"Degrading" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... so false, and base, and hollow, this great world—if its aims are so mean, its successes so paltry, the sacrifices it asks of you so degrading, the pleasures it gives you so wearisome, shameful even, why does Ethel Newcome cling to it? Will you be fairer, dear, with any other name than your own? Will you be happier, after a month, at bearing ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
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... Nobody can help us. 'T is of no account what England or France may do. Unless backed by our profligate parties, their action would be nugatory, and, if so backed, the worst. But even the war is better than the degrading and descending politics that preceded it for decades of years, and our legislation has made great strides, and if we can stave off that fury of trade which rushes to peace at the cost of replacing the South in the status ante bellum, ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
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... physical prostration. The seeming exception of elated spirits in bodily decay, in fasting, and in ascetic practices, is no disproof of the general principle, but merely the introduction of another principle, namely, that we can feed one part of the system at the expense of degrading and prematurely wasting others. ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
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... into India. This country, from the time of Alexander, had enjoyed repose from external aggression, had been ruled by its native princes, and been permitted by Providence to exercise, without control or reproof, the degrading superstitions, and the unnatural and bloody rites of a religion at the formation of which the fiends of cruelty and lust seem to have presided; but reckoning was now about to be demanded of the accursed ministers of this ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
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... lose all historical sense, just as an American does when he describes a mediaeval crime as if it had been committed by a European with a twentieth-century conscience. They charge men with keeping half humanity in a degrading state of slavery, and attribute all the sins of civilisation to the enforced ignorance and helplessness of women. Their contempt for their masters is almost beyond the German language to express, eloquently as they use it. They demand equality of education and opportunity, ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
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... sheer cruelty has, however, been supplanted by brutal sport. The bull-fights of Spain are true Colosseum spectacles, and whilst the danger-thrills which throb through a human concourse at the assaults of an infuriated bull may not be as degrading as mere gloating over pain, what can we say of the disembowelling of the horses which is such a feature of that sport. And the modern prize fight and boxing championship has something of the gladiatorial spirit. The enormous interest in the Dempsey-Carpentier contest is evidence of the increasingly ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
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... experience at first hand. I am a procurer for the purposes of mental prostitution. My books breed moral pestilence and spiritual disease. The unholy filth I write fouls the minds and pollutes the imaginations of my readers. I am an instigator of degrading immorality and unmentionable crimes. Work! No, young man, I don't work. Just now, I'm doing penance in this damned town. My rotten imaginings have proven too much—even for me—and the doctors ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
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... this vice has taken. Not only on Sundays, but also on week-days, I met peasants who were so intoxicated that I was surprised how they could keep in their saddle. I am, however, happy to say that I never saw a woman in this degrading condition. ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
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... men. In point of intellect and aspiration they were far beyond the people they governed—so far, indeed, that they were almost isolated. There was a multitude of slaves and consequently there was a feeling everywhere that useful work was degrading. The tendency of the slave-owner is always toward profligacy and conspicuous waste. To do away with slavery was out of the question—that was a matter of time and education—the ruler can never afford to get much in advance of his people. The court was infected with ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
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... one another his letters. They laughed together over his jokes, mildly, as befitted persons for whom a sense of humour might conceivably be a Satanic snare, and trembled together at his dangers. Mary's affection was free from anything so degrading as passion, and she felt no bashfulness in reading Jamie's love-letters to his parents; she was too frank to suspect that there might be in them anything for her eyes alone, and too candid to feel ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
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... names, labored unceasingly and successfully to abolish an important branch of the African slave trade, no voice was raised in the British parliament to abolish the impressment of seamen a system of slavery as odious, unjust and degrading, as was ever established by ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
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... purchased by bribery, for Ivan condescended to buy the interference of a Tartar princess. So slavish and degrading was his outward seeming that his wife, a noble and spirited lady, the daughter of the Emperor of Byzantium, could with difficulty prevail upon him to forego the humiliating usages which had hitherto attended the reception of the Mongol envoys. It had been customary ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
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... established between women and boys. Laetitia had formerly chafed at it, rejecting it utterly, save when now and then in a season of bitterness she handed here and there a volatile young lady (none but the young) to be stamped with the degrading brand. Vernon might be as philosophical as he pleased. To her the gaiety of these two, Colonel De Craye and Clara Middleton, was distressingly musical: they harmonized painfully. The representative of her ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
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... business would be an honest calling and though she was too proud to beg, she was not too proud to work, or to take a very humble position among the people around her. She did not look upon the act of selling candy to the passers-by in the streets as degrading in itself, and therein she differed very widely from her mother, who had been brought up in ease and affluence. Before she got home she had made up her mind what she should say, and how she should defend her plan from the ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
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... of real respect. He worshipped her one moment as the Aphrodite of his fancy; he was ready to strip and scourge her the next as the possible murderess of Caroline. But Bigot had fettered himself with a lie, and had to hide his thoughts under degrading concealments. He knew the Marquise de Pompadour was jealously watching him from afar. The sharpest intellects and most untiring men in the Colony were commissioned to find out the truth regarding the fate of Caroline. Bigot was like a ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
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... Maurepas, the D'Aiguillons, and that hateful Abbe Terray, who, for rapacity, were none of them better than Du Barry—and thus he ended by losing the love of his subjects. I have often pitied Louis XV. for degrading himself as he did before the eyes of his family, his subjects, and ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
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... Paraguay, or the mummy existence of a Japan and China. The feeling of self-dignity, and the expansiveness of that enterprizing spirit which is congenial to freemen, would revolt against the very idea of such a degrading national captivity. But if there were even a will to live such a mummy life, there is no possibility to do so. The very existence of your great country, the principles upon which it is founded, its geographical position, its present scale of civilization, and all its moral and material ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
