Sentence Examples:
We ought to lift and strengthen human nature, but we degrade and weaken it when we seek to lead it to good conduct by a bait, even if this bait beckons to a future world.
After Wu had given diligent attention to the various weights and measures, examined the laws and regulations, and restored the degraded officials, good government everywhere ensued.
Misery and poverty are so absolutely degrading, and exercise such a paralyzing effect over the nature of men, that no class is ever really conscious of its own suffering.
It is certainly one link of the degrading chain of superstitions which have long enslaved mankind, but which are now quivering to their fall.
He was never able to analyze his heart, though it then stood still within him; but the thing that swayed him to his purpose was not altogether the thought that Captain Snipes was about to degrade him, and that he had taken an oath within his soul that he should not.
The priests were inflated with a puerile but sincere belief in their own divinity, and inculcated a sense of duty which was nothing else than a degrading slavery to their own caste.
It had no compunction, no remorse in depriving human beings of their highest privileges; its whole tendency was to degrade the soul, and to cause forgetfulness of immortality.
And hence the sentiment, when pure, creates a sort of companionship of beings robed in celestial light, and exorcises those degrading passions which belong to earth.
Among other things, it instituted monasteries and convents, both for men and women, in which they sought to escape the contaminating influences which had degraded them.
The queen, who, to use her own words, would have preferred being nailed to the walls of the palace to seeking a refuge which she deemed degrading, pointed to the soldiers, and showed by her gestures that they were the only protectors whom it became them to look to.
The legate degraded him from his dignity: the king confiscated his estate, and cast him into prison, where he continued, in poverty and want, during the remainder of his life.
Certain it is, that most of the imputations upon her memory rest on the malignant anecdotes recorded by Dion, who dearly loved every piece of scandal which degraded human nature.
She is greatly moved at the sight of the youthful lover of old days, who, with more chivalry than prudence, offers forgiveness if she will break off this degrading alliance.
As the dualism of extension and thought is reduced from a substantial to an attributive distinction, so individual bodies and minds, motions and thoughts, are degraded a stage further.
I saw her eyes dilated with terror, and in her face the expression of a degraded martyr; and there were two persons within me: one who said, "Is it her fault?"
That love was considered impure and degrading, a humiliating affliction of the mind, not for a moment comparable to the friendship between men or the feelings that unite parents and children.
The sentiment which it represents may be only the sentiment of men of average moral tone, or it may even be that of men of an inferior or degraded morality, and hence it often needs to be tested by the application of rules derived from a higher standard both of feeling and intelligence.
The author of the Apocalypse, a writer of the first century, who was received in the second as John the apostle, holds up a yet more degrading view of the matrimonial relation.
The man who neglects his own appearance not only degrades himself to the level of his inferiors, but puts an affront upon his friends and acquaintances.
It is 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.
Knowing this, are you not obliged to confess that every healthy laboring man, who sees such things, must say to himself: "Is it not terrible that a man is thus degraded in the house which he used to inhabit as master and that his neighbor's dog is not worse off than he?"
While the author probably had no intention of subverting morality, his views of human nature were assuredly cynical and degrading in a high degree.
Again and again it was repeated, especially in a leading daily journal of the metropolis under the influence of a sectarian college, that I was ''degrading classical studies.''
The Yogi teachings inform us that the lower planes of the Astral World are inhabited by souls of a very gross and degraded type, undeveloped and animal-like.
The grace and delicacy, the sweetness and spontaneity of his genius are not more obvious and undeniable than the many defects which impair and the crowning deficiency which degrades it.
His statecraft in this respect was more cynical than that of the crowned robbers who had degraded eighteenth-century politics into a game of grab.
The consequence is that the legislators have been degraded to mere agents for drawing up measures, and leadership has been transferred to the press.
After the degrading business with the other woman had been concluded I thought we should have left England immediately on the honeymoon tour which my husband had mapped out for us, but he told me that would not be convenient, and we must remain in London a little longer.
It would not be a foul betrayal of youth by age; it would not be the sort of degraded crime that makes angels weep, and ordinary people change into judges and executioners.
The third council, held during the reign of the great Buddhist Emperor Asoka, was called on account of heretics, who, to the number of sixty thousand, were degraded and expelled.
Exclaimed Emily, aghast with astonishment and indignation, for the abruptness of the degrading proposition nearly deprived her of the power of speech.
It was not long, however, before the enemies of the institution found means to represent it to the people as tending to subvert their law, degrade their lawgiver, and dishonor their temple.
It is a strange case, and one which I feel assured must give you all much uneasiness, as, indeed, it gave me; but, as I said before, I will not let my judgment give in to the fearful and degrading superstition which all the circumstances connected with this strange story would seem to justify.
Our first need is a strong navy; without that we should be starving, perhaps eating each other, or submitting to the most degrading terms, within a few months of the outbreak of war, and the second is the increased production of food at home to make us more self-supporting in time of need.
Were they cheaply bought or not, that compassion and love for the degraded and the suffering which were the outcome of your years of poverty in Museum Buildings?
And hence the sentiment, when pure, creates a sort of companionship of beings robed in celestial light and exorcises those degrading passions which belong to earth.
Therefore, he would not have it degraded by, so to say, an indiscriminate breeding, such as has also made the children of men cheap and vulgar to each other.
In this kind of government human nature is not only abused and insulted, but it is actually degraded and sunk into a species of brutality.
Free labor is denounced as degrading and disgraceful; the honest triumphs of the poor man who works his way to independence are treated with scorn and contempt.
They tend to degrade a man and to make him consider himself as degraded in his own eyes; whereas it is the design of this change in the penal system, that he should be constantly looking up to the restoration of his dignity as a man, and to the recovery of his moral character.
The nobles considered all business degrading excepting war, and spent the weary months, when not under arms, in indolence in their castles.
I stand in this colony as the Chief Magistrate, and the representative of our Sovereign; anything, therefore, that could lessen me in the eye of the public would be degrading the King's authority, which shall never suffer in my person whilst I am capable of giving it its full power and consequence.
He found them mere savages, constantly at war among themselves and with their neighbors, ignorant of the arts of agriculture, and in the utterly degraded state for which we must seek a counterpart now in the more distant tribes, whom the message of civilization has not yet reached.
One other third consists of a poor, unskilled, degraded white population; and the remaining one third, which is a large allowance, we will say, intelligent and rich.
It was very degrading; but once in a while Cornelia accidentally touched him, or her face, lit up by interest in her occupation, came so near his own that he felt warm and thrilled, and went near to admit it was worth all the broken bones in the world, and the sacrifice of pride accompanying them.
I stood, therefore, silent with grief and vexation, on that day of the signal shame and humiliation of this degraded king and country.
It is degrading enough to be forced to mix with such rubbish in the schoolroom, without having to associate with him in the drawing room.
Poverty, madam, may try us, and that severely; but while we act rightly, it can never degrade us, but in the eyes of those, unfeeling as yourself.
In the store where I am allowed to buy my clothes it is quite the thing among the salesmen to see which one of them can degrade me most.
If we educate and save the girls we are using the very lever needed to lift these hopeless and neglected thousands living at our very doors, out of their degraded life and bring them into the light of the 19th century, and qualify them to take positions among the best women of the land.
The deformity which degraded and destroyed the manly beauty of his head and breast was hidden from view by an Oriental robe of many colors, thrown over the chair like a coverlet.
If public opinion were healthy, if it held for such mock heroes, not the incense of applause, but a lash of scorn, if boys were persuaded that so far from exhibiting in their conduct a manly trait, they were only proving themselves degraded puppies, the cure would be immediate.
Perhaps, too, there was in this a tincture of the superstitions of the times: whatever it was, the fact ought not to have degraded the truth and dignity of historical narrative.
And remember, that these physical influences of great cities, physically depressing and morally degrading, influence, though to a less extent, the classes above the lowest stratum.
In that fringe of shanties over yonder live the powers that keep you down; there are the foes that degrade you and your families, forcing you to live little better than wild beasts.
From this, at least, there is one distinct lesson to be learned, that however it may be natural for nations to lose a superiority, owing to arts, inventions, or foreign trade, yet, if the minds of the people and their manners remain pure, they will not be degraded, by falling a prey to an enemy.
She must either live a lonely life apart from her husband's, frowning down, or silently showing disapproval of his habits, or she must, to preserve peace and the semblance of happiness, bring herself down to his level and become even less delicate and more degraded than he.
The singular barbarities which they perpetrated throughout this struggle are vouched for by their own historians, but it does not appear that the Sinhalese degraded themselves by similar atrocities.
The trouble about that is, while strong drink will degrade some men to the level of the brute, drunkards are not made of brutes.
"Since she will not give up her wickedness and is hiding and plotting with low fellows, we hereby depose her and degrade her to the lowest rank."
The King's first act after his escape was to issue a royal proclamation disclaiming with horror the edict degrading and casting infamous reflections upon his beloved Queen.
She knew nothing of such sordid life as he had gone through, and to lack money for necessities seemed to her degrading beyond endurance.
A life of sin and shame has almost obliterated all that is good in her nature, almost I say, for no one, no matter how low or degraded, can be wholly bad.
One can listen and be entranced; one sees the dancer's "interpretations" or "translations" and the music is degraded to a series of sham classic postures.
Verily, this they can do only under glowing hatred towards their oppressors, and towards that order of things which place them in such a position, which degrades them to machines.
I must however, impartially observe that Philip de Comines says, Richard having murdered his nephews, degraded their two sisters in full parliament.
Whether my father is caught, or whether he escapes, he will be tried all the same, condemned, and sentenced to a degrading penalty for embezzlement and forgery.
