Degenerate

Famous quotes containing the word degenerate:

    Were it not for the corruption and viciousness of degenerate men, there would be no ... necessity that men should separate from this great and natural community, and by positive agreements combine into smaller and divided associations.
    John Locke (1632–1704)

    A degenerate nobleman is like a turnip. There is nothing good of him but that which is underground.
    Seventeenth-century English saying.

    It would seem as if the very language of our parlors would lose all its nerve and degenerate into palaver wholly, our lives pass at such remoteness from its symbols, and its metaphors and tropes are necessarily so far fetched.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)