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... insidious suggestion of the tempter. Thus the man who expected to go away despising now honored, reverenced, loved her, and through her strong but gentle ministry had turned his back on evil, and was struggling to escape its degrading bondage. ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
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... after his marriage, led entirely by Marion and her ways and desires, never went towards Edinburgh. The wretched old lady soon began to feel herself utterly deserted; and when her anger at this position had driven love out of her heart, she fell an easy prey to the most sordid, miserable, and degrading of passions, the hoarding of money. Nor was it until death opened her eyes that she perceived she ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
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... him, for the brother, for the child, for the cherished being who will come to me aged and desperate; and I wish that he may yet believe in something good, that he will not imagine everything in this world is unjust and infamous, for he will return to me weighed down by twenty years of shame, of degrading and undeserved shame. How will he bear these twenty years? What efforts must I not make to prove to him that he should not abandon himself to despair, and that life often offers the remedy, compassion to the most profound, to the most unjust human sorrows? ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
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... hold the certificate or rather the license warranting the marriage, and that you will espouse and aid in prosecuting her iniquitous claims. My son is now a reformed and comparatively happy man, but should this degrading and bitterly repented episode of his collage life be thrust before the public, and allowed to blacken the fair escutcheon we are so jealously anxious to protect, I dread the consequences. Only horror of a notorious scandal prevented me long ago from applying for a divorce, which could ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
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... had—Vere her child, Emile her friend. And now she was jealous of each with the other. And the enormous difference in their ages made her jealousy seem the more degrading. Nevertheless, she could not feel that it was unnatural. By a mutual act they had excluded her from their lives, had withdrawn from her their confidence while giving it to each other. And their reason for doing this—she was sure of it now—was ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
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... robe of truth, I worship it for what it covers," replied Philothea; "but I love not the degrading fables which poets have made concerning divine beings. Such were not the gods of Solon; for such the wise and good can never be, in ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
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... is convinced, whether rightly or wrongly, that he knows all about his own ideas that needs to be known. Byron never did thus know himself, either morally or intellectually. The higher part of him was consciously dragged down by the degrading reminiscence of the brutishness of his youth and its connections and associations; they hung like miasma over his spirit. He could not rise to that sublimest height of moral fervour, when a man intrepidly chases from his memory past evil done, suppresses ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
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... the expectation of receiving a few pieces of silver for betraying his country. Whatever was his recompense in this way I know not, but I am certain he was despised as long as he lived, and his memory will for ever be pointed at as contemptible and degrading by the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 480, Saturday, March 12, 1831 • Various
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... another, stamps ineffaceably on all her productions, either to imply that they are temporary and finite, or that their perfection must be wrought by toil and pain. The crimson hand expressed the ineludible gripe in which mortality clutches the highest and purest of earthly mould, degrading them into kindred with the lowest, and even with the very brutes, like whom their visible frames return to dust. In this manner, selecting it as the symbol of his wife's liability to sin, sorrow, decay, and death, Aylmer's sombre imagination was not long in rendering the birthmark ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
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... that you have the worst opinion of me; that you deny me the possession of all I value most. That is to say that I am a traitor to all my sisters; that I have acted as no woman can act without degrading herself and her sex; that I have sought where the incorrupt of my kind naturally scorn and abhor to seek.' She and I were silent for many a minute. 'Lucifer, Star of the Morning,' she went on, 'thou art fallen! You, once high in my esteem, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
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... cast-off mistress of that man's son. Yet all this she had taken upon herself in expiation of something—she knew not clearly what; no, for nothing—only for him. And yet this very situation offered her that gleam of hope which had thrilled her; a hope so wild in its improbability, so degrading in its possibility, that at first she knew not whether despair was not preferable to its shame. And yet was it unreasonable? She was no longer passionate; she would be calm and ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
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... their arms. It is said that General Gates [the American Commander] paid so nice and delicate an attention to the British military honour that he kept his army close within their lines, and did not suffer an American soldier to be a witness to the degrading spectacle of piling their arms.' Ann. Reg. xx. 173, 174. Horace Walpole, on Lord Cornwallis's capitulation in 1781, wrote:—'The newspapers on the Court side had been crammed with paragraphs for a fortnight, saying that Lord Cornwallis ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
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... proportionate to the number of letters in them arranged in parallel lines—for Mr. Hillquit's argument means neither more nor less than this—is, let me repeat, incredible. What, then, is the explanation of his indulging in a performance of this degrading kind? The explanation is that he, like so many of his colleagues, though recognising personally that labour among "modern nations" depends for its higher productivity on the picked men who direct it, cannot bring himself to renounce, ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
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... table in the sitting-room beyond which extended other rooms that, in addition to being ugly, were dark. But Lennox had no degrading manias for comfort. Pending the great day he camped in these rooms, above which, on an upper storey was a duplex apartment which, if Margaret ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
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... done in the quarrels of princes, without respect of persons, according to the state of the case. It clashed with the idea of the Papacy that alterations of political relations exercised such a decisive influence as they did in this matter. There was indeed something degrading for the English in their being made to feel the reaction of the Emperor's Italian victory, and his preponderance, ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
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... despotic system, or is more jealous of foreign interference with its trade. I suspect, also, that none has done more injury to the advancement of civilisation in the East, from their readiness to submit to all the absurd customs and degrading ceremonies imposed on them by the Chinese and other semi-barbarous nations, for the purpose of advancing their mercantile interests. Taught by them, these people look upon all Europeans as tribes of mean and despicable traders, who have neither the power nor ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
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... would be a blessing to themselves, and to who all who dwell under the same roof with them. We cannot consider any thing which we do to please our heavenly Father of small importance, and no favour can be degrading which ...
