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Dunghill   Listen
noun
Dunghill  n.  
1.
A heap of dung.
2.
Any mean situation or condition; a vile abode. "He... lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill."
Dunghill fowl, a domestic fowl of common breed.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Dunghill" Quotes from Famous Books



... it might be dissolved; this must be done four times in fourty days and nights; for if any good be in the Faeces, it will be dissolved in that time, then cast the Dregs away as unprofitable, being but Dirt, and to be cast to the Dunghill. ...
— Of Natural and Supernatural Things • Basilius Valentinus

... proportion is no measure for infinity. He that hath no more of this world but a grave; he that hath his grave but lent him till a better man or another man must be buried in the same grave; he that hath no grave but a dunghill, he that hath no more earth but that which he carries, but that which he is, he that hath not that earth which he is, but even in that is another's slave, hath as much proportion to God, as if all David's worthies, and all the world's monarchs, ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne

... knowest: a battle of words with such a woman is the very mischief. Were it not better for thee to carry on this war, if it must be waged, from behind thine own table in thine own study? Does not every cock fight best on his own dunghill? Thy daughters also are here, the pledges of thy love, the fruits of thy loins: is it well that they should see thee in the hour of thy victory over their mother? Nay, is it well that they should see thee in the possible ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... he, "I believe you. You'd be but a fierce young hound indeed, if at your time of life you could help to hunt a wretched warmint hunted as near death and dunghill as this ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... men is a constant surprise to me," said Mr. Forbes. "Dunghill cottages are not so frequent as they were, but there are still a vast number too many. When old Gifford made a solitude round him, Blagg built those reed-thatched hovels at Morte which contribute more poor rogues to the quarter sessions than ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... two hundred holes and forty pieces; he had long legs like the shank of a pipe, and a long great coat, for it is many the dab he put in his pocket. His coat was greasy, and it was no wonder, and an old grey hat as grey as snuff as it was many the day it was in the dunghill.' ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others

... wonderful in the Old Testament. Think of the depths out of which we have come, and the heights to which we are raised. "He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill to set them among princes and to make them inherit the throne of glory." [Footnote: 1 Sam. ii. 8.] Think of the sinner lifted out of all his bondage and ruin to be the Bride of the Lamb! There is nothing higher that God can give than this. This will be our glorious position by and by when ...
— The One Great Reality • Louisa Clayton

... brake in sodeinly into his Castle upon him, and in his bed murthered him the same yeare, the last day of May, crying out, 'Alas, alas, slay me not, I am a Priest.' And so lyke a butcher he lyved, and like a butcher he dyed, and lay 7 monethes and more unburyed, and at last, like a carion, buryed in a dunghill. An. 1546, Maij ult. Ex historia impressa."—(Foxe, edit. 1576, p. 1235.) Sir David Lyndesay thus alludes to the Cardinal's fate, in his poem entitled "The Tragedie of the umquhyle maist reverend Father David, be the mercy of God, Cardinal, and ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox

... fighting for the sovereignty of the dunghill, and one of them having got the better of the other, he that was vanquished crept into a hole, and hid himself for some time; but the victor flew up to an eminent place, clapt his wings, and crowed out victory. An Eagle, who was watching for his prey near the ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various

... any kind, with the exception of the bull, which shuts its eyes and rushes blindly forward, will venture to attack an individual who confronts it with a firm and motionless countenance. I say large and fierce, for it is much easier to repel a bloodhound or bear of Finland in this manner than a dunghill cur or a terrier, against which a stick or a stone is a much more certain defence. This will astonish no one who considers that the calm reproving glance of reason, which allays the excesses of the mighty and courageous in our own species, has seldom any other effect than to add ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... achieved for the poor negroes and others in the house of bondage, I said to myself, that here the hand of Wisdom is visible, for the load of perishable mortality is laid lightly on his spirit, by which it is enabled to clap its wings and crow so crously on the dunghill top of this world; yea even in ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt

... be "raised from the dunghill, set among princes, and made to inherit a throne of glory?" is dust and ashes, a puny rebel, a guilty traitor, to be pitied, pardoned, loved, exalted from the depths of despair, raised to the heights of Heaven—gifted with kingly honour—royally fed—royally clothed—royally ...
— The Faithful Promiser • John Ross Macduff

... has likely to pass through the crucial tests of a generation, perhaps several generations. Lord Bacon says the first sight of any work really new and first-rate in beauty and originality always arouses something disagreeable and repulsive. Voltaire term'd the Shaksperean works "a huge dunghill"; Hamlet he described (to the Academy, whose members listen'd with approbation) as "the dream of a drunken savage, with a few flashes of beautiful thoughts." And not the Ferney sage alone; the orthodox judges and law-givers ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... theology, the queen of them all. I would like him to be an honour to his family, as we live in days when our kings liberally reward learning that is virtuous and worthy; for learning without virtue is a pearl on a dunghill. He spends the whole day in settling whether Homer expressed himself correctly or not in such and such a line of the Iliad, whether Martial was indecent or not in such and such an epigram, whether such and such lines of Virgil are to be ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... brought to trial on the 4th of July, 1777. He defended himself, but though a vigorous writer, he was not a good speaker, and was in a strange place, while "Thurlow fought on his own dunghill," says Lord Campbell, "and throughout the whole day had the advantage over him." There was a special jury packed for the purpose by the hireling sheriff,—a "London jury" famous for corruption,—a tyrannical and powerful judge, ready to turn every weapon of the court against the defendant ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker

... aside, it is not one of its author's greatest triumphs. It begins with a good deal of that rather nauseous gush about the adorable candour of young persons which, in a French novel, too often means that the "blanche colombe" will become a very dingy dunghill hen before long—as duly happens here. There is, however, a chance for the novel reader of comparing the departure of two of these white doves[377] from their school-dovecot with that of Becky and Amelia from Miss Pinkerton's. ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... pheasants crow upon your perch: But when we fire your coats about your ears, And take your ships before your walled towns, We make a dunghill of your rotten bones, And cram our chickens with your grains ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley

... correct this crying evil of infant employment and neglected education, none of the patriots, bearded or shaven, have ventured to exert their strong lungs in so unpopular a cause: it is so much easier to stand on your own dunghill and abuse the lord of the manor than to put on an apron and a cap, mix up the lime and water, and whitewash your own cottage. But several manufacturers have honourably distinguished themselves by beginning the work of ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney

... was buried, but his tomb was broken up, with every insult that could be shown, by Scot, one of the Puritan possessors of Lambeth, while the other, Hardyng, not to be outdone, exhumed the Archbishop's body, sold its leaden coffin, and buried it in a dunghill. His remains were found by Sir William Dugdale at the Restoration, and honorably reinterred in front of the altar, with the epitaph, "Corpus Matthaei Archiepiscopi tandem hic quiescit." His tomb, in the ante-chapel, was re-erected by Archbishop Sancroft, but the brass ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various

... of the vile dunghill obtained me respect among the wretches of whom I formed part, and served to set up my spirits, which otherwise were flagging; and my position was speedily made more bearable by the arrival on board our ship of an old friend. This was no other than my second in the fatal duel which had ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray

... on an old man having found a pot of gold. He conceals it, and his nervousness lest some one should discover it is brought out with excellent humour. He drives the cooks out of the place with his stick. He has a battle-royal with a dunghill cock, who, he imagines is trying to scratch for it, then thinks Strobilus has stolen it, and calls on him to show one hand, and the ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... condition,— popes, sovereigns, lovers, gamblers, monks, soldiers,—are taunted with their fear of Death and do indeed see his approach with terror, Lazarus alone is easy and composed, and sitting on his dunghill at the rich man's door, tells Death that he does ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... for meanness, hypocrisy, ignorance—of esteem, genuine and earnest, for the Holy Scriptures, and for the more moderate of the Reformers who were spreading the Scriptures in Europe,—and all this great light wilfully hidden, not under a bushel, but under a dunghill. He is somewhat like Socrates in face, and in character likewise; in him, as in Socrates, the demigod and the satyr, the man and the ape, are struggling for the mastery. In Socrates, the true man conquers, and comes forth high and pure; in Rabelais, alas! the victor is the ape, while the man ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley

... instead of prophesying:" or, as Esaias saith, "What if all the watchmen of the city are become blind?" "What if the salt have lost his proper strength and savoriness," and, as Christ saith, "be good for no use, scant worth the casting on the dunghill?" ...
— The Apology of the Church of England • John Jewel

... thing," grumbled Jikiza. "Can I never have done in it? Fifty-and-three have I slain in my youth without a wound, and now for many years I have challenged, like a cock on a dunghill, and none crow ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard

... smiling at every window. The beasts, as placid as their masters, graze on without any disturbance; and I scarcely recollect to have heard one grunting swine or snarling mastiff during my whole progress. Before every village is a wealthy dunghill, not at all offensive, because but seldom disturbed; and there they bask in the sun, and wallow at their ease, till the hour of death and bacon arrives, when capacious paunches await them. If I may judge from the healthy looks and reposed complexions of the Flemings, they have every reason ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford

... ratio with the amount of food. This strange doctrine has apparently arisen from individual animals when supplied with an inordinate quantity of food, and from plants of many kinds when grown on excessively rich soil, as on a dunghill, becoming sterile; but to this latter point I shall have occasion presently to return. With hardly an exception, our domesticated animals, which have long been habituated to a regular and copious supply of food, without the labour of searching for it, are ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... friendly Rhimes, For raking in the dunghill of their crimes. To name each Monster wou'd make Printing dear, Or tire Ned Ward, who writes six Books a-year. Such vicious Nonsense, Impudence, and Spite, Wou'd make a Hermit, or a Father write. Tho' Julian rul'd the World, and held no more Than deist Gildon ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte

... Marlowe, or Chapman, or Jonson (despite his learning), or Cyril Tourneur, one might differ, but one would admit that perhaps there was something in it. Again, Voltaire's boast that he had been the first to show the French "some pearls which I had found" in the "enormous dunghill" of Shakespeare's plays was the sort of thing that might reasonably have been said by an anthologist who had made selections from Dekker or Beaumont and Fletcher or any dramatist writing under Elizabeth and James except William ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd

... dignity of that family diminished, that it seemed to be a rustic, ignoble family rather than a royal one." It was appropriate that that family, upon whom was a second time to be fulfilled the declaration in Ps. cxiii. 7, 8: "He raiseth up the poor out of the dust; He lifteth up the needy out of the dunghill, that He may set him with princes, with the princes of His people,"—in which, the second time, the transition should take place from the low condition to the royal dignity, should not be mentioned according to its royal, ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg

... who, in the shape of an old woman, had wheedled him out of his bell, had not deceived him. For the underground people dare not lie, but must ever keep their word—a breach of it being followed by their sudden change into the shape of toads, snakes, dunghill beetles, wolves, and apes, forms in which they wander about, objects of fear and aversion, for a long course of years before they are freed. They have, therefore, naturally a great dread of lying. John Schlagenteufel gave close attention and made trial of his new shepherd's ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various

... good from evil; so neither is a sweet scent perceived by the nose when a disagreeable one is present in it. I have heard from the angels, that they distinguish in the extremes what is lascivious from what is not, as any one distinguishes the fire of a dunghill or of burnt horn by its bad smell, from the fire of spices or of burnt cinnamon by its sweet smell; and that this arises from their distinction of the internal delights which enter into the external and ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg

... abodes of peaceful vinedressers; while the filth of the purlieus is unutterable. Throwing open the double casements of the widow's sanctum, I may not call it boudoir, when I leapt out of bed to enjoy the fresh morning air,—underneath was a noisome dunghill, grim gables frowned on either hand, but beyond was the riant landscape just described. Here truly God made the country, ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... say that the Republic of the Age of Reason is now a ruin, I should rather say that at its best it is a ruin. At its worst it has collapsed into a death-trap or is rotting like a dunghill. What is the real Republic of our day as distinct from the ideal Republic of our fathers, but a heap of corrupt capitalism crawling with worms; with those parasites, the professional politicians? I was re-reading Swinburne's bitter but not ignoble ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton

... lay for three hours without moving. And he smote me with a sore plague from head to foot, and I was filled with worms and ulcers and corruption. Therefore I arose and went out of the city in great misery and sorrow of heart, and sat upon a dunghill, being severed from the sons of men because of my evil plague. And there I remained many days. And I had no strength to work and earn my bread, so that my wife was compelled to labour as a handmaid in the house of a rich man, and carry water; and for that they gave her bread, and ...
— Old Testament Legends - being stories out of some of the less-known apochryphal - books of the old testament • M. R. James

... habits in the normal man. The manipulations of sadism or masochism are even utilized to revive a sexual appetite weakened by abuse. Individuals who have become impotent often try to excite themselves by observing the coitus of others. In fact a leaven of corruption and ignominy ferments on the dunghill of venal and artificial excitation ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel

... and sheep, that dashed against the ruined church like living waves, while swarms of wood-lice and crickets attacked the foundations and reduced them to dust with their sawlike teeth. Yet again, on the other side, there was Desiree's poultry-yard, where the dunghill reeked with suffocating fumes. Here the big cock, Alexander, sounded the assault, and the hens loosened the stones with their beaks, and the rabbits burrowed under the very altars; whilst the pig, too fat to stir, grunted and waited till all the sacred ornaments should be reduced ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola

... He is not a man to wrestle with an enemy of my strength without a strong interest in it. It was Cerizet; he's the infamous calumniator, from whose hands I wrenched the lease of your house near the Madeleine,—Cerizet, whom in kindness, I went to seek on his dunghill that I might give him the chance of honorable employment; that is the wretch, to whom a benefit is only an encouragement to treachery. Tiens! if I were to tell you what that man is I should turn you sick with disgust; in the sphere of infamy he ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac

... abruptly as he saw me,—"well, considering the peacock Harley brought so bright a plume to his own nest, we must admire the generosity which spared this gay dunghill feather to mine!" ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... highwayman's demand of "your money or your life," into that of "your money and your life." Neither does a great nation allow the lives of its innocent poor to be parched out of them by fog fever, and rotted out of them by dunghill plague, for the sake of sixpence a life extra per week to its landlords;[8] and then debate, with driveling tears, and diabolical sympathies, whether it ought not piously to save, and nursingly cherish, the lives ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... I see it in the fellow's eye; but just as you please about going nome. You're right in one thing—never to give up your own dunghill, so long as you can get room on it for a fair fling with your enemy. Besides, you can see better, by going home, what the chap's after. I don't see why he should come here to learn to preach. We can't support a preacher. We don't want one. ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms

... thirty-two pairs of silk stockings, five fine Aubusson tapestries. The plundered mistress of the house was driven out, to live on the charity of her friends. Her aunt, aged ninety-four years, was thrown upon a dunghill, where she died gazing on the peasants whom she had cared for and treated with kindness for years, as they divided among themselves her house-linen, her furniture, her plate, her porcelains, the very doors and windows of her home. All ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... course that dunghill cock of mine in there, that used to belong to the old woman, had to come within an inch of ruining me, beginning to scratch and claw around where this (looking under cloak) was buried. Enough said. It just got me so worked up I took a club and annihilated that cock, ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius

... bird greatly resembles the purple Gallinule in shape and make, but is much superior in size, being as large as a dunghill fowl. . . . This species is pretty common on Lord Howe's Island, Norfolk Island, and other places, and is a ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... rebounds from the perception that things are evil to the assertion of what ought to be or shall be. It triumphs over the Prince of Darkness, and covers a multitude of sins, as dew or hoar frost cover and make beautiful a dunghill. Dunghills exist; but he who makes of Macbeth's or Clytemnestra's crimes an elevating or exhilarating spectacle triumphs over the god of this world, as Jesus did when he made the most ignominious death the symbol, of his victory and glory. Little wonder that Albert Duerer, and Michael ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore

... house was burning Mme. Cherrier, who was coming out of the cellar to escape suffocation, was drenched with an inflammable liquid by some soldiers who were sprinkling the walls. One of them told her that it was benzine. She then ran behind a dunghill to hide herself with her parents, but the fire raisers dragged her by force in front of the blaze and she was obliged to witness the ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times

... others have lustily sworn that the soul was a vagrant, with no claim to any place of settlement whatever. Nevertheless, a vulgar notion has obtained that the soul dwelt on a little knob of the brain; and that there, like a vainglorious bantam-cock on a dunghill, it now claps its wings and crows all sorts of triumph—and now, silent and scratching, it thinks of nought but wheat and barley. The first step to knowledge is to confess to a late ignorance. We avow, then, our late benighted ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 30, 1841 • Various

... but the Action of the Mind, which compares the Ideas that arise from Words, with the Ideas that arise from the Objects themselves; and why this Operation of the Mind is attended with so much Pleasure, we have before considered. For this Reason therefore, the Description of a Dunghill is pleasing to the Imagination, if the Image be represented to our Minds by suitable Expressions; tho' perhaps, this may be more properly called the Pleasure of the Understanding than of the Fancy, because we are not so much delighted with the Image that is contained in the Description, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... presence (it must be sadly owned) challengings, bickerings, even brotherly quarrels, disturbed more and more the patriarchal peace of Sweetwater Farm. "I dunno what's come over the boys," their father grumbled; "al'ays showing off an' jim-jeerin'. Regilar cocks on a dunghill. A few years agone I'd 've cured it wi' the strap; but now ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... him: "Reuerend father, your humble children beseech your Grace not to haue your heart troubled with these things which you heare; but call to remembrance that blessed man Job, vanquishing the diuell on the dunghill, and reuenging Adam whome he had ouercome in paradise." Which words the archbishop considering with a freendlie countenance, perceiued that the minds of the people remained on his side, whereof both he and such as were about him, were right ioyfull and greatlie ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (2 of 12) - William Rufus • Raphael Holinshed

... this stinking dunghill of a world a mother's love is not. Your mother brings you into the world, carries you first in her body. What do we know about what she feels? But whatever she feels, it, at least, must be real. It must be. What ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce

... His gift: Creating, for our day, one single light; And his reflection, too, supplies the night. Perhaps a thousand other worlds, that lie Remote from us, and latent in the sky, 80 Are lighten'd by his beams, and kindly nursed; Of which our earthly dunghill is the worst. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... fevers followed, laying these villages waste. 'I have seen,' says a contemporaneous witness, 'the laborer endeavoring to work at his spade, but fainting for want of food and forced to quit it. I have seen the helpless orphan exposed on the dunghill, and none to take him in for fear of infection. And I have seen the hungry infant sucking at the breast of the already ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox

... ah! that's a fine fellow! Gagliuffi at Mourzuk." Again the Egyptian laughed, and screamed with frantic gesticulations, and our people coming up were also merry with him. "Ah!" he continued, "Gagliuffi, a real cock of the dunghill, a noble fellow, Gagliuffi! Do you know Gagliuffi?" I said I did not. This he couldn't understand, and said, "Ah, Gagliuffi has got plenty of money, he's the Bashaw of Mourzuk. Every time you go to see him he gives you coffee." Another Fezzaneer, standing by, swore to this: ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... self-indulgent minds most of these standard images are dramatic, and the cue men follow in unravelling experience is that offered by some success or failure of their own. The sanguine, having once found a pearl in a dunghill, feel a glorious assurance that the world's true secret is that everything in the end is ordered for everybody's benefit—and that is optimism. The atrabilious, being ill at ease with themselves, see ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... guineas were weighed,—send for sixpenn'orth at the cheesemonger's, and you will get at least five; which is just as it should be. For elegance of shape or quality of flesh, the Cochin cannot for a moment stand comparison with our handsome dunghill; neither can the indescribable mixture of growling and braying, peculiar to the former, vie with the musical trumpeting of our own morning herald: yet our poultry-breeders have been immense gainers by the introduction of the ungainly celestial, inasmuch as new blood has been infused into the English ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... for supper; the tragedy by the river; the murder of poor Hood, with a book of prayers in his hand; Franklin at Fort Enterprise, with two companions at the point of death, himself gaunt, hollow-eyed, feeding on pounded bones, raked from the dunghill; the arrival of Dr. Richardson and the brave sailor; their awful story of the cannibal Michel;—we revert to these things with a shudder. But we must continue on our route. The current still flows westward, ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt

... persuade myself to make it a garrison of war, war being a thing that I prefer to see as remote as may be), has sufficiently merited popular kindness, and so that it would be a hard matter justly to insult over me upon my own dunghill; and I look upon it as a wonderful and exemplary thing that it yet continues a virgin from blood and plunder during so long a storm, and so many neighbouring revolutions and tumults. For to confess the truth, it had been ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... Job, in shirtless ease, With collyflowers all o'er his face, Did on the dunghill languish, His spouse thus whispers in his ear, Swear, husband, as you love me, swear, 'Twill ease ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... forsake the monastery, was set upon by the devil in the form of a black dog. Other monks who broke their vows shared no better. Because a monk had been guilty of hoarding up a large sum of money, contrary to the rules of his order, he was denied Christian burial, and his body was cast upon a dunghill. After mass was said for the miser thirty days, the deceased monk appeared to a brother of his order and told him that he had been in purgatory till that day. From this blessed liberation St. Gregory instituted the custom of saying thirty masses for the dead. A gentleman in Rome, who was ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... beggary and desolation, lately brought over to be scattered like a pestilence among their countrymen, which may probably first seize upon themselves and their families, until their houses shall be made a dunghill. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift

... December 1559. He died on the 17th of May 1575, and was buried in his private chapel at Lambeth, in a tomb which he had himself prepared. His remains, however, were disinterred in 1648 by Colonel Scot, the regicide, and buried under a dunghill, but after the Restoration they were replaced in ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher

... mustard seed of it moving mountains. That's it, sonny. I've observed lots of things going round in the old 'bus. Most folks believe in nothing. What's the good of 'em? Move mountains? They're paralytic in front of a dunghill. I know what I'm talking about, bless yer. Now you come along believing in yer 'igh-born parents. I larfed, knowing as who yer parents were. But you believed, and I had to let you believe. And you believed in your princes and princesses, and your being born to ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... and in that deadly Indian hug in which men wrestle with their eyes;—over in five seconds, but breaks one of their two backs, and is good for threescore years and ten;—one trial enough,—settles the whole matter,—just as when two feathered songsters of the barnyard, game and dunghill, come together,-after a jump or two at each other, and a few sharp kicks, there is the end of it; and it is, Apres vous, Monsieur, with the beaten party in all the social relations for all the rest ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... them!" grunted John Flint, and scowled. "Huh! If it wasn't for Madame and a few more like her, I'd say women and hens are the two plum-foolest things God has found time to make yet. If you don't believe it, watch them stand around and cackle over the first big dunghill rooster that walks on his wings before them! There are times when I could wring their necks. Dern a fool, anyhow!" He wriggled in his chair ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... blanket?" said the frier: "by the dignity of man, I will twist the neck of every one of you as sure as ever the neck of a dunghill-cock was twisted." At which words he pulled off his mask, and the tremendous majesty of Colonel Bath appeared, from which the bucks fled away as fast as the Trojans heretofore from the face of Achilles. The colonel did not think it worth while to pursue any other of them except him who had the letter ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding

... cowardliness &c. adj.; timidity, effeminacy. poltroonery, baseness; dastardness[obs3], dastardy[obs3]; abject fear, funk; Dutch courage; fear &c. 860; white feather, faint heart; cold feet * [U. S.], yellow streak*. coward, poltroon, dastard, sneak, recreant; shy cock, dunghill cock; coistril[obs3], milksop, white liver, lily liver, nidget[obs3], one that cannot say "bo" to a goose; slink; Bob Acres, Jerry Sneak. alarmist, terrorist|!, pessimist; runagate &c. (fugitive) 623. V. quail &c. (fear) 860; be cowardly &c. adj., be a coward &c. n.; funk; cower,skulk, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... could be hoped from the laws when they were made the channel of extortion and oppression? Law, the glory of Rome in the abstract, became the most dismal mockery of the rights of man. Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its savor it is good for nothing, not even for the dunghill. When the laws practically add to the evils they were intended to cure, what hope is there in their conservative influence? The practice of the law ever remained an honorable profession, and the sons of the great were trained to it; but we find such men as Cyprian, Chrysostom, and Augustine, who ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... parable, the difficulty connected with the bad character of the judge at once disappears. It was necessary to go to a corrupt tribunal in order to find a suitable case; a pure judgment seat supplies no such example. In certain circumstances you might gather from a dunghill a medicinal herb which cleaner ground would never bear. The grain which becomes our bread grows best when its roots are spread in unseen corruption; and so perfect is the chemistry of nature, that the yellow ears of harvest retain absolutely no taint of the putrescence whence they sprung. ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... seek for high and strained carriages, you shall, for the most part, meet with them in low men. Arrogance is a weed that ever grows on a dunghill. It is from the rankness of that soil that she hath her height and spreadings. To be modest and unaffected with our superiors is duty; with our equals, courtesy; with our inferiors, nobleness. There is no arrogance ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... seldom exceeds fifty feet, and the breadth twenty; but in general the dimensions are smaller. Over this excavation they form the roof of wood which the sea throws ashore. This roof is covered first with grass, and then with earth, so that the outward appearance is like a dunghill. In the middle of the roof, toward each end, is left a square opening, by which the light is admitted; one of these openings being for this purpose only, and the other being also used to go in and out by, with the help ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... hard head. Nor is this origin of the illustrious Van Zandt a whit more improbable or repugnant to belief than what is related and universally admitted of certain of our greatest, or rather richest, men, who we are told with the utmost gravity did originally spring from a dunghill! ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... desires if she can—and she has often been able—actually to raise these, first to sanctity and then to her own altars; it is for her and her only to raise the poor from the dunghill and to set them with the princes. She sets before the Magdalen and the thief, then, nothing less but her ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson

... and in His one pure, all-sufficient love they are all enclosed. Fragmentary preciousnesses are strewed about us. There is 'one pearl of great price.' Many fragrances come from the flowers that grow on the dunghill of the world, but they are all gathered in Him whose name is 'as ointment poured forth,' filling the house ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren

... of jumbled stones, we did at last, and to our great joy, catch sight of a bit of wall. This was Maubert; a square, straggling congeries of buildings approached from behind, and of no inviting aspect. A dunghill stood in front of the house, and hens, pigs, and the friendliest dogs in the world disported themselves where the flower- garden ought to have been. At first the place seemed altogether deserted. We ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... consciousness as a part of the Mind." A new passion leaped to his dark eyes. "When I have finished my mission, no more need we be slaves of the dust, subject to all the frightful sufferings of this dunghill ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various

... feline, puss, pussy; grimalkin[obs3]; gib cat, tom cat. [wild mammals] fox, Reynard, vixen, stag, deer, hart, buck, doe, roe; caribou, coyote, elk, moose, musk ox, sambar[obs3]. bird; poultry, fowl, cock, hen, chicken, chanticleer, partlet[obs3], rooster, dunghill cock, barn door fowl; feathered tribes, feathered songster; singing bird, dicky bird; canary, warbler; finch; aberdevine[obs3], cushat[obs3], cygnet, ringdove[obs3], siskin, swan, wood pigeon. [undesirable animals] vermin, varmint[Western US], pest. Adj. animal, zoological equine, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... Church Fathers have named it the root of all Evil, the begetter of hate and bloodshed, the sure cause of the soul's damnation. It has been called "trash," "muck," "dunghill excrement," by grave authors. The love of it is denounced in all Sacred Writings; we find it reprehended on Chaldean bricks, and in the earliest papyri. Buddha, Confucius, Christ, set their faces against ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith

... heterogeneous throng that was composed of bustling traders of several nations—English, French, and Dutch—of planters and of seamen of various degrees, of buccaneers who were fruit-selling half-castes, negro slaves, some doll-tearsheets and dunghill-queans from the Old World, and all the other types of the human family that converted the quays of Cayona into a disreputable ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini

... these Jats,' said Kim softly. 'The Jat stood on his dunghill and the King's elephants went by. "O driver," said he, "what will you sell those little ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling

... she proceeded: 'Well, to be sure, you looked and talked so like a real ghost; and then the cock crowed so natural. I wonder how you could teach him to crow so exact, in the very nick of time; but, I suppose, he's game — An't he game, Mr Gwynn?' 'Dunghill, madam.' — 'Well, dunghill, or not dunghill, he has got such a clear counter-tenor, that I wish I had such another at Brambleton-hall, to wake the maids of a morning. Do you know where I could find one of his brood?' 'Probably in the work-house at St Giles's parish, madam; but I protest I know not ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... on the edge of the Taufusi swamp, was a small collection of huts, jumbled together in squalor and dirt, with pigs dozing in the ooze and slatternly women beating out siapo in the shade. It was a dunghill of out-islanders, Nieues, Uveans, Tongans, Tapatueans, banded together in a common poverty; landless people of other archipelagoes, despised of the Samoans, and paying tribute to the lord of the soil—a few men in war; a grudging hog ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... that slaves are some times, by half-feeding, half-clothing, over-working and stripes, reduced so low, that they are turned out as unfit for service, and left to perish in the woods, or expire on a dunghill. ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano

... wi' cannie thraw, [cautious twist] An' owre the threshold ventures; But first on Sawnie gies a ca', [call] Syne bauldly in she enters; [Then] A ratton rattl'd up the wa', [rat] An' she cried 'Lord preserve her!' An' ran thro' midden-hole an' a', [dunghill pool] An' pray'd wi' zeal an' fervour ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson

... said, demolished the report, so that he was unable to defend it against the attack. You can imagine his disgust, after the pains he had taken to render it unassailable, to find himself, as he expressed it, 'on his own dunghill,' ignominiously beaten. While the result exalted his opinion of the speech-making faculty of a Representative of a common school education, it at the same time cured him of any ambition ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... and turn this strumpet forth! Spurn her into the street; there let her perish, And rot upon a dunghill. Through the city See it proclaim'd, that none, on pain of death, Presume to give her comfort, food, or harbour; Who ministers the smallest comfort, dies. Her house, her costly furniture and wealth, We seize on, for the profit of the state. ...
— Jane Shore - A Tragedy • Nicholas Rowe

... compiled of earth, loose stones, and turf, where the wealthy might perhaps shelter a starved cow or sorely galled horse. But almost every hut was fenced in front by a huge black stack of turf on one side of the door, while on the other the family dunghill ascended ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... to be 'the god of the theatre.' Voltaire protested against this estimate in a new remonstrance consisting of two letters, of which the first was read before the French Academy on August 25, 1776. Here Shakespeare was described as a barbarian, whose works—'a huge dunghill'—concealed some pearls. ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee

... city of Treves; but inwardly it was full of rottenness and weakness. The Roman empire had been, in spite of all its crimes, for four hundred years the salt of the earth: but now the salt had lost its savour; and in one generation more it would be trodden under foot and cast upon the dunghill, and another empire would take its place,—the empire, not of brute strength and self-indulgence, but of sympathy and self-denial,—an empire, not of Caesars, but of hermits. Already was Gratian the friend and pupil of St. Ambrose of Milan; already, too, was he persecuting, ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley

... generously furnished him with supplies for his journey: but as bigoted zeal still increased, his wife's body, which had been interred at Oxford, was afterwards dug up by public orders, and buried in a dunghill.[**] The bones of Bucer and Fagius, two foreign reformers, were about the same time committed to the flames at Cambridge.[***] John Alasco was first silenced, then ordered to depart the kingdom with his congregation. The greater part of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume

... cried she, it makes me laugh; What! take within her bed a pilgrim's staff! Were such a circumstance abroad to get, My lady would with ridicule be met; The dog and master, probably, were last Beneath a hedge, or on a dunghill cast; A house like this they'll never see agen;— But then the master is the pride of men, And that in love is ev'ry thing we find Much wealth and beauty ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine

... men, forma debeat plus arti an naturae? Whether natural or artificial objects be more powerful? but not decided: for my part I am of opinion, that though beauty itself be a great motive, and give an excellent lustre in sordibus, in beggary, as a jewel on a dunghill will shine and cast his rays, it cannot be suppressed, which Heliodorus feigns of Chariclia, though she were in beggar's weeds: yet as it is used, artificial is of more force, and much ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... had asserted that there were more people than sheaves of grain. The Doctor believed that more sheaves are grown than there are people, but still more people than stacks of grain. "But a stack of grain yields hardly a bushel, and a man cannot live a whole year on that." Even a dunghill invited him to deep reflection. "God has as much to clear away as to create. If He were not continually carrying things off, men would have filled the world with rubbish long ago." And if God often punishes those who fear ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... carrion-crow and chattering-crow, bill-bird, curreso, turtledove and wild pigeons; the jenetee, clocking-hen, crab-catcher, galden, and black heron: the ducks, widgeon and teal; and ostriches to the southward, and of the dunghill-fowls. Of their cattle, horses, etc. Leopards and tigers. Of their serpents; the rattlesnake, small green snake. Amphisbaena, small black and small grey snake; the great land-, and the great watersnake; and of the water-dog. Of their sea-fish ...
— A Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier

... a solitary reader, the validity of Vachel Lindsay's claim to the title of Poet may be settled at once by witnessing the transformation of a filthy rumhole into a sunlit forest. As Edmond Rostand looked at a dunghill, and saw the vision Of Chantecler, so Vachel Lindsay looked at some drunken niggers and saw the ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps

... matter; his strength forsook him, and flinging the handkerchief and meat over the hedge, he ran away with all his speed. The handkerchief fell within reach of the dog, who instantly snapped at it; luckily it did not come untied. Hardy saw a pitchfork on a dunghill close beside him, and, seizing upon it, stuck it into the handkerchief. The dog pulled, tore, growled, grappled, yelled; it was impossible to get the handkerchief from between his teeth; but the knot was loosed, the meat, unperceived ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth

... it can change his shape! How base is pride from his own dunghill put! How I have rais'd thee, Sol. I list not tell, Out of the ocean of adversity, To sit in height of honour's glorious heaven, To be the eyesore[43] of aspiring eyes: To give the day her life from thy bright looks, And let nought thrive upon the face of earth, From which thou shalt withdraw ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... again seed-time, took a more effectual way of crippling the tenant than before. He seized on the farm implements and stock, of which the dunghill was in his eyes the most important. He had it, without a legal sale, carried away to his own farm-yard, even to the very rakings and sweepings of the road and the yard near which it lay. This he did that Ring might have no manure for his potato ground, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various

... who shuns the sword's decision, Nor betakes him to his sword-blade, To a swine I soon will sing him, To a snouted swine transform him. Heroes I have thus o'erpowered, Hither will I drive and thither. 280 And will pitch them on the dunghill, ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous

... gentlemen would regard the virtues of their ancestors, the founders of their quality—that gallant courage and solid wisdom, that noble courtesy, which advanced their families and severed them from the vulgar—this degenerate wantonness and forbidness of language would return to the dunghill, or rather, which God grant, be quite banished from the world, ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow

... wrong with more right.[39] He will be drunk with his hunters for company, and stain his gentility with droppings of ale. He is fearful of being sheriff of the shire by instinct, and dreads the assize-week as much as the prisoner. In sum, he's but a clod of his own earth, or his land is the dunghill and he the cock that crows over it: and commonly his race is quickly run, and his children's children, though they escape hanging, return to the place ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle

... behind. And one day he took the old road that led past the farm where she now lived. He looked at the roof from a distance. It was there, in there, that she lived with another! The apple trees were in bloom, the cocks crowed on the dunghill. The whole dwelling seemed empty, the farm hands had gone to the fields to their spring toil. He stopped near the gate and looked into the yard. The dog was asleep outside his kennel, three calves were walking ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... overcome God, or God's design must overcome thee. Thy design is to give thy good life, thy good deeds, a part of the glory of thy justification from the curse. And God's design is to throw all thy righteousness out into the street, into the dirt and dunghill, as to that thou art for glory, and for glorying here before God; yea, thou art sharing in the glory of justification when that alone belongeth to God. And he hath said, "My glory will I not give to another." Thou wilt not trust wholly to God's grace in Christ for justification; ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan

... creature who sells the use of her charms indifferently to sculpture or to love. Fine poetry, like other arts called fine, springs from "strange places," as the flower in the fable said, when it bloomed on the dunghill; nor is Burns more to be blamed than was Raphael, who painted Madonnas, and Magdalens with dishevelled hair and lifted eyes, from a loose lady, whom the pope, "Holy at Rome—here Antichrist," charitably prescribed to the artist, while he laboured in the cause of the church. ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... seconds, but breaks one of their two backs, and is good for three-score years and ten;—one trial enough,—settles the whole matter,—just as when two feathered songsters of the barnyard, game and dunghill, come together,—after a jump or two at each other, and a few sharp kicks, there is the end of it; and it is, Apres vous, Monsieur, in all the social relations with the beaten party for all ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various

... There is a dunghill of flowers, among which here and there we find a bright rose plucked but yesterday and worn for a day; and on this an old hag is always to be seen crouching—first cousin to Usury, the skinflint bargainer, bald and toothless, and ever ready to sell the contents, so well is she used to ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... can crow on his own dunghill!" That was Mr. Slide's first feeling, as with a painful sense of diminished consequence he retraced his steps through the outer lobbies and down into Westminster Hall. He had been browbeaten by Phineas Finn, simply because Phineas had been able to retreat ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... his death a petition was presented to the Pope, which to his honor he rejected, praying him to order Wycliffe's body to be taken out of consecrated ground and buried in a dunghill. But forty years after, by a decree of the Council of Constance, the old reformer's bones were dug up and burned, and the ashes flung into the little river Swift which "runneth hard by his church at Lutterworth." And so, in the often-quoted words of old Fuller, "as the Swift ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... mail. 'Know,' says the man, 'though proud in place, All courtiers are of reptile race. Like you, they take that dreadful form, Bask in the sun, and fly the storm; With malice hiss, with envy gloat, And for convenience change their coat; 30 With new-got lustre rear their head, Though on a dunghill born and bred.' Sudden the god a lion stands; He shakes his mane, he spurns the sands; Now a fierce lynx, with fiery glare, A wolf, an ass, a fox, a bear. 'Had I ne'er lived at Court,' he cries, 'Such ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... both immortal. He regretted the spitefulness that had led him to write in another name than hers because she had refused to support him. He had been a viler beast than the cutpurse poet of old France, without the lilies of verse that bloom pure white above the dunghill of Villon's life. ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... that the Inflamable Spirit, or as the Chymists esteem it, the Sulphur of Wine, may not only be separated from it by the gentle heat of a Bath, but may be distill'd either by the help of the Sun-Beams, or even of a Dunghill, being indeed of so Fugitive a Nature, that it is not easy to keep it from flying away, even without the Application of external heat. I have likewise observ'd that a Vessel full of Urine being plac'd in a Dunghill, the Putrefaction ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle

... himself, and repented in dust and ashes. But even so, I do not find him blamed for reprehending, and with a considerable degree of verbal asperity, those ill-natured neighbors of his who visited his dunghill to read moral, political, and economical lectures on his misery. I am alone. I have none to meet my enemies in the gate. Indeed, my lord, I greatly deceive myself, if in this hard season I would give a peck of refuse wheat for all that is called fame and honor in the world. This is the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various

... a lawyer killing a viper On a dunghill hard by his own stable; And the Devil smiled, for it put him in mind Of Cain ...
— English Satires • Various

... mothe, as he calls it, and gave me the letter; but with a strut, rather than a bow; and then sidled off like one of widow Sorlings's dunghill cocks, exulting after a great feat performed. And all the time that I was holding up the billet to the light, to try to get at its contents without breaking the seal, [for, dispatched in a hurry, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... holler: 'Adam! Come outer dem bushes 'fo' I pickle yo' hide! You my witness ob dis ruffian trispassin' on my prop'ty an' cussin' an' seducin' a ol' woman widout 'er consent,' she says. 'Has I retched my age,' says ol' Mis' Scarlett, 'to have his fowls ruinin' my gyardin', an' him whut's a dunghill rooster himself flyin' ovah ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler

... an alms.—"Oh, young gentleman," said he, "this is like throwing diamonds to a dunghill-cock. I cannot buy a loaf in the mountains, and I dare not venture into any town till I can get some other clothes to disguise myself. I was in the last insurrection, as the rebels call it, and so may be hanged without judge or jury, wherever they catch me; and they may hang ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... greatly diverted many young gentlemen who used the Back Kitchen as a place of nightly entertainment and refreshment. Huxter, who had a fine natural genius for mimicking every thing, whether it was a favorite tragic or comic actor, a cock on a dunghill, a corkscrew going into a bottle and a cork issuing thence, or an Irish officer of genteel connections who offered himself as an object of imitation with only too much readiness, talked his talk, and twanged his poor old long bow whenever drink, a hearer, ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray

... said she had read Romeo but had not yet got to Juliet. Nearly any kind of history is more important than formal literary history showing how in a literary way Abraham begat Isaac and Isaac begat Jacob. Any man of any time who has ever written with vigor has been immeasurably nearer to the dunghill on which he sank his talons while crowing than ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie

... authority'—and a successor of the apostles into the bargain—that's his ground. Well, I don't allow him to take it. 'Beggars can't be choosers' is mine, and I pin him to it. Oh, yes, I'm poison to him, but it does him good. 'That cock won't crow,' I say. He's game enough on his own dunghill, but a high-blooded lass like you ought to be his master by this time. Hint that you'll cut the painter, kick over the traces—you needn't do it, y'know. Threaten you'll run and join the stage—nothing unlikely in that— and, ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... idolatry, superstition, wealth, luxury springing from commerce, and moral corruption. 'Great is Diana of the Ephesians.' The books of Ephesus were a synonym for magical books. Many of us know how rotten to the core the society of that great city was. And there, on the dunghill, was this little garden of fragrant and flowering plants. They were 'saints in Christ Jesus,' though ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... dunghill cock that finds a pearl. To talk of wit to these, is as a man Should cast out jewels to a herd of swine—[aside.] Why, in the last words did consist ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... have Home Rule," said recently Mr. Winston Churchill, "for their own idiotic affairs." But the last word came from Lord Morley, the "father of Home Rule." "Give it them," he said, in friendly, private counsel, "give it them; let them have the full savour of their own dunghill civilization." ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement

... trunks, crooked, twisted, ranged along the enclosure, displayed beneath the sky their glittering domes, rosy and white. The sweet perfume of their blossoms mingled with the heavy odors of the open stables and with the fumes of the steaming dunghill, covered with hens and their chickens. It was midday. The family sat at dinner in the shadow of the pear-tree planted before the door—the father, the mother, the four children, the two maid-servants, and ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893

... one, a topknot from this. I say that in such Cocks nothing remains of the true Cock. They are Cocks of shreds and patches, idle bric-a-brac, fit to figure in a catalogue, not in a barnyard with its decent dunghill and its dog. I say that those befrizzled, beruffled, bedeviled Cocks were never stroked and cherished by Nature's maternal hand. I say that it's all Aviculture, and Aviculture is flapdoodle! And I say that those preposterous parrots, without style, without beauty, ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand

... modern heroine to compare with her, except it be Eugene Sue's Rigolette, who shines forth amidst the iniquities of "Les Mysteres de Paris" like some rich, bright, fresh cottage rose thrown by evil chance upon a dunghill. Tell me, please, about Mr. Hawthorne, as you were so good as to do about that charming person, Dr. Holmes. Is he young? I think he is, and I hope so for the sake of books to come. And is he of any profession? Does he depend ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... require some qualification if used respecting Paradise Lost! It is too much that this patchwork, made by stitching together old odds and ends of what, when new, was but tawdry frippery, is to be picked off the dunghill on which it ought to rot, and to be held up to admiration as an inestimable specimen of art. And what must we think of a system by means of which verses like those which we have quoted, verses fit only for the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... tell more of him than is yet known. My own notion is, that Thomson was a much coarser man than his friends are willing to acknowledge[349]. His Seasons are indeed full of elegant and pious sentiments: but a rank soil, nay a dunghill, will ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... little birds who were in an aviary, and others on the trees and bushes, almost tore their little throats with singing; but the cock, who minded only his hens, and the hens, who were solely employed in scraping a neighbouring dunghill, did not show in any manner that they took the least pleasure in ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... know, mamma, I hate militia officers; a set of dunghill cocks with spurs on—heroes scratched off a church door— clowns in military masquerade, wearing the dress without supporting the character. No, give me the bold upright youth, who makes love to- day, and his head shot ...
— St. Patrick's Day • Richard Brinsley Sheridan

... stood staring at him, with both hands stretched out. The rags shook as much with the horrible cough that tore him as with the cruel wind. He was a dreadful creature, with watery eyes, and a head and moustache of dirty gray. His long and unvenerable hairs strayed loose beneath the dunghill relic which crowned them. The rain was in his hair and beard, and had so soaked his tattered dress that it clung to him like the feathers of a drenched fowl. He shook and wheezed and panted, and gripped the air with tremulous fingers, and through the rents in his clothing his white ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray

... looks," she said. "I suppose Our Lady is in pieces somewhere on a dunghill. Surely, father—I beg your pardon, Mr. Dent—it cannot be the same religion if you have knocked Our Lady to pieces. But then I suppose you would say that she was a superstition, too. And where is the old altar? ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... accompanies the child to school, monopolises love, declaring it shameful and abominable if it does not submit to her benediction, and divides the earth into two categories—the consecrated, for those who die in her bosom, and the dunghill in the open air for the heretic. The Church interferes in dress, laying down what is honest and Christian wear and what is scandalous frivolity. She interferes in the most intimate relations of domestic life, and even penetrates into the kitchen, turning ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... of their national horse, even though we smuggled it through Kentucky or any other of our States. Again, it would be impossible to produce any type of a horse from the English thoroughbred, except a dunghill, and Mr. Robertson would not have his government ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various

... these poor creatures, how they will fight till they drop down dead upon the table, and strike after they are ready to give up the ghost, not offering to run away when they are weary or wounded past doing further, whereas where a dunghill brood comes he will, after a sharp stroke that pricks him, run off the stage, and then they wring off his neck without more ado, whereas the other they preserve, though their eyes be both out, for breed only of a true ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... character of the place. Accordingly, while he was watching over the gold, forgetful of food, he was starved to death; on which a Vulture, standing over him, is reported to have said: "O Dog, you justly meet your death, who, begotten at a cross-road, and bred up on a dunghill, ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus

... whenever doing as he pleases with any material object, applying it, as likely as not, to some base or criminal purpose, is disposing at his pleasure of a portion of the Divine essence: few who will not greatly prefer to believe that the vital principle which manifests itself in the form of a dunghill or of a poisoned dagger, may be, for the time, as completely individualised and separate from all other life or mind, as every human being perceives his own conscious mind or self to be. At all events, we have now reached a point beyond which ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... were, linked together, and together they must fight their battles. As two pigs may be seen at the same trough, each striving to take the delicacies of the banquet from the other, and yet enjoying always the warmth of the same dunghill in amicable contiguity, so had these young ladies lived in sisterly friendship, while each was striving to take a husband from the other. They had understood the position, and, though for years back they had talked about Mr. Gibson, they had never quarrelled; but now, in these latter days of the ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... before the authorities and commanded to perform the Ko tou. The Seiks obeyed; but Moyse, the English soldier, declaring that he would not prostrate himself before any Chinaman alive, was immediately knocked upon the head and his body thrown upon a dunghill.'—Quoted by the author from The Times. The Elgin of line 6 is Henry Bruce, eighth Lord Elgin (1811-1863), then Ambassador to China, and afterwards Governor-General of India. Compare Theology in ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various

... whose shoes are worn already! Call men to prayers who are godly because not found out, and ring chimes for the coming in of every year that brings this cursed world nearer to its end. No bell or book for me! Throw me on a dunghill, and let me rot there, to infect ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... hill-preachers, to a singular degree of likeness or identity. Their images scarce ranged beyond the red horizon of the moor and the rainy hill-top, the shepherd and his sheep, a fowling- piece, a spade, a pipe, a dunghill, a crowing cock, the shining and the withdrawal of the sun. An occasional pathos of simple humanity, and frequent patches of big Biblical words, relieved the homely tissue. It was a poetry apart; bleak, austere, but genuine, and redolent ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the day. I felt all-confident and sailed in for all I was worth, and finished him in less than three minutes, to the evident satisfaction of Mr. Keefer, whom, when the fight was waxing hot, I espied standing on the dunghill with a broad smile taking in the combat. I had nearly stripped my opponent of his clothing, held a large wad of hair in each hand, his nose flattened all over his face, two teeth knocked down his throat, his shins skinned and ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston

... turns its gray to tarnished silver. Overhead in a tower window a single light twinkles: women's voices rise and fall on the roofs. In a rich man's doorway slaves are sleeping, huddled on the tiles. A cock crows from somebody's dunghill, a skeleton ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton

... one child; but triumphs in the rest. How just his grief! one carries in his head A less proportion of the father's lead; And is in danger, without special grace, To rise above a justice of the peace. The dunghill breed of men a diamond scorn, And feel a passion for a grain of corn; Some stupid, plodding, monkey-loving wight, Who wins their hearts by knowing black from white, Who with much pains, exerting all his sense, Can range aright his shillings, pounds, and pence. The booby father craves ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young

... folly into your head? Never has one of our family been known to quit his country, and for this reason we are the honor of our race, and are proud of our genealogy. Where will you find a poultry-yard like this—mulberry-trees to shade you, a whitewashed henroost, a magnificent dunghill, worms and corn everywhere, brothers that love you, and three great dogs to guard you from the foxes? Do you not think that at Rome itself you will regret the ease and plenty of ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various

... his cattle; carried off eighty negroes, which were all he had, not leaving him one to bake him a cake. Thus, in one hour, as the wild Arabs served Job, did the British serve my poor brother, breaking him up root and branch; and, from a state of affluence, reduced him to a dunghill. ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems

... almost afraid I must go and read Spenser, and wade through his allegories, and drawling stanzas, to get at a picture. But, good night! you see how one gossips, when one is alone, and at quiet on one's own dunghill!—Well! it may be trifling; yet it is such trifling as Ambition never is happy enough to know! Ambition orders palaces, but it is Content that chats for a page or two ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... no standing army. And is it no evil that one man in every fifty should be bred to the trade of slaughter; should live only by destroying and by exposing himself to be destroyed; should fight without enthusiasm and conquer without glory; be sent to a hospital when wounded, and rot on a dunghill when old? Such, over more than two-thirds of Europe, is the fate of soldiers. It was something that the citizen of Milan or Florence fought, not merely in the vague and rhetorical sense in which the words are often used, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... will not rake the dunghill of thy crimes, For who would read thy life who reads thy rhymes? But of King David's foes be this the doom, May all be like the young man Absalom! And for my foes, may this their blessing be, To talk like Doeg, and to write ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various

... I've an old coat and waistcoat as I've nearly done with, but they've got a good bit of wear in them yet. They'll just about fit you, I reckon. You shall go back in them, and keep them and welcome, and we'll make these as they've spoilt a present to the dunghill. I only wish all other bad habits, and more particularly them as comes through rum, brandy, and such like, could be cast away on to the same place. You did quite right, Jim, to ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson

... some Authors, that having put Human Seed into a Viol close stopp'd, and plac'd it for some time in a Dunghill that was moderately hot; they observ'd that the Particles drew up themselves in such Order, as to assume the Form of a Child. This (say they) comes to pass after the same manner as the Forming of a Chick in an Egg, which requires only a temperate Heat to Hatch it. But they agree, that 'twas impossible ...
— Tractus de Hermaphrodites • Giles Jacob

... monks, Jews, and travelers,—all the people of his time and our own; and everywhere the specter Death is among them, taunting, threatening, and triumphing. He is absent from one picture only, where Lazarus, lying on a dunghill at the rich man's door, declares that the specter has no terrors for him; probably because he has nothing to lose, and his existence is ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand

... us. In 1813 the cowardly breach of silence of that taciturn legislative body, emboldened by catastrophe, possessed only traits which aroused indignation. And it was a crime to applaud, in 1814, in the presence of those marshals who betrayed; in the presence of that senate which passed from one dunghill to another, insulting after having deified; in the presence of that idolatry which was loosing its footing and spitting on its idol,—it was a duty to turn aside the head. In 1815, when the supreme disasters filled the air, when France ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... cats, and guinea-pigs they have killed?—not one. So, then, the rabbit dies, and justice takes no notice. This rabbit dead, the Abbe Adelmonte has its entrails taken out by his cook and thrown on the dunghill; on this dunghill is a hen, who, pecking these intestines, is in her turn taken ill, and dies next day. At the moment when she is struggling in the convulsions of death, a vulture is flying by (there are a good many vultures in Adelmonte's ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere



Words linked to "Dunghill" :   cumulation, agglomerate, unsanitariness, heap, mound



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