| 1. | "Then you will degenerate still more, sir.. - from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte |
| 2. | There is nothing weak-minded or degenerate about Miss Howard. - from The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie |
| 3. | Why, the degenerate fellow might as well have been a fiddler. - from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne |
| 4. | That so degenerate a strain as thi. - from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare |
| 5. | The more degenerate and base art tho. - from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare |
| 6. | His noble kinsman-most degenerate kin. - from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare |
| 7. | A recreant and most degenerate traito. - from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare |
| 8. | Such men as live in these degenerate day. - from The Iliad of Homer by Homer |
| 9. | Surely it will never, on the contrary, be suffered to degenerate from man to fien. - from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte |
| 10. | 'She degenerates into a mere slu. - from Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte |
| 11. | Gods how the son degenerates from the sire. - from The Iliad of Homer by Homer |
| 12. | Christianity gave Eros poison to drink he did not die of it, certainly, but degenerated to Vice. - from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche |
| 13. | Everything has degenerated in this century, even the rascals. - from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo |
| 14. | In some it is more, in others it is less worn, clipt, and otherwise degenerated from that standard. - from An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith |
| 15. | In Moscow he degenerated so much that if he had had to be there for long together, he might in good earnest have come to considering his salvation in Petersburg he felt himself a man of the world again. - from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy |
| 16. | "Monsieur," retorted Gavroche, "perhaps you were a man of wit yesterday, but you have degenerated this morning.. - from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo |
| 17. | Inasmuch, then, as this Leviathan comes floundering down upon us from the head-waters of the Eternities, it may be fitly inquired, whether, in the long course of his generations, he has not degenerated from the original bulk of his sires. - from Moby Dick; or The Whale by Herman Melville |
| 18. | So much that plant degenerates from its seed, As more than Beatrice and Margaret Costanza still boasts of her valorous spouse. - from The Divine Comedy, Complete by Dante Alighieri |