— The Nest in the Honeysuckles, and other Stories • Various
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... were mistaken. There are two or three poor societies; it is for them to look after these cases. What is the use of having poor societies, if we are to do the work ourselves? So low! so undignified! so degrading! just ask any ...
— Trading • Susan Warner
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... enough to think this a degrading task, and the time and labour which have been devoted to it misemployed, I shall content myself with opposing the authority of the greatest man of any age, JULIUS CAESAR, of whom Bacon observes, that 'in his book of Apothegms which he collected, we see that he esteemed it more honour to make himself ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
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... a water town, the youngster has little or no chance of a run and game ashore, and any exercise he takes is confined to being paddled up and down the river in a canoe, for to paddle himself would be deemed much too degrading—a Brunai noble should never put his hand to any honest physical work—even for his own recreation. I once imported a Rob Roy canoe from England and amused myself by making long paddling excursions, and I would also sometimes, to relieve the monotony of a journey in a native boat, take ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
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... no extravagant aspirations; a home of simple refinement and freedom from anxiety would restore her to her nobler self. How could he find fault with her? She knew nothing of such sordid life as he had gone through, and to lack money for necessities seemed to her degrading beyond endurance. Why, even the ordinary artisan's wife does not suffer such privations as hers at the end of the past year. For lack of that little money his life must be ruined. Of late he had often thought about the rich uncle, John Yule, who might ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
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... excessively ill-advised lover," she exclaimed wildly, and in tones which clearly indicated that she was inspired by every variety of affectionate emotion, "has the unendurable position in which you and all your household will be placed by the degrading commercial schemes and instincts of the mercenary-souled person Chang-ch'un occupied no place in your generally well-regulated intellect? Inevitably will those who drink our almond tea, in order to have an opportunity of judging the ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
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... perfect freedom of thought and of action had been secured to the people, instead of a slavish awe of the mob, an absolute dread of the uneducated masses, a sovereign contempt of the opinion of the world in accomplishing any design for the aggrandizement of the Union, the most despotic and degrading oppression of all who presume to hold religious opinions at variance with those of the masses, and the chained bondsman in a ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
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... more and more numerous become the people who don't. Mr. McCabe may recognize an example of what I mean in the gradual discrediting in society of the ancient European waltz or dance with partners, and the substitution of that horrible and degrading oriental interlude which is known as skirt-dancing. That is the whole essence of decadence, the effacement of five people who do a thing for fun by one person who does it for money. Now it follows, therefore, that ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
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... in retaining office exhibited by the late Government, which was utterly unexampled, and most degrading to the character and position of public men engaged in carrying on the Queen's Government, Sir Robert Peel was called to the head of affairs by her Majesty, in accordance with the declared wishes of a triumphant majority of her subjects—of a perfectly overwhelming majority of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
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... exclaimed Herrick. "Dogs are not wild animals. The things they're trained to do are of USE. They can guard the house, or herd sheep. But a bear is a wild beast. Always will be a wild beast. You can't train him to be of use. It's degrading to make him ride a bicycle. I hate it! If I'd known there were to be performing bears to-night, I ...
