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Undermine   /ˈəndərmˌaɪn/   Listen
Undermine

verb
1.
Destroy property or hinder normal operations.  Synonyms: counteract, countermine, sabotage, subvert, weaken.
2.
Hollow out as if making a cave or opening.  Synonym: cave.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Undermine" Quotes from Famous Books



... the sake of power, they allied themselves with a man who had deserted all alliances he had ever made; that he had deserted them before, after a treaty made, and had then deserted Perceval, after endeavoring to undermine Castlereagh; his conduct to whom had injured himself with the public in the most serious manner, in having allowed him to retain his office and undertake that melancholy expedition, five months after he had declared him so incapable that he put his own resignation upon his dismissal, ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various

... did more to undermine the power of the Protestant church than all other books then known. It furnished an immense amount of food for thought. It was written for the average mind, and is a straightforward, honest investigation of the Bible, and ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll

... kingly courtesies, Which we too long in favour have bestow'd Upon thy false, dissembling heart with us? What grief thou therewithal hast thrown on us, What shame upon our house, what dire distress Our soul endures, cannot be uttered. And durst thou, villain, dare to undermine Our daughter's chamber? durst thy shameless face Be bold to kiss her? th'rest we will conceal. Sufficeth that thou know'st I too well know All thy proceedings in thy private shames. Herein what hast thou won? thine own content, With the displeasure ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various

... and indifference vanished like the mist before the rising sun. All the arts of Haman had been needed to wean him from her and to teach him to forget her. How rarely does a vile, unholy counsellor or companion seek to corrupt a private man, or a prince, or a ruler, without striving first to undermine the influence of the virtuous wife, ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous

... lunge, parry, riposte, like rapier blades at play. "Because if I told her it is nonsense, that would undermine her faith in her teacher and her ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... FROM NATURAL PHILOSOPHY.—ANSWER.—Sixthly, you will say there have been a great many things explained by matter and motion; take away these and you destroy the whole corpuscular philosophy, and undermine those mechanical principles which have been applied with so much success to account for the PHENOMENA. In short, whatever advances have been made, either by ancient or modern philosophers, in the study of nature do all proceed on the supposition ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley

... boundless prairie farms of the West are now brought into competition with the fields of Great Britain in supplying the Englishman's table, and seem not unlikely, within this generation, to break down the aristocratic holding of land, and so perhaps to undermine aristocracy itself." ...
— The New Minister's Great Opportunity - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin

... make the necessary arrangements with a more than satisfactory result," when he might so easily have used his great and growing personal influence with the Chinese (he was a persona grata with them from the beginning) to undermine his chief. ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon

... work right and left and to undermine the walls, until large portions of them tumble over ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty

... like him, had long been endeavouring to undermine the authority which was the only safeguard to the morality of the school, felt themselves distinctly baffled. Mackworth had been put to utter rout by Bliss, and though he was almost bursting with dark spite, would not venture to do much; ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar

... to have a glimpse of the visitors in offices. She saw one of the younger Pembertons hide behind a bookcase while his father was talking to his brother. She knew that this Pemberton and Mr. Ross were plotting to oust the brother, and that the young, alert purchasing agent was trying to undermine them both. She knew that one of the girls in the private telephone exchange was the mistress and spy of old Pemberton. All of the chiefs tried to emulate the moyen-age Italians in the arts of smiling poisoning—but they did it so ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis

... accident, can they raise or lift themselves up. Trees serve as beds to them; they lean themselves against them, and thus reclining only slightly, they take their rest; when the huntsmen have discovered from the footsteps of these animals whither they are accustomed to betake themselves, they either undermine all the trees at the roots, or cut into them so far that the upper part of the trees may appear to be left standing. When they have leant upon them, according to their habit, they knock down by their weight the unsupported trees, and fall ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... 3 to 5 per cent of the population, are permitted to set the moral pace, while the 95 per cent, of law-abiding citizens are either asleep to their duties or else fail to see that the remedy is in their own hands. In many instances a few persons are allowed to undermine the morals of the community. In one town of our state a single individual was permitted for 25 years to corrupt the morals of many young men of the community through ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall

... population and resources not to attract the observation of other nations. It therefore may in the progress of time occur that opinions entirely abstract in the States in which they may prevail and in no degree affecting their domestic institutions may be artfully but secretly encouraged with a view to undermine the Union. Such opinions may become the foundation of political parties, until at last the conflict of opinion, producing an alienation of friendly feeling among the people of the different States, may involve in general destruction the happy institutions under which ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... the world, yet they do not indiscriminately approve of every system of education. Every one knows how much is done in our days, by the enemies of religion, to poison the sources of knowledge, and to undermine religion, under the pretext of promoting the liberal arts and sciences. In order to give a proper impulse to study, by securing protection for it, some insist that the full control of public instruction should be given to the government of each country, to be carried ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller

... irregular, and unequal action of the eroding agents. These agents follow the lines of least resistance; they are active at different times and seasons, and from different directions; they work with infinite slowness; they undermine, they disintegrate, they dislodge, they transport; the hard streaks resist them, the soft streaks invite them; water charged with sand and gravel saws down; the wind, armed with fine sand, rounds off and hollows out; and thus the ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs

... never desirable to allow the water flowing over the dam to fall directly on the ground in front, since the falling water will rapidly carry away this soil and undermine the front of the dam. For this reason, the lower section of the dam is made curved, as shown in Fig. 41, giving the water a horizontal direction as it leaves the dam instead of a vertical. A plank floor is often added ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden

... and that these judgments may be the first steps in that insensible process by which the unpretending but subtle and powerful engine of interpretation has been applied by the courts to give a certain turn to law and policy; applied, in this instance, to undermine the definiteness and certainty of doctrine, and in the end, the understanding itself which has hitherto existed between the Church and the State, and has kept alive the idea of her distinct basis, functions, ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church

... lead the great work. Yet he feared, knowing that all the long voyage, almost from the time they had sailed from England, his enemies, jealous of his fame and of his power over men, had sought to undermine it and to slander his good name. What lies they had spread through the three ships of a mutiny he was said to be instigating, until orders were passed which made him virtually a prisoner for the rest of the journey. ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson

... that began in September 1999 after a three-year hiatus, were derailed by a second intifadah that broke out in September 2000. The resulting widespread violence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Israel's military response, and instability within the Palestinian Authority continue to undermine progress toward a permanent agreement. Following the death of longtime Palestinian leader Yasir ARAFAT in November 2004, the election of his successor Mahmud ABBAS in January 2005 could bring a turning point in ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... was absorbed in figuring them up—and he needed the money, as usual—Neergard coolly informed him of his election to the club, and Ruthven, thunder-struck, began to perceive the depth of the underground mole tunnels which Neergard had dug to undermine and capture the stronghold which had now surrendered ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers

... she'd love me, Winsome, tinsome Caroline, Unto such excess 'twould move me, Teazing, pleasing, cousin mine! That she might the live-long day Undermine the snuffer-tray, Tickle still my hooked nose, Startle me from calm repose With her pretty persecution; Throw the tongs against my shins, Run me through and through with pins, Like a pierced cushion; Would she only say she'd love me, Darning-needles should not move me; But, reclining ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun

... the other out to sea. The Lord Protector communed with himself —shook his head—the thought forced itself upon him, "It is perilous to the State and to us all, to entertain so fateful a riddle as this; it could divide the nation and undermine the throne." He ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... reason have felt disinclined or unable to acquiesce in this exclusion of non-mechanical agencies, whether it be by reason of faith and instinct or by reason of direct experience and sensation to the contrary, have thought it necessary of late years to seek to undermine the foundation of Physics, and to show that its much-vaunted laws rest upon a hollow basis, that their exactitude is illusory,—that the conservation of energy, for instance, has been too rapid an induction, that there may be ways of eluding many physical laws ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge

... in 1891 and 1892, as many as fourteen actions were brought against the adepts of the Great Candle, and numbers of them were sentenced to imprisonment and to the confiscation of their goods. All this in spite of the fact that their beliefs did not in any way threaten to undermine the foundations ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot

... House meeting of employers, for aid to establish a training school for girls. It was to open the way for a thorough drill to the hundreds of poor girls, to fit them to earn equal wages with men everywhere and not to undermine "Typographical No. 6." I did not mean to convey the impression that "women, already good compositors should work for a cent less per thousand ems than men," and I rejoice most heartily that Typographical Union No. 6 stands so nobly by the Women's Typographical Union No. 1 and ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry

... dealings with the serf system. Toward his toiling millions Nicholas always showed sympathy. Let news of a single wrong to a serf get through the hedges about the Russian majesty, and woe to the guilty master! Many of these wrongs came to Nicholas's notice; and he came to hate the system, and tried to undermine it. Opposition met him, of course; not so much the ponderous laziness of Peter's time as an opposition, polite and elastic, which never ranted and never stood up—for then Nicholas would have throttled it and stamped upon it. But it did its best to entangle his reason and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne

... sluggishly from both as if in defiance of the great nation that lay so near and yet could not possess the little patch of land over which it floated. The Horse-Shoe Tower stood as of old, still unconquered by the fierce rapids striving to undermine it; and around base and balcony swarmed visitors who seemed like pigmies not so much on account of the distance as because they were dwarfed and belittled in the presence of the immense and the immeasurable. All these things lay ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford

... principles, the ardour of his Southern temperament,—he was a Marseillais by birth,—and the vivacious egotism that never brooked contradiction, often caused sharp friction with the King and the King's friends. He seemed born for opposition and criticism. Thereafter, his conduct of affairs helped to undermine the fabric of the Second Republic (1848-51). Flung into prison by the minions of Louis Napoleon at the time of the coup d'etat, he emerged buoyant as ever, and took up again the role that ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... a wonder," she confessed. "She has a mind of her own. I wonder why she's taken such an aversion to Rosamond lately? She never misses a chance to undermine her. Not openly, you know, but in a quiet way. I've noticed it ever since Doris Leighton came back and we had the spread that evening ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther

... after all only a weak aftermath of the infantile disease of Europe—the medieval Jew-hatred—whereas culturally retrograde Russia was still suffering from the same infection in its acute, "childish" form. The social and cultural anti-Semitism of the West did not undermine the modern foundations of Jewish civil equality. But Russian Judaeophobia, more governmental than social, being fully in accord with the entire regime of absolutism, produced a system aiming not only at the disfranchisement, but also at the direct physical annihilation of the Jewish ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow

... if the peril was not due to brigands, it must have come from some other quarter. Arthur Young, at Dijon and in Alsace,[1312] hears at the public dinner tables that the Queen had formed a plot to undermine the National Assembly and to massacre all Paris. Later on he is arrested in a village near Clermont, and examined because he is evidently conspiring with the Queen and the Comte d'Entraigues to blow up the town and send the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... sighs and enigmatical remarks of Ellis, to which she had paid but casual attention and attached no particular significance, now recurred to her memory with a new meaning. He had now evidently tried, in a roundabout way, to besmirch Tom's character and undermine him in her regard. While loving Tom, she had liked Ellis well enough, as a friend; but he had abused the privileges of friendship, and she would teach ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt

... with him. His purpose was to undermine her loyalty as a wife. His approaches had no charm, no finesse. Presuming on his relationship, he caught at her hand as she passed, or took a seat beside her if he found her alone on a sofa. At such moments she was furious with him, and once she ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... Revelation to be needless in this regard, how well soever they may, possibly, intend to Natural Religion, do herein entertain an Opinion that would undermine it: Experience shewing us that Natural Light, unassisted by Revelation, is insufficent to the Ends of Natural Religion: A Truth necessary to be acknowledg'd to the having a due value for the benefit that we receive by the Revelation of Jesus Christ; and many, who profess belief in him, have not ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham

... declaration of the national will, and are as ambiguous as the Delphic Oracle; and it is said that their half- measures, and determination not to see that public opinion is against them, and that a thorough change can alone undermine this military revolution, will contribute more than anything ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... and relieved him from the scandalous accusation of disloyalty. The report closed with a protest against the tendency, on the part of the Government, to resort to espionage and inquisitorial measures, in endeavouring to rid the Province of those obnoxious to the ruling faction, and in attempting to undermine the independence of the Legislature by scandalizing its members and awing them into political subserviency. The conviction was reiterated that there was no ground for the charge against Captain Matthews, the malignity and falsity of which was due to political hostility ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam

... their riches a clergy who has them by the same divine title as that by which he has tenure of his kingdom; to degrade an aristocracy which is the first step of his throne; to throw down social hierarchies of which he is the head and crown; to undermine laws of which he is the highest,—is to ask of the vaults of an edifice to sap the foundation. The king could not do so, and would not. In thus overthrowing all that serves him for support, he feels that he would be rendered ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... divorce must be of such a nature as to endanger life, but need not necessarily consist of physical violence. Even where no single act or number of acts can be shown which might cause reasonable apprehension of harm to life, if the ill treatment as an entirety is of a nature to affect the mind and undermine health to such a degree that the life will be ultimately endangered, it will entitle the injured party to a divorce. Ungovernable outbursts of rage, the use of profane and obscene language, applying insulting epithets to the wife in the presence of others, ...
— Legal Status Of Women In Iowa • Jennie Lansley Wilson

... such equality, liberty, and fraternity are included under the democratic principles which assume the same names, the Bible is the most democratic book in the world. As such it began, through the heretical sects, to undermine the clerico-political despotism of the middle ages, almost as soon as it was formed, in the eleventh century; Pope and King had as much as they could do to put down the Albigenses and the Waldenses in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; the Lollards and the Hussites ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... constant reminders of the danger of straying from the strait and narrow way, and of the tortures of the afterworld led to self-consciousness, introspection, and morbidness. The idea that Satan was at all times seeking to undermine the Puritan church also made it easy to believe that anyone living outside of, or contrary to, that church was an agent of the devil, in short, bewitched. As it is only the useful that survives, it was essential that the army of devils be given a work to do, and this work ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday

... opinion of many, that these were really possessed with devils, and that his divine virtue shone forth in nothing more conspicuous than in expelling them. I am very far from having the least intention to undermine the foundations of the christian doctrine, or to endeavour, by a perverse interpretation of the sacred oracles, to despoil the Son of God of his divinity, which he has demonstrated by so many and great ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead

... led on too far, but they were led on by the defence. One general no doubt spoke a word too much, but remember the accusations that were flung in his face. They ascribed to officers hidden intentions to undermine our institutions, but the French army cannot be an army of one man. There is not a single officer capable of an attempt against the country, for our officers ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 10, March 10, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... principles not been enfeebled by the foolish praise of his family, nor his vanity inflated by their senseless appeals to it—it is possible, nay, almost certain, that he would, even at this stage of his life, have been completely free from the failings which are beginning even now to undermine the whole strength ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton

... habit of analysis has a tendency to wear away the feelings: as indeed it has, when no other mental habit is cultivated, and the analysing spirit remains without its natural complements and correctives. The very excellence of analysis (I argued) is that it tends to weaken and undermine whatever is the result of prejudice; that it enables us mentally to separate ideas which have only casually clung together: and no associations whatever could ultimately resist this dissolving force, ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... waters seeming to pounce with ever- increasing fury from one imperturbable antagonist to another, now leaping clear over the head of one, only to dash itself into a cloud of spray against another, or pour like a cataract against its base in a persistent, endless struggle to undermine it; while over all tower the dark, shadowy rocks, grim witnesses of the battle. This spot is known by the appropriate name of "The Devil's Gate." Wherever the walls of the canon recede from the river's brink, and leave a space of cultivable land, there the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... telling them that Toleration is the device of the Devil. "I humbly beseech the Parliament," he says, "seriously to consider the depths of Satan in this design of a Toleration; how this is now his last plot and design, and by it would undermine and frustrate the whole work of Reformation intended. 'Tis his masterpiece for England; and, for effecting it, he comes and moves, not in Prelates and Bishops, not in furious Anabaptists, &c., but in holy men, excellent preachers; moderate and fair men, not for a toleration of heresies ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... an authority which is imposing by its great age, by its general recognition, by its documents, together with their tone and statements—qualities which are so infinitely difficult to combine that many a man, if he stopped to reflect, would not be so ready to help to undermine a religion, but would consider it the most sacred treasure of the people. If any one wants to criticise religion he should always bear in mind the nature of the great masses for which it is destined, and picture to himself their complete moral and intellectual ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer

... And, Jack, dear, you'd best get the hang of it before Cynthia comes. You might tell me all about your divorce. That's a sympathetic subject. Were you able to undermine it? ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell

... authority, but also that you resist with care the spirit of innovation upon its principles, however specious the pretexts. One method of assault may be to effect, in the forms of the Constitution, alterations which will impair the energy of the system, and thus to undermine what cannot be directly overthrown. In all the changes to which you may be invited, remember that time and habit are at least as necessary to fix the true character of governments as of other human institutions; ...
— Experiments in Government and the Essentials of the Constitution • Elihu Root

... knowledge, skill, and wealth are equaled by their virtues. Our country may have vast resources and great opportunities, but everything in the end depends upon the moral quality of its men and women. Undermine and corrupt this and we all know that there is nothing to hope for. The uncorrupted stock of true patriots in our land is firmly rooted in this conviction, which is worth more to the country than corn-fields and ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry

... it was a liberal plot to undermine capital and demand higher wages; liberals said big business could afford the temporary layoff and wanted to squeeze out the small businessman and ...
— Black Eyes and the Daily Grind • Milton Lesser

... about to be made, in New York, to divide its property; nor do I fear any open, declared agrarian statute; for what I apprehend is to come through indirect and gradual innovations on the right, that will be made to assume the delusive aspect of justice and equal rights, and thus undermine the principles of the people, before they are aware of the danger themselves. In order that you may not only understand me, but may understand facts that are of the last importance to your own pocket, I will first tell you ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper

... It is composed of a brave, a free, a virtuous, and an intelligent people. Our country abounds in the necessaries, the arts, and the comforts of life. A general prosperity is visible in the public countenance. The means employed by the British cabinet to undermine it have recoiled on themselves; have given to our national faculties a more rapid development, and, draining or diverting the precious metals from British circulation and British vaults, have poured them into ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various

... one knows, both by personal experience and by reflection, there can be no science except the science of that in which the destiny and welfare of man consist. For the objects of science are incalculable in number,—I undermine the word "incalculable" in the exact sense in which I understand it,—and without the knowledge of that in which the destiny and welfare of all men consist, there is no possibility of making a choice amid this interminable multitude of subjects; and therefore, without this knowledge, all other ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi

... hearers ventured sceptically to ejaculate, 'Den whar dat fence come from, ministah?' The outraged divine scratched his grey wool reflectively for a moment, and replied, after a pause, with stern solemnity, 'Tree more ob dem questions will undermine ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... friends were not equally the friends of the inventor? How could he know that Robert Belcher himself had not unwittingly come to the precise locality where he would be under constant surveillance? How could he know that a deeply laid plot was not already at work to undermine and circumvent him? The lad's reticence, determined and desperate, showed that he knew the relations that existed between his father and the proprietor, and seemed to show that he had ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland

... another way. If there is anybody here who takes pleasure in them, who thinks that such writing and such witticisms as he gets purveyed to him in these sheets do really help the cause of truth and intellectual freedom, I shall not attack his position from the front. I shall try to undermine it. I shall aim at rousing in him such a state of feeling as may suddenly convince him that what is injured by writing of this sort is not the orthodox Christian, or the Church, or Jesus of Nazareth, but always and inevitably the man who writes it and ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... normal condition; then we turn and rend the terrible passion of Paris with teeth as sharp as rat's teeth. We have Puritan women here, sour enough to tear the laces of Parisian finery, and eat out all the poetry of your Parisian beauties, who undermine the happiness of others while they cry up their walnuts and rancid bacon, glorify this squalid mouse-hole, and the dingy color and conventual small of our delightful ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... great champagne manufacturers of Reims are scattered in all directions over the historical old city. They undermine its narrowest and most insignificant streets, its broad and handsome boulevards, and on the eastern side extend to its more distant outskirts. Messrs. Werl and Co., the successors of the famous Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin, ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly

... gamble with the unknown because I hate the known. Never really had so little trouble with a gang—at least, not till these last few weeks. . . . What d'ye think's got into them, Adrian? Somebody's sure at the bottom of all these things. That last bit of trestle didn't undermine itself, and them spikes didn't loosen just to dump the ballast train. What's ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan

... was alone with the Father, are but another name for those exercises of prayer, fasting, meditation, communion with God, without which, as He tells His followers in the text I have read to you, it is not possible to eradicate from the soul those influences of sin which destroy its harmony and undermine its strength. ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival

... employer or producer, to give him the least possible return for his labor or product, was the ideal every capitalist must constantly keep before him, and yet it was mathematically certain that every such sharp bargain tended to undermine the whole business fabric, and that it was only necessary that enough capitalists should succeed in making enough such sharp bargains ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy

... Texas and these people swung the deal. It was virtually a theft from Mexico. A little while later, in 1848, we "paid" Mexico for California, Arizona, and Nevada. But if you read the true story of Fremont in California, and of the American plots there before the Mexican War, to undermine the government of a friendly nation, plots connived at in Washington with a view to getting California for ourselves, upon my word you will find it hard to talk of England being a land-grabber and keep a straight face. And, were a certain book to fall into your ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister

... that wiser king Canute, Thence to command the advancing tides of battle Till one ensanguined sea whelm throne and king And kingdom, friend, I take my woman's way, Smile in mine enemies' faces with a heart All hell, and undermine them hour by hour! This island scarce can fend herself from France, And now Spain holds the keys of all the world, How should we fight her, save that my poor wit Hath won the key to Philip? Oh, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... perchance he slept,— Only to fight with nightmares and to fly Down endless tunnels in a ghastly dream, Hunted by horrible human souls that took The shape of monstrous rats, great chattering snouts, Vile shapes of shadowy cunning and grey greed, That gnaw through beams, and undermine tall towns, And carry the seeds of plague and ruin and death Under the careless homes of sleeping men. Thus, in the darkness, did he wage a war With all the powers of darkness. 'If the light Do break upon ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... learned of the part he was to play in the rescue he would see that they had already taken the liberty of accepting that sacrifice. It was necessary, he explained, that the wall between the tunnel and the cell should fall at the first blow. An attempt to slowly undermine it, or to pick it to pieces, would be overheard and lead to discovery. He therefore intended to rend the barrier apart by a single shock of dynamite. But in this also there was danger; not to those in the tunnel, who, knowing at what moment the ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis

... and His teaching! One would infer from much that is written upon the subject of our Lord's teaching that He was a very mild giver of good advice but evidently the Scribes and Pharisees did not think so. They saw in Him a man who was setting himself to undermine their whole authority. ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry

... compared notes afterward; they went out sketching together, and instructed each other in the ways of art; and they carefully examined the foundations of each other's beliefs, and endeavoured respectively to strengthen and undermine the same. Gradually they fell into the habit of wondering every morning whether or not they should meet during the coming day; and of congratulating themselves nearly every evening that they had ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

... attention to Indian necessities, his efforts were unappreciated largely because of evil influences at work to undermine him and to advance Douglas H. Cooper. Steele had his points of vulnerability, his inability to check the Federal advance and his remoteness from the scene of action, his headquarters being at Fort Smith. Connected with the second point ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel

... what you are, Since you're so high I'll tell you what you were: Your Father was our General 'tis true, That Title justly to his Sword was due; 'Twas nobly gain'd, and worth his Blood and Toils, Had he been satisfied with noble Spoils: But with that single honour not content, He needs must undermine the Government; And 'cause h'ad gain'd the Army to his side, Believ'd his Treason must be justify'd. For this (and justly) he was banished; Where whilst a low and unknown life he led, Far from the hope and glory of a Throne, In a poor humble Cottage you were born; Your early Beauty did it self ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn

... that its impressive landscapes may be overturned or blotted out, or new scenes may be brought forth, in a day. The mountains do not stand a storm well. A hard rain will dissolve ridges, lay bare new strata, undermine and overturn cliffs. It seems almost a land of enchantment, where old landmarks may disappear in a single storm, or an impressive landscape come forth in a night. Here the god of erosion works incessantly and rapidly, dissecting ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills

... blamed for thinking us dangerous. Then, when he found himself defeated, and his wishes disregarded, on all sides, he began to hate us. It is easy enough to account for his feelings. Now, since our recent astonishing triumph, being himself incredulous about our celestial origin, he will try to undermine us by showing that our seeming miracle is no miracle ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss

... Church were like them we should quickly bid adieu to all hope of converting these regions, but we are thankful to be able to say that such folks are not numerous; there are, moreover, causes at work quite sufficient to undermine even their zeal. Their sons return at the vacations, from Oxford and Cambridge, puppies, full of the nonsense which they have imbibed from Platitude professors; and this nonsense they retail at home, where it fails not to make some impression, whilst the daughters scream—I beg their pardons—warble ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... condemned by Socialists, 197 ff. Socialist propaganda to undermine discipline and cause revolt in, 200 ff. Socialist proposals regarding ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... that "salvation was confirmed" by the preaching of the Gospel, "God also bearing witness with signs, and wonders, and divers miracles."[12] But those things which we are told were seals of the Gospel, shall we pervert to undermine the faith of the Gospel? Those things which were designed to be testimonials of the truth, shall we accommodate to the confirmation of falsehood? It is right, therefore, that the doctrine, which, according to the evangelist, claims the first attention, be examined and tried in the first place; ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... you had not been so assured of your own conduct I would not. But 'tis but reasonable that since I consent to like a man without the vile consideration of money, he should give me a very evident demonstration of his wit: therefore let me see you undermine my Lady Touchwood, as you boasted, and force her to give her consent, ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve

... provinces as a place of refuge, in case of need, he had full power to hold the Emperor a prisoner by means of his own forces, and within his own dominions; to exhaust the strength and resources of these countries, and to undermine the power of Austria in its ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... exerted himself so to bring the German people to reason, to make them understand the horror that they alone have brought deliberately upon the world! Alas! Far from it. Indeed, they have attempted with insidious propaganda to undermine the morale of our troops...." A little storm of muttered epithets went through the room. The Reverend Dr. Skinner elevated his chubby pink palms and smiled benignantly..."to undermine the morale of our troops; so ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos

... modesty seldom learn until it is too late. And he was hated not only by chamberlains, but, as he discovered with deepest grief, even by those whom he considered his truest friends, who had been working in secret conclave to undermine his influence with his royal friend and master. Whenever he returned to Berlin, later in life, he could not breathe freely in the vitiated air of the court, and the wings of his soul hung down lamed, if not broken. ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... fierce power of waters let loose. An old willow-tree, about whose roots I had often watched the king-cups growing, was now in the centre of a stream as broad as the Avon by our tan-yard, and thrice as rapid. The torrent rushed round it—impatient of the divisions its great roots caused—eager to undermine and tear it up. Inevitably, if the flood did not abate, within a few hours more there would be nothing left of ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... "It'll take a long time to undermine their reputation that way," he objected. "And we'd have a lot of people on these islands before ...
— The Players • Everett B. Cole

... Consules, the last favourable date for attacking France would have been in 1887. Bismarck sinned beyond forgiveness in not provoking a war at that time. More than that, his manoeuvres to undermine the credit of Russia and his policy of intimidation towards France, by exciting the hatred of both countries against Germany, only served ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam

... the Continental Congress, but foremost in the minds of the delegates was the problem of defense. After Henry's "Give me liberty or give me death" speech, the delegates made provisions for developing a military establishment. What they in fact did was to undermine the regular militia through the formation of "Independent Companies" in the counties. The revolutionary government which was evolving became a little more clearly defined when the Convention instructed each county to elect two delegates to sit ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education

... reached. It was a struggle requiring the utmost activity. The water was so turbid that we could not perceive objects an inch below the surface. The current rushed with a velocity that threatened to carry everything before it. The worst effect was its perpetual tendency to undermine its banks. Often heavy portions of the banks plunged into the river, endangering boats and men. The banks consisted of dark alluvion ten to fifteen feet above the water, bearing a dense growth of trees and shrubbery. The plunging of these banks into the stream often sounded like ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... Austria, had solemnly guaranteed the neutrality of Belgium. In the preservation of this neutrality our deepest sentiments and our most vital interests are alike involved. Its violation would not only shatter the independence of Belgium itself: it would undermine the whole basis which renders possible the neutrality of any State and the very existence of such States as are much weaker than their neighbors. We acted in 1914 just as we acted in 1870. We sought from both ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... Russian princess came to marry a Rajput king is easier to understand if one recalls the sinister designs of Russian statecraft in the days when India and "warm sea-water" was the great objective. The oldest, and surely the easiest, means of a perplexed diplomacy has been to send a woman to undermine the policy of courts or steal the very consciences of kings. Delilah is a case in point. And in India, where the veil and the rustling curtain and religion hide woman's hand without in the least suppressing her, ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy

... to 'undermine the idea of the state,' he besieges king and government with petitions for money; and he will confess in a letter, 'I should very much like to write publicly about the mean behaviour of the government,' which, however, he refrains from doing. He gets sore and angry ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... equal number of those of the nobility, who were stipulated to be delivered as hostages for the fulfilment of a treaty with Portugal, in 1393. [47] There will be occasion to notice, in the first chapter of this History, some of the circumstances, which, contributing to undermine the power of the commons, prepared the way for the eventual subversion of ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott

... stood upon the bank of the river, about sixty yards from its margin; and the purpose of the commander of the Indians was to undermine this, and blow up the garrison. Duquesne was pushing the mine under the fort with energy when his operations were discovered by the besieged. The miners precipitated the earth which they excavated into the river; and ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley

... peace in any form is most welcome to them. Titus approacheth reluctantly. He had rather deliver Jerusalem than besiege it. I am of the loved and dethroned Maccabaean line—acceptable to every faction of Jewry, from the Essenes to the Sicarii. Titus is my friend, unless he suspects me as coming to undermine his better friend, the pretty Herod. I shall help Jerusalem help herself; I shall make peace with Rome; I shall be King of the Jews!—Behold, is not my ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller

... community to Protestantism. The people demanded that the Bible should be read in the church in Turkish or Arabic, instead of the ancient Armenian and Syriac, which were, to most of them, dead languages; and the Jacobite bishop was forced to yield. Finding, at length, that this must rapidly undermine the priestly influence, he secretly removed the Scriptures from the church. But the word of the Lord was not bound, for the deacons or readers carried their ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson

... ambitious just desire, To mastery in so fire an art aspire, Must all extreams first diligently shun, And in a settled course of vertue run. Let him not fortune with stiff greatness climb, Nor, courtier-like, with cringes undermine: Nor all the brother blockheads of the pot, Ever persuade him to become a sot; Nor flatter poets to acquire the fame Of, I protest, a pretty gentleman. But whether in the war he wou'd be great, Or, in the gentler arts that rule a state; Or, else his amorous ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter

... now grown beyond such beliefs, but he did nothing to undermine Mhor's trust. He knew that the longer you can believe in such things the ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)

... your enquiring after Sir Timorous: I suspect you have some design upon him: You would fain undermine your cousin, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott

... use the provisions and supplies of the colonists.[87] It is also known that a commercial company of Baltimore, whose business it was to prosecute the African slave trade, was jealous of the Society and tried to undermine it. In addition, the trials and hardships incidental to founding the colony had reduced many of the settlers to want.[88] The most ignorant could thus fathom their condition: "We suffer: if the Society have means and does not apply them to our relief, it ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various

... him so that he grew cross, thinner than ever before, and generally disheveled. The little girl saw that another week of such confinement would all but kill him; while if he were shut up in the cave unchained he would undermine the stack. She feared, however, to give him his entire freedom; so she set to work to puzzle out a scheme that would ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates

... Military Governors to endorse his policy, but this action although crowned with success so far as the army chiefs were concerned—the conference voting solidly for war—was responsible for greatly alarming Parliament which saw in this procedure a new attempt to undermine its power and control the country by extra-legal means. Furthermore, publication in the Metropolitan press of what the Japanese were doing behind the scenes created a fear that extraordinary intrigues were being indulged ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale

... industrialists bent upon the absorbing object of productive efficiency; but they have paid a price they little realize. For in the attainment of this minor object, they have made a tremendous breach in the greatest defense of the existing order of society against the advancing enemy. To undermine the foundations of Liberty is to ...
— What Prohibition Has Done to America • Fabian Franklin

... would have thought, (so cunningly the rude[039] And scorned partes were mingled with the fine,) That Nature had for wantonesse ensude Art, and that Art at Nature did repine; So striving each th' other to undermine, Each did the others worke more beautify; So diff'ring both in willes agreed in fine; So all agreed, through sweete diversity, This Gardin to adorn ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson

... celebrated to the most distant corners of the earth; why, if mercenaries are necessary, those of Hanover are preferred to others: or why, if they are, indeed, preferable, they are now to be hired at a higher rate than at any former time? It appears to me of far more importance to undermine the foundation, than to batter the superstructure of our present system of politicks; and of greater use to inquire, why we have engaged in a war on the continent, than why we carry it ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson

... are their censor and critic, their stern taskmaster, who will not always hear before condemning; nay, you may give them a smart shower of stones, if the fancy takes you, or confiscate their property. The informer's tongue has no terrors for you; no burglar will scale or undermine your walls in search of gold; you are not troubled with book-keeping or debt-collecting; you have no rascally steward to wrangle with; none of the thousand worries of the rich distract you. No, you patch your shoe, and you take your ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata

... the mine, when a man named Cash, a fellow who had once been in the quartermaster's employ as a teamster, spoke up: "Governor Mason, did Judge Ricord say that?" "Yes," said the Governor; and then Cash related how he and another man, whose name he gave, had been employed by Ricord to undermine a heavy rock that rested above the mouth of the mine, so that it tumbled down, carrying with it a large quantity of earth, and completely filled it up, as we had seen; "and," said Cash, "it took us three ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... extreme antiquity, but the majority are comparatively modern. It is a significant fact that the entrance to perhaps the majority is in the sacristy of the parish church, and in that at Gapennes care was taken not to undermine the tower of the church. M. de Carpentin, who explored and reported on the excavation at Gapennes, remarks on the care taken to so distribute the chalk brought up from these passages and vaults that no ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould

... the basis is but frail. I mean such traitors as the vacant world Echoes most stunningly: not fur-robed knaves Whose whispers raise the dreaming bloodhound's ear Against benighted famished wanderers; While with remorseless guilt they undermine Palace and shed, their very father's house, O blind! their own, their children's heritage, To leave more ample space for fearful wealth. Plunder in some most harmless guise they swathe, Call it some ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor

... history of the past eighteen years or reflects upon the condition of public opinion. The peril, to put the matter plainly, is that Home Rulers will not stop at attaining Home Rule for Ireland, and that they may, and probably will, attempt to undermine the political predominance of England. Everything points in this direction. The agitation for Home Rule has fostered in Ireland, and to a very limited extent in certain other parts of the United Kingdom, a feeling approaching to jealousy of English ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey

... time our abode in the whale growing rather tedious and disagreeable, not able to bear it any longer, I began to think within myself how we might make our escape. My first scheme was to undermine the right-hand wall and get out there; and accordingly we began to cut away, but after getting through about five stadia, and finding it was to no purpose, we left off digging, and determined to set fire to the wood, which we imagined would destroy the whale, and secure us a ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian

... do not the Jesuits; they fain Would undermine the power of the land In which they dwell, and every effort strain To take the civil sceptre in their hand. They creep, as serpents, smoothly on their prey, But subtly spread their poison in ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats

... demented-bitter, accusing, rebellious. In such a mood he could not write. In place of inspiring him, the little town and its people seemed to undermine his power and turn his sweetness of spirit into gall and acid. He only bowed to them now as he walked feebly among them, and they excused it by referring to his sickness. They eyed him each time with pitying eyes; "He's failin' fast," they ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... no pains indeed in this piece of fruitless toil, and spent, I think, three or four weeks about it; at last finding it impossible to heave it up with my little strength, I fell to digging away the sand to undermine it; and so to make it fall down, setting pieces of wood to thrust and guide ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe

... only different, but opposed in strong contradistinction. The wrath of our ancestors, for example, was coloured GULES; it broke forth in acts of open and sanguinary violence against the objects of its fury. Our malignant feelings, which must seek gratification through more indirect channels, and undermine the obstacles which they cannot openly bear down, may be rather said to be tinctured SABLE. But the deep-ruling impulse is the same in both cases; and the proud peer who can now only ruin his neighbour according to law, by protracted ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... vital interest because they affected the moral condition of the country in which the baby was to grow up. Socialistic agitations, which a dispassionate bachelor could afford to regard with philosophic indifference, now presented themselves as diabolical plots to undermine the baby's happiness, and deprive her of whatever earthly goods Providence might see fit to bestow upon her, and so on, ad infinitum. From a radical, with revolutionary sympathies, my friend in the course of a year blossomed out into a conservative Philistine with a decided streak of optimism, ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... is if they martyrizes you for it at the stake?" wheezed the old man. He took up his tale anew. "So as I was sayin' he says to me, Sam Buckland do: 'Man to man,' he says, 'I respeck you for stickin' to principles what you don't 'old, Mat,' he says. 'And far be it from me to undermine a man's faith what he learned acrost his mother's knee,' he says. 'But see here,' he says; 'if that 'ole rockin'-hoss o' yours gets round the course I'll give you fi' pun for yourself; if a miracle happens and he gets ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant

... Every attempt to undermine the integrity of the Pontiff had now failed; and Henry saw with alarm that the thunder, which he had so long feared, was about to burst on his dominions. A plan of adjustment had been arranged between his envoys and Alexander; and to defeat the chicanery of his advisers, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various

... polished society countenance each other, and which reverses the principle of patriotism, by sacrificing public interests to private ones,—the substitution of intellectual for moral excitement, and the repression of enthusiasm by fastidiousness and ridicule,—these are among the causes that undermine a people,—that corrupt in the very act of enlightening them; till they become, what a French writer calls "esprits exigeans et caracteres complaisans," and the period in which their rights are best understood may be that in which they most ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore

... bed of death. He had refused to quit the room which he usually occupied, all encumbered as it was with his favourite hounds, his hunting accoutrements, and these horns, the winding of which had been his favourite amusement, and had contributed so powerfully to affect his lungs, and undermine his constitution. A sort of couch had been prepared for him of mattresses and cushions upon the floor; and upon that rude bed was the emaciated form of the dying monarch extended. To his customary attacks of blood-spitting, had succeeded a strange, and, until then, unknown symptom of malady, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various

... can do," Wallingford had said, with some confidence. And then he had added, with a cynical laugh, "But there are other things that—why, it would be, literally, as much as my life's worth to even try to undermine them!" ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher

... State at home, he would then encourage the seamen to be most vigilant abroad; for, said he, 'tis not our duty to mind State-affairs, but to keep foreigners from fooling us." The idea among the ultra-Republicans of using Blake's popularity to undermine Cromwell had ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... snow-drift upon which we stood rose directly out of the water, and, so far as we knew, it might have no other foundation than a narrow strip of ice. If so, the faintest breeze from any direction except north would roll in waves high enough to undermine and break up the whole escarpment, and either precipitate us with an avalanche of snow into the open sea, or leave us clinging like barnacles to the bare face of the precipice, seventy-five feet above it. Neither alternative was pleasant to contemplate, and I determined, if ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan

... search of a means to undermine the confidence which united Ovid and Carmina, and still calling on her invention in vain, Mrs. Gallilee had passed a sleepless night. Her maid, entering the room at the usual hour, was ordered to leave her in bed, and not to return until the bell ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins

... him here to judge him, and he is already bored," she continued. "He pines for Paris, I tell him; the nostalgia of criticism is on him; he has no author to pluck, no system to undermine, no poet to drive to despair, and he dares not commit some debauch in this house which might lift for a moment the burden of his ennui. Alas! my love is not real enough, perhaps, to soothe his brain; I don't intoxicate him! Make him drunk at dinner to-night and ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac

... Carlisle. Strafford, The wind that saps these walls can undermine Your camp in Scotland, too. Whence creeps the wind? Have you no eyes except for Pym? Look here! A breed of silken creatures lurk and thrive In your contempt. You'll vanquish Pym? Old Vane Can vanquish you. And Vane you think to fly? Rush on the Scots! Do nobly! Vane's slight sneer Shall test success, ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... or killed; the death-rate of officers was terrible. Freddy had died as he had lived, an almost perfect example of England's manhood—a striking proof that her decadence was an ugly scandal, whose birthplace was Berlin. It was one of Germany's many clever forms of propaganda, intended to undermine England's prestige in the eyes of neutrals when the "great ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... world, Tony.' A woman of blood and imagination in the warring world, without a mate whom she can revere, subscribes to a likeness with those independent minor realms between greedy mighty neighbours, which conspire and undermine when they do not openly threaten to devour. So, then, this union, the return to the wedding yoke, received sanction of grey-toned reason. She was not enamoured she could say it to herself. She had, however, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Farnum. "Yet, if she is helping to undermine the secrets of the United States Government, something will have to ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham

... times when the classical perfection of our graceful tongue is strangely inadequate to express emotion," confessed Kai Lung, colouring deeply, as Hwa-mei stood revealed before him. "It is truly said: 'The ingenuity of a guileless woman will undermine nine mountains.' You have cut off all the ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah

... Hawthorne speaks of in "The Custom House"; alluding to "old King Derby, old Billy Gray, old Simon Forrester, and many another magnate of his day; whose powdered head, however, was scarcely in the tomb, before his mountain-pile of wealth began to dwindle." But Nathaniel's family neither helped to undermine the heap, nor accumulated a rival one. However good the forecast that his immediate ancestors had made, as to the quickest and broadest road to wealth, they travelled long in the wake of success without ever winning it, themselves. The malediction ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop

... truth? The great consolidations that have been effected during the past few years have resulted from the enactment of statutory laws. These laws have emanated from the brains of men, paid by the Trust magnates to undermine the republic. No more treasonable acts were ever committed than by the men who have sold the rights of a free people to a band of ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams

... Mrs. Southcott, has an idea of entrusting an egg to that particular denomination, or merely understands that she has no business in the building and is consequently frantic to enter it, I cannot determine; but she is constantly endeavouring to undermine the principal door: while her partner, who is infirm upon his legs, walks up and down, encouraging her and defying the Universe. But, the family I have been best acquainted with, since the removal from this trying sphere of a Chinese circle at ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... now—for this moment— 'Tis thine, but think with terror on the slow, The quiet power of time. From open violence The attachment of thy soldiery secures thee Today—tomorrow: but grant'st thou them a respite Unheard, unseen, they'll undermine that love On which thou now dost feel so firm a footing, With wily theft will draw away from thee One after the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)

... the real direction of affairs to an Armenian noble named Moushegh, who belonged to the illustrious family of the Mamigonians. Moushegh ruled Armenia with vigor, but was suspected of maintaining over-friendly relations with the Roman emperor, Valens, and of designing to undermine and supplant his master. Varaztad, after a while, having been worked on by his counsellors, grew suspicious of him, and caused him to be executed at a banquet. This treachery roused the indignation of Moushegh's brother Manuel, who ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson

... Word that kindled the heart of Luther to the work of Reformation, and the Word alone could bring it to its consummation. With the Word the whole Church of Christ and the entire fabric of our civilization must stand or fall. Undermine the Bible and you undermine the world. It is the one, true, and only Charter of Faith, Liberty, and salvation for man, without which this race of ours is a hopeless and abandoned wreck. And when Luther gave forth his German Bible, it was ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss

... wooden penthouses over them, and closely woven wicker defences, marched on slowly and cautiously, and attempted to undermine the walls with iron tools: many also bore ladders which had been made of the height of the walls, and came up close to them: when some were dashed down by stones hurled on their heads, others were transfixed by whizzing javelins, and falling back, dragged ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... thought casts a terrible light upon our present epoch, in which, far more than at any former period, money sways the laws and politics and morals. Institutions, books, men, and dogmas, all conspire to undermine belief in a future life,—a belief upon which the social edifice has rested for eighteen hundred years. The grave, as a means of transition, is little feared in our day. The future, which once opened to us beyond the requiems, has now been ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac

... their children to school, or to allow them to remain there. They cannot comprehend the advantage of having their children clothed, fed, or educated, whilst they lose their services; on the contrary, they find that all the instruction, advice, or influence of the European, tends to undermine among the children their own customs and authority, and that when compelled to enforce these upon them, they themselves incur the odium of the white men. Independently, however, of this consideration, and of the natural desire ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... for instruction. These arguments so closely resemble those of the Jesuits that they might have been inspired direct from the Vatican, or, which is the same thing, the notorious "court-chaplain party" in Berlin. No wonder, then, that these propositions, which would undermine the whole liberty of science, have met with the loudest approbation from the "Germania," the "New Evangelical Church Times" ("Neue Evangelischen Kirchenzeitung"), and other leading, equivocating organs of the Church militant. ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel

... Mrs. Kent Page?" asked Stephen in surprise, and remembered that his mother had once accused Corinna of trying to "undermine society." ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow

... much the history of the Union General. The latter was solemnly blessed by the Pope, and in a like way Zola shows us the Universal receiving the Papal benediction. Moreover, the second object of the Union General was to undermine the financial power of the Jews, and in the novel we find a similar purpose ascribed to Saccard's Bank. The union, we know, was eventually crushed by the great Israelite financiers, and this again is the fate which overtakes the institution ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson

... represent consciousness generate some second motive power distinct from, at variance with, and often stronger than, the original impetus? Clearly no scientific thinker can admit this. To do so would be to undermine the entire fabric of science, to contradict what is its first axiom and its last conclusion. If then the motion of our six billiard balls has anything, when it corresponds to consciousness, distinct in kind from what it always had, it ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock

... operated to scare Smooth Crumbaugh clean out of Colored Odd Fellows' Hall and leave the fainting Ophelia in the rescuing arms of Jeff. But there had been half a dozen other affairs, each of such intensity as temporarily to undermine Jeff's peace of mind. Between spells of infatuations for attractive strangers, she accepted Jeff's devotions. The trouble was, though, that life, with Ophelia, seemed to be just one infatuation after ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb

... the barbican we ascended a narrow lane, winding between walls, and came on an open esplanade within the fortress, called the Plaza de los Algibes, or Place of the Cisterns, from great reservoirs which undermine it, cut in the living rock by the Moors, for the supply of the fortress. Here, also, is a well of immense depth, furnishing the purest and coldest of water, another monument of the delicate taste of the Moors, who ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... which uncertainty has hitherto deterred the wise, and obscurity the ignorant. Happy, if we can unite the boundaries of the different species of philosophy, by reconciling profound enquiry with clearness, and truth with novelty! And still more happy, if, reasoning in this easy manner, we can undermine the foundations of an abstruse philosophy, which seems to have hitherto served only as a shelter to superstition, and a ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al

... that soon after the birth of Romulus and his brother Remus, Amulius, King of Alba, fearing that they might one day undermine his authority, ordered that they should be exposed on the banks of the Tiber; and that in this situation the infant Romulus was suckled by a wild beast; that he was afterward educated by the shepherds, and brought up in the rough way of living and labors of the countrymen; and that ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... afterwards used force to reassert imperial rights over the Italian cities, acting not so much in the interest of the Empire as for the aggrandizement of the Spanish monarchy. At the same time the Papacy, which had done so much to undermine the authority of the Empire, exercised a power at once anomalous and ill-recognized except in the immediate States of the Church. By the extinction of the House of Hohenstauffen and by the assumed right to grant the investiture of the kingdom of Naples ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... run ferreting down in my part o' the country. You, or Eccles—I don't care who 'tis—you've been at my servants to get at my secrets. Some of you have. You've declared war. You've been trying to undermine me. That's a breach, I call it. Anyhow, I've come for my wife. I'll ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... people do not regard religion seriously, where they desire and accept religion as aesthetic enjoyment." Nevertheless, the evil attending this type of teaching is, to our thinking, great and serious, designed to undermine selfhood and to set up a species of dry-rot ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer

... was also determined, that thanks should be given by the town of Mansoul to Mr. Prywell, for his diligent seeking of the welfare of their town: and further, that forasmuch as he was so naturally inclined to seek their good, and also to undermine their foes, they gave him a commission of scout-master-general, for the good ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan

... head, on the virtue of his wife. This leads to the wager which forms so important an incident in the drama. Ambrogiolo bets one thousand florins of gold against five thousand, that Zinevra, like the rest of her sex, is accessible to temptation—that in less than three months he will undermine her virtue, and bring her husband the most undeniable proofs of her falsehood. He sets off for Genoa, in order to accomplish his purpose; but on his arrival, all that he learns, and all that he beholds with his own eyes, ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... clamour has turned a slippery statesmen from the paths of patriotism and propriety, and whose subterranean machinations—aided and abetted by men versed in Jesuistic and Machiavellian strategy, and who believe that the end justifies the means—threaten to undermine the British Empire, and to involve the citizens of England in political and financial ruin. A pretty pass for a respectable individual like John Bull. England to be worked by the wire-pulling of a few under-bred, half-educated priests! whose tincture of learning John himself ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... feeling of Judah Halevi, Crescas had this in common with the medival national poet that he resented the domination of Jewish belief and thought by the alien Greek speculation. In a style free from rhetoric, and characterized rather by a severe brevity and precision, he undertakes to undermine the Aristotelian position by using the Stagirite's own weapons, logical analysis and proof. His chief work is the "Or ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik

... required nor admitted of any cure. This conclusion therefore did really more animate than depress me." Note that his health, usually delicate, is here raised to the level of his morality, although what it had suffered through the various disturbances might have been enough to undermine it. He had the satisfaction of feeling that he had some hold against fortune, and that it would take a greater ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various

... RALPH. Undermine the other fellow. You can't go to those movie people now, Maud. They'd star you as the celebrated Maud Builder who gave her father into custody. Come to us instead, and have perfect freedom, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... Scrooge's horror, looking back, he saw the last of the land, a frightful range of rocks, behind them; and his ears were deafened by the thundering of water, as it rolled and roared, and raged among the dreadful caverns it had worn, and fiercely tried to undermine the earth. ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens

... to speak familiarly, a mere matter of feeling. They are, therefore, I thought, favorable to prudence and clear-sightedness, but a perpetual worm at the root both of the passions and of the virtues; and above all fearfully undermine all desires and ... all except the purely physical and organic; of the entire insufficiency of which to make life desirable, no one had a stronger conviction than I had.... All those to whom I ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... St. Petersburg speeches of English politicians, which often sounded more offensive there than in London: he also had to watch and report to London the unofficial doings and sayings of the aggressive Pan-Slavist party, who might at any moment undermine ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore

... is great for thickness, it is compacted of all the grace and goodness of God, both spiritual and temporal; and for height, if you count from the utmost side to the utmost, then it is higher than heaven, who can storm it? (Heb 7:26) and for depth, it is lower than hell, who can undermine it? (Job 11:8). ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... ways, May laud the rose, and wish, from hour to hour, That he had petals like the empress-flower, And there could grow, unwing'd, and be a bud, With all his warblings ta'en at singing-flood And turned to vagaries of the wildest scent To undermine the meekness in ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay

... the notion that the will of a mere majority is absolute in the state. The law is a reality only when the outlawed interests represent an insignificant minority. Arbitrarily to increase the outlawed interests is to undermine the ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various

... looked only to their masters at Versailles; and hence a state of things as curious as it was lamentable. The little settlement was a hot-bed of gossip, backbiting, and slander. Officials of every degree were continually trying to undermine and supplant one another, besieging the minister with mutual charges. Brouillan, the governor, was a frequent object of attack. He seems to have been of an irritable temper, aggravated perhaps by an old unhealed wound in the cheek, ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman

... Communist argument that, although capitalist propaganda can prevent the majority from becoming Communists, yet capitalist laws and police forces cannot prevent the Communists, while still a minority, from acquiring a supremacy of military power. It is thought that secret propaganda can undermine the army and navy, although it is admittedly impossible to get the majority to vote at elections for the programme of the Bolsheviks. This view is based upon Russian experience, where the army and navy had suffered defeat and had been ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell

... drove her parlour young ladies in the Regent's Park, was an exile from her native country (Islington was her birthplace, and Grigson her paternal name), and an outlaw at the suit of Samuel Sherrick: that Mr. Sherrick whose wine-vaults undermine Lady Whittlesea's Chapel where the eloquent ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... of Parliament as a whole. In order to secure that this distinction is maintained, and in order to avoid the defects of the French committee system under which independent rapporteurs disregard and override the authority of the ministers, and thus gravely undermine their responsibility, it would be necessary not only that each committee should include a majority of supporters of Government, but that the chair should be occupied by the minister ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various

... censuring me for violence in language it did not try to controvert what I said. I have always entertained the opinion that frauds in elections are more dangerous crimes than cheating, theft and robbery, because they are committed against the whole people and sap and undermine republican institutions. I have always denounced them, or anything approaching them, when ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman



Words linked to "Undermine" :   cave, weaken, disobey, sabotage, sap, hollow, core out, hollow out, derail



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