Admiration was in danger of degenerating into adulation; as, for example, when a literary man, on his introduction to her, asked "whether a bat might be allowed to appear in the presence of a nightingale."

Imagine my feelings when I found that I was degenerating, little by little, into a slow left-hand bowler with a swerve.

[* Degendering, degenerating.]

The moral standing of the nation, taken as a whole, has been degenerating; in business, in public affairs, in private life, until the standards of value have been confused, the line of demarcation between right and wrong blurred to indistinctness, and the old motives of honour, duty, service, charity, chivalry and compassion are no longer the controlling motive, or at least the conscious aspiration, of active men.

The errors and false theories of great men sometimes, perhaps most often, arise out of true ideas falsified by degenerating into conceptions; or the mind excited to action by an inworking idea, the understanding works in the same direction according to its kind, and produces a counterfeit, in which the mind rests.

The gentleman was sporting and harmless, the lady was good-natured, and just sufficiently eccentric to be amusing without degenerating into a bore.

Even in 1824 it was said to be degenerating, and gentlemen who had previously been the chief breeders gradually deserted the fancy.

Remarkably intelligent, and caring enough for sport to be sympathetically excited at the sight of a rabbit without degenerating into cranks on the subject like terriers.

Free, civilized, and prosperous communities are brought face to face, as it were, with the mixed and degenerating populations of the Slave country.

If it testifies any thing, it is only this, that the natural disposition of the negroes is not always proof against the degenerating influences of slavery.[A] Again, the actual wants of the negroes are very few and easily supplied, and they will undoubtedly prefer going into the woods where they can live almost without labor, to toiling in the hot cane fields or climbing the coffee mountains.

The round hand of the schoolmaster, under the House of Hanover, degenerating into the careless, half-formed hands of the present day.

In times of stress, a "messianic" element tended to become prominent: the world is bad and degenerating; morality and a just social order have decayed, but the coming of a savior is close; the saviour will bring a new, fair order and destroy those who are wicked.

And this shows how the race over there on the little island is degenerating.

During an evening spent at Tent Lodge Tennyson remarked, on the similarity of the monkey's skull to the human, that a young monkey's skull is quite human in shape, and gradually altersthe analogy being borne out by the human skull being at first more like the statues of the gods, and gradually degenerating into human; and then, turning to Mrs. Tennyson, "There, that's the second original remark I've made this evening!"

Any criticism of an edition of Shakspeare must necessarily concern itself with seemingly insignificant matters, often with a comma or a syllable,and the danger is always of degenerating into a captiousness and word-catching unworthy the lover of truth for its own sake.

Look at your poor girls, many of them fading round you, dropping off in consumption or decline; or, what is worse, degenerating to sour old maidsenvious, back-biting, wretched, because life is a desert to them; or, what is worst of all, reduced to strive, by scarce modest coquetry and debasing artifice, to gain that position and consideration by marriage, which to celibacy is denied.

He is many times flat and insipid; his comick wit degenerating into clinches, his serious swelling into bombast.

Her ladyship was anxious to obtain some juvenile anecdotes of her hero; but the Bishop contrived to be amusing without degenerating into gossip.

It should be therefore the Concern of every wise and virtuous Woman, to keep this Sprightliness from degenerating into Levity.

The armies of James, meanwhile, made no headway against the courageous and determined defenders of Derry, where the siege was degenerating into a blockade, the scanty rations and sickness of the besieged being a far more formidable danger than the attacks of the besiegers.

The men who executed it evidently felt something of the inspiration that breathes in the original, and they have produced a version that will remain to all time a monument of the simplicity, dignity, grace, and melody of the English language; its very style has had a nobly educative effect on the national literature, and has contributed more than anything else to prevent it from degenerating into the merely frivolous and formal.

If they can be kept from degenerating, their rise when it comes will lift those below them, but it is a Herculean task to lift them by lifting all below as well.

Thanks in great part to Gibbon Wakefield's much-abused Company, New Zealand was fortunate in the mental calibre of her pioneer settlers, and in their determined efforts to save their children from degenerating into loutish, half-educated provincials.

On women we must depend, first and last, for personal and household hygienefor preventing the race from degenerating in as far as these things are concerned.

Either it is a remnant of something degenerating, something which once has been immense, or it is a particle of what will in the future develop into something immense; but in the present it is unsatisfying, it gives much less than one expects.