— The Nature Faker • Richard Harding Davis
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... beheading was executed thus:—They sometimes cut off the criminal's head with a sword, as is done among the Romans. But Rabbi Yehudah says this was degrading, and in some cases they placed the culprit's head upon the block and struck it off with an ax. Some one remarked to him that such a death is more ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
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... position, of unblemished reputation from his youth up, an accomplished scholar, a learned jurist, an eloquent barrister, and, more than all, a Christian gentleman, should have been guilty of the base treachery and the degrading crime here charged upon him was just simply incredible—no ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
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... air pollution from power plant emissions results in acid rain; acidification of lakes and reservoirs degrading water quality and threatening aquatic life; Japan is one of the largest consumers of fish and tropical timber, contributing to the depletion of these ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
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... between master and slave is a perpetual exercise, of the most boisterous passions; the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submission on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it. The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives loose to the worst of passions; and thus nursed, educated, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
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... life;—you are going to give that sorry offering to God, because His mercy endureth for ever! Shame—shame upon the heart which can let such a plan rest in it one moment. If it be there, crush it like a man. It is a degrading thing to enjoy husks till there is no man to give them. It is a base thing to resolve to give to God as little as possible, and not to serve Him ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
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... becoming, in adopting its changing curves and variable tension, in sympathising with the rhythm of its genesis, in perceiving all existence from within, as a growth, in following it in its inner generation; in short, in promoting movement to fundamental reality, and, inversely, in degrading fixed states to the rank of ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
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... it, he felt a faint tug inside him; as it were a whispered reminder that, away at Kapurthala, he had been about as free as a bird with a string round its leg. He resented the aptness of that degrading simile. It was a new sensation; and he did not relish it. The few women he intimately loved had counted for so much in his life that he scarcely realised his abysmal ignorance of the power that is in woman—the mere opposite of man; the implicit challenge, the potent lure. Partly from temperament, ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
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... character, Francis Paslew, second of the name, held aloof from the insurrection, and when his brother was arrested he wholly abandoned him. Still the owner of Wiswall had not altogether escaped suspicion, and it was probably as much with the view of degrading him as of adding to the abbot's punishment, that the latter was taken to the hall on the morning of his execution. Be this as it may, the cortege toiled thither through roads bad in the best of seasons, but now, since the heavy rain, scarcely passable; and it arrived there in about ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
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... could not understand that you were consenting to buy me—me—your wife! You wished to possess me for a little, as a sort of variation to your usual list, although your heart must have told you that it was degrading to me to be placed on such a plane. You did not recoil from such an idea, but pursued it, just as you pursue them, and the more eagerly, because I was more expensive. But you have deceived yourself, not me. Not thus will you ever regain possession of your wife. Adieu, Monsieur! ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
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... keep it at her own disposal." Seldom seen upon the streets, she remained at home, surrounded by virgins and widows, obedient and loving to her mother. Among the high-born women it was regarded as degrading to assume the costume of the nun, but she bore the scorn of her social equals with humility ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
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... future importunity, painful to me, and, all circumstances considered, degrading to Sir George, whose honor is very dear to me, though I am obliged to refuse him that hand which he surely cannot wish to receive without my heart, I am compelled to say, that, without an idea of ever being united to Colonel Rivers, I will ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
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... say that it degrades oneself to find pleasure in degrading things or degraded people, you will perhaps admit the fact but deny that it has any application to theatre-going. Is it not a fashionable, intellectual, and what not, amusement? Let ...
— Tired Church Members • Anne Warner
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... Virginia, Tennessee, and other States, where most of the labor is done by slaves. But it necessarily loses something of its respectability, by the side of, and when associated with, slave labor. Wherever labor is mainly performed by slaves, it is regarded as degrading to freemen. The freemen of the North, therefore, have a deep interest in keeping labor free, exclusively free, ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
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... good qualities; third, and perhaps most important of all, the discontent very properly felt by the French Zouaves, who were compelled to work at the trenches, to dig, to plant, etc., while the Mussulmans utterly refused to take part in this, to their mind, degrading toil. The Gordian knot was cut, and all difficulty done away, by making the regiment, in effect, exclusively European. Thus reorganized and reinforced, the regiment, on receiving the standard sent it by the king, immediately separated,—one ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
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... hah!" they sung, and each endeavored to drown the voice of the other. Now they crouch as they dance, looking diminutive and contemptible, as those who are degrading themselves in their most sacred duties. Then they rise up, and show their full height. Stalwart warriors as they are, their keen eyes flash as they glance from the fire to each others' faces, distorted with the effort of uttering such discordant sounds. Now their broad chests heave with ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
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... engagement, or that the local officials would allow persecutions for opinion's sake, when once the facts are made known to them. In doing this the missionaries should conform to Chinese custom and etiquette, so far as it can be done without assuming an attitude that would be humiliating and degrading to themselves.'' ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
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... apprehend. Wishes and advices from a father are not commands. You showed a petulant, foolish temper, quite unworthy of you, in turning your back on Uncle John, and saying in effect, 'I don't intend to take your advice, I intend to take my own way, even though it lead me to a Fife fishing village—and a degrading love affair." ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
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... in fifty communities from the Alleghanies to the Pacific coast; only these little states, instead of dying in the bud, would have gone through a rank flowering period of bloody and aimless revolutions, of silly and ferocious warfare against their neighbors, and of degrading alliance with the foreigner. From these and a hundred other woes the West no less than the East was saved by the knitting together of the ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
