Wolfe wanted to exhibit the spiritual impoverishment, the cultural barrenness and the social snobbery of the American small town.

Everywhere in this forlorn, seedy world the imagery is of decay, confinement and material and spiritual impoverishment: beggars and cripples, gimcracks and trash, cramped rooms, dirty sunlight, dead-end lives.

The result was grinding inefficiency and material and spiritual impoverishment.

In the first half of the novel, he reflects on the spiritual, intellectual, and moral impoverishment of his family to his Roman student Gambetti.

This has prevented women from truly being themselves and it has resulted in a spiritual impoverishment of humanity.

Only music that stems from spiritual impoverishment enriches my life, Oh, like everybody else I had my summer of soul, like a lot of white boys, thought I'd found my truest voice.

Those years of "pizza and champagne" are now over, but they left a legacy of spiritual and material impoverishment that Mr. Bielinsky found hard to ignore.

The dancers arrive and leave with strong impressions: of spiritual impoverishment, of vacant streets, of distances, of people unable to show themselves, of glamour and illusion.

But it is also a matter of spiritual impoverishment, the lack of human liberties, and the result of any violation of human rights and human dignity.

Indeed, in some circles, the notion has taken hold that the Libeskind Vision should be seen as a bulwark against the spiritual impoverishment of a commercial society.