"Demoralizing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... secret cutting of rates and the sudden fluctuations that constantly take place are demoralizing to all business except that of a purely speculative character, and frequently occasion great injustice and ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... spectacles on every side, and the stories I had read of the stony-heartedness during the plague, were more than rivalled by these charnel realities. Already corruption was violating the "temples of the living God." The heat of the day and the general demoralizing influences of the climate, were making havoc with the shapely men of yesterday, and nature seemed hastening to reabsorb, and renew by her marvellous processes, what was now blistering and burdening her surface. Enough, however, ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... to make objectors remember that priests have mothers and sisters and relations whom they love; and priests would be the first to prevent these beloved ones from the demoralizing influences which enemies ignorantly ...
— Confession and Absolution • Thomas John Capel
... the horse I saw win the Derby in 1834. These two, with an old portrait of the great Eclipse, who, as my engraving of 1780 (Stubbs's) says, "was never beat, or ever had occation for Whip or Spur," will constitute my entire sporting gallery. I have not that vicious and demoralizing love of horse-flesh which makes it next to impossible to find a perfectly honest hippophile. But a racer is the realization of an ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... it teaches of a God who is personally interested in the individual and who will reward present misery with future bliss. The demoralizing effect of this infamous fraud is apparent everywhere. If a worker is constantly assailed with this nonsense from the pulpit, the result is the production in him of a mental as well as a physical slavery; it aggravates his mental inertia, ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... borrow another. A dear friend whose life has been devoted to philology once said to me while commenting upon the deterioration of manners among the students of Japan: "Why, the English language itself has been a demoralizing influence!" There was much depth in that observation. Setting the whole Japanese nation to study English (the language of a people who are being forever preached to about their "rights," and never about their "duties") was almost an imprudence. The policy was too wholesale as well as ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... I speak not on the testimony of others merely, but from extensive observation and personal experience. I have known numbers whom infidelity has degraded, but none whom it has elevated. We do not say that every change in a Christian's belief is demoralizing. Disbelief in error, resulting from increase of knowledge, may improve his character; but the loss of faith in Christ, and God, and immortality, can never do otherwise than strengthen a man's tendencies to vice, and weaken his inclinations ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... distinguishing the case from its predecessor. Underlying all is a nervous terror of the abuse of freedom founded on the assumption that men will continue to act when free exactly as they acted under the demoralizing influence of coercion. The British Empire has grown, and continues to grow, in spite of this deeply rooted political doctrine. Ireland is peculiar only in that her proximity to the seat of power has exposed her for centuries to an application of the doctrine in its most extreme form and without ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... despise us!! all, to cease dreading us. In the language of a powerful journalist, (the Spectator,) opposed on most points to the present Government, "the late Ministers commenced a career, perilous in the extreme to all the best interests of the nation—demoralizing public opinion, wasting public resources, and entangling the country in quarrels alike endless and aimless; and all this with a labouring after melodramatic stage effect, and a regardlessness of consequences perfectly unprecedented." We were, in the words of truth and soberness, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... so on; but you are as well aware as I am that the subject has been mixed with a heap of nonsense both by Jews and Christians. And as to the connection of our race with Palestine, it has been perverted by superstition till it's as demoralizing as the old poor-law. The raff and scum go there to be maintained like able-bodied paupers, and to be taken special care of by the angel Gabriel when they die. It's no use fighting against facts. We must look where ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... freedom made reasonable allowance for a man brought up under such demoralizing influences as Thomas Hughes had been, they of course felt less confidence in him, than they would have done had he sought to obtain liberty by some more commendable process. Being aware of this, he returned ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... immediately with the men bear hearty testimony to their good conduct. Captain Jones, commanding Troop F, says: "I could only do justice to the troop by mentioning by name all who were engaged, not only for their bravery, but for their splendid discipline under the most demoralizing fire." Lieutenant Fleming, commanding Troop I, says: "The entire troop behaved with great gallantry. Private Elsie Jones particularly distinguished himself." Captain Beck, commanding Troop A, says: "The behaviour of the enlisted men ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... with it," he said, in desperate disgust. "Then this whole cursed business would be done away with. It isn't a question of our laxity of divorce laws," he said, after a pause, "it's a question of the senseless severity of the laws in other States. That's what throws this demoralizing business into ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... cigarette is usually the hall-mark of the particularly mild and harmless individual. It is the dissipation of the Y.M.C.A.; the innocent joy of the pure-hearted boy long ere the demoralizing influence of our vaunted civilization has dragged him down into the depths of the ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome
... the moral cultivation of mankind: and if women are to remain in their subordinate situation, it were greatly to be lamented that the chivalrous standard should have passed away, for it is the only one at all capable of mitigating the demoralizing influences of that position. But the changes in the general state of the species rendered inevitable the substitution of a totally different ideal of morality for the chivalrous one. Chivalry was the attempt to infuse moral elements ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... Rappists have, and it is an advantage in point of neatness. The slop-made coats and trousers worn in many societies quickly turn shabby, and give a slouchy appearance to the men, which is disagreeable to the eye, and must be more or less demoralizing to the wearers. The blue jacket of the Rappist is a very suitable and comfortable working garment; and the long coat of the Shaker always looks ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... urged, after many other accusations, "I consider that Mr. Quarrier is setting the very worst, the most debasing, the most demoralizing example to these working folk, whose best interests he professes to have at heart. I am assured (and the witness of my own eyes in one instance warrants me in giving credit to the charge) that he constantly enters public-houses, taverns, even low ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... to the man who is burdened with unnecessary and exaggerated fears, and who mistakes for a fancied security the privilege of sitting quietly in one place, that the uprooting which comes with war is demoralizing. The natural officer sees it as an hour of opportunity, and though he may not like anything else about war, he at least relishes the strong feeling of personal contention which always develops when there are many openings inviting ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... the Marshal's name revived Don Marcelo's hope. Perhaps this soldier, who was keeping his faith intact in spite of the interminable and demoralizing marches, was nearer the truth than ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... objections to the present publicity of divorce proceedings is, first, that publicity is generally in proportion to the wealth of the parties, as is also the prolongation of the proceedings; and second, that such reports are generally of a demoralizing nature for the public to read; and third, and not least, that few if any couples seeking a divorce are without fathers or mothers or relatives, children, or near friends, to whom the public revelation of the marital unhappiness or the personal wrong-doing of the parties involved is a pain ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... and measures, declare that they would sooner forego their Abolitionism than their party.... Now, these are not the views of here and there a straggling Abolitionist, but of seven-tenths of all the voting Abolitionists of the State.... They are entirely unconscious of the demoralizing influence of their course. They need light, warning, entreaty, and rebuke." Besides this demoralization of the Abolitionists, as described by Collins, the parent society at New York fell into bad financial straits. It was absolutely without ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... social position, the more wretched is her life. Married women are so afraid of resembling the professional dancing girls, that they cannot be persuaded to learn anything the latter are taught. If a Brahman woman is rich her life is spent in demoralizing idleness; if she is poor, so much the worse, her earthly existence is concentrated in monotonous performances of mechanical rites. There is no past, and no future for her; only a tedious present, from which there is no possible escape. And this only if everything be well, if her family be ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... disadvantages were added Caecina's inveterate self-seeking and his newly-acquired indolence. An overdose of success had made him slack and self-indulgent, or, if he was plotting treachery, this may have been one of his devices for demoralizing the army. It has often been believed that it was Flavius Sabinus[454] who, using Rubrius Gallus as his agent, tampered with Caecina's loyalty by promising that, if he came over, Vespasian would ratify any conditions. It may have occurred also to Caecina to remember his quarrels ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... Another external and demoralizing interruption to talk is poor table-service. There can be no good conversation at table where the talk is constantly interrupted by wordy instructions to servants. A hostess who takes pride in the table-talk of her guests assures herself in advance that ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... preliminary "bakhshish," to show or even to tell where certain ruins, concerning which they spoke or romanced, are found in their hills. And yet there are theologians who would raise Poverty, the most demoralizing of all conditions, to the rank ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... to be tabooed from this moment. You must not say, 'How tired you look!' or 'How pale you are!' It is not manners at the Friary, and it is demoralizing. I am ten times more tired this minute than I was ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... press, as an American, and as a man, did we allow such an opportunity as is presented to us by 'The Biglow Papers' to pass by without entering our earnest protest against such attempts (now, alas! too common) at demoralizing the public sentiment. Under a wretched mask of stupid drollery, slavery, war, the social glass, and, in short, all the valuable and time-honored institutions justly dear to our common humanity and especially to republicans, are made the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... cannon to keep cannon from walloping the infantry. Now when there is an action, though guns still go after guns if they know where they are, most of the firing is done against trenches and to support trenches and infantry works, or with a view to demoralizing the infantry. Concentration of artillery fire will demolish an enemy's trench and let your infantry take possession of the wreckage remaining; but then the enemy's artillery concentrates on your infantry and frequently makes their ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... those he had been wearing at the time of the accident. Somebody had been thoughtful enough to have them cleaned and pressed; from which he argued that the plunging fall on the wet asphalt had been demoralizing in more ways than one. Continuing the experimental venture, he walked back and forth and up and down until he could do it without clutching at the bed-rails to save himself from falling. Then he reshot the door-bolts and went back ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... magnanimous North be just, even to its enemies. Slavery is a great wrong, as well as a great mistake in political economy; men are by no means good enough to be trusted with irresponsible power; slaves have been treated with savage cruelty, and the institution is indeed demoralizing: all this, and a great deal more, we readily grant our writer; and yet we cannot help wishing he had shown us something to love, to hope for, in our enemy. He makes an earnest and able protest against a great wrong, and as such we gladly accept his book; but as a work of art, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... use of words is extremely common, to exaggerate according to the mood of the moment, to say more than one means and cover one's retreat with "I didn't mean it," to pull facts into shape to suit particular ends, are demoralizing forms of untruthfulness, common, but often unrecognized. If a teacher could only excel in one high quality for training girls, probably the best in which she could excel would be a great sincerity, which would train them in frankness, and in the knowledge that to be entirely ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... a new and terrible form of slavery, and equally demoralizing with the ancient form of slavery for both slave and slave-owner; only much worse, because it frees the slave and the slave-owner ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... system were plainly manifest on the surface from the condition of the colony,—the profligacy of the towns, the