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... part of the evil it attacked; for the spirit that makes people talk coarsely about sex is the same spirit that makes men act coarsely to women. It was not Puritanism at all that would put an end to this squalor and cruelty, but sensuality. If you taught that these encounters were degrading, then inevitably men treated the women whom they encountered as degraded; but if you claimed that even the most casual love-making was beautiful, and that a woman who yields to a man's entreaty gave him some space of heaven, then you could insist that he was under an obligation of gratitude ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
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... it, father," answered the old man, his voice trembling with emotion, for his sensations were too powerful, too sublime, even, for the degrading passion of fear—"but never before did this fair piece of the creation seem so lovely in my eyes as now, when I am about to quit it for the ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
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... fiddling; and I have stood sometimes wondering in the street, with about six blackguard boys wondering too, at the strange contortions of the figures jumping up and down to the mysterious squeaking of the kit. Have they no shame ces gens? are such degrading initiations to be held in public? No, the snob may, but the man of refined mind never can submit to show himself in public laboring at the apprenticeship of this most absurd art. It is owing, perhaps, to this modesty, and the fact that I had no sisters ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
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... uncontrollably into hysteria and tears. Here was Mrs. Croyle, a grown woman, standing in front of her like a mutinous obstinate child, looking like one too, talking like one and bidding Joan leave her Wub alone. Whence did she get that ridiculous name? It was all degrading and grotesque. ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
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... passed out for their morning intermission he beckoned the youth to him. Dan Murphy made a covert grimace expressive of his whole being's revolt against any such degrading task, and Scotty went forward reluctantly. He wanted to disobey, but the man's courtesy ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
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... societies, even peasants,—this frightful thing that I had fallen, and not because I was subjected to the natural seduction of a certain woman. No, no woman seduced me. I fell because the surroundings in which I found myself saw in this degrading thing only a legitimate function, useful to the health; because others saw in it simply a natural amusement, not only excusable, but even innocent in a young man. I did not understand that it was a fall, and I began to give myself to those pleasures (partly from desire ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
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... interviews. In these, the Prophet, with his characteristic plausibility, denied that his course was the result of British influence. His sole object, he alleged, was a benevolent one towards his red brethren; to reclaim them from the degrading vices to which they were addicted, and induce them to cultivate a spirit of peace and friendship, not only with the white people, but their kindred tribes. To this sacred office, he insisted, with much earnestness, he had been specially called by the Great Spirit. That he might the more successfully ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
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... that," she answered sadly. "But nothing could alter the fact that you wish to be treacherous, and throw me over—and just for money! It's simply degrading. It's all nonsense to say it will ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
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... Stuermer and his friends had arranged this disgraceful exhibition of unholiness in order to discredit and destroy Grichka's rival. Five minutes later I met the Bishop Theophanus walking with the Procurator of the Holy Synod, who, like myself, witnessed the degrading sight, and from that moment Mitia the Blessed no longer exercised power, and was not further invited to the salons of those mystical members of the aristocracy. He had been swept into oblivion in a ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
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... at the supper "Isabella Wardle devoted herself exclusively to Mr. Trundle." Pointed enough, surely. We may be fortified in this view by finding that on the return of the party, all dead drunk, at one in the morning, on Trundle was specially cast the degrading menial duty of carrying Wardle ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
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... zeal and courage the preaching of the word of God. His enemies were active and powerful, but the queen and many of the nobles were his friends, and the people in great numbers sided with him. Comparing his pure and elevating teachings and holy life with the degrading dogmas which the Romanists preached, and the avarice and debauchery which they practised, many regarded it an honor to be ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
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... her in the brazen act of looking for him! Mrs. Maldon was grieved; and her gentle sorrow for Rachel's incalculable lapse was so dignified, affectionate, and jealous for the good repute of human nature that it mysteriously ennobled instead of degrading ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
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... gentleman now encouraged his angry fox-terriers, by every means at his command, to continue their vile and degrading occupation; holding on all the time to the ears of Dicky and Noel, who scorned to ask for mercy. Dicky got purple and Noel got white. It was ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
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... administered to the judgment by continual progression in some improper path, till that which is to all others palpably and painfully degrading becomes pleasant and eminently proper in him who labours under the mental oblivion. Such a course Mr. Freeman has trod, for while he admits that gambling is pernicious, he clamours for the natural right which all men possess, to do it so long as they ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
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... his young brother struggling with the unruly Spaniards. His presence, however, was no doubt a further exasperation to the malcontents. There existed in Isabella a little faction of some of the aristocrats who had never, forgiven Columbus for employing them in degrading manual labour; who had never forgiven him in fact for being there at all, and in command over them. And now here was another woolweaver, or son of a wool-weaver, come to put his finger in the pie that Christopher ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
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... he would have appeared at the Battle of Buena Vista. This monument is intended as a weathercock to crown the new dome of the Capitol at Washington. By this happy contrivance, the horse will be freed from the degrading necessity of touching the earth at all,—thus distancing Mr. Mills by two feet in the race for originality. The pivot is to be placed so far behind the middle of the horse, that the statue, like its original, will always indicate which ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
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... love as Vaughan's that Honorias value. Because a woman's nature is not proof against deterioration, because a large and long-continued infusion of gross blood, and perhaps even the monotonous pressure of rough, pitiless, degrading circumstances, may displace, eat out, rub off the delicacy of a soul, may change its texture to unnatural coarseness and scatter ashes for beauty, women do exist, victims rather than culprits, coarse against their nature, hard, material, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
