Fear is the proof of a degenerate mind. [ Virgil ]

Where flowers degenerate man cannot live. [ Napoleon ]

Oft have I heard that grief softens the mind
And makes it fearful and degenerate. [ William Shakespeare ]

Prudence is a necessary ingredient in all the virtues, without which they degenerate into folly and excess. [ Jeremy Collier ]

Devotion, when it does not lie under the check of reason, is apt to degenerate into enthusiasm (fanaticism). [ Addison ]

The lust of gold succeeds the lust of conquest; The lust of gold, unfeeling and remorseless! The last corruption of degenerate man. [ Samuel Johnson ]

We derive from nature no fault that may not become a virtue, no virtue that may not degenerate into a fault. Faults of the latter kind are most difficult to cure. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

A little grain of the romance is no ill ingredient to preserve and exalt the dignity of human nature, without which it is apt to degenerate into everything that is sordid, vicious and low. [ Swift ]

As the index tells us the contents of stories and directs to the particular chapter, even so does the outward habit and superficial order of garments (in man or woman) give us a taste of the spirit, and demonstratively point (as it were a manual note from the margin) all the internal quality of the soul; and there cannot be a more evident, palpable, gross manifestation of poor, degenerate, dunghilly blood and breeding than a rude, unpolished, disordered, and slovenly outside. [ Massinger ]