scant reprobation of crimes and those who had committed them. Down below, in the openly sanctioned slavery called assignment, in the demoralizing chain gangs and in the inexpressibly horrible penal settlements, were more abundant and more awful proofs of the general wickedness and corruption. Moreover these appalling results were accompanied by colossal expenditure. The cost of the colonial convict establishments, with the passages out, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... Twain, their brain will become as fertile as his. To them tobacco is bad in any form. It poisons their blood, stunts their growth, weakens the mind, and makes them lazy. "It is not easy," says Mr. Ruskin, "to estimate the demoralizing effect of the cigar on the youth of Europe in enabling them to pass their time happily in idleness." It has been forbidden at Annapolis, the Naval School, and at West Point, the Military Academy of the United States, having been found injurious to the health, ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... ship that was "wanted" by the Jamaican Governor. Having overtaken the ship, La Trompeuse, he seized her, fitted her up as a man-of-war, and then started out on a wild piratical cruise, taking eighteen Jamaican vessels, barbarously ill-treating the crews, and completely demoralizing the trade of the island. Two other ships were now sent to find and destroy the new La Trompeuse, but Hamlin escaped and sailed to the Virgin Islands, and was most hospitably received by the Governor of the Danish Island of St. Thomas, one Adolf Esmit, ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... the Jesuits exaggerated the amount of brandy used in the trade, they did not exaggerate its demoralizing effect upon both the Indian and the trader. They believed that brandy would wreck the Indian's body and ruin his soul. They were right; it did both. It made of every western post, in the words of Father Carheil, ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... of virtue and morality,—for those who can extract them; but even for these few it is a very partial teaching; and for the many who cannot read so spiritually, whether in the book or the brothel, the experience is demoralizing and deadening. But toward the end of the paper the critic lets it appear that he does not place Le Sage so high as some of his phrases prompt us to infer; and he quotes this judgment of Joubert: "Of the novels of Le Sage it may be said that they seem to have been written in a cafe, by a ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... without reference to states, the result would more often be doubtful, and it would be sometimes necessary to count every vote in every little out-of-the-way corner of the country before the question could be settled. The occasions for dispute would be multiplied a hundred fold, with most demoralizing effect. Our present method is doubtless clumsy, but the solidity of the electoral colleges is a safeguard, and as all parties understand the system it is in the long run as fair for one ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... the men were not greatly to blame for this painful and demoralizing termination to the evening's entertainment. Sergeant Troy had so strenuously insisted, glass in hand, that drinking should be the bond of their union, that those who wished to refuse hardly liked to be ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... began to threaten the institution. Men felt that it was a curse to the slave, and poisoned the best white society of the slave-holding States. As early as 1781, Mr. Jefferson, with his keen, philosophical insight, beheld with alarm the demoralizing tendency of slavery. "The whole commerce," says Mr. Jefferson, "between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions; the most unrelenting despotism on the one part, and degrading submission on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... The demoralizing influence of slavery is not so great in Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, and Western Virginia. The evil falls mostly on the male population; females not being exposed ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... much as possible by lime juice, and another in the daytime. She had no desire to reform! And she longed passionately to drown not only her heart but her pride. Now that her system was refusing its demoralizing drug she felt that horror of her descent only possible to a woman who has inherited and practised all the refinements of civilization. She longed to return to those first months of degraded oblivion, and ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... Charlie! He has not been so attentive to the family during your absence, I can assure you. We haven't so much as had a peep at him since you went away. Flossy, I hadn't an idea you could be so rude. I declare, I think that Wilbur girl is demoralizing you. They say she has no idea of considering people's feelings; but then, one ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... my poor mother, that my father was induced to give up that nefarious traffic. Since that, his capital has been chiefly employed in privateering, which, if not so brutal and disgraceful, is certainly nearly as demoralizing. I have been home but a short time, and I have already ventured to express my opinion, certainly not so forcibly and so well as you have, upon the subject; but I was laughed at as a tender-hearted girl, who could not be a fit judge of such matters. But now that you, a captain of one ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... another hell, on a day of great battle—September 14, 1916—when for the first time tanks were used, demoralizing the enemy in certain places, though they were too few in number to strike a paralyzing blow. The Londoners gained part of High Wood at frightful cost and then were blown out of it. Other divisions ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... where they would be free from his depredations. If the $1,750 in the bank had been meant as a bribe or a stipend for good behavior, such as was formerly paid to Italian brigands, it certainly could not have been more demoralizing in its effect; for all agreed that, since Lars Moe's death, Bruin misbehaved worse ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... spite of herself, and the stout lady on the platform went on piling up the indictment against her sex, and showing how demoralizing the vote had proved to women; how the suffrage sentiment was dying out in the West; how the "Antis" were organizing even in the suffrage States to lift the curse from their kind; how much purer and ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... probably it is a surfeit, and what we suppose are the pangs of hunger are really the miseries of repletion. More people are suffering from too much than from too little. Especially are the good things here in a demoralizing profusion. Ask any large employer of labor, and he will tell you that what ails the working-classes is an excess of pianos and buggies and opera-boxes. Ask any workman what ails his employer, and he will say that it is the ownership ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... prevailed under the protectorate of Cromwell. He was now called to witness the effects of open and avowed wickedness among governors and nobles, by which the fountains of iniquity were opened up, and a flood of immorality let loose upon all classes; demoralizing the nation, and distressing the church. It must have been difficult to form any thing like an accurate estimate of the number of those who abandoned their Christian profession. The immoral conduct of one bad man is more conspicuous ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... He claims that the commission is autocratic, down to its last deputy. Denies that we have the right to apportion one-half the earnings to the workers and the other half to the owners. States that our system is wasteful, unjust, and demoralizing." ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... sedition. He put in force, in the name of the Company, a code of "Laws, Divine, Moral, and Martial," to which no parallel can be found in the severest legislation of New England. An invaluable service to the colony was the abolition of that demoralizing socialism that had been enforced on the colonists, by which all their labor was to be devoted to the common stock. He gave out land in severalty, and the laborer enjoyed the fruits of his own industry and thrift, ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... it!" I cried. "I 'll inform the police and I 'll have the law on these brazen creatures. What would Alice say! And what would become of Fanny and of little Josephine if they were brought up under the demoralizing influences of spectacles like that! Do you suppose I 'm going to have Galileo and Herschel corrupted? And little Erasmus—shall his pure, innocent mind be contaminated? Never, ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... admitted Schwalbe in a low tone, for his Leutnant's words had produced a demoralizing effect upon the men. "How much cable have ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... abuse the military profession, and to mislead their deluded followers, by clamouring about the expense of the army, and the aristocratic bearing of its members, that they may the more readily carry out their own schemes of personal vanity and demoralizing political economy. ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth
... paralyzed, or if sound in body, may be without aim or ambition, without plans or projects, destitute of executive ability or good judgment in the business affairs of life. And such sentimentalists, after demoralizing women with their twaddle, discourage our demand for the right of suffrage by pointing us to the fact that the majority of women are indifferent to this movement in their behalf. Suppose they are; have not the masses of all oppressed classes been apathetic and ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... ills to which humanity is heir to service in the Army. Every relaxation of principle in the granting of pensions invites applications without merit and encourages those who for gain urge honest men to become dishonest. Thus is the demoralizing lesson taught the people that as against the public Treasury the most ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... took place which changed the whole current of David Crockett's life, leading him from his lonely cabin and the peaceful scenes of a hunter's life to the field of battle, and to all the cruel and demoralizing influences of ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... comfortably married; decently married this time. I have proposed to contribute to his establishment. I mention it to show that the case has been practically considered. He has had a tolerably souring experience of the state; he might be inclined if, say, you took him in hand, for another venture. It's a demoralizing lottery. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a remarkable circumstance that so little attention has been paid in Canada to the immense tract of country lying to the north of our boundary line, and known as the Hudson's Bay Company's Territory. There can be no question that the injurious and demoralizing sway of that company over a region of four millions of square miles, will, ere long, be brought to an end, and that the destinies of this immense country will be united with our own. It is unpardonable that ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... life, was conversant with ghosts, apparitions, spectres, devils. This prevalent, all but universal, exercise of credulous fancy, exalted into the most imposing dignity of theology and faith, must have had a demoralizing effect upon the rational condition and faculties of men, and upon all discrimination and healthfulness of thought. When error, in its most extravagant forms, had driven the simplicity of the Gospel out of the Church ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... business. And at last patience was rewarded by his enemy's fore-paw finding its way into Aleck's powerful jaw, and remaining there till Snarleyow's attentions to the back of his neck forced him to shift his hold. From that time forward the sheep-dog had to fight on three legs, which he found demoralizing. But still he had the advantage, and it was not until any other dog of Aleck's size would have retreated half killed that the bull-dog's superior courage and stamina began to tell. Quite heedless of his injuries, and the ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... outrages will be rewarded by an Act remitting debts and breaking contracts, they are not likely in future to limit their operations to land, but will apply the same maxims to other contracts. The demoralizing of character is a fact to ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... dispose of his property to the corruption of the public morals. Mr. Freeman adduced the instance of a father having a right to disinherit one son and prefer the other. This is not a parallel case. The parallel would be a rich man leaving his fortune to found an Institution of demoralizing tendency—say to teach you the art of cheating! The laws would annul such a bequest. Society has an original, inherent right to defend itself from all evil—and that gaming is an evil, whether played with cards, lotteries, ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... consequence, have felt impelled to look in on Williams and VanHorne every day—sometimes oftener. I am unable to dismiss my speculations from my thoughts. I find myself wondering what has happened to the stocks I am carrying, and I am satisfied that the practice is thoroughly demoralizing to my self-respect and to my progress. I am going to give ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... third and fourth generation. When a slave escapes from a Southern plantation, he at once takes a name as the first step in liberty—the first assertion of individual identity. A woman's dignity is equally involved in a life-long name, to mark her individuality. We can not overestimate the demoralizing effect on woman herself, to say nothing of society at large, for her to consent thus to merge her existence so wholly in ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the model statesman, I would say he must have mental breadth and clearness, incorruptible integrity, strength of will, tireless patience, humanity, preserved from demoralizing weakness by conscientious reverence for law, ardent love of country, and, regulating all, a commanding sense of responsibility to God, the Judge of all. These, though wrapped in seeming rustic garb, were found in Abraham Lincoln. He had mental breadth and clearness. ...
— Abraham Lincoln - A Memorial Discourse • Rev. T. M. Eddy
... The baby was again covering one twinkling eye with its spread, pink palm, and was saying "Pik-k?" and laughing with the funniest little squint to its nose that Bud had ever seen. It was so absolutely demoralizing that to relieve himself Bud gave the squaw a shake. This tickled the baby so much that the chuckle burst into a rollicking laugh, with a catch of the breath after each crescendo tone that made it absolutely individual and like none ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... to read this affecting story without finding in it a complete answer to the charge of demoralizing the lower classes? Does the Barrister really think, that this generous and grateful enthusiast is as likely to be unprovided and poverty-stricken in his old age, as he was prior to his conversion? Except indeed that at that time his old age was as improbable as his distresses ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... The most Dangerous Departments of Home. Duty of Parents to instruct their Children in reference to it. How far the Christian Parlor may Conform to the Laws and Customs of Fashion. Adulteration of the Christian Home through Indiscriminate Association. The Sad and Demoralizing ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... top of the rocks, behind which he had been concealed, Frank was sending a shower of bullets whistling. After the first two shots, he aimed high, counting on demoralizing the savages by terror, instead of taking chances of hitting Old Rocks or ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... superiority in order to advance within the shorter ranges, and the impossibility of accomplishing this at ineffective ranges, make it imperative that fire be not opened as long as the advance can be continued without demoralizing losses. The attack which halts to open fire at extreme range (over 1,200 yards) is not likely ever to reach its destination. Every effort should be made, by using cover or inconspicuous formations, or by advancing ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... of men who came in contact with the Boers at a time when one would expect that the demoralizing and hardening influences of war had ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... of these young people are possessed of good intentions and would respond to amusements less demoralizing and dangerous, if such were available at no greater cost ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... and when all persons, with any sense of moral good and evil, will look upon it with the same indignation with which my father regarded it. My father was as well aware as anyone that Christians do not, in general, undergo the demoralizing consequences which seem inherent in such a creed, in the manner or to the extent which might have been expected from it. The same slovenliness of thought, and subjection of the reason to fears, wishes, and affections, which enable them to accept a theory involving ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... his men from the demoralizing influences of the Indian camp, La Salle chose a naturally strong position at some distance down the river, fortified it, and built lodgings for the men, together with a house for the friars. This, the first habitation reared by white men in the {241} territory now comprised in the State of ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... anything that has less tendency to soften a man than long columns of figures. I think the figures you work at are quite as demoralizing as the minerals I have ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... what ships we have should not be of the very best quality. The effect of a victory is two-fold, moral and material. Had we been as roughly handled on water as we were on land during the first year of the war, such a succession of disasters would have had a most demoralizing effect on the nation at large. As it was, our victorious seafights, while they did not inflict any material damage upon the colossal sea-might of England, had the most important results in the ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... had the Inventor's Intention been innocent" (p. 6 [note the suspicion of Swift's political and religious bias]), the author is mildly pleased with the first three voyages. But he finds intolerable the satire on human nature in the last, here echoing Addison's criticism of the demoralizing effect of a satire on mankind (Spectator 249, 5 ...
— A Letter From a Clergyman to his Friend, - with an Account of the Travels of Captain Lemuel Gulliver • Anonymous
... with great pleasure. He saw that despite her constant association with such demoralizing influences, Mrs. McGee was still a true Southern gentlewoman. And as a morsel of yeast may leaven the entire lump of dough, so her presence here in the midst of such unruly elements ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... critically at his own boyish portrait, wondering if Bettina had ever looked at it, and what feelings it might have aroused, and then passed on and stood before that most beautiful of all the Lady Hurdlys who had been or who might ever be. But this was too demoralizing to that mood of hardness that he had but recently assumed, and so he turned his back on the ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... described as an application of the process of capping the line or "crossing the 'T.'" This tends to throw the slower squadron into confusion by bending it back upon itself, meanwhile exposing it to a demoralizing fire. ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... here," said the Monarch, "if you're going to stay here at all, you must please to remember that this isn't a University. I simply won't have idlers loafing round wasting their own time and demoralizing society with their lazy habits. Pardon my abruptness" (he continued, more mildly), "but with all the exclusiveness in the world I can't prevent our getting a little mixed now and then, and if people come here with ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... it was Miss Lord who spoke, "is demoralizing the school. Mae Van Arsdale says that she will go home if she has to room any longer with Patty Wyatt. I do not know ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... on the development of Grecian thought and enterprise. The exhibition of sculpture and painting alone made them attractive and intellectual, while the athletic exercises amused ordinary minds. They were not demoralizing, like the sports of the amphitheatre, or a modern bull-fight, or even fashionable races. They were more like tournaments in the martial ages of Europe, but superior to them vastly, since no woman was allowed to be present at the Olympic ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... followed by ruinous contractions. At successive intervals the best and most enterprising men have been tempted to their ruin by excessive bank loans of mere paper credit, exciting them to extravagant importations of foreign goods, wild speculations, and ruinous and demoralizing stock gambling. When the crisis arrives, as arrive it must, the banks can extend no relief to the people. In a vain struggle to redeem their liabilities in specie they are compelled to contract their loans and their issues, and at last, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... is very demoralizing to the intellect," he went on after a pause. "He is surrounded by innumerable books; he cannot possibly read them all; he dips into one and picks up a scrap from another. His mind gradually fills itself with miscellaneous flotsam, with superficial opinions, ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... recovery. England and America have caught the epidemic. But pantheism, sir, will not live, though here and at Oxford the students are reading Hegel, Strauss, Bruno-Bauer, and Feuerbach. At Oxford,' he added, 'these pernicious doctrines are demoralizing the university. Blanco White and John Sterling were but the pioneers of a large party of university men, who are preparing to avow their disbelief in Christianity.' The Doctor was right. Francis Newman, brother of the Puseyite Newman, who seceded to the Romish Church, and belongs ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... occasion, and on the 12th of May, 1789, in a speech of three hours and a half, he held the attention of the House, while he unfolded the African Slave-Trade in its several points of view,—its nature, being founded in injustice, its cruelties, the terrible mortality of the slave-ship, the demoralizing influence of the trade upon British sailors, and the astonishing waste of life among them, as well ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... men are ardent for social reform, the one actively, the other passively engaged in it. Both also regard the law as to homosexuality as absurd and demoralizing. They also think that the law prohibiting polygamy is largely the cause of prostitution, as many women are prevented from living honest lives and being cared for by someone, and many men could marry one woman for physical satisfaction and ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... McIntosh, striving vainly to rally his demoralized men, sank with a bullet in his brain; Hodgson, his leg broken by a ball, clung to a sergeant's stirrup until a second shot stretched him dead upon the bank. The loss in that wild retreat (which Reno later called a "charge") was heavy, the effect demoralizing; but those who escaped found a spot well suited for defence. Even as they swung down from off their wounded, panting horses, and flung themselves flat upon their faces to sweep with hastily levelled carbines ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... with her chastity when her consent has been given, as on a level with an assault on an innocent child merely introduces confusion. It must often be unjust to the male partner in the act; it is always demoralizing and degrading to the girl whom it aims at "protecting"; above all, it reduces what ought to be an extremely serious crime to the level of a merely nominal offence when it punishes one of two practically mature persons for engaging with full knowledge and deliberation ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... ordinary importance. It was John Henry Wichern, founder of the Rough House, near Hamburg. He had just returned from his laborious tour through the districts of Silesia, which, in addition to the demoralizing revolutionary excitement, were stricken by famine and fever. Whole villages were depopulated, not enough inhabitants being left alive to bury the dead. Grief and despair reigned everywhere. The number of orphans ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... all there is for me at present. I appreciate as never before the value of having lived an open life.... The parlor, the street corner, the newspapers, the very air seem full of social miasma.... Sad, sad revelations! There is nothing more demoralizing than lying. The act itself is scarcely so base as the lie which denies it.... It is almost an impossibility for a man and a woman to have a close, sympathetic friendship without the tendrils of one soul becoming fastened around the other, with the result of infinite pain and anguish.... ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... sale. The growths increased by leaps and bounds, as though determined to show their resentment of the measures taken against them by marshalling all their forces in a demoralizing plantkrieg. ...
— The Sky Trap • Frank Belknap Long
... into play in the first great independent movement of American troops, which was to give the Germans a warning of what they were to expect from the army from across the seas, of which they had so sneeringly spoken. The drive opened with a demoralizing barrage, the greatest of the kind that, up to that time, had ever been laid down by artillery. It greatly exceeded in the number of guns brought into action and in amount of ammunition used, any barrage that either the Germans or the ...
— In the Flash Ranging Service - Observations of an American Soldier During His Service - With the A.E.F. in France • Edward Alva Trueblood
... the rigid Scottish Highlands that I was demoralizing Christian worship by giving organs to churches. The very strict Presbyterians there still denounce as wicked an attempt "to worship God with a kist fu' o' whistles," instead of using the human God-given voice. After that I decided that I should ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... the other hand, you are demoralizing me completely. You have no idea what empty, formal affairs recitals seem to me now; they are so impersonal. I feel like grumbling, because I can't talk over each item of the programme with the one ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... thing you are, Ken!" said Julia gratefully. And as Kennedy came over to stand near her, Julia gave her a little rub with her head, like an affectionate pony. "I think it's partly this hotel that's demoralizing me," Julia went on, a little shamed. "I feel so useless—getting up, eating, dressing, idling about, and going to bed again. Jim has his work, and I'll be glad when I ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... example for Barney, and in spite of the comfort he has been I now fully realize the limitations of so many of his race, at once witty, warm-hearted, soothing, and impossible; it is difficult not to believe what they say, even when you know they are lying, and this condition is equally demoralizing both to master ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... of the whole Mediterranean world. Her ships plied the seas, her armies and governors ruled the land. The introduction of wealth, luxuries, and slaves from the new provinces, which followed their capture, soon had a very demoralizing influence upon the people. Private and public religion and morality rapidly declined; religion came to be an empty ceremonial; divorce became common; wealth and influence ruled the State; slaves became very cheap and abundant, and were used for almost every ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... who would enforce the laws with equal justice, without fear or favor. I merely throw out this as a hint of what might be accomplished, because it has become fashionable for good but easy-going people to dismiss these matters with the remark that nothing practical can be done to meet the demoralizing and degrading power of ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... strong shoulders above him in hands that looked like a tangle of baked nerves, and shook them vigorously. "You are a great boy!" he said with a sort of quizzical solemnity. "A great boy. This damned, God-forsaken, pestilential, demoralizing, brutalizing factory for enriching a few with the very life blood and vitals of thousands that will suffer and starve and never be heard of" (all his language cannot be recorded), "will make two or three reputations by the way. Mine ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... but skin-deep—very pleasant and attractive, and yet very heartless. Art is a source of innocent enjoyment, and an important aid to higher culture; but unless it leads to higher culture, it will probably be merely sensuous. And when art is merely sensuous, it is enfeebling and demoralizing rather than strengthening or elevating. Honest courage is of greater worth than any amount of grace; purity is better than elegance; and cleanliness of body, mind, and heart, than any amount ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... quite a fair game, but I'm sure, without even seeing him, that he plays a diabolically good game and I know I shall cut against him. Mrs. Shelley? Every one's always a success with her; talking to her is as demoralizing as cracking jokes from the Bench. Mrs. O'Rane wants me to write her a duologue—just as one draws a rabbit for a child . . . . That only leaves you. And you capitulated more completely even than Poynter, without the '63 port as an ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... Among the whisperers it was related how the Emperor—who with the greatest difficulty had been prevailed on to leave Carignan the night before about eleven o'clock—when entreated to push on to Mezieres had refused point-blank to abandon the post of danger and take a step that would prove so demoralizing to the troops. Others asserted that he was no longer in the city, that he had fled, leaving behind him a dummy emperor, one of his officers dressed in his uniform, a man whose startling resemblance to his imperial master had often puzzled the army. Others again declared, and ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... its anniversaries and its dragging, interminable weeks: demoralizing summer, when Mrs. Mayo quite frankly appeared at her side window in a dressing sacque, and Honora longed to do the same. But time never stands absolutely still, and the day arrived when Mr. Beckwith called in a carriage. Honora, with an audibly beating ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... John, simply by being a loving, indulgent husband, had come into the position, in some measure, of demoralizing the public conscience, of bringing in luxury and extravagance, and countenancing people who really ought not to be countenanced. He had a sort of uneasy perception of this fact; yet, at each particular step, he seemed to himself ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... returns, because so many of the agricultural counties, especially in England, are overspread with towns and manufactories or collieries. Thus Kent and Shropshire are justly classed with agricultural counties, though part of the former is in fact a suburb of London, and of the latter overspread with demoralizing coal mines. The entire want of any police force in some of the greatest manufacturing counties, as Lanarkshire, by permitting nineteen-twentieths of the crime to go unpunished, exhibits a far less amount of criminality than would be brought to light under a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... since "tattoo" of the night before. The other party had captured three, so that only one man had escaped. I doubt not this prevented the desertion of the bulk of the Second Infantry that spring, for at that time so demoralizing was the effect of the gold-mines that everybody not in the military service justified desertion, because a soldier, if free, could earn more money in a day than he received per month. Not only did soldiers and sailors desert, but ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... corps, thus augmented, being generally called Steele's scouts. Perry, who was selected by Superintendent Cotton on account of special fitness, brought with him a nine-pounder gun, which did unique service in demoralizing and scattering Big Bear's murderous and pillaging band, to whose outrages we have already referred. These two Police detachments became the tentacles of our column and the mainspring of ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... soldier of to-day be the result not only of the ruthless command from the official higher up but also of the de-souling, materialistic influence of Socialism on the common people of Germany during the past twenty-five years? Is not the viciousness of Prussian militarism plus the demoralizing influence of Socialism ...
— Socialism and American ideals • William Starr Myers
... respectable and cultivated citizens of every town, began to crowd to hear them, even following them from one place to another, and giving them loud and honest applause. Then they were adjudged immodest, and their conduct denounced as unwomanly and demoralizing. Their devotion to principle, the purity of their lives, the justice of the cause they pleaded, the religious stand-point from which they spoke, all were overlooked, and the pitiless scorn of Christian men and women of every sect was poured down upon them. ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... Please, please, please, not in front of the child. (JOYCE kicks). It's demoralizing for her to hear her idolized ...
