The lapping waves of the open portion gradually undermine and cause it to break off in large masses like icebergs, which gives rise to a precipitous front like the discharging wall of a glacier entering the sea.

Some of these kings were poets, and others were saints, like their great ancestor David; and yet, in spite of all their efforts, corruption, and infidelity gained ground, and ultimately undermined the state and prepared the way for Babylonian conquests.

We shall hardly be far wrong if we say that the new interest in the future and the progress of the race has done a great deal to undermine unconsciously the old interest in a life beyond the grave; and it has dissolved the blighting doctrine of the radical corruption of man.

It was accused of secretly undermining slavery and exciting false hopes among the slaves.

He liked to visit his favorites, and received visits from them in return so long as his physical forces remained; but when these were hopelessly undermined by self-indulgence, he buried himself in his palaces, and rarely appeared in public.

While Voltaire was indirectly undermining the religious convictions of mankind, the Encyclopedists more directly attacked the sources of religious belief, and openly denied what Voltaire had doubted.

The Pro-slavery faction in Kansas, stimulated by the constant support of the National Administration, was engaged in a final effort to maintain a supremacy over the affairs of that Territory which the current of immigration from the Free States had been steadily undermining.

Efforts at organization of the people and by the people, are perpetually being undermined.

At the same time her natural resources were being depleted and with the growing importance of cotton, rubber and petroleum, all of which Britain must import, her economic ascendancy was progressively undermined.

Other influences, more sincere and at the same time more dangerous, were simultaneously undermining men's minds.

But spightfully to undermine my fame, To take away my arte!

The Government will never be able to count upon a well-armed and self-sacrificing people in the hour of danger or necessity, if it calmly looks on while the warlike spirit is being systematically undermined by the Press and a feeble peace policy preached, still less if it allows its own organs to join in with the same note, and continually to emphasize the maintenance of peace as the object of all policy.

If it must be destroyed, from the prevalence of the same vices which have uniformly undermined all empires,utter and unspeakable rottenness and depravity,in spite of Christianity, whether nominal or real; if eternal justice must bear sway on this earth, bringing its fearful retributions for the abuse of privileges and general wickedness,then we accept the natural effects of that violence which consummated the ruin.

Without this salutary measure the whole structure and validity of international law would be permanently undermined.

It is a method of astutely undermining or outflanking prejudice.

I represented to them that they were, as a class, both arrogant and luxurious, and would, indeed, have long ago become insupportable, only that the fabric which their rapacity was for ever striving to erect, their extravagance as perpetually undermined.

Many who call themselves Christian preachers busily undermine moral sentiment, by telling their hearers, that if they do not believe the Bible (or the Church), they can have no firm religion or morality, and will have no reason to give against following brutal appetite.

To this Avarice replied, that he looked upon Plenty (the first Minister of his Antagonist) to be a much more destructive Counsellor than Poverty, for that he was perpetually suggesting Pleasures, banishing all the necessary Cautions against Want, and consequently undermining those Principles on which the Government of Avarice was founded.

But in doing this, the statesmen or politicians concerned failed to take into account certain factors and facts which must inevitably, in the course of time, undermine their arrangements.

The administration of Mr. Lincoln will be conservative, because no government is ever intentionally otherwise, and because power never knowingly undermines the foundation on which it rests.

(2) In the nineteenth century the discoveries of science in many fields bore with full force upon fabrics which had been constructed in a naïve and ignorant age; and historical criticism undermined methodically the authority of the sacred documents which had hitherto been exposed chiefly to the acute but unmethodical criticisms of common sense.

But as the aristocracy became converted into a special ruling class concentrating in its hands not only power but also wealth, the clients became parasites and beggars; and the new adherents of the rich undermined outwardly and inwardly the burgess class.