in figures 163 to 168. The chromatin ...
— Studies in Spermatogenesis (Part 1 of 2) • Nettie Maria Stevens
... Government, and decay of the nation.] Everywhere Rome was failing in her duties as mistress of the civilised world. Her own internal degeneracy was faithfully reflected in the abnegation of her imperial duties. When in any country the small-farmer class is being squeezed off the land; when its labourers are slaves or serfs; when huge tracts are kept waste to minister to pleasure; when the shibboleth of art is on every man's lips, ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... of dissipation, of nervous disorders, of suicide. We may then affirm that socialism does not deny the Darwinian law of the struggle for existence. Socialism will, however, have this indisputable advantage—the epidemic or endemic forms of human degeneracy will be entirely suppressed by the elimination of their principal cause—the physical poverty and (its necessary consequence) the mental ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... anarchy and mischief, which must always happen when the government of a nation depends upon the caprice of the ignorant, harebrained vulgar. All the miseries of men for a long series of years grew out of that infamous mode of polity, a democracy; which is to be reckoned to be only the corruption and degeneracy of a republic, and not to be ranked among the legitimate forms of government. If it be not a legitimate government, we owe it no allegiance. He is a blind man who does not see this truth; he is a base man who will not assert it. Democratic power is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... that you cannot conceive of an honest friendship, even between near relations. You fill me with repulsion—I measured the depth of your degeneracy at Pisa. That is why I left you. I wanted to breathe in an uninfected atmosphere. My cousin is a person of remarkable intellectual powers, of chivalrous ideals, and of superior character. He has had great troubles. He is far from well. I am ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... writer apprehended was that the machines would so equalise men's powers, and so lessen the severity of competition, that many persons of inferior physique would escape detection and transmit their inferiority to their descendants. He feared that the removal of the present pressure might cause a degeneracy of the human race, and indeed that the whole body might become purely rudimentary, the man himself being nothing but soul and mechanism, an intelligent but passionless principle ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... against the practice of breeding from any near relationships; it being usually found that degeneracy follows, and often to a serious degree; but it is not proved that this degeneracy, although very common and even usual, is yet a necessary consequence. That ill effects follow in a majority of cases is not to be doubted, but this is easily and sufficiently ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale
... to come to look over the morning papers, and chat about the news, the stocks, and the degeneracy of the times. What a club is to an idle man of fashion,—what a sewing-society is to a scandal-loving woman,—what a billiard-room is to a man about town,—what the Athenaeum is to the sober and steadfast bibliolater,—that is the Insurance Office to the retired merchant, bald ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... toward democracy no man has been less justly accused than Cicero, unless it might be Caesar. To Caesar we must accord the merit of having seen that a continuation of the old oligarchical forms was impracticable This Cicero did not see. He thought that the wounds inflicted by the degeneracy and profligacy of individuals were curable. It is attributed to Caesar that he conceived the grand idea of establishing general liberty under the sole dominion of one great, and therefore beneficent, ruler. I think he saw no farther than that ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... Sid Morton's cruel death, a man in whom he had no interest whatever? No. It would be absurd to believe that these things were the promptings responsible for his present actions. Some hideous psychological twist was driving him. Some passion swayed him over which he had no control whatever. Some degeneracy was upsetting his mental balance, and forcing him against his better instincts. But, even so, his whole attitude was that of a man of clear, alert mind, of iron purpose, ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... it formed a background for the brilliant picnic of Anglo-foreign society; but Dorothea had no such defence against deep impressions. Ruins and basilicas, palaces and colossi, set in the midst of a sordid present, where all that was living and warm-blooded seemed sunk in the deep degeneracy of a superstition divorced from reverence; the dimmer but yet eager Titanic life gazing and struggling on walls and ceilings; the long vistas of white forms whose marble eyes seemed to hold the monotonous light of an alien world: all this vast wreck of ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... out. Cecily Haguenin found many opportunities of writing him letters and assuring him of her undying affection. Florence Cochrane persisted in seeing or attempting to see him even after his interest in her