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... top were all these sad evidences of the degraded condition of the people. I wandered around and examined the idols, most of which had in front of them, and in some instances on their flat heads, offerings of tobacco, food, red cotton, and other things. My heart was sad at these evidences of such degrading idolatry, and I was deeply impressed with my need of wisdom and aid from on high, so that when I met the people who here worshipped these idols I might so preach Christ and Him crucified that they would be constrained to accept ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
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... the Eastern portion of the world, where an hereditary, or at least traditional, despotism has never ceased since the earliest social records, and where a mode of thought infinitely more degrading than any feudalism has become ingrained in the blood and soul of the chief races, presents far more favourable conditions to the growth and development of the true adventurer than are offered in any free country. For in a free country the majority can ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
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... suspicions, discovering the trust-unworthiness of one's most intimate friends, the necessity of insincerity and concealment sometimes where one feels that one ought and would desire to be most open; then the degrading nature of the occupation, mixing with the lowest of mankind, and absorbed in the business for the sole purpose of getting money, the consciousness of a sort of degradation of intellect, the conviction of the deteriorating effects upon both the feelings and the ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
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... to be gained in reviewing that unhappy affair," continued the other. "Your mother's family are headlong, impulsive, fiery, unstable, emotional. There was a last shameful and degrading scene. I offered her a separation; but she was unwisely persuaded to sue ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
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... privacy is threatened: If he was to be hung by the Law, by all means let it be for a sheep! Moreover the notion of standing in a witness box and swearing to the truth that no gesture, not even a word of love had passed between them seemed to him more degrading than to take the tacit stigma of being an adulterer—more truly degrading, considering the feeling in his heart, and just as bad and painful for his children. The thought of explaining away, if ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
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... As he did so, every eye, suddenly released from his imposing figure, flashed towards the immovable Clifford, to find him still absorbed by the action and attitude of the man who had just undergone what to him doubtless appeared a degrading ordeal. Pale before, he was absolutely livid now, though otherwise unchanged. To break the force of what appeared to be an open, if involuntary, self-betrayal, another guest stepped forward; but no sooner had he raised his hand to his vest-pocket than Clifford moved, and ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
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... that no unnecessary severity was practiced. In accordance with this sentence, the fellow was immediately taken out and flogged; and that was the last seen of him in that region. He went off and never came back. The latter part of the sentence, however, was supererogatory; for there was something so degrading in a public whipping, that I have never known a man thus whipped who would stay longer than he could help, or ever desire to return. However this may have been, the sense of justice of the community was satisfied. No blood had been shed; there had been no hanging; ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
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... here, then, little lady, and learn better. What is it to be a player? It is this. A thing despised and rejected on all sides; a thing that was a century since denied what they call Christian burial; a thing that is still deemed for a woman disgraceful, and for a man degrading and emasculate; a thing that is mute as a dunce save when, parrot-like, it repeats by rote with a mirthless grin or a tearless sob; a wooden doll, as you say, applauded as a brave puppet in its prime, ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
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... that the Rhamdas, superintellectual as they are, can consent to such a contest? Is it not degrading, to their way of ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
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... alarm them. They cannot strike the sun out of heaven, but they are able to raise a smouldering smoke that obscures Him from their own eyes. Not being able to revenge themselves on God, they have a delight in vicariously defacing, degrading, torturing, and tearing in pieces, His image in man. Let no one judge of them by what he has conceived of them, when they were not incorporated, and had no lead. They were then only passengers in a common vehicle. ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
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... license to preach transform a man into a higher order of beings and endow him with a natural quality to govern? Are the laity an inferior order of beings, fit only to be slaves and to be governed? Is it good policy for mankind to subject themselves to such degrading vassalage and abject submission? Reason, common sense, and the Bible, with united voice, proclaim to all mankind that they are all born free and equal; that every member of a church or Christian congregation must be on the same footing in respect of church ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
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... of which he had thought he had so truly and deeply repented, but another which he had always been taught was a very low and degrading vice. Oh, could there be ...
— Elsie's New Relations • Martha Finley
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... reform. At the same time he attacks the whole policy of Eubulus, charging him with distributing doles without regard to public service, adding to the amenities of Athens instead of maintaining her honour in war, and enriching her politicians while degrading her people. The main object of the speech was unsuccessful; and just about this time (though whether before or after the speech is disputed) Apollodorus proposed that the people should decide whether the surplus revenues should go to the Festival ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes
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... have not room to consider some of the appendages to the theory, such as the assertion of the essential unity of the human and the brute intellect, the denial of the immaterial nature of mind, and the advocacy of the system of phrenology. These absurd and degrading doctrines are naturally connected with the atheistic hypothesis we have been considering. They are its legitimate children. But they have already been refuted so often and so conclusively, that any revival of them at the present day is hardly deserving of notice. If we should stop here, then, it ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
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... true that a stone is only a stone, whatever it may have been used for, but a peculiar sanctity is in most minds associated with the grave, and we ought not to run the risk of shocking tender-hearted people by degrading even the dead memorial of the dead to profane and secular purposes. And yet, what has become in too many cases of the old gravestones? The very old ones we may perhaps account for, but where are the middle-aged ones ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
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... they had for ever lost the virtue of purity! They would understand that the confessional is a snare, a pit of perdition, a Sodom for the priest; and they would be struck with horror and shame at the idea of the continual, shameful, dishonest, degrading temptations by which their confessor is tormented day and night—they would blush on account of the shameful sins which their confessors have committed—they would weep over the irreparable loss of their purity—they would promise before ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
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... absurdity!" I exclaimed. "She will never conform to your rules. She hates nursing. She has too much good sense to insult her fine womanly nature by degrading and ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