— I'll Leave It To You - A Light Comedy In Three Acts • Noel Coward
... thus narrowed in the base contests of selfishness, jealousy, and fraud; but of all the demoralizing influences that darken the mind by closing up permanently its most important inlets, none have had such a wide-spread and far-reaching power for evil as the false theology which demands the absolute surrender of ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 - Volume 1, Number 12 • Various
... such an artless ingenuous little house, so full of the demoralizing simplicity of great wealth, that it seemed to Susy just the kind of place in which to take the first steps in renunciation. But Nick had objected that Paris, at that time of year, would be swarming with acquaintances who would ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... the founders of Christianity would have been criminals, and prolonged imprisonment might have been as effective as crucifixion. That any class of men could have been mean enough and shameless enough to ask for such a law is a sad commentary on the demoralizing influence of medical schools, from which they derived their inspiration; and that any legislative body could have yielded to the demand is another illustration of the well known corruption ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various
... weak; and Schneider abused Whistler as he was dying—the second occurrence of the kind.... The thefts of food by Henry, and his execution, formed a culmination to the dissensions, though it did not entirely stop them. Never was there a more terrible example of the demoralizing effects of the conditions of Arctic life and privations upon men who in other circumstances were able to dwell ...
— Henry Hudson - A Brief Statement Of His Aims And His Achievements • Thomas A. Janvier
... (accounts which bear the impress of truth, and are hardly liable to the charge of having been written within too close range of time and space, or vice versa, to be strictly truthful), indicate the demoralizing and debasing effects of the "system" from its initial period, this followed up by the blighting influences of slave life, even under the most favorable conditions, for nearly two hundred and fifty years, left upon Negro life and character ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... unfortunate fact that very few people are able to be idle successfully. I think it is not so much because we misuse idleness as because we misinterpret it that the long days become increasingly demoralizing. I would ask no one to accept a forced idleness without objection or regret. Such an acceptance would imply a lack of spirit, to say the least. But idleness and rest are not incompatible; neither are idleness and service, nor idleness and contentment. If we can look upon rest as ...
— The Untroubled Mind • Herbert J. Hall
... Uncle George!" says Rylton. "You see how you are demoralizing me! But, surely, if you cannot live in peace with him, there must be others—other relations—who would ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... Do you dare to complain of this deliverance? You ought rather to go on your knees every day of your life, and devoutly thank the kind Providence which gave you such an unexpected opportunity to escape from so demoralizing a servitude. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... that's no reason! I can prove to you that you are. Who else but you would have taken in a homeless and friendless creature like me, and let her stay bothering round in demoralizing idleness, while you were seriously teaching the young idea how to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... was learning his trade, and though he lived under demoralizing influences, he never lapsed into bad habits. What he said of himself one day was strictly true, and it was one of the most material causes of his ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... handsome for Thwicket now—I really ought. My profit is $113,000. I doubt if his will reach even $500. That doesn't look quite fair, seeing that he did the business all on his own money. The deuce of it is, though, that it's demoralizing to make presents to your brokers. After all, business ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... was the first work in this country for the welfare of young business women. A home was the imperative need of the friendless young women employed in cities then as it is now, since the small wages received make possible for them only the poorest quarters amid demoralizing conditions. These Christian Women opened a house and took into it as many as they could reach, giving clean rooms, wholesome food, cheap rent, pure moral atmosphere and religious influences. From this developed the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... wandering tribes of Asia and Africa. Therefore it is necessary—economic science and morality absolutely command it—for us to solve the problem of division: now, where are the economists? More than thirty years ago, Lemontey, developing a remark of Smith, exposed the demoralizing and homicidal influence of the division of labor. What has been the reply; what investigations have been made; what remedies proposed; has the ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... four years old, will eat tobacco and, strange to say, it has no bad effect. They get tobacco from the Danish missionaries and from the sailors on board the whaling, seal, and walrus-ships. Whisky has not yet gotten in its demoralizing work. ...
— A Negro Explorer at the North Pole • Matthew A. Henson
... a dread of the ultimate results of slavery. He wished—it had been accounted sensible in his family to wish—that slavery had never existed. Having existed, they never thought of favoring its extinction. They thought it corrupting and demoralizing to the white race. They felt that it was separating them, year by year, farther and farther from that independent self-relying manhood, which had built up American institutions and American prosperity. They feared the fruit of this demoralization. ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... to get as much out of them as one can: and to do this a man must learn a little dissimulation, and how to put a good face upon a bad business. But, on the other hand, it is exactly for this reason that card-playing is so demoralizing, since the whole object of it is to employ every kind of trick and machination in order to win what belongs to another. And a habit of this sort, learnt at the card-table, strikes root and pushes its way into practical life; and in the affairs of every day a man gradually comes ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... made his great speech on the preceding day, wherein the grievous expensiveness and hideous immorality of Standing Armies were vividly portrayed. He did not hesitate to speak straight out on the subject of the demoralizing influence of Armies on the People among whom they were quartered or posted, and the broad track of moral desolation which an armed force everywhere leaves behind it. If the facts in this connection were but ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... being some time in this country, writes, after his return, to an American friend, and thus cheerfully records his impressions. "The frightful effects produced by an unrestrained democracy," he says, "the demoralizing effects produced by universal suffrage never appeared to me so odious as they do now by contrast with the good breeding, the order and mutual support which all give to each other in this country, from the highest to the lowest." ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury |
