Sentence Examples:
I am sorry to find, from visits to various schools, that the movements of the children have degenerated into buffoonery; they have been allowed to put themselves into the most ridiculous postures, and have thus raised objections which would not otherwise have been urged.
Planters and others, who ride about a good deal, as a rule keep in fairly good health; but the children of Europeans certainly degenerate, and after two or three generations die out, unless they intermarry with natives, and make frequent visits to colder climates.
This fear, by putting on airs of offended morality, has always intimidated people who have not measured its essential weakness; but it will prevail with those degenerates only in whom the instinct of fertility has faded into a mere itching for pleasure.
The coarse nature of the peasant has here been corrupted into bestiality by the disturbance of his instincts, while he is as yet incapable of principles; and in this type of the degenerate peasant is seen the worst example of ignorance intoxicated by theory.
The ratio of mortality is no guide, of course, to the immeasurable injuries wrought to mind and body by these same fearful odds upon the children who survive; and who survive, maimed, diseased, degenerate, to live out lives of disability, of joylessness and ineffectiveness.
Now, take it as a rule through life, my young friends, that all servile imitation degenerates into caricature, and let your adoption and illustration of every part of your system of life be modified by circumstances, and regulated by good sense and manly independence.
It would but furnish an additional proof that all that is greatest, noblest, and most beautiful, when it once begins to degenerate and corrupt, invariably reaches a proportionate depth of corruption and degeneracy, and assumes the worst and wildest aspect of deformity.
It is false modesty and ignorance which degenerate into vice and excesses; the scientific truth is always pure and holy, because it is based on reason, while abnormal delicacy is only emotional, and is quite likely to shoot into the other extreme, namely, licentiousness.
Amongst tuberculous people, those with inherited or acquired syphilis, and those with a constitution unbalanced in other ways, that is to say, amongst so-called degenerates, there have been individuals who have had a large share in the advance of the human race.
Among the fungi found in caves, many also vegetate upon the surface of the earth exposed to the influence of light, and not seldom degenerate into monstrous forms in their less congenial subterranean abodes; but many are the exclusive children of darkness.
A people, ignorant and oppressed, washed out in blood the wrongs which they had suffered, but their liberty degenerated into license, their ideals proved impracticable, and the anarchy of their radical republic was succeeded by the military despotism of Napoleon.
It is very probable that from the mere operation of the law of heredity, there must be a comparatively large percentage of degenerates among the offspring of related parents, for defects which tend to be bred out by crossing are accentuated by inbreeding.
While believing firmly in the propriety of this order of things, yet we would not have you imagine that we underestimate the value of a respectable lineage, but it is better to be the originator of a great family than to be the degenerate descendant of one.
Indeed, if Andrew Johnson had possessed only a little of Abraham Lincoln's sweet temper, generous tolerance, and patient tact in the treatment of opponents, he might at least have prevented the conflict of opinions from degenerating into an angry and vicious personal brawl.
In that of Constantine we may contemplate a hero who had so long inspired his subjects with love and his enemies with terror, degenerating into a cruel and dissolute monarch, corrupted by his fortune or raised by conquest above the necessity of dissimulation.
The features of the Bedouin damsel, although degenerate, resemble those of the Arabian mother, from whom she claims descent; and so close a similarity pervades the community at large, that one mold would appear to have been employed for every individual composing it.
It presented an uncompromising and rather scornful front to the sister mansions with which it had hitherto been on intimate terms, now fast degenerating into a shabby gentility, seeking covertly to catch the eye of boarders, but as yet refraining from open solicitation.
Although Pythagoras understood and believed these doctrines, he did not, as is well known, receive them from his degenerate countrymen, but, on the contrary, imbibed them from private sources among the orientals, where fragments of their remarkable learning were still extant.
He lived in a degenerate age, when skepticism and sensuality were eating out the life and vigor of Grecian society, when Greek civilization was rapidly passing away, when ancient creeds had lost their majesty, and general levity and folly overspread the land.
We will commence our study by a careful investigation of the original meaning of the words Magic Wand, since those who were the masters and originators thereof, are far more likely to know more about them than their degenerate offspring of a later age.