began to wane. For another thing Aileen, owing to the complication and general degeneracy of her affairs, had recently begun to drink. Owing to the failure of her affair with Lynde—for in spite of her yielding she had never had any real heart interest in it—and to the cavalier attitude with which Cowperwood took her disloyalty, she had reached that state of speculative ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... and service is right and good for woman; and that we are to prefer a state of society where woman does these things with her own hands, instead of having them done for her, and that this is our only safeguard against luxury and degeneracy. I will not debate it. I am only showing that, tried by an ordinary test,—the position of woman,—Southerners are really ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... harsh but ultimately salutary action of the great law of Natural Selection without providing an efficient substitute for preventing degeneracy. The substitute on which moralists and legislators rely—if they think on the matter at all—is the cumulative inheritance of the beneficial effects of education, training, habits, institutions, and so forth—the inheritance, ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... the survival of the fittest, and in this residuum there was not wanting a certain savour. Subdued and quickened by man-o'-war discipline, they developed a dogged resolution, a super-capacity not altogether incompatible with degeneracy; and to crown all, the men who officered the resolute if disreputable crew were men in whose blood the salt of centuries tingled, men unrivalled for sea-sagacity, initiative and pluck. If they could not uphold the honour ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... of the Spirit's work have been entertained by theologians in consequence of erroneous conceptions regarding the degeneracy of human nature. Augustine held that man can do nothing which will at all contribute to His spiritual recovery. He is like a lump of clay, or a statue without life or activity. In consequence of these views, he held ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace
... retreat to the quiet centre of the spirit, gives that assurance of a Reality, a calmer and more valid life attainable by us, which supports the stress and pain of self-simplification and permits us to hope on, even in the teeth of the world's cruelty, indifference, degeneracy; whilst diligent character-building alone, with its perpetual untiring efforts at self-adjustment, its bracing, purging discipline, checks the human tendency to relapse into and react to the obvious, and makes possible the further development of the ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... starting from the couch, "am I under the delusion of a dream; or are these things really so, as my friend has represented them? Such a total and sudden degeneracy is amazing! is monstrous ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... or will be among mankind. [13] Propertius and Ovid [14] accept this language as proper and natural, and the striking rapidity with which it established itself in universal use is one of the most speaking signs of the growing degeneracy. Augustus himself was not cajoled, Tiberius still less, but Caius and his successors were; even Vespasian, when dying, in jest or earnest used the words "ut puto deus fio." As the satirist says, "Power will believe anything that Flattery ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... we must assume a type-species. This will be that kind which has the class-properties in their greatest intensity (and, therefore, most easily studied with all their effects); and we must conceive the other varieties as instances of degeneracy from ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... parents sinned, and also ( 2) that by this sin they fell from their original righteousness; for this only means that the first conscious act of disobedience by man produced alienation from God, and degeneracy of nature. This was no arbitrary punishment, but the natural consequence. The creed also says truly ( 3) that this corrupted nature was conveyed to all their posterity; for this only means, that, by the laws of descent, good and evil qualities are transmitted; ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... recently of such friends of British chess as F. H. Lewis, I. C. H. Taylor and Captain Mackenzie left a void, which in the absence of any fresh like popular players and supporters, goes far to account for the depression and degeneracy of first ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... avoid the conclusion that it is an inevitable and characteristic expression of the American spirit. It is only natural for the sons and grandsons of the men who settled this country to take an interest in wholesome and vigorous sports; in fact it would be a sad commentary on the degeneracy of the modern generation if such an expression of their inheritance were not evident. But a distinctively American attitude towards sport is also manifested in the intense personal and university ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... that innate diligence, of which Mr. Carlyle has said, 'that genius is only an infinite capacity of taking pains,' and we can understand somewhat of the causes which produced those statues, human and divine, which awe