Famous quotes containing the word degenerate:
“A degenerate nobleman is like a turnip. There is nothing good of him but that which is underground.”
—Seventeenth-century English saying.
“We now demand the light artillery of the intellect; we need the curt, the condensed, the pointed, the readily diffusedin place of the verbose, the detailed, the voluminous, the inaccessible. On the other hand, the lightness of the artillery should not degenerate into pop-gunneryby which term we may designate the character of the greater portion of the newspaper presstheir sole legitimate object being the discussion of ephemeral matters in an ephemeral manner.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (18091845)
“He was ... a degenerate gambler. That is, a man who gambled simply to gamble and must lose. As a hero who goes to war must die. Show me a gambler and Ill show you a loser, show me a hero and Ill show you a corpse.”
—Mario Puzo (b. 1920)