Stephen Coleridge has already established his position among the more tuneful writers of true lyric verse, and into all that he writes the poet puts delicacy and true emotion, the former never becomes mere phrase, the latter never degenerates into wordy passion.
That gate I suppose to be the most exquisite piece of pure flamboyant work existing; for though I have spoken of the upper portions, especially the receding window, as degenerate, the gate itself is of a purer period, and has hardly any renaissance taint.
He had proclaimed his faith in the ultimate recognition of truth, but he did not believe that unaided truth should necessarily prevail, for human nature being very imperfect, very narrow and very selfish, the best institutions have a permanent tendency to degenerate.
They enjoy a moderate degree of liberty, which, when kept within bounds, is most salutary both for individuals and for communities, though when it degenerates into license, it becomes alike burdensome to others, and uncontrollable and hazardous to those who possess it.
Those individuals who live on white slavery, professional degenerates, and their like, are ridiculed and nagged by the upper castes; the effeminate "sissies" are also a constant butt for the jests and abuse not only of convicts, but of keepers as well.
And it seemed iniquitous that such changes should come about, and that merry girls should grow into sluts and slovens, and ardent young husbands should degenerate into unkempt bullies, and houses meant for happiness should decay, and marriage promises all be forgotten.
Those were ticklish times, and Pitt, fearing lest revolutionary theories might be promulgated through the instrumentality of the press, determined to tighten the reins, and curb that freedom of expression which, after an interval of rest from prosecution, was manifestly degenerating.
If mental and physical culture cannot be handed down; if the children of the educated and the well-developed must be born uneducated and undeveloped, is it not better to have a generation of strong and cultured men and women than a generation of degenerate weeds?
In fact, displays of courage and resolution and heroic contempt of difficulties were so highly prized that, from the latter part of the seventeenth century such a habit of thought naturally degenerated in the case of the unrefined or illiterate into mere truculence and roughness.
Once only, late at evening, on a gondola journey through the narrow canals did the looming palaces, which in the daylight had gradually degenerated into artificial scenery, appear to him in all the massive splendor of the dark golden glories of their past.
My thoughts degenerated into vague musing, and a sort of drowsiness began to steal over me; I remained, however, with my elbows resting on the stone balustrade, either because I was fascinated by the charm of the night, or through indifference and forgetfulness.
Our private devotions would be more ready to sink into coldness and apathy were they not quickened by the public services of the sanctuary, and the Sabbath services would also degenerate, were we not stirred up by the occasional occurrence of Sacramental services.
Every such attempt as the Theosophical Society has hitherto ended in failure, because, sooner or later, it has degenerated into a sect, set up hard-and-fast dogmas of its own, and so lost by imperceptible degrees that vitality which living truth alone can impart.
The vast majority of women bear the discomforts of gestation and the actual perils and pangs of birth with exemplary fortitude: and it is a gross slander for anyone to maintain that a few cowardly and degenerate individuals really represent that devoted sex.
There was a good deal of nonsense in this curious custom of once a year getting on a giving jag, which was about what Christmas had degenerated into, and if something could prevent the dementia that possessed many people at this season it should be welcomed.
This is in fact the opinion held by our opponents; we are supposed especially to have "balked into" the patients everything that supports the importance of sexual experiences, and often the experiences themselves, after the combinations themselves have grown up in our degenerate imaginations.
The image of a saint, as is rightly maintained, may still occasionally degenerate into a fetish, as occurs when it is regarded as the seat of magical powers, or when its owner believes that he possesses in it a household idol capable of bringing him weal or woe.
It was a most anxious time for many months when there seemed a danger that the suffrage cause might degenerate into futile quarrelling among suffragists about the respective merits of their different methods, rather than develop into a larger, broader, and more widespread movement.
It was for want of fixed convictions that the noble sympathies entertained by the French nation for the rest of Europe at the outset of the Revolution so soon degenerated into forcible oppression, when her retrograde leader began his seductive appeal to selfish passions.
And he cites to us the fact that many children of highly developed parents degenerate and become paupers and criminals, while on the other hand, some children born of lowly and even criminal parents take the opposite course and become respectable and useful citizens.
The length of such a competition would have made it tedious to spectators and competitors alike, and it must have degenerated into a mere test of endurance, in which the elements of skill, activity, and grace which made the pentathlon so popular would have been lost.
The admiration usually bestowed upon the attractions of its domestic architectural forms is, no doubt, fully merited; albeit that the cathedrals of these wealthy and powerful communities are, no one can possibly deny, if not of a mongrel type, at least of a degenerate one.
And more even than ever do I find it little, aged, with worn-out blood and worn-out sap; I feel more fully its antediluvian antiquity, its centuries of mummification, which will soon degenerate into hopeless and grotesque buffoonery, as it comes into contact with Western novelties.
Although, among a people like the Tahitians, vitiated as they are by sophisticating influences, this custom has in most cases degenerated into a mere mercenary relation, it nevertheless had its origin in a fine, and in some instances, heroic sentiment, formerly entertained by their fathers.
During some time, there was in his administration a strange mixture of virtue and vice, until at last his virtues themselves degenerated into vices; being, as we may reasonably conjecture concerning his character, inclined to avarice through want, and to cruelty through fear.
One compartment became a gymnasium, another the carpenter's shop, the third, in which we were, remained a stable, though in these degenerate days no horse ever set foot inside it, its only use being to provide a place for the odd-job man to clean shoes.
Such a festival must indeed have degenerated, in a wealthy and despotic empire, into a theatrical representation; but it was at least a comedy well worthy of a royal audience, and which might sometimes imprint a salutary lesson on the mind of a young prince.
In that of Constantine, we may contemplate a hero, who had so long inspired his subjects with love, and his enemies with terror, degenerating into a cruel and dissolute monarch, corrupted by his fortune, or raised by conquest above the necessity of dissimulation.
While the greatness and decision of his character remain unimpaired, perhaps even heightened, it will be noticed that self-reliance, never in any man more justified, has tended to degenerate into boastfulness, and restlessness under displeasing orders to become suspicion of the motives prompting them.
This makes it for the first time intelligible how life, even when it suffers complete failure in its work in the world, even when the activity exerted upon the world is completely frustrated, by no means degenerates into a state of destitution and ruin.
In any case, this state is also an aberration in the normal being, but imputable to fatigue, and in him is not chronic, as in the degenerate, nor does it amount to the hidden fundamental character of his being, as the sophists who calumniate him pretend.
And, therefore, we may note in these sciences which hold so much of imagination and belief, as this degenerate natural magic, alchemy, astrology, and the like, that in their propositions the description of the means is ever more monstrous than the pretence or end.
In the House of Lords the Prime-minister would escape the necessity for being in a position to vindicate all the details of administration, and to answer the multiplicity of questions on all sorts of subjects, the putting of which has almost degenerated into a vice.
Many years ago I met with an extract from his antiquated volume, of which, having preserved no copy, I cannot give the admirable verbiage of the fourteenth century, but must submit for it the following tame translation in the flat English of our degenerate days.
The feebleness and corruption of the Directory had relaxed the reins of discipline from top to bottom, and a practice which finds its justification only when executed with the strictest method and accountability, had degenerated into little better than disorganized pillage.
The highest compliment that can be paid to American medicine and medical men is that, in spite of this handicap of education they did not utterly degenerate, but, on the contrary, somehow managed to maintain the dignity of the profession and do much good work.
Amiability degenerates into simplicity when it leads to the refusal to accept obvious facts merely because they impugn the character of an acquaintance; and what is the use of feminine devotion if it boggles over accepting what you say, just because you say something a little surprising?
This prejudice against instrumental music, which was drawn from the very nature of its aesthetic impression, was fortified by the associations of instruments with superstitious pagan rites, and especially with the corrupting scenes habitually represented in the degenerate theater and circus.
When you are planning the treatment of dilatation of the heart you first determine whether the dilatation is a result of the stretching of a sound heart by overfilling during muscular effort, or of the insufficient emptying of failing chambers with degenerated and feeble walls.
They laughed at the fiercest storms, landed on the most inaccessible coasts, and pushed up the shallowest rivers, while Charlemagne's degenerate successors tamely beheld the fairest towns in their dominions sacked and burnt by the terrible crews of those terrible barks.
Nevertheless, this barbarism of the nations of the West did not at all resemble that of the Turks, whose religion and manners repelled every species of civilization or cultivation, nor that of the Greeks, who were nothing but a corrupted and degenerated people.
His perseverance degenerated into obstinacy and defiance, his laborious endurance into a passionate activity which overtaxed his powers, and he became combative and quarrelsome and found his greatest pleasure in the discomfiture of his opponents; his frankness made way for the coarsest criticism.
Amidst the lengthened plaudits of a vast multitude, Nero struck the first stroke into the earth, and raising a basket of sand upon his imperial shoulder looked proudly round him as if to claim a second burst of applause from flattering Greeks and degenerate Romans.
The only son who lived to succeed him was a scrofulous degenerate, who presented, even in his infancy, an exaggeration of his inherited type, which made him a monstrosity, a poor creature who never emerged from puerility, and finally died of senile decay at forty.
Mendelssohn's elegance of style, richness of color, and his personality caused a wave of imitation to set across musical production, but it soon subsided, for only the most stalwart methods endure the dilution incident to their adoption by lesser talent without degenerating to insipid weakness.
Often as caterpillars of different species have been placed on starvation diet, whether for experimental purposes or to procure very small butterflies, it has never yet happened that a single organ, such as antenna, leg, or wing, has thereby been eliminated or caused to degenerate.
It was about five o'clock in the afternoon when the cat, Pharaoh, woke up, and transformed himself instantly from deep sleep to strained alertness, in that way which is peculiar to the children of the wild, but has been lost by their domestic degenerates.
If some termination to the Third term discountenanced services of a chief magistrate be not fixed by the Constitution or supplied by practice, this office, nominally four years, will in fact become for life; and history shows how easily that degenerates into an inheritance.
They were originally captives taken in war, or condemned malefactors; but in the degenerate days of the Empire, knights, senators, and soldiers sought distinction in the arena, and even unsexed women fought half-naked in the ring, or lay dead and trampled in the sands.
And yet, notwithstanding all these services and blessings, there are found many, very many, weak, degenerate sons, who, lost to virtue, to gratitude, and patriotism, openly exult that this Administration is no more, and that the "Sun of Federalism is set forever."
Possibly they represent the degenerate and altered vestiges of eye-like organs present in archaic vertebrates, or it may be that they represent the remains of organs not eye-like in function but which for some other reason lay close under the surface of the body.
By the beginning of the Tudor period, however, these blade-like flanges, originally made for offense, degenerated into mere ornaments, while the greater importance of the end with the royal arms (afterwards enriched with a cresting) resulted in the reversal of the position.
For, besides continuing thus to enervate both body and mind, these conveniences lost with use almost all their power to please, and even degenerated into real needs, till the want of them became far more disagreeable than the possession of them had been pleasant.
I thought of going to sociologists, insanity experts, those whom we read so much about in the papers, who are always talking of reform, eugenics, social service; but the realization that these glittering generalities meant nothing to one poor, weak, degenerate individual like me, deterred me.
I think it of importance to have been acquainted with many of the royal family of either sex; as it may be gathered from thence that king Edward, concerning whom I was speaking before I digressed, by no means degenerated from the virtues of his ancestors.
He seems, however, to forget that this custom, which was practiced in various nations, is a religious rite, and was inaugurated at a time when the adoration of the sun, as the source of all life and light, had degenerated into the most degrading phallic worship.
In a rapid crescendo, the abdomen oscillating with increasing rapidity, it acquires its maximum volume; it remains for a few seconds at the same degree of intensity, then becomes weaker by degrees, and degenerates into a shake, which decreases as the abdomen returns to rest.
I must confess that there are some forms of vice, cruelty for example, for which it is hard to find any explanation, save indeed that it is a degenerate survival of that war-like ferocity which may once have been of service in helping to protect the community.
If normal animals are experimentally alcoholized and are shown to produce defective offspring under such conditions, then in their cases at least, the disorders in the offspring must be due to the effects of alcohol and not to an innately degenerate condition of the parent.
And I am sure, the answer in all candor must be, a bigoted and seditious race of men, a degraded and inferior class of women, an ignorant and degenerate herd of children; and does not the inevitable, and inexorable, logic of things necessitate just these?
I have read with pleasure your romance of pure chivalry, and I would that we could find in these degenerate days more knights and gentlemen, more spotless maidens and virtuous women, such as those of whom your pen delights to tell, and my ears delight to hear.
You should realize that they don't know any better, also that presently they may become dreadfully bored after the manner of degenerates and move away from the Bluffs, and then companionable, commuting, or summer resident people will have a chance to buy their houses.
The same hand, which expelled those invaders, deposed the last of a race of heavy and degenerate princes, more like eastern monarchs than German leaders, and who had neither the force to repel the enemies of their kingdom, nor to assert their own sovereignty.
The characteristics of this style are an extreme simplicity which does not degenerate into puerility, great directness, and at the same time vividness in telling the story, and a remarkable undercurrent of wit which is never obtrusive, as is sometimes the case in the verse tales.
And no sooner had the city been rudely awakened to the perilous presence, in overwhelming numbers, of ignorant and inflammable foreigners than these turned up and presumed to lead the revolt, to make capital out of it, to interpret it in terms of an exotic and degenerate creed.
They who did not study him more closely, were apt to imagine that he was merely a blustering, good-natured, violent, headstrong man, whose manners must inevitably have degenerated into vulgarity, had he not been nobly born, and accustomed to the society of his peers.
Degenerate forms may arise, the belief may at times even disappear altogether or be displaced by a crude belief in magic and demons, but it itself can in no wise have been developed from anything else, for it was possessed by mankind from the very beginning.
Nothing of this doting, degenerate character, repudiated by all antiquaries, occurs in the Statistical Account: if it did, the sum of all the errors in names, dates, and other things, inevitably incident to so vast a variety of details, would not have been an equal blemish.
Their features, bronzed by the sun and the air of the desert, indicated intelligence and bravery; there was in them something of the haughty and determined bearing of the first Spanish conquerors, from whom they descended in a direct line, without degenerating.
Suppose, as might well have happened, that the Barnacles, one and all, instead of recapitulating in their early life, were to develop directly from the egg to the adult form, as so many animals do; should we have ever made out that they were degenerate Crustaceans?
One single kaleidoscopic glance into the perpetual whirl of any one of these clubs, which used to be places of friendly social intercourse for the best European circles, is quite sufficient to see the class of degenerate, greedy parvenus that rule poor, bleeding, helpless, exhausted Turkey.
The good condition of the ductless glands is largely dependent upon a life based on hygienic principles, although when these glands are of the best quality they may stand a good deal and not degenerate so soon, even after excessive activity following injudicious or fast living.
Their language, it is true, was at this time first cultivated, from an indescribable waste of tastelessness and barbarity, while the harmonious diction of the Italian and Spanish poetry, which had long before spontaneously developed itself in the most beautiful luxuriance, was rapidly degenerating.
There is nothing of the imbecile or degenerate in his features or expression, as is usually true in similar cases, where some lunatic escapes into the woods and by living in filth and nakedness wins the title of wild man among the peasants of the neighborhood.
Amongst the degenerate Romans whom those ferocious Germans had subjugated, civilization was reconstituted on the ruins of vices common in the early history of a new society by the adoption of a series of loose and dissolute habits, both by the conquerors and the conquered.
She regarded speech as one of heaven's best gifts, and thought that conversation should be made one of the finest arts, and used to subserve the highest and best purposes of life, and always regretted when it was permitted to degenerate into gossip and backbiting.
Indeed, if the lessons of history can be trusted, such a state of society is bound to be wrecked from within by anti-social influences; political power becomes the object of factious strife, and the rule of the majority degenerates into the tyranny of the majority.
The children of such persons are degenerate also, and as the class is numerous and fertile there is here a social problem which is not primarily a problem in alcohol, but is accidentally connected therewith simply because the proneness to alcoholism is a symptom of the degeneracy.
In Sable Island they have already degenerated to the level of Highland ponies; but in all countries where they have run wild, the elongated and arched head, high shoulders, straight back, and other structural characters probably of the original wild horse, have appeared.
There was more to this screed below the line which marked the lower end of the clipping, but it contained no further reference to the Paisleys, merely dilating in a would-be humorous manner upon the degenerating influence of the foreign legacy upon the American citizen.