and shame the artificiality and degeneracy of our modern so-called civilisation—we can understand somewhat of the reverence for the human form, of the careful study of every line, the storing up for use each scattered fragment of beauty of which the artist caught sight, even in his daily walks, and consecrating it in his memory ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... by the three children, three different generations are designated, and the gradual degeneracy of the people, which sinks deeper and deeper. But this opinion must certainly be rejected. There is no gradation perceptible. On the contrary, the announcement of the total destruction of the kingdom ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... capons and game, good wine and the dainties of the earth console him and cheer his heart. Then he prays to God and says 'I am poor and in misery.' Were God to answer him He would say, 'thou liest!'" To illustrate the degeneracy of the age, Peire relates a fable, perhaps the only instance of this literary form among the troubadours, upon the theme that if all the world were mad, the one sane man would be in a lunatic asylum: "there was a certain town, I know not where, upon which a rain fell of such a nature that ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor
... two notable particulars: He had no quarrel with the world, and he did not wax rich. "One thing thou lackest, O Walt Whitman!" we might have said to the poet; "you are not a financier." He died poor. But this is no proof of degeneracy, save on 'Change. When the children of Count Tolstoy endeavored to have him adjudged insane, the Court denied the application and voiced the wisest decision that ever came out of Russia: A man who gives away his money is not necessarily ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... compromises and delusive hopes of liberty. Should the Roman people, of their own free will, pretend to give themselves away,—to sell themselves to a faction whose subversive principles they abhor, their forefathers of all preceding ages would protest against their base degeneracy; the children of the generations to come would curse their memory; all reflecting men of the present time would accuse them of black ingratitude,—ingratitude to the mighty dead among their Pontiffs, to whom they are indebted for their very ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... the pitcher nearer him, clinking the ice invitingly, and directed his attention to our iris-bed as a more cheerful object of contemplation than the degeneracy of the inhabitants of Vermont. The flowers burned on their tall stalks like yellow tongues of flame. The strong, sword-like green leaves thrust themselves boldly up into the spring air like a challenge. The ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... astonished at the thought. "O, the degeneracy of the nineteenth century,—the sinfulness of ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... tale with decent horror, and therefore I do beseech the "gentle reader" to believe, that if all the succedanea to this mysterious narrative are not in strict keeping, he will ascribe it only to the disgraceful innovations of modern degeneracy upon the sober and dignified habits of our ancestors. I can introduce him, it is true, into an old and high-roofed chamber, its walls covered in three sides with black oak wainscoting, adorned with carvings of fruit and flowers long anterior to those of Grinling Gibbons; the fourth ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... of the Future by the Past? In ancient States, the mass were slaves; civilization and freedom rested with oligarchies; in Athens twenty thousand citizens, four hundred thousand slaves! How easy decline, degeneracy, overthrow in such States,—a handful of soldiers and philosophers without a People! Now we have no longer barriers to the circulation of the blood of States. The absence of slavery, the existence of the Press; the healthful proportions of kingdoms, neither too confined nor too vast, have created ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... born de legitimo matrimonio; and few of the gudewives prided themselves upon absolute fidelity. This flaw, which in England would poison all domestic affection, was not looked upon in a serious light by the islandry. The priesthood used to lament the degeneracy of the age and sigh for the fine times of foros e fogos, the rights and fires of an auto-da-fe. The shepherds have now learned to move with the times and to secure the respect of their sheep. Imagine being directed to Paradise ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... progress since emancipation, in so far as it can be measured by elementary schooling and by increasing literacy; its criminality, dependency, and physical and mental defectiveness—those characteristics of individual degeneracy which Negroes manifest in common with other racial classes in all civilized communities; finally, its economic progress, as indicated by increasing ownership of homes, by entrance into skilled trades and professions, and primarily and fundamentally by the rapid development ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... little for plain Fact, these people, and were in that advanced state of degeneracy on the subject, that instead of being impressed by the speaker's strong common sense, they took it in extraordinary dudgeon. The men muttered 'Shame!' and the women 'Brute!' and Sleary, in some haste, communicated the following hint, apart ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... of racial degeneracy, past, present, or to come, troubled its victim very little as he lay there. Indeed, it had never troubled him much. He was one of those men who cannot learn to think systematically, but who make up their deficiency by feeling the more intensely. And now that the unseen ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... all forms of degeneracy in the farmer's face Kenny barricaded the door with a loose plank from the upper step, made sure it would fall easily with a clatter, examined his revolver and had his sleep out, thanks to the fact that the day proved cloudy. ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... in mind that the first effect of association with the more advanced race was not improvement but degeneracy. I have no wish to discredit the statements of the early explorers, including the Jesuit priests; but it is evident that in the zeal of the latter to gain honor for their society for saving the ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman
... of warmth and ventilation in Winter an important question. House-builder and stove-maker combine against fresh air, 136. Run-away slave boxed up. Evil qualities of bad air aggravated by heat. Dwellings and public buildings generally deficient in ventilation. Degeneracy will ensue, 137. Women the greatest sufferers. Necessity of reform, 138. Public buildings should be required to have plenty of air. Improved hive, its adaptedness to secure ventilation, 139. Nutt's hive too complicated. Ventilation independent of the entrance, 140. Hive may be entirely ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... that this degeneracy of the feet goes with a decline in the brain, whether as cause or effect I will not pretend to know. These hoofed beasts have shallow natures and live shallow lives. They eat what is spread by Nature before their noses, have no ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... admirably disciplined phalanx at Charonea; and even at Chaeronea they were not defeated but slain in their ranks, fighting to the last. It was this band, directed by the skill of great captains, which gave the decisive blow to the Lacedaemonian power. It is to be observed that there was no degeneracy among the Lacedaemonians. Even down to the time of Pyrrhus they seem to have been in all military qualities equal to their ancestors who conquered at Plataea. But their ancestors at Plataea had not ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... such an account of the youth of Britain more true, in my opinion, than it is prudent. I am far from discovering any such remarkable degeneracy in the age, or any great prevalence of cowardice and unmanly delicacy; nor do I doubt of hearing that our youth, if they are sent upon any expedition, have shown that the British courage is not yet extinguished, and that, if they are ranged on the plains ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... — N. deterioration, debasement; wane, ebb; recession &c. 287; retrogradation &c. 283[obs3]; decrease &c. 36. degeneracy, degeneration, degenerateness; degradation; depravation, depravement; devolution; depravity &c. 945; demoralization, retrogression; masochism. impairment, inquination|, injury, damage, loss, detriment, delaceration|, outrage, havoc, inroad, ravage, scath[obs3]; perversion, prostitution, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... wealth has brought about increased expenditure, principally in matters of dress, and the women in particular seem to have made the most of this opportunity. Vanity and frivolity multiplied on every hand as a natural consequence; the Church was growing daily less able to cope with the moral degeneracy of the time on account of its own immoral condition; thus, the foundations were being laid for those centuries of corruption and national weakness which were soon ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... infidelity which prevail to such an alarming extent in the present day, may be ascribed to parental neglect of the young. The desolating curse of heaven invariably accompanies neglect of domestic obligations and duties; it was this that constituted that dreadful degeneracy which preceded the coming of the Messiah. The parents were alienated from the children, and the children from their parents. And the only way in which the Jews could avert deserved and impending ruin, was by "turning the ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... offered up, a propitiatory sacrifice to the demon of slavery. Never before has an outrage so unblushingly profligate been perpetrated upon the Federal Constitution. Yet, while we mourn the degeneracy which this transaction evinces, we behold, in its attending circumstances, joyful omens of the triumph which awaits our struggle with the hateful power that now perverts the General Government into an engine of ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... which they lived; it only betrays the relative industry and felicity with which they imitated the language and thoughts of a former age. They were the last monuments of civilized antiquity, the last of a noble race, which, after a long period of degeneracy, became extinct ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... seated at her domestic altar, gives homilies on the degeneracy of modern housekeeping equal to the lamentations of Dr. Holdfast as to the falling off from the good ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... confidence, too improvidently given, he owed all his power? Was this the master you chose? Could you bring your tongue to give him the name of Augustus? Could you stoop to beg consulships and triumphs from him? Oh, shame to virtue! Oh, degeneracy of Rome! To what infamy are her sons, her noblest sons, fallen. The thought of it pains me more than the wound that I died of; ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... here one man is as good as another, and they will find those who were rich on earth no better than themselves. As for your Spartans, you will not mind scolding them, from me, upon their present degeneracy? ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... without heroism, without chivalry, without loyalty, without laughter, and without children! Every man standing alone, isolated, self-centred, self-cursed, outlawed, loveless, marriageless, going headlong to degeneracy and death! Such might be God's punishment on this cruel and wicked city ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... with itself, did not dispute the word. Had Melrose, out of his immense income, spent a couple of thousand pounds on the village at any time during the preceding years, a score of deaths would have been saved, and the physical degeneracy of a whole ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... remembering her readings of a certain wonderful old quarto book in her father's library, by an eccentric old Scottish nobleman, wherein the wearing of garments and sleeping in houses is accused as the cause of human degeneracy, she took a forced merry stand on her return to the primitive healthful state of man and woman, and affected scorn of our modern ways of dressing and thinking. Whence it came that she had some of her wildest seizures of iridescent humour. Danvers attributed the fun to her mistress's gladness in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the wager of battle tells in the end for the advantage of the race, by eliminating the maimed, the ugly, and the cowardly, and encouraging the strong, the handsome, the enterprising, and the valiant. This is nature's way of preventing degeneracy. ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... in functional cardiac disorders; in intellectual sluggishness, loss of memory, and color blindness; in loss of appetite, and other neuroses of motion, and marked blunting of various functions of sensation, and in degeneracy of descendants; but that lesser evils are produced must be proved mostly by inference, circumstantial ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various
... out its wealth like water for a noble purpose. Never again will 'the almighty dollar' be called America's divinity. We were sinking fast to low aims and selfish purposes, and wise men groaned at national degeneracy. The summons came, and millions leaped to offer all they had, to fling fortune, limb, and life on the altar of an unselfish cause. The dead manhood of the nation sprang to life at the call. We proved the redness of the old faithful, manly blood, to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... above the common level; painfully they climb the rugged heights, attain the summits of power, of wealth, of intelligence, of talent, and then, no sooner are they there than they topple down and disappear in gulfs of mental and physical degeneracy." The demographical researches of Hansen[253] (following up and completing Dumont's) tended, indeed, to show that urban as well as feudal aristocracies, burgher classes as well as noble castes, were liable to become effete. Hence it might well be concluded ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... of lamentation over the degeneracy of the British seaman, my experience may be accepted as a contribution to the mass of evidence on this vexed question. I have not been surrounded by such smart seamen as can only be found on a man-of-war, ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... their decision to withdraw the British force from the island of Yeu. The indignant letters of Windham to Pitt in 1796-8 show that, after the Yeu fiasco and the beginning of the peace negotiations with France, his advice was slighted. His moanings to Mrs. Crewe over the degeneracy of the age also tell their tale. In October 1796 he merely "drags on" at the War Office until he sees what ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... distinctly demoralizing influence, having power only to change excellent Buddhists into prostitutes and thieves. And in such a way, according to the same laws, Mike had observed, since he had adopted pessimism, certain unmistakable signs in himself of moral degeneracy. ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... levied aids and benevolences upon the different travellers on the king's highway. A letter of the old lord, his father, which, by the by, is not the letter of an illiterate man, is still extant, in which he complains in very moving terms of his son's degeneracy and misconduct. The young scapegrace, wishing to make his father know from experience the inconvenience of being scantily supplied with money, enjoined his tenantry in Craven not to pay their rents, and beat one ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 354, Saturday, January 31, 1829. • Various
... Romans: he tells us (I believe I can repeat his words), that if he attained any degree of excellence, he owed it, not so much to the precepts of rhetoricians, as to his meditations in the walks of the academic school. I am aware that other causes of our present degeneracy may be added; but that task I leave to my friends, since I now may flatter myself that I have performed my promise. In doing it, I fear, that, as often happens to me, I have incurred the danger of ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... toward White River Farm, and he was thinking chiefly of Seth, a man he hated for no stronger reason than his own loss of caste, his own degeneracy, while the other remained an honest man. The deepest hatreds often are founded on one's own failings, one's own obvious inferiority to another. He was thinking of that love which Wanaha had assured ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... heroes, accepted as inspired scripture by the people, and by philosophers in part explained away by an allegorical exegesis and in part felt increasingly as a burden to the intelligence. In this period of degeneracy there were none the less an awakening to religious needs and a profound longing for a new revelation of truth, which should satisfy at once the intellect ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... brigands in the great money hunt. It was this: A certain charitable lady gave some years of her life to the study of those conditions in which, as I have said, the criminally inactive, the hopelessly useless, were produced by authorized routine, at a ruinous cost in money and degeneracy, and to the great ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... As I shall thus address myself to a foreign audience, it will of course be my duty to describe the frivolities of American manners—the faults of American ladies, the imbecilities of American gentlemen, the scurrilities of the American press, the weakness of American magazines, the degeneracy of American literature, the roguery of the American public, the want of taste of American engineers, the ignorance of American professors, and to discuss any questions of strictly local interest which may happen to present themselves. I shall studiously avoid stating that ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... in her condition have in all civilised societies laid the female more early and seriously open to the attacks of parasitism than the male. And while the accumulation of wealth has always been the antecedent condition, and the degeneracy and effeteness of the male the final and obvious cause, of the decay of the great dominant races of the past; yet, between these two has always lain, as a great middle term, the parasitism of the female, without which the first ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... spendthrifts, but never as young and accomplished a dissembler.— Nay, man, never bend your angry brows on me. I speak in bitterness of heart, from what I remember of your worthy father; and if his son hears of his degeneracy from no one else, he shall hear it from ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... should deride and scoff at this strange man, living as nobody else lived, thinking as nobody else thought; a prophet, crying from his solitude of great troubles at hand; the apostle of the past; the preacher of an impossible restoration; the witness to his contemporaries that their degeneracy was incorrigible and their doom hopeless; and that another seal in the book was broken, and a new era of calamity and downfall opened in the history ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... in somewhat a later period, and in the court of a Syrian queen, preserved the spirit of ancient Athens, observes and laments this degeneracy of his contemporaries, which debased their sentiments, enervated their courage, and depressed their talents. "In the same manner," says he, "as some children always remain pygmies, whose infant limbs have ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... phrase of Whig coffee-houses have "swinged off" the "Examiner," most of which I had never seen nor heard of before. I remember some time ago in one of the "Tatlers" to have read a letter,[4] wherein several reasons are assigned for the present corruption and degeneracy of our taste, but I think the writer has omitted the principal one, which I take to be the prejudice of parties. Neither can I excuse either side of this infirmity; I have heard the arrantest drivellers pro ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... mysteries of every kind of complicated mechanism—bicycles, sewing machines, clock-work toys and watches. Finally, gentlemen, there are people with an hereditary animus against private property. You may call this phenomenon degeneracy. But I tell you that you cannot entice a true thief, and thief by vocation, into the prose of honest vegetation by any gingerbread reward, or by the offer of a secure position, or by the gift of money, or by a woman's love: because there is here a permanent beauty ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... flat, but I attributed that to the degeneracy of the times, and of Cornish people in particular. The fact was, they understood that text far better than I did, and knew that "the Church of the first-born" was something more spiritual than ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... is greater, the fecundity less than those of any other nation in the world, unless it be France, whose anxiety regarding her depopulation we would share in full measure were it not for the foreign immigration to the United States, which counteracts the degeneracy of the American.[1] The original causes for this increasing sterility are moral and not physical. When this is known, does not the philosophy of the American working woman become a subject of vital interest? ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... as to incline it to good instead of evil. God is infinitely blessed and happy, because he is infinitely just and good. Man is unblessed and unhappy, because he is unholy and evil. One of the clearest proofs of man's degeneracy is found in his willingness to remain in his sinful and unhappy state. Like the man among the tombs, he is ready to cry out, in thought if not otherwise, "Let us alone! what have we to do with thee? Art thou come to torment us ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... gradations by which corruption steals into the world, and oppose it in every step, by giving perpetual warning and instruction to mankind; which, added to the strong influence of our own example, would probably prevent that continual degeneracy of human nature so justly complained of in ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... prevalent spirit of universal skepticism was a general laxity of morals. The Aleibiades, of the "Symposium," is the ideal representative of the young aristocracy of Athens. Such was the condition of society generally, and such the degeneracy of even the Government itself, that Plato impressively declares "that God alone could save the young men of his ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... expect to be receiver-general," and, after lighting his tenth cigar as a tribute, presumably, to the lung power of the combatants, will indulge in some moody reflections on the decay of British valour and the general degeneracy of Englishmen. He will then drink liqueur brandy out of a claret glass, and, having slapped a sporting solicitor on the back and dug in the ribs a gentleman jockey who has been warned off the course, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 5, 1890 • Various
... men, in the difficulties they had to encounter, was truly painful to me. I had hoped better things of the Scotch, from their known moral and enlightened education; but their horrid imprecations proved a degeneracy of character in an Indian country. This I lamented to find was too generally the case with Europeans, particularly so in their barbarous treatment of women. They do not admit them as their companions, nor do they allow them to eat at their ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... largely obviated but, as with most other hybrids between distinct species, the seedlings lacked sufficient uniformity to be of especial value. A few individuals turned out superior to the parent but on the whole degeneracy, from the nut-producers standpoint, appears among ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various
... the volcanic fires which issue from a thousand flaming craters; the thunderbolts which perpetually descend from heaven, and the earthquakes, whose trepidations are felt to the very center of our globe, have superinduced a degeneracy through all the productions of nature. Men have been frightened into intellectual dwarfs, and the beasts of the forest have not attained more than ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... followed Louis in his wild and reckless course since he left his father's mansion. It was too painful to witness the degeneracy of our early favorite. But the whole history of the past was written on his haggard brow and pallid cheek. It need not be recorded here. He had thought himself a life-long alien from the home he had disgraced, for never could he encounter his father's indignant ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... all men of his age and standing, has a great idea of the degeneracy of the times. He seldom expresses any political opinions, but we managed to ascertain, just before the passing of the Reform Bill, that Nicholas was a thorough Reformer. What was our astonishment to discover shortly ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... a pretext for arming itself; and what is the pretext? There was a time when men openly advocated war as a thing to be desired; commended it to each generation as a sort of tonic to tone up the moral system and prevent degeneracy, but we have ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... me, that when Paul said nothing stronger than heathen moralists had said about human wickedness, it was absurd to quote his words, any more than theirs, in proof of a Fall,—that is, of a permanent degeneracy induced by the first sin of the first man: and when I studied the 5th chapter of the Romans, I found it was death, not corruption, which Adam was said to have entailed. In short, I could scarcely find the modern doctrine of the "Fall" any where in the Bible. I then remembered ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman |
