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Corrupting   /kərˈəptɪŋ/   Listen
Corrupting

adjective
1.
Seducing into corrupt practices.
2.
Harmful to the mind or morals.  Synonym: degrading.  "The vicious and degrading cult of violence"
3.
That infects or taints.  Synonym: contaminating.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Corrupting" Quotes from Famous Books



... concerning punishments, and how many ways of escaping them the greatest part of the legislators have afforded malefactors, by ordaining that, for adulteries, fines in money should be allowed, and for corrupting [28] [virgins] they need only marry them as also what excuses they may have in denying the facts, if any one attempts to inquire into them; for amongst most other nations it is a studied art how men may transgress their laws; but no such thing is permitted amongst us; for though ...
— Against Apion • Flavius Josephus

... sanctify or condemn the same action!—What care ought we to take not to confound the distinctions of right and wrong, when self comes in the question!—I condemned in Mr. Lovelace the corrupting of a servant of my father's; and now I am glad to give a kind of indirect approbation of that fault, by inquiring of him what he hears, by that or any other way, of the manner in which my relations took my flight. A preconcerted, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... work in two huge volumes, published at London at the beginning of the present century. After the introduction and triumph of Christianity in Britain, for several centuries the two systems of thought and ritual mutually influenced each other, corrupting and corrupted.4 A striking example in point is this. The notion of a punitive and remedial transmigration belonged to Druidism. Now, Taliesin, a famous Welsh bard of the sixth century, locates this purifying metempsychosis in the Hell ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... is a flighty combination. I don't pretend to say what your little Mrs. Haney is at bottom. Thus far I like her. I talk about her freely, but I defend her in public. But, at the same time, fifty thousand dollars a year is a corrupting power." ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... of flesh and blood, fashioned with the subtle tools, the cunning hands, of Satan! O execrable art of singing, have you not wrought mischief enough in the past, degrading so much noble genius, corrupting the purity of Mozart, reducing Handel to a writer of high-class singing-exercises, and defrauding the world of the only inspiration worthy of Sophocles and Euripides, the poetry of the great poet Gluck? Is it not enough to have dishonored a whole century in idolatry of that wicked ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee

... always imply prodigious compassion for others; not satisfied with being the most disinterested, nay, the reverse of all patriots, for you sacrifice your very slender fortune, not to improve it, but to keep the poor honest instead of corrupting them; and you write politics as simply, intelligibly, and unartfolly, not as cunningly as you can to mislead. Well, with all these giant virtues, you can find room and time in your heart and occupations for harbouring and exercising what those monkeys ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... commonly, that such as value themselves by the greatnesse of their wealth, adventure on Crimes, upon hope of escaping punishment, by corrupting publique Justice, or obtaining Pardon by ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes

... festival in honour of the god Bacchus had been first introduced into Etruria through a Greek priest, and, spreading like a cancer, had rapidly reached Rome and propagated itself over all Italy, everywhere corrupting families and giving rise to the most heinous crimes, unparalleled unchastity, falsifying of testaments, and murdering by poison. More than 7000 men were sentenced to punishment, most of them to death, on this account, and rigorous enactments were issued ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... any other pleasure in the conquest of a woman but that of depriving another of her; and not able to persuade any one of his passion, because he spoke to her, as at all other times, in jest: but cruelly revenging himself on those who refused to hear him; corrupting the servants of those whom they did favour, counterfeiting their handwriting, intercepting their letters, disconcerting their rendezvous; in one word, disturbing their amours by everything which a rival, prodigal, indefatigable, and full of artifice, can be imagined to ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... William's conquest of England took place in 1066. This piece of tapestry, therefore, if Matilda really worked it, is about eight hundred years old. And when we consider how delicate, slender, and frail is the fibre of a linen thread, and that the various elements of decay, always busy in the work of corrupting and destroying the works of man, have proved themselves powerful enough to waste away and crumble into ruin the proudest structures which he has ever attempted to rear, we are amazed that these slender filaments have ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... there must be always that dreadful possibility—which perhaps has never become actual since the fall of Atlantis—that a whole large section of mankind should go quite mad, and become unfit to carry on the work of evolution. It is a matter of corrupting the streams of heredity; which is done by vice, excess, wrong living; and these come of ignorance. Heaven knows how near it we may be today; I do not think Christendom stands, or has stood, so very ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... untried power of grateful but ruinous idleness, sunk them to a state, which, however elevated in theory, was in fact more degraded and more miserable than that of bondage. In addition to all this, pauperism, with the numerous evils of corrupt and corrupting indolence, threatened to impose its sluggish weight upon a groaning community. Hence, the progress of emancipation was, for the time, most righteously arrested.'—[Address of the Board of Managers of the African ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison

... fulness than the manifesto above quoted. Like the latter, it conceded at the start that there was no law under which the object in view could be obtained. It characterized the Mormons as but little above the negroes as regards property or education; charged them with having exerted a "corrupting influence" on the slaves;* asserted that even the more intelligent boasted daily to the Gentiles that the Mormons would appropriate their lands for an inheritance, and that their newspaper organ taught them that the lands were to be taken ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... this stock must soon dwindle down to a very small family. Now let a scarcity of honey occur in the fields, this poor stock cannot be properly guarded, and is easily plundered of its contents by the others. Honey is taken that is in close proximity to dead bodies, corrupting by thousands, creating a pestilential vapor, of which it has probably absorbed a portion. The seeds of destruction are by this means carried into healthy stocks. In a short time, these in turn fall victims to ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby

... with the skin undermost, on a board, and is well rubbed and covered over with a mixture of equal quantities of common salt and Jamaica pepper. Some of this mixture is carefully spread under the fins to prevent them from corrupting, which they sometimes do, especially if the weather is warm. A board with a large stone is sometimes laid upon the fish, with a view to make the salt penetrate more effectually. In some places, as Dumbarton, instead of a flat board, a shallow wooden trough is used, by which means ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 277, October 13, 1827 • Various

... may it be a guileless heart! In heaven's own sight of priceless worth! Where nought corrupting e'er hath part, Pure, as the source which ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various

... thing of which few are capable. Some religious persons say that these conversations are of great service. I believe it may be true for some, but not for all; for there is a period wherein it hurts, especially when it is of our own choice; the human inclination corrupting everything. The same things which would be profitable, when God, by His Spirit, draws to them, become quite otherwise, when we of ourselves enter into them. This appears to me so clear, that I prefer being a whole day ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon

... to all Greeks, and to none but Greeks, was stronger and clearer during the interval between B.C. 600-300 than it came to be afterward. For the Macedonian conquests had the effect of diluting and corrupting Hellenism, by spreading an exterior varnish of Hellenic tastes and manners over a wide area of incongruous foreigners who were incapable of the real elevation of the Hellenic character; so that although in later times the games continued undiminished both in attraction ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... But there are more things you need forgiveness for. It is not enough to get rid of one sin. We must get rid of all our sins, you know. They're not nice things, are they, to keep in our hearts? It is just like shutting up nasty corrupting things, dead carcasses, under lock and key, in our most secret drawers, as if they were ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald

... prevent the heat of the summer water penetrating to it; and if, when the sea-bottom was upraised into land, the covering was sufficiently thick to prevent the heat of the summer air and sun thawing and corrupting it. ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... Parliament, that such an exercise of power, the creating of a king, was possible. Haughty, arrogant kings bowed submissively to its will. Henry could not make laws nor impose taxes without first summoning Parliament and obtaining his subjects' consent. But corrupting influences were at work which were destined to cheat England out of her liberties ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele

... these modern maidens who imitate the boldness of the character and dress of the adventuress or the stage and opera favorite. It has become a tiresome feature of our modern life with the insidious faculty of corrupting the manners even of families who know better. She was so different! And in that moment I knew her superiority as a woman. I ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child

... for the shoulders of one man. He has been given to the American people for their sins in politics and economics. His opponents may scold him as much as they please. They may call him a demagogue and a charlatan; they may accuse him of corrupting the public mind and pandering to degrading passions; they may declare that his abusive attacks on the late Mr. McKinley were at least indirectly the cause of that gentleman's assassination; they may, in short, behave and talk as if he were a much more ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... than this periodical commemoration of the dead? There is none that more harmonises with the best feelings of our nature; and yet of all the dogmas rejected by ecclesiastical reforms, I know of none which has less pretensions to Scriptural authority or has been more mischievous, corrupting alike the priesthood and the laity, than that which makes the masses and prayers incident to the commemoration of the dead propitiatory for ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... was persuading Pons to engage Mme. Cantinet as his nurse, Fraisier had sent for her. He had plied the beadle's wife with sophistical reasoning and subtlety. It was difficult to resist his corrupting influence. And as for Mme. Cantinet—a lean, sallow woman, with large teeth and thin lips—her intelligence, as so often happens with women of the people, had been blunted by a hard life, till she had come ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac

... more than another name for Puritanism. Both wage a ceaseless warfare upon beauty in its every form, from painting to religious ritual, and from the drama to the dance—the first because it holds beauty to be a mean and stupid thing, and the second because it holds beauty to be distracting and corrupting. ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken

... by the experienced Dr. Ullathorne, and as the system recommended by the House of Commons Committee to be abolished as incapable of improvement and 'remarkably efficient, not in reforming, but still further corrupting those ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne

... Scripture as a symbol of evil, some have interpreted this Parable in a very different manner. But the meaning assigned to it above is in accordance with ancient interpretation; and the other explanation is involved in difficulties. For, if the leaven represents a corrupting influence, the Parable would describe the Kingdom of Heaven either as having an evil effect upon the world, or else as progressing itself towards corruption till the ...
— The Kingdom of Heaven; What is it? • Edward Burbidge

... to-day one looks, one finds this illusion as to what a public servant really is, for the moment, corrupting our public life. ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee

... subtle and exquisite vileness which is poisoning and weakening our country than such a phrase as this, about the desirability of rubbing down the angularities of poor men. Reduced to permanent and practical human speech, it means nothing whatever except the corrupting of that first human sense of justice which is the critic ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton

... ancient worship weeps. Suicide Graces dangle down the charms Sprawling like gourds on outer garden-heaps. She stands in her unholy oily leer A statue losing feature, weather-sick Mid draggled creepers of twined ivy sere. The curtain cried for magnifies to see! - We cannot quench our one corrupting glance: The vision of the rumour will not flee. Doth the Boy own such Mother?—shoot his dart To bring her, countless as the crested deeps, Her subjects of the uncorrected heart? False is that vision, shrieks the devotee; Incredible, we echo; and anew Like a far growling lightning-cloud ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Orleans Times-Democrat, in its editorial accompanying the publication of this letter, said: "We have seen the corrupting influence in our politics and our elections of making fraud an element of our suffrage system. We are certainly not going to get away from fraud by encouraging it, or making it a part of the suffrage system we place in our new constitution." The same editorial further states ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe

... in nothing, and openly said so, who took part in those terrible atheistical meetings and discussions, which, as Father Russell had solemnly said, were like a plague-centre in Manchester, drawing in and corrupting soul after soul. And Dora was to help in throwing her young cousin, while she was still almost a child with no 'Church principles' to aid and protect her, into the hands of this enemy of the ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Egypt. The Persian came and the Persian went, and after the Persian came the Macedonian, and now for nigh upon three hundred years the Lagidae have usurped the double crown, defiling the land of Khem and corrupting the worship of its Gods. And mark thou this: but now, two weeks since, Ptolemy Neus Dionysus, Ptolemy Auletes the Piper, who would have slain thee, is dead; and but now hath the Eunuch Pothinus, that very eunuch who came hither, years ago, to cut thee off, set ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard

... the mainspring of the evils of married life; but, over and above that, marriage is made rank by the lives these classes lead. This holds good particularly with regard to the women, who frequently give themselves over to idleness or to corrupting pursuits. Their intellectual food often consists in the reading of equivocal romances and obscene literature, in seeing and hearing frivolous theatrical performances, and the fruition of sensuous ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... the less expensive mode of walking, entering a strange world. Sauntering along the Bowery she turns down Bayard street. Bayard street she finds lined with filthy looking houses, swarming with sickly, ragged, and besotted poor; the street is knee-deep with corrupting mire; carts are tilted here and there at intervals; the very air seems hurling its pestilence into your blood. Ghastly-eyed and squallid children, like ants in quest of food, creep and swarm over the pavement, begging for bread or uttering profane oaths at ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... Liturgy of the Church has frequently exercised a corrupting influence on the text of Scripture. Having elsewhere considered St. Luke's version of the Lord's Prayer[168], I will in this place discuss the genuineness of the doxology with which the Lord's Prayer concludes in St. Matt. ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon

... from the corrupting influence of all immoral associations. Be not carried away by the pomp and glare of refined and decorated wickedness. Let not the ornaments and magnificence of mere outward life divert your attention from those hidden principles ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips

... the dedication of the Florentine History to Clement: 'The miseries and humiliations of dependence, the bread which is more bitter than every other food, the stairs which are more painful than every other ascent, had not broken the spirit of Machiavelli. The most corrupting post in a corrupting profession had not depraved the generous heart of Clement.' The sentence I have printed in italics may perhaps tell the truth about the Church and Popes in general; but the panegyric ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... despair. I will rather anticipate a new confederacy, exempt from the corrupt and corrupting influence and oppression of the aristocratic democrats of the South. There will be (and our children, at farthest, will see it) a separation. The white and black ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... must suffice. He summoned thousands to come to labor in the rose-garden of Quetzalcoatl, and when they had gathered together, he fell upon them and slew them with a hoe. Disguised with Huitzilopochtli, he irritated the people until they stoned the brother gods to death, and from the corrupting bodies spread a pestilential odor, to which crowds of the Toltecs fell victims. He turned the thought of thousands into madness, so that they voluntarily offered themselves to be sacrificed. By his spells all articles of food soured, and ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton

... these essential conditions of judicial equity. First, the number of the jury who had power to convict was reduced. Second, treason was made to consist in such vague and infinitely elastic kinds of action as inspiring discouragement, misleading opinion, depraving manners, corrupting patriots, abusing the principles of the Revolution by perfidious applications. Third, proof was to lie in the conscience of the jury; there was an end of preliminary inquiry, of witnesses in defence, and of counsel for the accused. Any kind of testimony was evidence, whether material ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley

... sitting at Westminster, in their humble advice concerning a Larger Catechism, we find these amongst others—"All devising, counseling, commanding, using, and any ways approving any religious worship not instituted by God himself, tolerating a false religion.—— All superstitious devices, corrupting the worship of God, adding to it, taking from it, whether invented and taken up of ourselves, or received by tradition from others, though under the title of antiquity, custom, devotion, good intent, ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery

... Never was delicate sensibility proved to be more distinct from plain practical benevolence, than in the writings of the author to whom I allude. Instead of employing his talents for the benefit of his fellow-creatures, they were applied to the pernicious purposes of corrupting the national taste, and of lowering the standard of manners and morals. The tendency of his writings is to vitiate that purity of mind, intended by Providence as the companion and preservative of youthful ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce

... English character decidedly preponderate. Naturally, this people love justice, manly dealing, fair play; and though I think the shop-keeping attitude is unfavorable to this tendency, it has not effaced it. The English have too much pride to be tricky or shabby, even in the essentially corrupting relation of buyer and seller. And the Englishman who may be repulsive in his out-of-door intercourse or spirally inclined in his dealings, is generally tender and truthful in his home. There only is he seen to the best advantage. When the day's work is over and the welcome shelter ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... "census spiritual" of American society. Elenor Murray, in her birth and love and sufferings and desperate end, is represented as pure nature, "essential genius," acting out its fated processes in a world of futile or corrupting inhibitions. But Mr. Masters has less skill at portraying the sheer genius of an individual than at arraigning the inhibitions of the individual's society. When he steps down from his watch-tower of irony he can hate ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren

... sisters opposed it bitterly as bringing discredit on them all; and old Yacob, though he had formed a sort of liking for his clumsy, obedient serf, shook his head and said the thing could not be. The young men were all angry at the idea of corrupting the race, and one went so far as to revile and strike Nunez. He struck back. Then for the first time he found an advantage in seeing, even by twilight, and after that fight was over no one was disposed ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... immoral. (a) It rests on the old idea of retribution. (b) It tends to weaken the sacredness of human life. (c) It endangers the lives of innocent people. (d) Executions and the sensational newspaper accounts which follow have a corrupting influence. ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton

... If the jury'd been from this county, we'd have hanged him sure! Splitting the country into kindling wood, and stirring up a yellow jacket's nest of Spaniards, and corrupting honest men! If they won't hang him, then tar and feathers, say I! Soh, Selim! ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston

... Trust—because I felt convinced that they would sooner or later lay themselves open to exposure and criminal prosecution, and that it would further increase the hostility toward their industry if they should persist in their attempts to defeat the prohibition movement by the expenditure of money in corrupting elections, legislation and ...
— Government By The Brewers? • Adolph Keitel

... known throughout the world. I have another reason for bringing this matter before the British public, and it is this: slavery is a system of wrong, so blinding to all around, so hardening to the heart, so corrupting to the morals, so deleterious to religion, so{326} sapping to all the principles of justice in its immediate vicinity, that the community surrounding it lack the moral stamina necessary to its removal. It is a system of such gigantic evil, so strong, so overwhelming in its power, that no one ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... the march, for the girl had become the constant companion of Seraphine. The latter, however depraved she might be, had certainly in the first instance entertained no idea of corrupting the child whom she patronized. She had at first taken her solely to such places of amusement as were fit for her years and understanding. But little by little the descent had come. Reine, too, as she grew into a woman, amid the hours of idleness when she was left alone by her father—who, perforce, ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola

... to show how recent English writers are corrupting the language; and, in doing so, he falls into some ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer

... skeptical as to the value of any criticism by a man who pours contempt over the pictures of Puvis de Chavannes, stigmatizes one of Beethoven's purest creations as "corrupting," and ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White

... them a more wholesome mixture of blood than he himself possesses, and an energy, nay, perhaps a genius, derived from the Kurts, which, with an upward instead of a downward tendency, may be a redeeming force in society instead of a corrupting one. ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... habit which dwells upon them is the result of our experience, and comes later. It is enough for a child if he follows pure and safe instincts, and lives without reflection a healthy, unperverted life, under wise guidance and good teaching. Growing in this way, free from corrupting influences or the contagion of bad example, and poisoned by no bad atmosphere, he develops naturally towards a manhood which is rooted in healthy tastes, affections unspoilt, and in good habits. Thus you see what the very young have a right to claim at the hands of all their elders—that ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival

... for them, so they must be Popes, but in a sneaking way, still calling themselves Church-of-England men, in order to batten on the bounty of the church which they were betraying, and likewise have opportunities of corrupting such lads as might still resort to Oxford with ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow

... the demands of this most unnatural traffic, by which great numbers of mankind, free by nature, are subject to inextricable bondage, and which hath often been observed to fill their possessors with haughtiness, tyranny, luxury, and barbarity, corrupting the minds and debasing the morals of their children, to the unspeakable prejudice of religion and virtue, and the exclusion of that holy spirit of universal love, meekness, and charity, which is the unchangeable nature and the ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson

... the latter portion to his wife, Tii or Taia; but there is no evidence that any evil result followed, or that these princesses did not influence him for good. It is too much taken for granted by many writers that female influence is corrupting. No doubt it is so in some cases; but it should not be forgotten that there are women whom to have known is "a liberal education." Mutemua and Tii may have been ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson

... survey the aboriginal youth, less in number than many a colonial household, with deep solicitude; or when estimating their claims, to remember the fortunes of their fathers. Or should their helplessness and dependence ever tempt a ruler to expose them to the corrupting influence of the lowest examples, and to assign them the meanest education, he may be recovered to some sense of justice by the following confession of a ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... prosecuting with impartial severity the wrongdoers among business men, public officials, and labor leaders alike. The principle is the same in the two cases. Just as the blackmailer and the bribe giver stand on the same evil eminence of infamy, so the man who makes an enormous fortune by corrupting Legislatures and municipalities and fleecing his stockholders and the public stands on a level with the creature who fattens on the blood money of the gambling house, the saloon and the brothel. Moreover, both kinds of corruption in ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... Romaine Empire bore the raine Of all the world, and florisht most in might, The nations gan their soveraigntie disdaine, And cast to quitt them from their bondage quight. So, when all shrouded were in silent night, The Galles were, by corrupting of a mayde, Possest nigh of the Capitol through slight, Had not a Goose the treachery bewrayde. If then a goose great Rome from ruine stayde, And Iove himselfe, the patron of the place, Preservd from being to his foes betrayde, Why ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser

... continuance in thy work. It is not pretence of doing God the greatest service, or performing the weightiest duty, that will excuse the least sin, though that sin capacitated or gave us the opportunity for doing that duty. Thou wilt have little thanks, O my soul! if, when thou art charged with corrupting God's worship, falsifying thy vows, thou pretendest a necessity for it in order to a continuance in the ministry. As he read this, and glanced at much more which he did not read, he gained resolution for himself, ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... to the times of Turrettine, the danger of "corrupting philosophy through an intermixed divinity" was admirably shown by Bacon in his "Novum Organum;" and the line indicated was exactly what we now find was laid down of old with such precision in Scripture. "To ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... leaving him so long in the Tall Grass," said Mr. Tibbetts. "But now that we have tried the two Extremes, we know just what to do with Art. We shall send him to a small Town, where he may associate with bright Youth of his own age and yet be away from the distracting and corrupting Influences of the ...
— People You Know • George Ade

... stepping-stones to advancement. At Paris, in 1851, he met Lamoriciere, who received him coldly, and Changarnier, who treated him better. He left Satory indignant, exclaiming, "We must finish with this Louis Bonaparte. He is corrupting the army. These drunken soldiers make one sick at heart. I shall return to Africa." In October Changarnier's influence decreased, and X.'s enthusiasm abated. X. then frequented the Elysee, but without giving his adherence. ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... which right and truth in regard to these matters can be established and different folkways compared and criticised. Only experience produces judgments of the expediency of some usages. For instance, ancient peoples thought pederasty was harmless and trivial. It has been well proved to be corrupting both to individual and social vigor, and harmful to interests, both individual and collective. Cannibalism, polygamy, incest, harlotry, and other primitive customs have been discarded by a very wide and, in the case of some of them, unanimous judgment that they are harmful. ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... deities of the Syrians and Moabites, and even the gods of the Philistines, whom God had commanded they should not serve.[6] Their hearts became hardened in their apostacy. The siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnazar, and the captivity in Babylon, had the most corrupting influence on the purity of the Mosaic doctrines, and on the laws. The original writings discovered by Hilkiah, were retrenched, added to, and the order of the events displaced. From the long residence amongst, and a great intercourse ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various

... were treated almost as well as the children of the family. They lived under the same roof, worshipped at the same altar and in some cases were taught in the same school. Care was taken so to elevate the slave and keep him above corrupting influences as to make him not merely a tool for exploitation but a decided asset in the family economy of life. That the slave of this type had much to do with the development of the colonial family no one ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various

... of the statue of a soldier, on the other side of the entrance, was this statement: "We do not use force until good laws are defied." Which ought to read: "We do not use force until laws are defied." Such ideas as these are corrupting courts, and biasing the public mind, and the injury is more than apparent to the observer. If law is not a standard, what standard can we have? We must have one. We repeat again: "Law commands that which is right and prohibits that which is wrong." ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation

... God shall enter into the two exposed and corrupting bodies, and they shall stand upon their feet to defy Anti-Christ and his host, and laugh at the pains of death. Great fear will fall upon them who saw the dead so raised. This time the telegraphs will be muffled, and the news is kept back from the nations as much as possible; but ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild

... priori, and its actual influence as shown by the facts, few will suppose that anything we could have done would have stayed its course or prevented it from working out its legitimate effects on the white subjects of its corrupting dominion. Northern acquiescence or even sympathy may have sometimes helped to make it sit more easily on the consciences of its supporters. Many profess to think that Northern fanaticism, as they call it, acted like a mordant in fixing ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... has thrown the fertile state of Kansas into the ring to be fought for by free-state men and pro-slavery men. The Border Ruffians of Missouri are breaking the law every day by going over into Kansas, never meaning to live there only long enough to vote, and are corrupting the state government. They are corrupting it by violence and illegal voting. If slavery wins in Kansas and Nebraska, it will control the Union forever. The greatest battle in our history is about to be fought out in Kansas, ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick

... Athens.—Of course there have been some famous prosecutions for "impiety." Socrates was the most conspicuous victim; but Socrates was a notable worshipper of the gods, and certainly all the charges of his being an "atheist" broke down. What he was actually attacked with was "corrupting the youth of Athens," i.e. giving the young men such warped ideas of their private and public duties that they ceased to be moral and useful citizens. But even Socrates was convicted only with difficulty[*]; a generation has passed since his death. Were he on trial at present, a majority of ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis

... I couldn't share your feeling, but I respected it. However, I doubt if your loan was a benefit to either of them. It probably tempted him to count upon money that he hadn't earned, and that's always corrupting." ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells

... erected! What a multitude of captives had added to the pomp and wealth of the proudest city of antiquity! Babylon the great,—-"the glory of kingdoms," "the praise of the whole earth," the centre of all that was civilized and all that was corrupting in the Oriental world, with its soothsayers, its magicians, its necromancers, its priests, its nobles,—was now to fall, for its abominations cried aloud to heaven ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord

... satisfied that banks, national or State, are not necessary as fiscal agents of the Government. Revenue duties have taken the place of the protective tariff. The distribution of the money derived from the sale of the public lands has been abandoned and the corrupting system of internal improvements, it is ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... angels! Be not sure. Everything is as we happen to see it—a bit of philosophy, which, as they despise the best things secularly considered of this life, steels them to indifference for what you and I, and others not of their caste, may think. They have arrived at a summit above the corrupting atmosphere of the earth, where every one of them has already the mansion promised him by our Blessed Lord, and where the angels abide and delight to serve him.... For the rest, O Prince, call them indifferently recluses, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... though he allows that about two hundred millions of pounds sterling are spent yearly in the States on strong drink; but he mourns most because of the steady ruin which he sees overtaking the social happiness of his country. The saloon is subtly corrupting the men of America, and the ghastly plagues of selfishness, brutality, and immorality are spreading with cruel swiftness. The great author's conclusion is more than startling, and I confess to having caught my breath when I read ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... Cayenne, one suspects the same snares, because the Revolution, in view of the ignorance of the proletarians, would take place only at the profit of our adversaries."[35] There is no way to escape the corrupting power of capitalism. It has its representatives in every movement that promises to be hostile. It has its spies in the labor unions, its agents provocateurs in insurrections; and its money can always find ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... without corrupting, he made a venal age unanimous. France sunk beneath him. With one hand he smote the house of Bourbon, and wielded in the other the democracy of England. The sight of his mind was infinite; and his schemes were to affect, not ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... should, of course, be transported free, but a great many persons receive passes and are classed as employes who never render any legitimate service for the company giving the pass, and by far the greater portion of passes are not granted from pure motives, but are given for the purpose of corrupting their holders. It arouses antagonism, because as a rule passes are given to people who are fully able to pay their fare and are denied to those who are least able to pay it. The passenger who pays his fare and ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee

... towards her lover, the mother paraded openly before her daughter the intimacy of her relations with Vitalis, and with the help of the literature with which the young bookseller supplied her, set about corrupting her child's mind to her own depraved level. The effect of her extraordinary conduct was, however, the opposite to what she had intended. The mind of the young girl was corrupted; she was familiarised with vice. But in her heart she did ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving

... good does a republic. The advantage of a free state consists in this, that its revenues are in general better administered; and even where this is not the case, it has at first the advantage of not being governed by court favourites. But, on the other hand, the corrupting power in a democracy, when once brought into action, erelong becomes more dissolving than in a despotism; for instead of paying court merely to the friends and relations of the prince, it becomes necessary to provide for the friends and relations of the multitude ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... detrimental, noxious, pernicious, mischievous, full of mischief, mischief-making, malefic, malignant, nocuous, noisome; prejudicial; disserviceable[obs3], disadvantageous; wide-wasting. unlucky, sinister; obnoxious; untoward, disastrous. oppressive, burdensome, onerous; malign &c. (malevolent) 907. corrupting &c. (corrupt &c. 659); virulent, venomous, envenomed, corrosive; poisonous &c. (morbific) 657[obs3]; deadly &c. (killing) 361; destructive &c. (destroying) 162; inauspicious &c. 859. bad, ill, arrant, as bad as bad can be, dreadful; horrid, horrible; dire; rank, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... that the church in its first ages was full of forged hooks, giving accounts of the same events, different from those of the books of the New Testament. The different sects, and the church itself, was torn by as many schisms then as it ever has been since, who mutually accuse each other of corrupting the Christians scriptures, and of ...
— Letter to the Reverend Mr. Cary • George English

... The corrupting influence of the Parliamentary environment on working-class representatives is what the Anarchists have up to the present considered the strongest argument in their criticism of the political activity of Social-Democracy. We have seen what its ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff

... bodies, and had struck their roots in the graves of men, sodden, while alive, in steaming courts and drunken hungry dens. And here, in truth, they lay, parted from the living by a little earth and a board or two—lay thick and close—corrupting in body as they had in mind—a dense and squalid crowd. Here they lay, cheek by jowl with life: no deeper down than the feet of the throng that passed there every day, and piled high as their throats. Here they lay, a grisly family, all ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... now lost, thanks to the present generation of young fellows, a corrupted and at the same time corrupting race, but, above everything, vain, foolish and brutal. For the sake of uttering spiteful paradoxes, they chaffed these poor girls about their hands, disfigured by the sacred scars of toil, and as a consequence these soon no longer earned even enough to buy ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger

... sentinel of hell'; St. Jerome came in with 'Woman is the gate of the devil, the road to iniquity, the sting of the scorpion'; St. Gregory, I believe, considered her to have no comprehension of goodness; pious old Tertullian complimented her with corrupting those whom Satan dare not attack; and then there was St. Chrysostom—really he was much more charitable than his fellow Saints—it always seemed to me he was not only more humane but more human—more interested, you might say. You know he said, 'Woman is a necessary evil, a domestic ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson

... professors, is the only right and safe rule—the only one which can make consistency in religious matters possible at all times and on all occasions. Otherwise it might be shaken by the new proofs of the insidious, corrupting, anti-truthful nature and effects ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell

... him off Miss Du Plessis' land, to prevent him marrying her, to hinder him corrupting the farmers and causing their farms to go to waste ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... on the back of a fire that was blazing in the chimney, in spite of the piteous entreaties of the mother. Suspicion eventually fell on Darrell, whose house was identified by the midwife, and he was tried for murder at Salisbury, "but, by corrupting his judge, Sir John Popham, he escaped the sentence of the law, only to die a violent death by a fall from his horse." This tale of horror, it may be added, has been carefully examined, and there is little doubt but that in its main and most prominent features it is ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer

... thine ne'er may I hold a place Till I renounce all sense, all shame, all grace— That seat,—like seats, the bane of Freedom's realm, But dear to those presiding at the helm— Is basely purchased, not with gold alone; Add Conscience, too, this bargain is your own— 'T is thine to offer with corrupting art The rotten borough[62] of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron

... table at Mr Boffin's was usually a very pleasant one, and was always presided over by Bella. As though he began each new day in his healthy natural character, and some waking hours were necessary to his relapse into the corrupting influences of his wealth, the face and the demeanour of the Golden Dustman were generally unclouded at that meal. It would have been easy to believe then, that there was no change in him. It was as the day went on that the clouds gathered, and the ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... wonder why?" Outfield stopped suddenly and frowned perplexedly. "Why, a month or six weeks ago I would have been one of the first they would have asked to help! I'm afraid it's associating with you, Joel. You're corrupting me! Say, didn't I make a mess of it this afternoon? I got about ten yards off the beach and just had to give up and pull back—and pull hard. Blessed if I didn't begin to wonder once if I'd make it! The fact is, Joel, I'm an awful dab at swimming. And I ought to be punched for letting you go out ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour

... view—this instrument of Confession is, among the Irish of the humbler classes, a direct preservative against certain forms of immorality at least."[58] "Among other charges preferred against Confession in Ireland and elsewhere, is the facility it affords for corrupting the female mind, and of its actually leading to such corruption. * * * So far from such corruption resulting from the Confessional, it is the general belief in Ireland—a belief expressed to me by many trustworthy men in all parts of the country, and by Protestants as well as ...
— Confession and Absolution • Thomas John Capel

... afternoon. And across the mountains one may hear even to- day the despairful, yet appealing, voice of Celoron, speaking for the great Onontio: "My children," he says, "since I have been at war with the English I have learned that that nation has seduced you; and, not content with corrupting your hearts, they have profited by my absence from the country to invade the land which does not belong to them and which is mine.... I will give you the aid you should expect from a good father.... I will furnish you traders in abundance ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley

... Middle Ages the masses and the majority of their learned theological teachers believed the Greek and Latin classics were inspired by Evil Spirits; that sculptures or paintings, if beautiful, were of evil; that all cleverness in Mathematics, Chemistry, or Medicine proved the presence of the corrupting Evil Spirit working in man. Any bridge over a chasm or a rapid river was the work of the Devil; even the most beautiful Gothic cathedrals, like those of Cologne and St. Stephen at Vienna were constructed by architects ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... religion-spurning, God-defying persons sent there—especially by disinterested white societies in America, which interferingly came forward in a measure which was originated solely by ourselves (and that, too, but a few of us), as our only hope for the regeneration of our race from the curse and corrupting influences of ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany

... held the balance with an unsteady hand. How sad the condition of him who is in authority! Not only are the miseries of power imposed upon him, but its vices also, which, not content with torturing, succeed in corrupting him. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... love it. There are forms of sickness in which the man goes about, and to each inquiry says, 'I am perfectly well,' though everybody else can see death written on his face. And so it is with this terrible malady that has laid its corrupting and putrefying finger upon us all. The worse we are, the less we know that there is anything the matter with us; and the deeper the leprosy has struck its filthy fangs into us, the more ready we are to say that we are sound. We preachers have it for one of our first ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren

... connection with Tyre was defective, in that there was no attempt to bring Hiram and the men who worked for the Temple to any knowledge of the God of the Temple, and the relation with Egypt was more unsatisfactory still, in that it meant only the importation of corrupting luxuries and the marriage with an Egyptian princess, an idolatress, this relation with the queen of Sheba was the true one. Solomon did in it what Israel was meant to do for the world. He attracted a seeker from afar, and imparted to her the wisdom ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... He who watcheth over all His children keep thee in faith of thy resolution!" said the Preacher, fervently. "Humble yourselves to receive instruction, and it shall be given you. Turn away now in your youth from the corrupting pleasures of the world, heed not its hollow vanities, and that peace which is not such as the world giveth, the peace of God which passeth all understanding, shall be yours. Yet, let not yours be the world's righteousness, the world's peace, which shuts itself up in solitude. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... women who stand up and wash six days in the week at 75 cents a day who would like to take a vacation and sit on a jury at $1.50. Some women would like to sit on a jury at the trial of the sharks that live by corrupting boys and girls. It would be easier for a woman to sit on a jury and send to the penitentiary the men who are trying to ruin her boy than to be always watching the boy." Another question was: "Have not men a better right to the suffrage because they have to support the family?" She answered: "It ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... asked about the evils of camp life; for she was one of that fine sort to whom righteousness seems every man's and woman's daily business, one of the most practical items in the world's affairs. And I said camp life was fearfully corrupting; that the merest boys cursed and swore and stole, or else were scorned as weaklings. Then I grew meekly silent and we talked in pairs again, and because I yearned to talk most with Camille I talked most with Estelle. Three times when I turned ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable

... certainly live amongst the scant literature of the North. And, indeed, the spectacle of the man of the higher race, with all the age-long traditions and habits of civilisation behind him, descending below the level of the savage, corrupting and debauching the savage and making this corrupting and debauching the sole exercise of his more intelligent and cultivated mind, is one that has aroused the disgust and indignation of whites in all ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... what this Christian city has been looking at for many a year. We shall not run any danger of corrupting morality, be sure.' ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... these critics were associated many others, who, whether they agreed or disagreed with its purely religious tendencies, denounced it because it dealt plainly with certain corruptions of human nature, the very mention of which, according to them, was in itself corrupting, and was an outrage of the decorums of a respectable Christian home. Since those days the gravest reviews and newspapers have dealt with such matters in language far more plain and obtrusively crude than mine, and often displaying a much more restricted sense of the ultimate ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock

... composed of the very best and most orderly dispositions. They are sent here to guard and keep in obedience to the laws when force may be requisite, a set of the worst, the most atrocious characters that ever disgraced human nature; and yet we find amongst those safeguards men capable of corrupting the heart of the best disposed, and often superior in every species of infamy to the most expert in wickedness amongst the convicts. Our stores, provisions, and granaries must be intrusted to the care of these men; what ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne

... well drilled into him, and never forgot it. Hence biblical passages and expressions had been often in his mouth, as the effect of mere unconscious cerebration. The Erewhonians had caught many of these, sometimes corrupting them so that they were hardly recognizable. Things that he remembered having said were continually meeting him during the few days of his second visit, and it shocked him deeply to meet some gross travesty of ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler

... this whole movement was instigated by the circulars sent out by the Abolition confederates in the Senate. These preachers had been led by an atrocious falsehood "to desecrate the pulpit, and prostitute the sacred desk to the miserable and corrupting influence of party politics." What right had these misguided men to speak in the name of Almighty God upon a political question? It was an attempt to establish in this country the doctrine that clergymen have a peculiar right to determine the will of God ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... I cannot trust myself, Mr. Hodder, to speak of Horace Bentley's life. . . I feel too strongly on the subject. I have watched, year by year, this detestable spirit of greed, this lust for money and power creeping over our country, corrupting our people and institutions, and finally tainting the Church itself. You have raised your voice against it, and I respect and honour and thank you for it, the more because you have done it without resorting ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... have trade getting worse every day," said he (it was true), "and you are robbing your parents to make a beast of yourself, and corrupting your companions! I wonder your mother ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... shiver in the snow-hut of the Esquimaux, or drip with perspiration in the cane-fields of the tropics. But let life depart, and it falls to that of the surrounding objects. Decay immediately begins. So, when religious vitality is maintained in the heart, the corrupting influences of the world remain inoperative. This vitality having been infused into the heart of Miss Hawley, the fervor of her spirit rose to a higher temperature than that of all surrounding objects. She could no longer assimilate ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... years old, who had been lifted on to the throne of a murdered father, must have had a strong will and a love of goodness to have resisted the corrupting influences of royalty in a land full of idols. Here again we see that, great as may be the power of circumstances, they do not determine character; for it is always open to us either to determine whether we yield to them or resist them. The prevailing idolatry influenced the boy, but ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... other irregularities, find himself the worse for it, for a day or two; but not so as to breed a fever. He may, likewise, be affected by the revolutions of the heavens; but neither the heavens, nor those irregularities, are capable of corrupting the humours of a temperate person; and it is but reasonable and natural it should be so, as the two irregularities of diet are ...
— Discourses on a Sober and Temperate Life • Lewis Cornaro

... with fish salted, and the heads of anchovies, all pounded and putrified together. But this kind of decomposed bait is forbidden by the fishery laws. The employment of it accounts for the rareness of good sardines, as the remaining of such a substance in the body of the animal cannot fail of corrupting it. It is a pretty sight to behold the little fleet employed in the sardine fishery return in the evening, laden with the results of the day's work. The fish, when landed, are counted out into baskets, shaken in the water, and taken up to one of the ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser

... not be hastily concluded that this involves the extinction of the private practitioner. What it will really mean for him is release from his present degrading and scientifically corrupting slavery to his patients. As I have already shown the doctor who has to live by pleasing his patients in competition with everybody who has walked the hospitals, scraped through the examinations, and bought a brass plate, soon finds himself prescribing water to teetotallers ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw

... general body there were no one knew how many pure Republicans. The meeting having been solemnly opened with prayer by Dr. Owen, there was a vehement speech from Desborough. The essence of the speech was that "several sons of Belial" had crept into the Army, corrupting its former integrity, and that therefore he would propose that every officer should be cashiered that would not "swear that he did believe in his conscience that the putting to death of the late King, Charles Stuart, was lawful and just." Amid the ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... property of the latter, and convey it to him, and the slave informs Peri of it, who, wishing to detect Antoninus in the very act, allows the slave to convey the property to him; can an action of theft, or for corrupting the slave, or neither, be maintained against Antoninus? The case was submitted to us, and we examined the conflicting opinions of the earlier jurists on the matter: some of whom thought that neither action lay, and others, that Peri might sue on theft only. But we, in order to put ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian

... might have grouped these interesting types into a picture of soul-stirring beauty. Even had the fifty been found, all with the proper dispositions and in harmonious unanimity of purpose, there was little chance that they would remain unaffected by the unbalancing and corrupting influences of a new country, where they would be absolute masters over an inferior race of people. Many excellent men of the highest principles and best intentions went from Spain to America in those times, but few resisted the ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt

... not for corrupting the boys. That was done-or not done-by my amiable cousin Ted. What harm did her 'baccy do to ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge

... very classes who exhibit the same vulgarities in their most perfect form, and that their conflict with each other, as between nation and nation, exhibit to us, in the magnified and hideous form of war, the same sore which is all the time corrupting our internal economy. The brutality, and atrocity of modern war is but the reflection of the brutality and inhumanity of our commercial regime and ideals. The slaughter of the battlefields may be more obvious, but it is less deliberate, and it is doubtful whether it be ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter

... of the earliest notices of turnips being eaten by sheep:——"Some in Essex have their fallow after turnips, which feed their sheep in winter, by which means the turnips are scooped, and so made capable to hold dews and rain water, which, by corrupting, imbibes the nitre of the air, and when the shell breaks it runs about and fertilizes. By feeding the sheep, the land is dunged as if it had been folded; and those turnips, though few or none be carried off for human use, are a very excellent improvement, nay, some ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... commissions to colonelcies and inferior commands, the regal pomp of the commander-in-chief, immoderate largesses to his favourites, (for he never gave less than a thousand florins,) enormous sums lavished in corrupting the court at Vienna—all this had been effected without burdening the Emperor. These immense sums were raised by the contributions levied from the lower German provinces, where no distinction was made between friend and foe; ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... this response, we sat in a comical sort of restraint, smothering a laugh, which we were afraid might burst out. In his Life of Gay, he has been still more decisive as to the inefficiency of The Beggar's Opera in corrupting society[1099]. But I have ever thought somewhat differently; for, indeed, not only are the gaiety and heroism of a highwayman very captivating to a youthful imagination, but the arguments for adventurous depredation are so plausible, the allusions so lively, and the contrasts ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... turned into a pillar of salt! the common lodging-house can do more and worse than that! It can turn men and women into pillars of moral death, for even the influence of a long term of penal servitude, withering as it is, cannot for one moment be compared with the corrupting effect of common ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes

... by slow education. Better, indeed, for us perhaps that He should not cure us at once, lest we should fancy that sin was a light thing which we could throw off whenever we chose; and not that it is an inward disease, corroding and corrupting, the wages whereof are death. And so it is that because Christ loves us He hates our sins, and cannot abide or endure them, but will punish them, and is merciful and loving in punishing as long as a tincture or remnant ...
— Out of the Deep - Words for the Sorrowful • Charles Kingsley

... hard and unpleasant; but it is to be remark'd, that all Cheeses that are hard press'd will keep longer than those that are gently press'd, and bear transporting thro' the hottest Climates, which the more tender-made Cheeses will not without corrupting, unless they are put into Oil. There is one thing which I may observe particularly, relating to the Rennet Bag; which is, that the Calf should suck it full about an hour before it is kill'd, that there may be more and fresher Curd in it; tho' in the killing of Calves it is a Rule to let ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley



Words linked to "Corrupting" :   infectious, seductive, degrading, noxious



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