Sordid dirtiness

Usage examples of sordidness.

There is no gusto, no beauty, no intensity of bitterness even, to make its sordidness interesting in any other than a pathological way.

But their wants soon reduced them to stock-raiding and other predatory practices, with the result that in the end the whole countryside made common cause against them, and so the last phase of the fratricidal struggle deteriorated into a man hunt away in the backblocks north of Perth and the southern districts, full of heroic incidents, but devoid of historical interest except as far as serving, by reason of its sordidness and cruelty, to extinguish thoroughly any lingering sympathy which the coastal population might still cherish for the lost cause of Western Australia.

The ampler horizon it presented, the loftier ideals it set up, the counteracting agency it supplied to the sordidness of motive and act which, left unchecked, was certain to overwhelm the national spirit--all these were enforced by him again and again with clearness and effectiveness.