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... tie that had yet united the guilty Caroline to Vargrave was broken,—a woman forgives sin in her lover, but never meanness. The degrading, the abject position in which she had seen one whom she had served as a slave (though, as yet, all his worst villanies were unknown to her), filled her with shame, horror, and disgust. She rose abruptly, and quitted the room. They did not ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book XI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
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... that might shock its ladylike ears. The next morning he met the from-dance-returning Bessy abstractedly, and soon took his leave, full of a disloyal plan, conceived in the sleeplessness of her own bedchamber. He was satisfied that he owed a duty to its unknown parents to remove the child from the degrading influences of the barber Kanaka, and Hank Fisher especially, and he resolved to write to his relatives, stating the case, asking a home for the waif and assistance to find its parents. He addressed this letter to his cousin Maria, partly in consideration of the ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
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... were possible) from this calamity, I turned to a letter from my father which had arrived by the same post. The envelope contained a strip of newspaper-cutting; and my eye caught again, "Son of Millionaire Dodd—Figure somewhat fleshy," and the rest of the degrading nonsense. What would my father think of it? I wondered, and opened his manuscript. "My dearest boy," it began, "I send you a cutting which has pleased me very much, from a St. Joseph paper of high standing. At last you seem to be coming fairly to the front; and I cannot but reflect with delight and ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
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... there are no fewer than fifty in this little town. Sunday wear for the men is a green tail-coat of some coarse sort of drugget, and usually a complete suit to match. I have never set eyes on such degrading raiment. Here it clings, there bulges; and the human body, with its agreeable and lively lines, is turned into a mockery and laughing-stock. Another piece of Sunday business with the peasants is to take their ailments to the chemist for advice. It is as much a matter for Sunday as church-going. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
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... either—the coffins of the men about to be executed, were placed in that pew, upon the seat by their side, during the whole service. It may seem incredible, but it is true. Let us hope that the increased spirit of civilisation and humanity which abolished this frightful and degrading custom, may extend itself to other usages equally barbarous; usages which have not even the plea of utility in their defence, as every year's experience has shown them to ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
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... is contented to look like a butterfly, father, she must be content to be taken for one, but I must say I think it is degrading that men should look upon it in that light. They don't dress themselves up in all sorts of ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
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... much attention to him just then. Poor old Dad! He thinks that because the first emigrant in our family dates back a couple of hundred years or so we are something rather special in the way of human beings, and I know very well that he thought it most degrading for a daughter of his to be in such a miserable place. Of course it is really very clean, Aunt Jennie, because Yves has been trained on a man o' war, where the men spend nearly all of their time scrubbing things. I have seen ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
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... to me, that I found myself regretting that I had not asked advice of the aged negress who had rested beside me in the shadow of the sycamore. I wondered if she would consider the selling of newspapers a less degrading employment than the hawking of vegetables, and with the thought, I saw stretching before me, in all its alluring brightness, that royal road of success which leads from the castle of dreams. One instant I resolved ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
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... labourers, seem to have abused their powers. To the genuine Matabili, who lived only for war and plunder, and had been accustomed to despise the other tribes, work, and especially mine work, was not only distasteful, but degrading. They had never been really subdued. In 1893 they hid away most of the firearms they possessed, hoping to use them again. Now, when their discontent had increased, two events hastened an outbreak. One was the removal ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
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... be considered a degrading and dangerous view of human beliefs and responsibility for them," the Reverend Doctor replied. "Prove to a man that his will is governed by something outside of himself, and you have lost all hold on his moral and religious nature. There is nothing bad men want to believe so much ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
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... blesses their daily life, then will the maiden of a pure heart believe that her dream is real, and that the man of her choice is pure; whose heart is free and open as her own; all of whose thoughts may be avowed; who is incapable of wronging the innocent, or still further degrading the fallen,—a man, in short, whose brute nature is entirely subject to the impulses of his better self. Such men there are in countless numbers, who have kept themselves free from stain, and who can look the purest maiden in the eye and not shun the glance. Through God's grace they ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
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... college now, save when she was labouring in her botany laboratory, for there the mystery still glimmered, she felt she was degrading herself in a kind ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
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... enthusiasm so often excited by tragic excellence. The thing to be dreaded with the great bulk of the spectators—that is, by far the largest portion of mankind—is not their avowed infidelity and their open wickedness; it is the sway of the degrading or selfish passions which is chiefly dangerous. The thing to be feared is, not that they will say there is no God, but that they will live altogether without God in the world. How important, then, that genius ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
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... princes would have considered as degrading, and not without a sense of amusement, the Monarch of France waited till his Life Guardsman had satisfied the keenness of a youthful appetite. It may be supposed, however, that Quentin had too much sense and prudence ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
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... much in marriage—modern, upper-class marriage," she repeated. "And, just precisely on that account, it seems to me all the more degrading and shameful that a girl should risk marrying the wrong man. People talk about a broken engagement as though it was a disgrace. I can't see that. An unwilling, a—a—loveless marriage is the disgrace. And so ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
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... that to be the correct term. One of my patients tells me that it is the talk of the district. A local ruffian, a patient of ours, by the way, matched against a pugilist over at Croxley. I cannot understand why the law does not step in and stop so degrading an exhibition. It is really ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
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... slaveholder was the most enthusiastic and resolute secessionist and supporter of the Confederacy. He was just rising in the world, and anything which barred the upward way was denounced as degrading and insulting. A larger class of Southerners who joined with measured alacrity the armies of defense were the small farmers of the hills and poorer eastern counties; but the "sand-hillers" and "crackers," the illiterate and neglected by-products of the planter counties, were not minded ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