The ancient custom of Hellas, which still prevails in Italy and Sicily, left the judgment to the spectators, but this custom has been the ruin of the poets, who seek only to please their patrons, and has degraded the audience by the representation of inferior characters.
The latter was regarded as degrading and base (at least in principle) and woe to the man who held, or rather, avowed, another opinion.
"Granting that you actually believe in your own supposition, why are you so anxious to pollute your ears with the recital of circumstances that you assume to be degrading, or sinful?"
All this was said with a kind of passionate recklessness, as if the speaker, having suddenly thrown off her mask, scarcely cared how utterly she degraded herself.
I feel degraded when I am forced to wear property straw in my hair and assume a bucolic air for the small sum of ten dollars.
He who yields to his lower self will prostitute and degrade them all, and the tragedy that leads on to the mad scene at the close, where the cries of Margaret have no parallel in literature except those of Lady Macbeth, is the inevitable result of choosing the pagan and refusing the ideal.
Davis, "and he will devote much of his time, and substance as well, to the uplifting of the degraded, and the exalting of mankind through daily practice."
His own, meanwhile, was full to overflowing, having received immense accessions from the confiscated property of his unsuccessful generals and degraded ministers.
This lofty offensive style could not fail to make a deep impression on a mind penetrated with a just sense of those obligations by which the chief magistrate is bound to guard the dignity of his government, and to take care that his nation be not degraded in his person.
He can talk of liberty in the most swelling, high-sounding, and fascinating style, while all the time he is making men the most degraded and miserable slaves.
This is the real fact, as applicable to the degraded and hypocritical mass which leavens the present English generation, and is the only answer they deserve.
Man and his fortunes, in all climes and all ages, became topics of intense interest, especially when they tended to degrade by contrast the detested condition of things at home.
And, then, this insatiable appetite of our hearts, being so degraded and perverted, like all degraded and perverted appetites, becomes an iron-fast slave to what it feeds upon.
The legate degraded him from his dignity; the king confiscated his estate, and cast him into prison, where he continued in poverty and want during the remainder of his life.
He did not probably foresee that, in proportion as he degraded the parliament, by rendering it the passive instrument of his variable and violent inclinations, he taught the people to regard all its acts as invalid, and thereby defeated even the purposes which he was so bent to attain.
This monarch was addicted to licentious and degrading pleasures, and was a prince of weak intellect, irritable and capricious, open to flattery, and easily deceived by the crafty.
It seems to me that where a lady of ordinary degree is elevated to a higher position, she often acquires a refinement like one originally belonging to it; but there are other women, who when degraded from their rank spoil their taste and habits just like the lady in question.
While in this degrading occupation he wrote three plays, the sale of which to the managers of the public games enabled him to quit his drudgery, and begin his literary career.
For we find that the man who abandons the regimen of meat abandons alcohol also; and to do this is to renounce most of the coarser and more degraded pleasures of life.
"He who knows how much a well-ordered household contributes to the cultivation of domestic virtues and family affections, will not think a woman degraded who sacrifices somewhat of her tastes and pleasures to the deeper happiness of procuring such advantages for those she loves."
Indeed, I soon found myself an object of more general interest than I wished to be; and so far from being degraded by being placed in the second cabin, that part of the ship became the scene of as much pleasure and refinement, during the voyage, as the cabin itself.
And now at last she was in the power of a new captor, one whom she knew from the gossip of the temple and the palace to be cruel and degraded.
The degrading picture of womankind as depicted in the Old Testament is well known to anyone who has glanced through this storehouse of mythology.
He knows nothing of humanity, but what he sees through the bars of his prison; and imagines that there is nothing in the world but capricious tyrants and trembling, degraded slaves.
All the brutal instincts of his degraded disposition were aflame, and he resolved that his revenge for the indignities that had been put upon him, should be full and complete.
Nor can we afford to endure the moral blight which the existence of a degraded and hated class must necessarily inflict upon any people among whom such a class may exist.
I have heard that greedy human beings sometimes reduce themselves to the condition of pigs, who are entirely devoted to cramming; but I should not choose to degrade myself to that level.
Their treasures had been taken, their temples polluted, their religion profaned, their monarchs slain, their women outraged, and the people forced into a degrading, exhausting slavery.
And, a very celebrated writer calls it, "that most iniquitous and absurd form of government, by which human nature was so shamefully degraded."
The most wretched victims in soul and body, who were obliged to flee forwards because they could not flee in any other direction, were called heroes, and the manliest word in our language, a word of which only the freest and the greatest are worthy, was degraded.
Let no one say that this testing system is a mere mechanical method, that it degrades Culture from its intellectual dignity, and is equivalent to the Chinese literary tests for office.
It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him the truth there and then, tell him she had lied about mailing the letter to Madison, and that she had been miserable ever since; tell him that this rotten, artificial life disgusted and degraded her, that she was sick of it and of him.
When you use me as a stepping stone to salute the police you spoil my appetite on the grounds that I may be degraded and incriminated.