"Abject" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lies in it. They hear the Chief Clerk read of "the efforts made by the Government during the past thirty years in the interest of education," and applaud; while at the Royal Banquet they jostle and hustle each other to kiss the edge of Majesty's frock-coat. The abject slaves! ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... Whether these two dependents understood that they were being reproached for living at his expense, I don't know, but their stomachs looked more pinched than ever, and their whole figures shrivelled up, grew gloomier and more abject than before. . . . Their submissive air exasperated ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... like an embryo among these men; he had admired Nathan's book, he had reverenced the author as an immortal; Nathan's abject attitude before this critic, whose name and importance were both unknown ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... of warmth Rose-Marie moved just a fraction of an inch closer to the boy. She knew, somehow, that his small, curiously abject apology was in a way related to the "kid sister"; she knew, almost instinctively, that this Lily who could make a smile come to the dark little face, who could make a tenderness dwell in those hard young eyes, was the only avenue by ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... Blake's departure—he came to join them. They watched his approach in silence, and both noted—though with different eyes and different feelings—the pallor of his fair face, the dark lines under his colourless eyes. His condition was abject, and his manners, never of the best—for there was much of the spoiled child about Richard—were clearly ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... is not dead, the ideal love, but indwells, a redeeming power, wherever there are desolate hearts and minds to be updrawn and united by its ministry; a power so lustral in its nature, that no abject and despairing thought creeps into its presence but is purified and exalted by its regard. This love brings hope and cheerful constancy; with a shining falchion it affrights into their natal darkness ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... one after another, all because, at the beginning of her sophomore year, she had made a reputation for brilliant literary work? Eleanor had been right, when she was a freshman, in insisting that it was the start which counted. Then, despite her first abject failure, she had compassed the difficult achievement of a second start. How proud Betty had been of her! And now all her fair hopes and high ambitions had crumbled to dust and ashes. Was it right to help her cover up the ruin? ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... pain he evidently suffered, Jock could hardly wait to lead his masters back to the flock. Hurrying on with him they crossed a little rise of ground and came upon the sheep which were crowded close to one another, panting in abject terror. ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... place with which to get mixed up with that I know, and I've gone over a great many maps since I left home and know just how small the world is. So, I sent the Khedive my books after having asked his permission, and received the most abject thanks. And as Cromer called on me, I am going to drop around on him with a few of them. Some day there will be fine things going on here, and there is only one God, and Lord Cromer is his Prophet in ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... me the abject thing I was. Her conditions were harder than death; but the hope she had spoken was like a glimpse of ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... follow still further what happened. The shopkeepers, finding their trade quite gone, for it was almost worth a person's life to go into their shops, watched as they were by paid spies, had to capitulate to the League. An abject apology and a promise to let themselves be evicted next time were the price they had to pay to be allowed in a free country to carry on their trade. Ruin faced them both ways. After having the ban of boycotting taken ...
— About Ireland • E. Lynn Linton
... with a threatening demeanour. Our landing was opposed, but a few well-directed volleys from a Gardiner gun (which did not jam) caused the hostile force to disperse, and we landed in great state. Marching on the chief's house, we were received with an abject submission that I had scarcely expected. The people were absolutely cowed, more by the fulfilment of the prophecy, I think, than even by the execution done by our Gardiner machine gun. At the bishop's request, I delivered a ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... position was not one to encourage impartiality in his presentation of facts, and that the imperial favour was not won by plain speaking; nevertheless we have before us a man who could not obliterate himself enough to play the abject flatterer always, and he gives us the reverse, too, of his brilliant picture, as we shall ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... left the water, but a few seconds had elapsed and the saurian was not two yards from me. The abject horror and hopelessness of that moment was something I can never forget. Suddenly Lekas came floundering through the mud; a second more, and he perceived my enemy when almost within reach of ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... the best war, and therefore she has suffered all the evils of the worst war and the worst peace. The average Chinaman took the view that China was too proud to fight and in practice made evident his hearty approval of the sentiments of that abject pacifist song: "I Didn't Raise My Boy to be a Soldier," a song which should have as a companion piece one entitled: "I Didn't Raise my Girl to be a Mother," approval of which of course deprives any men or women of all right of kinship with the soldiers and ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... of such abject terror and despair, as froze the very blood of the two gentlemen below. They saw it but for a glimpse, for the window was instantly thrust down; but that glimpse had been sufficient, and they turned and left the court without a word. In silence, too, they ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... and swift rising anger. Twisting, struggling, writhing, cursing, two men lay upon the ground held in a fierce embrace, much in the manner of two wildcats. Beyond them, huddled upon the ground, her face covered with her hands, a picture of abject terror, crouched ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... merely as a form of amusement, a thing to be wondered and stared at, and to be dismissed from the mind as soon as the curtain dropped. Bjoernson, whose patriotic soul could not endure the thought of this abject foreign dependence, ascribed all the existing abuses to the predominance of the Danish element, and in a series of vehement articles attacked the Danish actors, managers, and all who were in any way responsible ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... abject, lamentable, paltry, sorrowful, base, miserable, pathetic, touching, contemptible, mournful, piteous, woful, despicable, moving, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... governor. A slight prolongation of the voyage would have rendered her as helpless as if peopled by a phantom crew; and she must have been blown before the wind until dashed to fragments on the rocks on some uninhabited part of the coast. The extremity of abject powerlessness had unquestionably been reached when the wide entrance to Port Jackson could not ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... an interruption. At the moment he was bounding up the companion-ladder, a young man of feeble character—who would have been repudiated by the sex, had he been born a woman—sprang down the same ladder in abject terror. He went straight into the bosom of the ascending doctor, and they both went with a ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... The voice again; or, like a gate of steel Fronting the sun, receives and renders back His figure and his heat. I was much rapt in this; And apprehended here immediately Th' unknown Ajax. Heavens, what a man is there! A very horse that has he knows not what! Nature, what things there are Most abject in regard and dear in use! What things again most dear in the esteem And poor in worth! Now shall we see to-morrow— An act that very chance doth throw upon him— Ajax renown'd. O heavens, what some men do, ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... the woman who worships at your side? You surprise me! Worth fifty, a thousand dollars!—wearing diamonds, buying $1,000 dresses—for what? To wear to church—in which to worship Him who had not where to lay his head! And a thousand people in this one city alone in abject poverty— "And the greatest of these is Charity." What a cruel stone is Selfishness to ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... without another word, ran right away, neighing as it went, leaving Dirk in a state of abject terror. ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... long that people began to say (as they say now of the creator of Rip Van Winkle) that he could not play anything else, Lemaitre startled the town with a new creation, utterly distinct from anything he had hitherto done. From depicting the most abject rascality he passed in a moment, as it seemed, to the representation of delicacy of sentiment and grandeur of soul in Alexandre Dumas's play of Richard d'Arlington, and again as Gennaro in Victor Hugo's Lucretia Borgia. Yet the wild dissipation of the man's life was never so great as at this ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... violently. I submitted without a struggle, experiencing a curious sensation of pleasure in the midst of my pain. When he repeated his order I found its accomplishment no longer repulsive. One of the few pleasurable memories this intimacy, extending over years, has left for me is that moment of abject abasement to one who, with no warmth of feeling, had yet once had sufficient energy to be brutal ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... betrayed my abject despair. I was so completely knocked over that I offered no opposition when the Colonel impudently took the telegram out of my ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... Notwithstanding this abject poverty, a bullying tax-gatherer, with half a dozen louting soldiers, have been up here prowling about, and wresting with violence the means of supporting life from these miserable beings. The scenes which I witness are heart-rending, beyond all I have heard of Irish misery and rent-distraining ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... father-land; that he teaches us peace, unity and all the lovely charities of life (nothing else is Christianity), as of old, Plato, who is truly worthy of being counted a great prophet, dreamed of them in his republic; that he would lift us above a state of abject dependence on country, parents, kindred, health, and all the blessings of earth, and convince us that poverty and the other miseries of life are in no wise evil. These doctrines Christ has confirmed ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... uneasy shifting of position. You should stand on both feet, bearing a little more heavily on one than the other. The same general principles apply to the sitting posture. This may be either graceful, dignified, and elegant, or awkward, abject, and uncouth. The latter class of qualities may be got rid of and the former acquired, and depend upon it, it is a matter of some consequence which of them characterizes your position and movements. Walking is not so difficult an accomplishment as standing ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... abject and hideous"—she went on as without hearing him. "Abject above all. Or old above all. It's when one's old that it's worst. I don't care what becomes of it—let what WILL; there it is. It's a doom—I know it; you can't see it more than I do myself. ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... the grace and power of Jesus Christ as if they needed it not. Whether you know it or not, you are a broken reed; and the only way of your ever being bound up and made strong is that you shall recognise your sinfulness, your necessity, your abject poverty, your utter emptiness, and come to Him who is righteousness, riches, fulness, and say, 'Because I am weak, be Thou my strength.' The secret of all noble, heroic, useful, happy life lies in the paradox, 'When I am weak, then am I strong,' and the secret of all failures, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Murphy, unbuckled the leather despatch-bag, and rebuckled it across his own shoulder. Then he set to work to revive the prostrate man. The eyes, when opened, stared up at him, wild and glaring; the ugly face bore the expression of abject fear. The man was no longer violent; he had become a child, frightened at the dark. His ceaseless babbling, his incessant cries of terror, only rendered more precarious any attempt at pressing forward through a region overrun with hostiles. But ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... themselves have formed,—that is a very grave one. Mr. George thought that it was owing to those laws and institutions, and not to any thing in the natural or physical condition of the country itself, that there was so much abject poverty in Great Britain. ...
— Rollo in London • Jacob Abbott
... lover, My name seems dear since uttered by thy voice; Yet, argus-eyed, I watch and would discover Each blemish in the object of thy choice. I coldly sit in judgment on each error, To my soul's gaze I hold each fault of me, Until my pride is lost in abject terror, Lest I become ...
— Poems of Sentiment • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... grandees came the smaller landholders, composing the second and more numerous class of the Arabs; then the great mass of the inhabitants, who had sunk into the state of absolute helots. These last were hired peasants or fellahs who cultivated the land, and lived in abject poverty. There was also a class of Arabs, namely, the Bedouins or rovers, who would never attach themselves to the soil, but were the children of the desert. These wandering Arabs, divided into tribes on both sides of the valley, ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... thou didst thirst for, take thy fill of blood!" Was shown how routed in the battle fled Th' Assyrians, Holofernes slain, and e'en The relics of the carnage. Troy I mark'd In ashes and in caverns. Oh! how fall'n, How abject, Ilion, was thy ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... quelled, things returned for a time into substantially the same condition as before, and yet the bondage of the people was never afterward so abject and hopeless as it had been. A considerable general improvement was the result. Indeed, such outbreaks as this against oppression are like the earthquakes of South America, which, though they cause for the time great terror, and often much destruction, still have the effect to raise the ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... obstinate, but unable to restrain his ambition: his ambition was still less dangerous than the tyranny and violence of his temper. An implacable enemy, but a lukewarm friend; insolent to his inferiors, but abject to his superiors; though in his whole character and deportment he was almost diametrically opposite to the king, he had the fortune, beyond any other minister, to maintain, during the greater part of his reign, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... house was inverted and disorganized, hopelessly. And the doctor came into the room. She smiled at the doctor apologetically, foolishly, as if saying: "We all come to it. Here I am." She was calm without. Oh, but what a prey of abject fear within! "I am at the edge of the precipice," her thought ran; "in a moment I shall be over." And then the pains—not the heralds but the shattering army, endless, increasing in terror as they thundered across her. Yet she could think, quite clearly: "Now I'm in the middle of it. This ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... family resentment; the unjust dismissal of a wife being counted as an insult to her kindred. He might disinherit an only son; but in that event he would be obliged to adopt a kinsman. He might kill or sell either son or daughter; but unless he belonged to some abject class, he would have to justify his action to the community.* He might be reckless in his management of the family property; but in that case an appeal to communal authority was possible, and the appeal might result in his ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... in the Place d'Armes to get my medicine, and ran back again to give it me, before I knew where I was (such is the debilitating influence of malaria), instead of forgiving him, I found myself, in abject contrition, actually ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... from side to side with that curious movement which only dogs use to express their gladness. Then the strange, three-legged beast went further. Down he threw himself full length upon the floor and grovelled effusively, whining and scraping the boards in a perfect fervour of abject delight. ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... not hesitate any longer. I rose to my feet, and crossed the space which lay between the two tables. As I drew nearer to her I watched the child's face. At first a flash of desperate hope seemed suddenly to illumine it; then a fear more abject even than before took its place as she glanced at her companion. She watched me come, reading without a doubt the purpose in my mind with a sort of fascinated wonder. Her eyes were still fastened upon mine when at last I paused before her. I leaned over the table, keeping ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... daily San Francisco letter for the "Enterprise," for which he received thirty dollars a week. This, with his earnings from the "Californian," made his total return larger than before. Very likely he was hard up from time to time—literary men are often that—but that he was ever in abject poverty, as he would have us believe, is just a good story and ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... proof. He had received bribes; he had given false judgments for money; he had perverted justice to secure the smiles of Buckingham, the favorite; and when a commission was appointed to examine these charges he was convicted. With abject humility, he acknowledged his guilt, and implored the pity of his judges. The annals of biography present no sorrier picture than this. "Upon advised consideration of the charges," he wrote, "descending into my own conscience, and calling my memory to account so far as I am able, I ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... thy trespasses; and, at this day, If for Greece, Egypt, India, Africa, Aught good were destined, thou wouldst step between. England! all nations in this charge agree: But worse, more ignorant in love and hate, Far, far more abject is thine Enemy: Therefore the wise pray for thee, though the freight Of thy offences be a heavy weight: Oh grief, that Earth's best hopes rest ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... for him his flogging, he determined to have a little amusement at Walford's expense before according to him the pardon which he knew his shipmates expected of him. When, therefore, Walford staggered up to the side of the berth, and began eagerly and incoherently to stammer forth the most abject apologies and the wildest prayers for forgiveness, Rudd simply growled forth an oath and impatiently flung himself over in the berth with his back to the petitioner. This had the intended effect of causing Walford's apologies and prayers to be reiterated with increased eagerness and incoherence, ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... for themselves. But they made no complaint, although their hardships increased daily. They were compelled to dispose of almost everything they possessed to keep the frog supplied with food, and at last they were left in a state of abject poverty. Then only did the courage of Hanina's wife give way and she ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... ministry. I hope you have received mine regularly since, that you may know all the consequent steps. I like the Pasquinades you sent me, and think the Emperor's(509) letter as mean as you do. I hope his state will grow more abject every day. It is amazing, the progress and success of the Queen of Hungary's arms! It is said to-day, that she has defeated a great body of the Prussians in Moravia. We are going to extend a helping hand to her at last. Lord Stair (510) has accepted what my Lord Argyll ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... Richard determined to proceed to Normandy, with a view of there making war upon Philip and punishing him for his treachery. On his landing in Normandy, John came to him in a most abject and submissive manner, and, throwing himself at his feet, begged his forgiveness. Eleanora joined him in the petition. Richard said that, out of regard to his mother's wishes, he ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... of Darius was soon made fatal by his abject cowardice. The Macedonians having made a sudden assault on the Persian left wing, it gave way and fled. Darius, who was in his chariot in the centre, seeing himself in danger from this flight, suddenly lost his over-confidence, ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... factor in experience. Caution, circumspection, prudence, desire to foresee future events so as to avert what is harmful, these desirable traits are as much a product of calling the impulse of fear into play as is cowardice and abject submission. The real difficulty is that the appeal to fear is isolated. In evoking dread and hope of specific tangible reward—say comfort and ease—many other capacities are left untouched. Or rather, they are affected, but in such a way as to pervert them. Instead of operating ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... and sweeping courtesy and chanting of the weird words. The final "dosh!" held, in its low, fierce tone, all the significance of abject adoration. With that "dosh" had the child Priscilla wooed the favour and recognition of the god. It was a ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... lips and blazing eyes Landless sprang forward, and clapped the mouth of the pistol to the ruffian's temple. Roach recoiled, then sunk upon his knees with an abject whine for mercy. ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... this lion-tamer of twenty-one, who, without in the least wishing to do so, unconsciously even (she was the quietest of the party), had made the monarch of the forest crouch at her feet and gaze at her in abject humility? ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... dilapidated and poverty-stricken country. Capable as it is of producing almost every thing, and actually producing nothing which might not become a staple with a proper application of capital and skill, its inhabitants are miserably poor, and daily sinking deeper and deeper into the utter helplessness of abject want. ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust, Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 'tis prosperous to be just; Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside. Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified, And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... sagacious diviners must have been well acquainted with the military energy of the Tartar government, and the abject weakness of their own; and certainly knew, from their brethren in Kathay, the significant name of the Tartar general; on which foundation, they constructed the enigma of their prophecy, which, like many others, contributed ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... thousand men. They were all in rags, ludicrously armed with weapons of every description, and were proceeding hastily towards the Tuilleries, vociferating all kinds of gross abuse. It was a collection of all that was most vile and abject in the purlieus of Paris. "Let us follow the mob," said Bonaparte. We got the start of them, and took up our station on the terrace of the banks of the river. It was there that he witnessed the scandalous scenes which ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... and read, opened new, undreamt-of vistas. The Bible, Homer, and Shakespeare began now to be considered of all books the most worthy to be studied. And thus it came to pass that in a short time a most complete revolution was accomplished in literature, from abject slavery to ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... companion in abject terror, unable to move. Her fear stricken eyes were wild and staring as the mountain of flesh pushed ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... for a beholder to predicate any particular age in the object. You can scarce make a guess between seventeen and seven-and-thirty. This antique cast always seems to promise ill-luck and penury. Yet it seems he was not always the abject thing he came to. My sister, who well remembers him, can hardly forgive Mr. Thomas Ranson for making an etching so unlike her idea of him when he was a youthful teacher at Mr. Bird's school. Old age and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... And with a bewildered feeling of abject fear, Anna heard the quick steps of the soldier echoing down ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... in order to see what progress his son had made in mechanics and mathematics, asked him to draw something of a technical nature for his inspection. Alexius, in order to escape such an ordeal, resorted to the abject expedient of disabling his right hand by a pistol-shot. In no other way could the tsarevich have offended his father so deeply. He had behaved like a cowardly recruit who mutilates himself to escape military service. After this, Peter ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... cause, those who had already absented themselves being ordered to return.(1290) The good example thus set was unhappily not followed by the city rectors. Many of them, to their shame, forsook their cures in abject fear, leaving their parishioners to die without the consolations of the Church, whilst their pulpits were seized upon by Presbyterian ministers, who embraced the opportunity of publicly declaiming against the sins of the court and the ill usage to which they had been compelled to submit.(1291) ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... no notice of this coarse pleasantry, she simply adhered to her thesis. "One has taken one's dose and one isn't such a fool as to be deaf to some fresh true note if it happens to turn up. But for abject horrid unredeemed vileness from ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... occupied before I came on board; so that if we had been detained at sea a whole week by contrary winds and bad weather, one half of the passengers must have slept upon the boards, howsoever their health might have suffered from this want of accommodation. Notwithstanding this check, he was so very abject and importunate, that we gave him a crown ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... and their meannesses, as elsewhere in their glory and beauty. And not so much their meanness and weakness, as that of those who have distorted these innocent servants of truth to become tools of falsehood and the abject instruments of the extinction of all honesty ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... replied by inarticulate groans and wheezes, and while he yet struggled for breath Nero came trotting back through the woods with a mortified and contrite expression pervading his body from eloquent eyes to abject tail, while Pike, as the spaniel was called, followed at some distance with an affected carelessness of demeanor as if she would have it clearly understood that she had been running solely for her own pleasure, with no idea of chasing the deer. The men laughed, and patting their favorites ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... half-brother, and hinted that I would be wise to conciliate him if I wished to have my own way. In the act of entering one of the rooms, I turned upon him angrily, and bade him be off. The next moment this half-brother of a Siamese magnate was kneeling in abject supplication in the half-open doorway, imploring me not to report him to his Excellency, and promising never to offend again. Here was a miracle of repentance I had not looked for; but the miracle was sham. Rage, cunning, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... was a match for any two in the country side, and yet, I am happy to think, he was as bad as any one. As for me, to say that my heart became like water and my knees like soft wax, is to express in mild words my state of abject terror. There was no need to inquire what the maids thought, for smothered shrieks, louder and louder as each peal of knocks vibrated through the little house, proclaimed sufficiently their ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... shells, or piping on flageolets or beating tom-toms, accompanied them. The crowd carrying torches or high crates with flaming coco-nuts, walked or rather danced along on each side, elated and excited with the sense of the present divinity, yet pleasantly free from any abject awe. The whole thing indeed reminded one of some bas-relief of a Bacchanalian procession carved on a Greek sarcophagus—and especially so in its hilarity and suggestion of friendly intimacy with the god. There were singing of hymns and the floating ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... I visit the depths of the fiord; the sea is my steed and I bridle it; I know where the singing flower grows, and the talking light descends, and fragrant colors shine! I wear the seal of Solomon; I am a fairy; I cast my orders to the wind which, like an abject slave, fulfils them; my eyes can pierce the earth and behold its treasures; for lo! am I not the virgin to whom the pearls dart from ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... now propitiated as gods, had taken toll of my villagers for two long years. The people were in abject terror, for none knew the day, hour, or place of the monsters' next leap. Many were already resigned to death. "It's written on our foreheads," they said, with gentle misery. Poor devils! Think of the ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... ring, kissed the hand offering it, and took his departure, moving backward, and with downcast eyes, his manner declarative of the most abject humility. ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... sudden change of hostility to abject admiration and worship was embarrassing. His mind was all in a whirl, and when the others knelt before him and kissed his paw he could find no words to say. He simply smiled as graciously as he could, and accepted ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh
... city, where all the nobler organs of expression are closed by political conditions, the viler channels run continual filth and poison, and the people, shut out from public and free discussion of religious and political themes, occupy themselves with private slander, and rend each other in their abject desperation. As it is part of the existing political demonstration to avoid the opera and theatre, the Venetians are deprived of these harmless distractions; balls and evening parties, at which people, in other countries, do nothing ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... of all law, the Senate and the people being no longer considered in the state. But this arbitrary rule, introduced by Severus, is thought to have tended more than any thing else to destroy the vigor of the Roman Empire, by leading the people to an abject dependence upon ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... manifested an abject devotion to her, and would barely listen even to "Scotty" when she was near—the moment he heard her footsteps howling insistently till she ignored all of the others and came directly to him. It became a matter of pride with her to take him into the ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... views of Members in all parts of the House, anxious only to do his duty to his QUEEN and Country. Whereas it is clear he is a martinet of the severest type, a ruthless tyrant, a man who rules with a rod of iron, and keeps his followers in a condition of abject personal terror." ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 6, 1891 • Various
... understand, the East? We Asiatics are often appalled by the curious web of facts and fancies which has been woven concerning us. We are pictured as living on the perfume of the lotus, if not on mice and cockroaches. It is either impotent fanaticism or else abject voluptuousness. Indian spirituality has been derided as ignorance, Chinese sobriety as stupidity, Japanese patriotism as the result of fatalism. It has been said that we are less sensible to pain and wounds on account of the callousness of ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... salvation of their women. "Women," replied the Chinaman; "women have no souls. You can't make Christians of them." Few persons born in civilized lands, unless brought into immediate contact with the heathen, can have any idea of the wretched condition of their women, even at this day. Kept in a state of abject bondage, they are compelled to serve with rigor. Controlled as though they were possessed of less intelligence than male children of tender years, it might yet be supposed, from the burdens laid upon them, that they were possessed of far superior strength, physically, than men. In some countries—not ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... the accursed of Hecate. Saronia commands those spirits by her goodness; I draw them by the evil within me. But those shades are the slaves of the priestess, slaves like she was a slave to thee, with this difference: she treats the most abject with compassion; thou ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... that he drank off the cup of suffering to the very extremity of what his peculiar nature allowed. And in no life of so short a duration, have there ever been crowded equal extremities of gorgeous prosperity and abject infamy. It may be added, as another striking illustration of the rapid mutability and revolutionary excesses which belonged to what has been properly called the Roman stratocracy then disposing of the world, that within no very great succession of weeks that same victorious rebel, ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... to come in before I conclude—namely, that infelicities of various kinds belong to the state here below. Who are we that we should not take our share? See the slight amount of personal happiness requisite to go on with. In noisome dungeons, subject to studied tortures, in abject and shifty poverty, after consummate shame, upon tremendous change of fortune, in the profoundest desolation of mind and soul, in forced companionship with all that is unlovely and uncongenial—men, persevering nobly, live on, and live through all. The mind, like water, passes ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... accordance with his children's wishes, Mr Maurice accompanied Harry to the residence of the poor woman they had seen at Mr T.'s shop. It was a miserable hovel, but after all there was an air of cleanliness and comfort about it, that the most abject poverty can seldom of itself destroy. A white curtain, mended it is true, in very many places, yet looking quite respectable, still shaded the only window of the apartment. There were a few coals, on which was laid a single stick of wood, in the open fire-place, but ...
— Effie Maurice - Or What do I Love Best • Fanny Forester
... today find itself more advanced on the road to progress. But as it was, the myth of religion was foisted on the superstitious brain, and man resigned himself to his fate, and lived in such a manner as to please this hypothetical supernatural being. The inevitable result was the abject misery, both material and spiritual, of Europe during the period when the Church was in ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... for many years the recluse headquarters of the Jesuits, so of all enslaved Spanish-Americans probably the Guaranis are the worst. During Lent they will inflict stripes on their bodies, or almost starve themselves to death; and their abject humility to the Pa is sad to witness. On special church celebrations large processions will walk the streets, headed by the priests, chanting in Latin. The people sometimes fall over one another in their eager endeavors to kiss the priest's garments, They prostrate themselves, count ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... gospel to you that are at Rome also; for I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth." But now, when he found himself actually at its gates and thought of the abject condition in which he was—an old, gray-haired, broken man, a chained prisoner just escaped from shipwreck—his heart sank within him, and ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... M. Fustel de Coulanges himself points out, corresponded very closely to that of the Sudras. The plebeians had no religion and no ancestors; they did not belong to a family or a gens. [192] They were a despised and abject class, who lived like beasts outside the proper boundary of the city. The touch of the plebeian was impure. [193] "When tribunes were created a special law was necessary to protect their life and liberty, and it was promulgated as follows: 'It is forbidden ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... matter for the present, she resumed her examination of the apartment, and was more and more attracted by it as she proceeded. For, thanks to her eminence as a local beauty, she had not that fear of beautiful and rich things which renders abject people incapable of associating costliness with comfort. Had the counterpane of the bed been her own, she would have unhesitatingly converted it into a ball-dress. There were toilet appliances of which she had never felt the need, and could only guess ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... o'clock, why force him to come away from his lodgings with his breakfast in his throat? To tell the truth, it was policy on the part of Mr. Slope. Mr. Slope had made up his mind that Mr. Harding should either accept the hospital with abject submission, or else refuse it altogether, and had calculated that he would probably be more quick to do the latter, if he could be got to enter upon the subject in an ill-humour. Perhaps Mr. Slope was not altogether wrong ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... gained the advantage; and that if he paid his court badly to the minister, he had the consolation to find, that those who suffered themselves to be cheated, in the end gained no great advantage from their complaisance; for they always continued in an abject submission, while the Chevalier de Grammont, on a thousand different occasions, never put himself under the least restraint. Of which the following ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... saved up much money by his having had the command of a vessel for so many years, during which he had defrauded and pilfered both from the men and the government. Friends and connections he had none on this side of the water, and, when on shore, he had lived in a state of abject misery, although he had the means of comfortable support. He was now fifty-five years of age. Since he had been appointed to the Yungfrau, he had been employed in carrying despatches to the States-General from King William, and had, during ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... do not," I said, still with my abject humility. "Don't take any more trouble—let me go ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... a high official of the Criminal Investigation Department reached an outlying police station under the conduct of a young constable whose swelling pride was soon reduced to abject misery as the divisional detective-inspector, who was leaning on a high desk and chatting with a station-sergeant, sprang forward to ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... of the needs of the other departments, will naturally take the word of its administrative head, especially since he desires the same freedom. This was actually the case in Sacramento, Cal., where the commission plan was tried for fifteen years and given up as an abject failure. Says the Hon. Clinton White of that city: "In almost every instance, the board soon came to the understanding that each man was to be let alone in the management of the department assigned to him. This resulted in there ...
— Elements of Debating • Leverett S. Lyon
... same," said he, "Madam. And, albeit I neither be earl, lord, nor baron within it, yet has God made me—how abject that ever I be in your eyes—a profitable member within the same. Yea, Madam, to me it appertains no less to forewarn of such things as may hurt it, if I foresee them, than it does to any of the nobility; for both my vocation and conscience craves plainness ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... entring otherwise into the justice or merit of this part; for I take it that these are sufficient for any body that is forc'd to follow them. Agathocles the Sicilian, not of a private man onely, but from a base and abject fortune, got to be King of Siracusa. This man borne but of a Potter, continued alwayes a wicked life throughout all the degrees of this fortune: neverthelesse he accompanied his lewdnesse with such a courage and resolution, that applying himselfe to military affaires, by the degrees ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... (No sign of the abject life— Not even a blasphemy...) But the spindle legs keep time To a limping rhythm, And the shadows twitch upon the snow Convulsively— As though death played With ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... Ryan, "it won't last a month! We'll put them out of business if it does. They'll weaken, Mr. Barwig, you'll see! They'll weaken all right." The ashen appearance of Von Barwig's face, the abject despair he saw depicted there aroused the man's sympathy. "It won't be long, Mr. Barwig," he repeated in a softened voice. "I know it's hard, but what are we to do? If we don't stand together, ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... in shades of midnight darkness Abject sits the Pagan world; There the banner of salvation Ne'er hath been by time unfurled; Nor their idols From their ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... now served but to haunt him with the images of death in those ghastliest shapes familiar to them who look only into the bottom of the charnel, and see but the rat and the worm and the loathsome agencies of corruption. It was not the despair of conscience that seized him, it was the abject clinging to life; not the remorse of the soul,—that still slept within him, too noble an agency for one so debased,—but the gross physical terror. As the fear of the tiger, once aroused, is more paralyzing than that of the deer, proportioned to the savageness of a disposition to which fear ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... feel your lady's unkind (I will not call it ungenerous) recapitulation of the favours I have received; and, as I take it for granted that you knew and approved of her letter, I must beg leave to assure you, that, far from being swayed by menaces and reproach, I am determined to embrace the most abject extremity of fortune, rather than submit to such dishonourable compulsion. When I am treated in a more delicate and respectful manner, I hope I shall behave as becomes,—Sir, your ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... with an expression of wooden-headed, abject innocence on his big, broad face, and looked ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... bull within a few yards was altogether too much for the tiger, which now turned and commenced to sneak off with astonishing rapidity, keeping completely out of the bison's sight, and looking like the most abject wretch imaginable. My goudas became frantic at this, and seeing that there was now no chance of a fight between the bull and the tiger, I rushed along the hill with the view of trying to get a good shot at the latter, but this I found would be impossible, so I rested my rifle on ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... the truth of the said remonstrances was not disputed, nor the tone in which they were written complained of, the same being submissive, and even abject, though the cause (his distresses) was by the said Hastings, in a great degree, and in terms the most offensive, attributed to the Nabob himself; but no relief was given, and the same unwarrantable establishments, maintained at the same ruinous ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... that the tongue used by Moses was not even a pure dialect of one of the languages resulting from "the confusion." He makes man the inventor of speech, and resorts to raillery: speaking against his opponent Eunomius, he says that, "passing in silence his base and abject garrulity," he will "note a few things which are thrown into the midst of his useless or wordy discourse, where he represents God teaching words and names to our first parents, sitting before them like some ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... guileless, and noble soul for the fanaticism of Madame Hulot's love. Having fully persuaded herself that her husband could do her no wrong, she made herself in the depths of her heart the humble, abject, and blindfold slave of the man who had made her. It must be noted, too, that she was gifted with great good sense—the good sense of the people, which made her education sound. In society she spoke little, and never spoke evil of ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... inferior woman, a sworn member of the Coffinkey clique, admiring and looking up to her Serene Highness as the great lady of the place, and wearing an almost abject manner when receiving good counsels from her. Neither of them commanded respect, nor were they likely to change the belief, which prevailed at the Folly, that all ability ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... policeman within hearing in chase. And then goodness only knew what she would say of him. He was so frightened that for a moment the insane notion of strangling her in the dark passed through his mind. And he became more frightened than ever! She had him! He saw himself living in abject terror in some obscure hamlet in Spain or Italy; till some fine morning they found him dead too, with a knife in his breast—like Mr Verloc. He sighed deeply. He dared not move. And Mrs Verloc waited in silence the good pleasure of her saviour, ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... to hope that Gabriella will never marry," replied Mrs. Carr with the uncompromising bitterness of abject despair; "the Carrs all seem to marry ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... side, not on theirs. We, born servitors and underlings, it was thought, had forgotten our proper places,—nay, had presumed to strike back, when our masters chastised us. Of course, we should soon be whipped to our knees again. And when we were again submissive and abject, Europe must so have demeaned itself as still to be on good terms with the conquerors. As for us, our final opinion of their demeanor, so they deemed, mattered very little. The ill opinion of the servants can be borne; but one must needs be ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... medicine he had a horror, grounded upon scenes of contract surgery upon the fields of battle. The ministry he set aside. From commerce, as he had always seen it in his native town, twelve hours a day of haggling and smirking, he shrank with all the impulses of his soul. The abject country newspaper gave him no inkling of that fourth estate which was later to spring up in the land. Arms he loved, but there was now no field for arms. There were no family resources to tide him over the season of experiment, and, indeed, but for a brother and a sister, who lived ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... of passion. What life would he lead when she was gone? For she would go! Her resolution was irrevocable. All dropped from his side at once. The mistress, to whom he had sacrificed the noblest and most loving heart, he had lost under circumstances as abject as their two years of passion had been dishonorable. His wife was about to leave him, and would he succeed in keeping his son? He had returned to be avenged, and he had not even succeeded in meeting his rival. That being so impressionable had experienced, in the face of so many repeated blows, ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... own: he could however have borne and put up with all this, if he could only have got his will of his sister; but to give up to her, who had been his slave all his life—to own, at last, that he had no power over her, whom he had always looked upon as so abject, so mean a thing; to give in, of his own accord, to the robbery which had been committed on him by his own father; and to do this, while he felt convinced as he still did, that a sufficiently unscrupulous ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... "the studio mantelpiece" of No. 7; no young lady author had ever commented on "the unaffected simplicity" with which Mr. Pitman received her in the midst of his "treasures." It is an omission I would gladly supply, but our business is only with the backward parts and "abject rear" ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 'Yes, Sir,' replied the abject Grinder, 'I'm sure you would be down upon me dreadful, Sir. I wouldn't attempt for to go and do it, Sir, not if I was ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... found in his eventful voyage from India. He told her about the outbreak of the flames, the alarm of the passengers, the coward mob of panic-stricken wretches, who had lost all manliness and all human feeling in their abject fear. Then he described the tall form of Obed Chute as it towered above the crowd. Obed, according to Windham's account, when he first saw him, had two men by their collars in one hand, while in the other he held his revolver. His voice with its shrill accent rang out ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille |