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... consolation strong enough to cast quite out a certain feeling of shame that mingled with his amusement—a shame which—is it not odd!—he would not have felt had his sporan been full of sovereigns. But the shame was not altogether a shameful one; a fanciful fear of degrading the chieftainship, and a vague sense of the thing being an imposition, had each a part in it. There could be nothing dishonest, however, in thus earning a shilling for ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
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... influence to get him a commission, and no money to pay for it if it were offered me. I think that was pretty plain; and I have been surprised ever since that I ever could have placed myself in such a degrading position as ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
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... for he found the dominant vice was precisely that one most repugnant to his nature. If Lord Byron ever admitted, with La Rochefoucault, that hypocrisy is a homage vice renders to virtue, he did not the less consider this homage as degrading to him who offered it, insulting to those to whom it is addressed, and most corrupting in its effect upon ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
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... caused them occasional inconvenience, since from time to time they would have to pay their court to their suzerain; and it seems towards the close of the Median period to have involved an obligation which must have been felt, if not as degrading, at any rate as very disagreeable. The monarch appears to have been required to send his eldest son as a sort of hostage to the Court of his superior, where he was held in a species of honorable captivity, not ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
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... not know," he said. "I feel as if I were, in some measure, running the risk of degrading my holy office, by accepting, merely for my personal convenience, a dependent position, where certain compliances, as a necessary condition, might be expected, which are contrary ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
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... centuries and more. You come, with the blood of merchants, pioneers and heroes in your veins, to a normal battle. But for me, my forebears were savages two hundred years ago. My people learn to know civilization by the lowest and most degrading contact with it, and thus equipped or unequipped I tempt, an abnormal contest. Can't you ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
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... the fittest" in the commonly used animal sense is not a theory or principle for a "time-binding" being. This theory is only for the physical bodies of animals; its effect upon humanity is sinister and degrading (see App. II). We see the principle at work all about us in criminal exploitation and profiteering. As a matter of fact, the ages-long application of this animal principle to human affairs has degraded the whole human ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
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... envy. Yes—base, mean, low, unartistic, degrading as is this passion, I felt it rise up like a snake in my breast when I saw that feeble woman. She was splendidly dressed—wrapped in furs of the most costly kind, trailing behind; her velvets and lace worth a countess's ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
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... clambering on over the choked debris of the flume that had dammed and diverted the current. It was evident that the same idea had occurred to them, and they were risking their lives in the attempt to set free the impediments. Shocked and indignant as Christie had been at the degrading absorption of material interests at such a moment, the element of danger lifted the labors of these men into heroism, and she began to feel a strange exultation as she watched them. Under the skilful blows of their axes, in a few moments the vast body of drift began to disintegrate, and ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte
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... and because he understands the imbecile jargon of the stock market, and because he is able to distinguish between the ideas of rival politicians, and because he is privy to the minutiae of some sordid and degrading business or profession, say soap-selling or the law. But these empty talents, of course, are not really signs of a profound intelligence; they are, in fact, merely superficial accomplishments, and their acquirement puts little more strain ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
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... his majesty and Mr. Addington. In a letter to the Duke of York, he called "the opportunity of displaying his zeal at the head of his regiment," which was intended to be consolatory to his feelings, "a degrading mockery." The whole correspondence, in truth, brought great discredit, both on the heir-apparent and his advisers. It ended, however, in the prince joining his regiment at Brighton, in opposition to the expressed ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
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... commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do what he sees others ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
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... to join our circle, I shall feel obliged to leave it. It is degrading enough to be forced to mix with such rubbish in the schoolroom, without having to associate with him in ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
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... Church Rochester had, indeed, very slender claims. To save his place he had sate in that tribunal which had been illegally created for the purpose of persecuting her. To save his place he had given a dishonest vote for degrading one of her most eminent ministers, had affected to doubt her orthodoxy, had listened with the outward show of docility to teachers who called her schismatical and heretical, and had offered to cooperate strenuously with her deadliest enemies in their designs against her. The highest praise to which ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
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... but you'll see. Just wait. Only, if I do catch him and hand him over to you, will you cry quits? Will you drop all this about degrading me in the presence of my regiment? Not that I mind, you know; but still no regiment likes to have all the other ...
— The Man of Destiny • George Bernard Shaw
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... ago, so are they now. They were satisfied with bark wigwams then; a board and a mud hovel is enough to-day. They cannot comprehend a white man's ambition to work that he may dress and live well, and all money and all thought spent in civilizing the Indian has only resulted in degrading him. He absorbs all the white man's vices and none of his virtues. Not only that, but the effort to redeem him has warped and twisted him into a cunning and revengeful creature; all malice and no honor. So true is this that the ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
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... remote suspicion of this Barratt's connection with the shop which he had not accidentally entered; and the sudden appearance of this wretch it was, at the very moment of finding herself charged with so vile and degrading an offence, that contributed most of all to rob her of her natural firmness, by suddenly revealing to her terrified heart the depth of the conspiracy which thus yawned like a gulf below her. And not only had this sudden horror, upon discovering a guilty design in what before had ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
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... the new government has ushered itself to the world as honest, masculine, and dignified. It has shown genuine dignity, in my opinion, in exploding adulatory titles; they are the offerings of abject baseness, and nourish that degrading ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
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