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Grovelling   Listen
adjective
grovelling, groveling  adj.  Lying prone; low; debased; submissive in a self-abasing manner. "A groveling creature."
Synonyms: cringing, wormlike, wormy.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Grovelling" Quotes from Famous Books



... secrets, or betrays his confederates, or deserts many duties of life? Will you act in a manner consistently with courage, and its attendants, greatness of soul, resolution, patience, and contempt for all worldly things? Can you hear yourself called a great man when you lie grovelling, dejected, and deploring your condition with a lamentable voice; no one would call you even a man while in such a condition. You must therefore either abandon all pretensions to courage, or else pain must be put ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... the violation of our wives and daughters, cruel oppression, bigoted intolerance, whips and chains, the dungeon, the fagot, and the stake: such are the miseries and indignities we shall see and suffer; at least those grovelling souls will see and suffer them who now shrink from an honorable death. For my part, by Allah, I ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving

... with a compelling message to his fellows. It seemed only necessary to reach out his hand in order to grasp a chaplet—a crown. With her the world seemed his debtor. Now he was a thing cast off, a broken boy grovelling at the foot ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... victim writhed in a paroxysm of agony; his veins swollen almost to bursting. Whether real or imaginary, whether a victim to insanity or of some supernatural agent, its influence was not the less terrible in its effects. Starting suddenly from his grovelling posture, he cried, fixing his eyes on De Vessey with ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... manner; and the Catholic, by the very pomp with which he chants his Te Deum, somewhat conceals the meaning of his act, and, keeping God a little out of sight, makes his mass express the natural feeling of a human triumph. But the sleek Puritan, at once grovelling and presumptuous, mingles with his sanguinary mood all the morbid sickly conceit, all the crawling affected humility of the conventicle. All his bloodsheds are "mercies," and they are granted in answer ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... not romance, if I were you," replied the doctor; "you will find, I fear, a very grovelling and commonplace reality. Felipe, for instance, I have seen. And what am I to say? He is very rustic, very cunning, very loutish, and, I should say, an innocent; the others are probably to match. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson

... but one privilege and advantage to man's body above other moving creatures, that he is not, as others, grovelling, but of an erect, of an upright, form naturally built and disposed to the contemplation of heaven. Indeed it is a thankful form, and recompenses that soul, which gives it, with carrying that soul so many feet ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne

... low, grovelling, vindictive, feelings which agitate and disgrace themselves. If Roman Catholic principles are true and undeniable, none but Roman Catholics will be saved from the wrath to come. If Anglo-Catholic principles are true and undeniable, ...
— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell

... diving hastily to recover the volumes, and promptly knocking his head against that of Billykins, who was also grovelling for the same purpose, while Nealie plunged into the business of their visit, hoping to divert the attention of the master of the house from the awkwardness of the boys, poor things; but Sylvia giggled in quite a disgraceful fashion, then blinked hard at a bust of Apollo which stood on a bookshelf ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant

... which, notwithstanding that it bore on the lawful panel the great name of Jarley, and was employed besides in conveying from place to place the wax-work which was its country's pride, was designated by a grovelling stamp-office as a 'Common Stage Waggon,' and numbered too—seven thousand odd hundred—as though its precious freight ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... the Bible; let us remember that the Old Testament represents those early centuries when the people of Israel were surrounded by the corruptions of Baal worship, which transcended the grovelling wickedness of all other heathen systems, ancient or modern. Let us bear in mind the kind of training which the nation had received amid the corruptions of Egypt, all rendered more effective for evil by their degrading bondage; and with all these disadvantages ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... in a fresh flood of tears. "A wretch, a miser. You are unworthy, sir, to be linked to a family from whom Germain takes his gentlemanly qualities. Had he nothing but you in him, he would be a grovelling clod-hopper to-day instead of a favourite ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall

... the husbands was kind of lurking in the background, bunched up together. They seemed abashed by this strange frenzy of their womenfolks. How'd they know, the poor dubs, that a poet wasn't something a business man had ought to be polite and grovelling to? They affected an easy manner, but it was poor work. Even Judge Ballard, who seems nine feet tall in his Prince Albert, and usually looks quite dignified and hostile with his long dark face and his moustache and goatee—even the good old judge was rattled after a brief and unhappy effort ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... devotion to mere self-interest. We are, in a great measure, a nation of materialists, too much devoted to the pursuit of selfish and so-called practical aims, too little to the spiritual and the ethereal. Reform must come, else the soul will become gross and grovelling, and the nobler part of our natures, the more delicate and refined sympathies of the heart, the finer faculties of the intellect, will rust away with disuse, and the whole race become sensual, and finally effete, however brilliant may ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... groan, a roar, a swift surging of men, thick, black, like swarming bees. Some bent above the two prone figures. Others caught at the rope, grovelling, snarling. ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough

... nothing but what was ridiculous. Nevertheless, though these Poems contain some detestable passages, the effect, as Dr Johnson well observes, 'of reality and truth became conspicuous even when the intention was to show them grovelling and degraded.' The Pastorals, ludicrous to such as prided themselves upon their refinement, in spite of those disgusting passages, 'became popular, and were read with delight, as just representations of ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... but was too good-natured a man not to say that, if she wished to resign, his house and arms were open to her. Still, however, he could not bear to remove her from the Court. His veneration for royalty amounted in truth to idolatry. It can be compared only to the grovelling superstition of those Syrian devotees who made their children pass through the fire to Moloch. When he induced his daughter to accept the place of keeper of the robes, he entertained, as she tells us, a hope that some worldly advantage or other, not set down in the contract ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... spectators; some of them have a suppliant look, others are stoical, but all will have to roll at last upon the sand of the arena, condemned by the inexorable caprice of a people greedy for blood. "The modest virgin," says Juvenal, "turning down her thumb, orders that the breast of yonder man, grovelling in the dust, shall be torn open." And all—the heavily armed Samnite, the Gaul, the Thracian, the secutor; the dimachoerus, with his two swords; the swordsman who wears a helmet surmounted with a fish—the one whom ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier

... together, as they now justified their names, and blundered over one another in a make-believe attempt to bite and worry the foot; Nic looking on amused as they threw themselves down, rolling over and grovelling along on their sides and backs to get close up and feel the black's toes tickle them, and catch hold ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn

... little she became mute also; and thus at last we reached Tonbridge. Scarcely were we in the High Street than, not waiting for Diana to draw rein, I leapt from the cart with such precipitation that I tripped awkwardly and rolled, grovelling, in the dust. Scrambling hastily to my feet, I saw she had pulled up and was eyeing me a little anxiously, but her voice was sullen as ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol

... the office, leaving him cringing and grovelling on the floor. "There will be no directors' meeting, Mr. Sexton," she informed the manager as she passed through the general office. ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne

... I am Kano Indara," said the artist, almost grovelling on the stones. "Enter, dear sir, I beseech. You must be weary. Accompany me in this direction, august youth. Mata, bring ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa

... Sir Philip, testily; "don't crouch grovelling on the floor there. Get up and let us know the meaning of this. Good heavens! the lad may be here ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge

... her hands and fell on the floor, grovelling: "I will say aught that you bid me, kind sir. I cannot bear it again. I cannot go back to that place. I am too old to be tormented. I will bear what testimony ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... triumph across the playground, and staggered half-way up the steep garden path, when Acton happening to tread on a loose pebble brought the whole procession to grief, and caused the noble band of conquering heroes to be seen all grovelling in a ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery

... hell, and left to others, worthy of the transcendent honour, the glorious task of saving souls. What was I, steeped in sin, as I had been up to the very moment of my conversion—what was I, insolent, pretending worm, that I should raise my grovelling head, and presume upon the unmerited favour that had been showered so graciously upon me? It remained for those—purest and best of men, whose lives from childhood onward had been a lucid exposition of the word of truth—whose ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... said Joe, thoughtfully—his feeling of despair seeming to have deadened the agony he had felt; "I've been thinking it out while you were grovelling up there like a rat, and I think that the air will soon be all driven out of the mine by the water. Ugh! hark at it now. How it comes bubbling and racing up there! If you put your head over the edge of the rock there, it's fit to blow ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn

... flying cattle, with the longings of a Western Indian. The struggle between thirst for vengeance and cupidity was severe but short. The latter quickly predominated in the bosom of one whose passions were proverbially grovelling; and scarcely a moment intervened between the flight of the animals and the swift pursuit of the guards. The trapper had continued calmly facing his foe, during the instant of suspense that succeeded his hardy act; and now that Weucha was ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper

... and a host of Rabbis explain away, each after his own fashion, Christianity dwells, lovingly as it were, upon the "Fall" of man[FN325] and seems to revel in the contemptible condition to which "original sin" condemned him; thus grovelling before God ad majorem Dei gloriam. To such a point was and is this carried that the Synod of Dort declared, Infantes infidelium morientes in infantia reprobatos esse statui mus; nay, many of the orthodox still hold a Christian babe dying unbaptised to be unfit for a higher existence, and some ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... you like to have it in black and white, I've been all the brains of the business here—single-handed! It was I got the secret of the wolf bait from the mother of your lame friend here," he pointed with his unoccupied hand to my grovelling boy, "when first I followed Paulette out from New York and laid up in Skunk's Misery to wait till I had a clear way to get to La Chance. That old ass Thompson gave me that, when I scooped him up on the road. After I'd used him, two of my men drowned him in Lac Tremblant—and you'd never have ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones

... have never failed in any scheme, therefore you may feel secure in this," replied Miss Malison, with ready flattery; for she knew Miss Grahame's love of designing, and really felt gratified at any plan tending to injure Mrs. Hamilton, whom she detested with all the malevolence of a mean and grovelling mind, which despised the virtue that was ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar

... his deep, earnest love of order in things intellectual, in every excess of disorder in things material, and his passionate love of the beautiful could be profaned by frequent grovelling amid the hideous deformities of vice. Poe, in his reverence for Art (his only reverence), seemed generally to set greater store on the elaborate and artistic perfection of his works, than in the spontaneity of genius therein ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... the wooer? Thou?"—so taunted they— "Nay! Merely poet! A brute insidious, plundering, grovelling, That aye must lie, That wittingly, wilfully, aye must lie: For booty lusting, Motley masked, Self-hidden, shrouded, Himself his booty— HE—of truth the wooer? Nay! Mere fool! Mere poet! Just motley speaking, ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche

... that pursue the souls of the wicked—as the devils of the mountains after a liar. He would not have lasted much farther, this bundle of sweating dust. Get up, fellow!" he said, touching Phraortes's head with his toe. "Thou liest grovelling there like a swine in ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford

... to the dignity of her situation, and the purse of her lover, and his credit into the bargain, are taxed to the utmost to fit her out in becoming style. The wife of a free trapper to be equipped and arrayed like any ordinary and undistinguished squaw? Perish the grovelling thought! In the first place, she must have a horse for her own riding; but no jaded, sorry, earth-spirited hack, such as is sometimes assigned by an Indian husband for the transportation of his squaw and her pappooses: the wife of a free trader must have the ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving

... read five or six pages." Yet, he attached the most importance to "Locke's Essay," for he acknowledged that it turned his attention to metaphysics, and, he said, "It awakened me from my stupor, and induced me to form a resolution to abandon the grovelling views which I had been ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer

... conspirator!' said he. 'Get up, you grovelling hound! Here, Gerard, take charge of him and ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle

... any way, as if some wind had blown them there, did not improve on acquaintance. The walls, five feet high, were built of poles some five inches in diameter; the low roof, made of similar poles, was heavily heaped with earth. What with this deep earth-covering, and with their grovelling toward the earth in such a flat and neighborly fashion, they had a dreadfully under-foot look, and seemed rather dens than houses. Many were ragged and rotten, all inconceivably cheerless. No outhouses, no inclosures, no vegetation, no relief of any kind. About and between ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... crying and wailing, "these are Christians—these men have been promised by you, but now, the inheritance of perfect bliss. What is their faith, that it does not give them strength to die like men? Why is it that a woman quails not, while they lie grovelling on the deck?" ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat

... the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure. The things included under pleasure and pain may require farther explanation; but this does not affect the general theory. To the accusation that pleasure is a mean and grovelling object of pursuit, the answer is, that human beings are capable of pleasures that are not grovelling. It is compatible with utility to recognize some kinds of pleasure as more valuable than others. There are pleasures that, irrespective of amount, are held ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain

... church bells.... The carillon was ringing.... Church bells were chiming through the night. To Bobinette, the abject creature grovelling in the mire of the roadway, the bells sounded vaguely serene, ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre

... teaches are the very last expression of God's greatness shown in His wonderful evolution of matter into His own image. And for what? That one family might maintain the position given to one of their ancestors in the remote, dark, and grovelling ages of the past for prowess of which a modern prizefighter might be proud, but for acts to which he with a higher standard ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney

... of nature—yet in Athens only is there a great open museum of such monuments. The Athenian buildings, though none of them Homeric in point of origin, are old enough for us. Two-and-a-half millennia satisfy our grovelling aspirations. And Mr. Mure himself, whilst insisting on their too youthful character, admits that they are 'superior in number, variety, and elegance to those which the united cities of Greece can now show.' Yet even these pure monuments have been combined with modern aftergrowths, ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey

... says Professor Huxley, 'is to promote morality and refinement, by teaching men to discipline themselves, and by leading them to see that the highest, as it is the only content, is to be attained not by grovelling in the rank and steaming valleys of sense, but by continually striving towards those high peaks, where, resting in eternal calm, reason discerns the undefined but bright ideal of the highest good—"a cloud by day, a pillar ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock

... modified by the world's progress—was her tenet, and she had no scruple in partaking in any act of worship; while naturally conscientious, and loving all the virtues, she viewed the terrors of religion as the scourge of the grovelling and superstitious; or if suffering existed at all, it could be only as expiation, conducting to a condition of high intellect and perfect morality. No other view, least of all that of a vicarious atonement, seemed to her worthy of ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... whole grovelling tribe of Leppins, outnumbering the Van Horns, possibly, are ready with oral testimony and a shower of depositions, and what all besides. Ouf! not an inch do I yield. J'y suis; j'y reste. Not an inch should anybody else yield. Well, thank me, Roger, for ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller

... alter the fact that he was just a common human being. The lump that rose in his throat was so big, and so hard, he did not try to swallow it. He hurried back into Rainbow Bottom. The first log he came across he kicked over, and grovelling in the rotten wood and loose earth with his hands, he brought up a half dozen bluish-white grubs. He tore up the ground for the length of the log, and then he went to others, cramming the worms and dirt with them into his pockets. When he had enough, he ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter

... ill-born brood; call ye it highway robbery to give freedom to those in bondage, to release the captives, to succour the miserable, to raise up the fallen, to relieve the needy? Infamous beings, who by your vile grovelling intellects deserve that heaven should not make known to you the virtue that lies in knight-errantry, or show you the sin and ignorance in which ye lie when ye refuse to respect the shadow, not to say the presence, of any knight-errant! ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... grovelled in the dust. Then, slinking out of the canebrake, stooping near the ground and trying to join the dust-throwing circle behind Moreau's back, came the Leopard-man. The last of the Beast People to arrive was the little Ape-man. The earlier animals, hot and weary with their grovelling, ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells

... upwards and his sword hissed over his shoulder. But the dragoman had screamed out something which arrested the blow, and which brought the chief and the lieutenant to his side with a new interest upon their swarthy faces. The others crowded in also, and formed a dense circle around the grovelling, ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle

... owing his every comfort as well as the continuance of his race, to woman, denied her every intellectual initiative! 'Who would have thought that a woman'—could do anything but bend low before a man with grovelling humility saying 'My lord, here am I, the waiting vessel of your lordship's pleasure!—possess me or I die!' We have ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli

... that the withdrawal from the Indian of the Government's protecting arm, and the recognition of his position, as no longer that of a needy, grovelling annuitant, but as one of equal footing with the white before the law, would—far from bringing blessings in their train—promote, with other evils, a pernicious development, with calamitous reaction upon him, of the aggrandizing instinct ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie

... was a case for prayer, any prayer!—the prostrate woman, the hesitating lash, the tearless anguish of the Siamese child, the heart-rending cry of the English child, all those mothers with grovelling brows, but hearts uplifted among the stars, on the wings of the Angel of Prayer. Who could behold so many women crouching, shuddering, stupefied, dismayed, in silence and darkness, animated, enlightened only by the deep whispering heart ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens

... creation,—as everything of agriculture, of science, and of the mechanical arts, has,—would teach him more of God, and of the gratitude he owes to him, than any theological Christian sermon he now hears. Great objects inspire great thoughts; great munificence excites great gratitude; but the grovelling tales and doctrines of the Bible and the Testament are fit only ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... these contentions. She is abominably rouged, and before me she is grovelling, as she must have seen some ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al

... forward, dancing with strange leaps and whirling his sword about his head, to throw himself prone before and beneath the vermilion hoofs that never paused or swerved in their gallop. Not a movement, not a glance of the rider gave sign of acknowledgment or recognition; not a look was cast upon the grovelling form, safe or hurt or maimed—only the soldier's comrades howled their plaudits, mingled with laughter and rude jeers whenever the devotee lay still or writhed or rose staggering from some stroke of ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne

... I declare!" he exclaimed loftily. "But there, what can you expect from a low, grovelling beetle? Away, sir, pass on! Your very presence is distasteful to me. The idea of placing ME upon the same level—in the same family, as a low-born, mean, insignificant, utterly valueless——" Here the Diamond fairly choked ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant

... with the belief that life is a great and noble calling; not a mean and grovelling thing that we are to shuffle through as we can, but an elevated ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... in the absence of the men, whose efforts, if present, they would not hesitate to scoff at. The disturbing influence of the resolution became at once perceptible, and the earliest means were taken to bring the question to an issue. Mr. Hume, a parsimonious economist, of niggard principle and grovelling sentiment, undertook the office of coercing the Irish. He gave notice of a motion for a call of the House. This man, a mean utilitarian, had been rejected by the country of his birth and the country ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny

... Manor House and you away. Only once has that happened to me, the year you were at school, and now "all that's shuv be'ind you" and you're out and dancing about. I shall certainly have urgent private affairs in Woolwich during the next month. Talk of respect! When was I ever anything but grovelling? And once I have gazed upon your portrait in train and feathers I shall be reduced to such a state of timidity ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker

... abandon their old schemes merely because they had agreed by treaty to do so is shown by a letter which was found at Lo Bengula's kraal by Mr. F. Thompson when he went up to negotiate for Mr. Rhodes. The stealthy grovelling of the Commandant-General before a savage native chief, the unctuous phraseology, the hypocritical assurances of an undying friendship between Boer and Matabele so long as there are living one of each race, throw a lurid light upon the conduct of Boer diplomacy with ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick

... you mean by Science?" demanded Heliobas. "The foot of the mountain, at which men now stand, grovelling and uncertain how to climb? or the glittering summit itself which touches ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... gentle reader will excuse me for dwelling on these and the like particulars, which, however insignificant they may appear to grovelling vulgar minds, yet will certainly help a philosopher to enlarge his thoughts and imagination, and apply them to the benefit of public as well as private life, which was my sole design in presenting this and other accounts of my travels to the world; wherein I have been chiefly studious of ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift

... the same unassisted laws of matter, which we now see producing only such comparatively meagre and insufficient results, actually caused animalcules to be produced from pure sand, and fishes to be created out of oysters, and birds to be generated by slimy and grovelling reptiles, and men to be born from monkeys;—if he should tell us all this, certainly we could offer no direct confutation of the wonderful tale. In regard to alleged facts of this character, the wisest of men are, and always must be, mere children. But it would be monstrous ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen

... at him as though he were grovelling stupidity, and then lay back on her cushions with a "You will ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey

... in philosophy, grovelling through Diogenes Laertius—Plutarch's "Placita" and sich—and often wondering whether the schoolmasters have any better ground for maintaining that Greek is a finer language than English than the fact that they can't write ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley

... creeds they can't expound, Prepare a fancied bliss or woe? Shall reptiles, grovelling on the ground, Their ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... hour has at length struck. The flag is unfurled. The gentry want to extirpate us by means of poison, we will extirpate them with fire and sword. The brave shall live, the cowards shall die. Ye, who see your children, your parents tormented and grovelling in the dust, snatch up your arms and avenge them. Fear not the soldiers, they also will be on our side. Let none go who has short-cropped hair. Two deputies must proceed forthwith from every village to Hetfalu, ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai

... felt some sensible torment. Many have climbed to the top thereof, where they heard the groans more plainly than they could below. One among the rest being a-top, spoke to the tree; but presently came down much astonished, and lay grovelling on the earth speechless for three hours, and then reviving said, Brampton, Brampton, thou art much bound to pray.' The author of this news is one Mr. Vaughan, a minister who was there present and heard and saw these passages, and ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 82, May 24, 1851 • Various

... air—gleaming lights, then dense blackness—so the hours passed. Sally after sally the snowplow made, only to withdraw to give way to the pick crews, and they in turn, gasping and reeling, hurried out for the attack of the plow again. Men fell grovelling, only to be dragged into the open air and resuscitated, then sent once more into the cruelty of the fight. The hours dragged by like stricken things. Then—with dawn—the plow churned with lesser impact. It surged forward. Gray light ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... him?" pursued my convict. "Do you see what a villain he is? Do you see those grovelling and wandering eyes? That's how he looked when we were tried together. He never ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... relics which are any thing but herself, to wander among a few mouldy ruins, that are only imperfect indexes to lost volumes of glory, and meet at every step the more melancholy ruins of human nature—a degenerate race of stupid and shrivelled slaves, grovelling in the lowest depths of ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock

... croaked feebly, still grovelling with her face near the ashes and without looking up, "and I called—the cry of warning. It was her order. Her order," she ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad

... nearest, and seized him by the horn; and up and down they wrestled, till the bull fell grovelling on his knees; for the heart of the brute died within him, and his mighty limbs were loosed beneath the steadfast eye of that dark witch maiden, and the magic whisper of ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various

... O hail!' he said, wheedling, royally vested, royally above, yet grovelling there to the prince below him. King Richard stopped with his foot on the next step, and let the Count ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett

... the world has looked on with mingled pity and scorn at the blindness of the man who stood there and paraded his faithfulness; while all the world has bent with a pity that was near to love, a pity that was full of sympathy because man recognized his condition and experience, for the poor creature grovelling upon the pavement, unwilling and unable even to look upon the altar, but who, standing afar off, said, "God be merciful to me a sinner!" Whatever else you say, don't say, "I have been the very best I could." That ...
— Addresses • Phillips Brooks

... when I join the Muse's revel, Begad, I wish you at the devil! In vain my verse I plane and bevel, Like Banville's rhyming devotees; In vain by many an artful swivel Lug in my meaning by degrees; I'm sure to hear my Henley cavil; And grovelling prostrate on my knees, Devote his body to the seas, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Christianized and terrified into worthy citizens of this fair land? Could the clear white flame that burned in the brains of the padres strike fire in their neophytes' narrow skulls, create a soul in those grovelling bodies? He dismissed ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton

... principle—who will sacrifice honour for a few paltry dollars—who will debase himself for gain—whose gross sensuality suffocates all high, spiritual love? No! no! It is impossible! And she who unites herself with such a man, must either shrink, grovelling, down to his mean level, ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur

... Lancelot he would have won the most sceptical. The sound of his voice soothed me then, as far as it was possible for anything to soothe me, and I shifted slightly to one side and looked up at him furtively and crossly, my poor face all blubbered with tears and smeared with mire where I had lain grovelling. ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... the heaving mass upon his left, slew it with the knife, and tossed its body on the ground. At length, it seemed, it reached the turn of the high- priestess. She set down the basket on the steps, moved into the centre of the ring, grovelled in the dust before the reptiles, and still grovelling lifted up her voice, between speech and singing, and with so great, with so insane a fervour of excitement, as struck a sort of horror through ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson

... is enabled to flush his authority by tyrannising over those who every hour deserve the publick acknowledgments of the community; to intrude upon the retreats of brave men, fatigued and exhausted by honest industry, to drag them out with all the wantonness of grovelling authority, and chain them to the oar without a moment's respite, or perhaps oblige them to purchase, with the gains of a dangerous voyage, or the plunder of an enemy lately conquered, a short interval to settle their affairs, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson

... prayers and grovelling pleas, therefore, they hurled him bodily out upon the deck, delivering him to the mercy of the fearful things from which they had themselves ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... he gave a great stroke of might, and clave his shield through. When Beaumains saw his shield cloven asunder he was a little ashamed of that stroke and of her language; and then he gave him such a buffet upon the helm that he fell on his knees. And so suddenly Beaumains pulled him upon the ground grovelling. And then the Green Knight cried him mercy, and yielded him unto Sir Beaumains, and prayed him to slay him not. All is in vain, said Beaumains, for thou shalt die but if this damosel that came with me pray me to save thy life. ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory

... horror on the years of my young manhood, for I was guilty of slaying men in battle, of gambling, of riotous squandering of substance gained by the toil of serfs, of deceit, and of profligacy. That course of life lasted ten years. Then I took to writing, but the motive was grovelling, for I aimed at gaining ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... unprepared to accept it. For instance, in Monsieur Alphonse, a husband, on discovering that his wife has had an intrigue before their marriage, and that a little girl whom she wishes to adopt is really her daughter, instantly raises her from the ground where she lies grovelling at his feet, and says: "Creature de Dieu, toi qui as failli et te repens, releve toi, je te pardonne." This evangelical attitude on the part of Admiral de Montaiglin was in itself very surprising, and perhaps not wholly ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... and instantly a soldier swooped upon the grovelling figure, twitched him to his feet and drew him apart, stuttering furious ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... Many a day thou hast Trampled the Emperor's lands beneath thy feet. Oh, I am but a woman! Were I man, I'd find some better thing to do, than here Lie grovelling in the dust. ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller

... Isurium; their foundations having been dug up for the mercenary purpose of obtaining their materials. We cannot sufficiently censure such irreverence to "hoar antiquity," or the contracted and grovelling ideas which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 343, November 29, 1828 • Various

... presence felt in the very home of their enemies, and could rejoice in having inflicted upon them more injury than they had themselves received. Though they had not captured or annihilated them, they had done enough to inspire and fully sustain their own grovelling pride. ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain

... principles, M. announced that she could see clear through the ice-floor, as if there were nothing between her and the rock below. I ventured to doubt this, for there was an air of immense thickness about the whole ice; and as soon as A. and I had succeeded in grovelling across the intervening space, and converged upon her, we found that the appearance she had observed was due to a most perfect reflection of the roof, as shown by the candles we carried, which may give some idea of the character of the ice. We did not care to study this effect for any very prolonged ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne

... of drawer and crouches down in the corner, left, behind the cupboard. A moment later the door is flung open and MAT BURKE appears in the doorway. He is in bad shape—his clothes torn and dirty, covered with sawdust as if he had been grovelling or sleeping on barroom floors. There is a red bruise on his forehead over one of his eyes, another over one cheekbone, his knuckles are skinned and raw—plain evidence of the fighting he has been through on his "bat." His eyes are bloodshot and heavy-lidded, his face has a bloated ...
— Anna Christie • Eugene O'Neill

... the Dramatic "biz" preferred? There you may "boom" it like a bird. Turn on the Absolute-Absurd; By that strange tap the mob is stirred. Be dismal, deathly, dirty, dim; Grovelling, ghastly, gruesome, grim, Anything meaning morbid whim; Quidnuncs will cry, "What treuth! what vim!" Chorus—Tra-la-la! "Boom" to-day! ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 5, 1892 • Various

... to his meaning at first, because I had only got as far as G. RUB,—and then I saw that the whole thing as it stood spelled 'GRUB.' Lord, how the swine laughed! He told the form all about it, and of course they all laughed too, the sniggering, grovelling sweeps! ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay

... whose noble and proud heart felt humbled by this pious grovelling of her husband; "not so, we will be more than dust and food for worms. The dust of common mortals will be scattered in every direction by the hand of Time, and over their graves will History walk with destroying feet; but she will remain with us and will ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... disproportionate share of victories. But let me not boast. For the present, I have done all that I meant to do in this matter. It is for you, dear reader, now to get a floor, a friend, some soldiers and some guns, and show by a grovelling devotion your appreciation of this noble and beautiful gift of a limitless game that I ...
— Little Wars; a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books • H. G. Wells

... been, heretofore, often unjustly accused of ambition. Low, grovelling souls, who are utterly incapable of elevating themselves to the higher and nobler duties of pure patriotism,—beings who, forever keeping their own selfish ends in view, decide all public measures by their presumed ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... the purity of its morality. That there is some salt in England—minds not swayed by mere externals—he is fully convinced; if he were not, he would spare himself the trouble of writing; but to the fact that the generality of his countrymen are basely grovelling before the shrine of what they are pleased to call gentility he ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... had found his way to New York. In this remarkable letter, the boy seems to have written with prophetic instinct. "To confess my weakness, Ned," he says, "my ambition is prevalent, so that I contemn the grovelling condition of a clerk or the like, to which my fortune condemns me, and would willingly risk my life, though not my character, to exalt my station.... I mean to prepare the way for futurity.... I shall conclude by saying, I wish there was a war." This may be regarded as a boyish ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various

... know what you mean by grovelling, Mr. Bertram. I don't like grovellers myself. I like men who can keep their heads up—who, once having them above the water, will never allow them to sink. Some men in every age do win distinction and wealth and high place. These ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... precincts of the temple were many priests gathered around the altars, praying, weeping, grovelling in the dust. Impostors in safety, they were not the less superstitious in danger! Calenus passed them, and entered the chamber yet to be seen in the south side of the court. Burbo followed him—the priest struck a light. Wine and viands strewed the table; the remains ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... of an evil habit, the rising superior to opposition and attack, the spiritual exaltation that comes from resisting the invasion of the grovelling material side of life. Sometimes when you are worn and weak with the struggle; when it seems that justice is a dream, that honesty and loyalty and truth count for nothing, that the devil is the only good paymaster; when hope grows dim and flickers, then is the time when you must tower in the great ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan

... heard Richard crying for her upstairs. She dragged herself up at once, but remembered and fell grovelling on the floor and wept. But Richard continued to call for her, and she struggled to her feet and made her way up the stairs, clinging to the banisters. She looked over her shoulder at the loathed room and ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... that lifts them up to high degree, And treads us down in grovelling misery, England affords these glorious vagabonds That carried erst their fardels on their backs Coursers to ride on through the gazing streets, Sweeping it in their glaring satin suits, And pages to attend their masterships. With mouthing words that better wits have framed, They purchase lands and ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes

... sensitive to this form of torture. A forefinger extended with a threatening waggle was sufficient to rob her of every vestige of self-control, while the play of her brother's fingers over her ribs reduced her instantly to grovelling submission. To do Graham justice, he was quite unable to appreciate the fact that this pastime cost Ruth real suffering. He would have put his hand into the fire before he would have struck his sister, yet he frequently subjected ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith

... political criticism. The basis of this style of writing is a caput mortuum of impotent spite and dulness, till it is varnished over with the slime of servility, and thrown into a state of unnatural activity by the venom of the most rancorous bigotry. The eminent professors in this grovelling department are at first merely out of sorts with themselves, and vent their spleen in little interjections and contortions of phrase—cry Pish at a lucky hit, and Hem at a fault, are smart on personal ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... the object of our wishes, and this bright emblem for which I have so long striven will now finally become mine. I shall be the ruler of this land, and in the unrestricted exercise of royal power I shall behold these millions of venal slaves grovelling at my feet, and whimpering for a glance or a smile. Ah, how ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... had the mirror, to behold myself in the fulness of my glory! and, oh, that the domineering fop, my master, were in presence, that I might triumph over him! that I might even contemn the wretched wight, the mortal of a grovelling soul, and of a debased understanding. [He looks about him, and sees his master.] How the devil came these three together? Nothing vexes me, but that I must stand bare to him, after such an ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden

... mistress of your lot? While you seemed but a demon of vengeance, you commanded terror, and to good purpose; but such a foul fiend as thou hast of late shown thyself—such a very worthless, base trickster of the devil—such a sordid grovelling imp of perdition, can gain nothing but scorn from a soul ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... chaplain for morning and evening prayers. In all these points the lawgiver was also an example. A sincere and ardent piety exalted his courage. Equally free from the coarse infidelity which leaves the passions of the barbarian without a control, — and from the grovelling superstition of Ferdinand, who humbled himself to the dust before the Supreme Being, while he haughtily trampled on his fellow-creature — in the height of his success he was ever a man and a Christian — in the height of his devotion, a ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.

... back again to the ground, grovelling and speechless. The tyrannic Thascius, regarding him with a scowl of drunken wrath, seized an empty vase, and poising it in his unsteady hand, prepared to hurl it at the hunchback's prostrate form, when again a single cry—a woman's—rising ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... what he regarded as lasting personal friendship with the Czar! It is all moonshine to say that he broke the friendship. The power of Russia, Prussia, and Austria were hopelessly wrecked more than once, and on each occasion they intrigued him into war again, and then threw themselves at his feet, grovelling supplicants for mercy, which he ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman

... The sick and wounded tend,—soothe the distressed. If thy weak arm cannot protect, yet plead With bold rebuke the cause of the oppressed, Kindling hot shame in Mammon's votaries, Abashed, at least, in lucre's grovelling quest; And, in the toil-worn serf, a glad surprise Awakening—when, from brute despondency, Taught to look up to heaven with dazzled eyes.— Thus mayst thou do God service,—thus apply Thyself, within thy limit, to abate What wickedness thou seest, or misery: Thus, in a Sacred Band, ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... collect my scattered senses, I found myself nearly suffocated, and grovelling in utter darkness among a quantity of loose earth, which was also falling upon me heavily in every direction, threatening to bury me entirely. Horribly alarmed at this idea, I struggled to gain my feet, and at last succeeded. I then remained motionless for some moments, endeavouring to conceive ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... accused of ambition in presenting this measure. Ambition! inordinate ambition! Low, grovelling souls who are utterly incapable of elevating themselves to the higher and nobler duties of pure patriotism—beings who, forever keeping their own selfish aims in view, decide all public measures by their presumed influence on their own aggrandizement—judge me by the venal rule which ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord

... wagged here and there at the will of waves, and to have no spring nor mind of its own; or else that it has at least no springy intention and elasticity of purpose, but only a knobby, knotty, prickly, malignant stubbornness, and incoherent opiniativeness; crawling about, and coggling, and grovelling, and aggregating {161} anyhow, like the minds of so many ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... judgments thus venerate, live according to the ordinances of the Church. It is a great wickedness in you to admit such crimes as do not become the conversation even of secular men. Your profession is the heavenly life. Do not condescend to the grovelling wishes and vulgar errors of ordinary mortals. Let the men of this world be coerced by human laws; do you obey the ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

... words the serpent opened his golden mouth and fell to laughing. The thought that this little mortal, grovelling before him, could believe himself able to repay the ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall

... Israel avenge that splendid murder? Why did not every man of the tribe of Simeon become a Goel to the dauntless assassin? Because Vice cannot stand for one moment before Virtue's uplifted arm. Base and grovelling as they were, these money-mongering Jews felt, in all that remnant of their souls which was not yet eaten away by infidelity and avarice, that the Son ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... mother, which had immediately followed it. At other times she congratulated herself for having repulsed far from her two wretched creatures, who, she said, had both dishonoured their family by their grovelling inclinations. Sometimes, at the sight of the many miserable objects with which Paris abounds, she would fly into a rage, and exclaim,—"Why are not these idle people sent off to the colonies?" As for the notions of humanity, ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre

... consisting in human beings, were to disappear under the magic touch of the instrument of freedom. The chattel was to be transformed into a person, the person into a soldier, the soldier into a citizen—and thus the Negro slave, like the crawling caterpillar, was to leave his grovelling situation, and in new form, wing himself to the sublime ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams

... deliverer!" he cried as he rose from the floor, where he had been grovelling in heartrending paroxysms of grief. Seizing the old man's hand, he kissed it and pressed it to his bosom. Then, bursting into tears, he added: "God Himself will reward you for having come to visit ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... and Euphra, and the loudest voice of his despairing agony could not reach across that gulf. An awful conviction awoke within him, that the woman he worshipped would scarcely receive his worship at the worth of incense now; and yet in spirit he fell down grovelling before his idol. The words "euphrasy and rue" kept ringing in his brain, coming over and over with an awful mingling of chime and toll. When he thought about it afterwards, he seemed to have been a year in crossing the hall with Mrs. Elton on his arm. But as ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald

... of the sect was alarming to constituted authorities, its bestiality disgraceful to the cause of religious reformation. The leaders were among the most depraved of human creatures, as much distinguished for licentiousness, blasphemy and cruelty as their followers for grovelling superstition. The evil spirit, driven out of Luther, seemed, in orthodox eyes, to have taken possession of a herd of swine. The Germans, Muncer and Hoffmann, had been succeeded, as chief prophets, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... the lustrous constellations of that pure sky. Jacob had thought himself alone; the vision peoples the wilderness. He had felt himself defenceless; the vision musters armies for his safety. He had been grovelling on earth, with no thoughts beyond its fleeting goods; the vision lifts his eyes from the low level on which they had been gazing. He had been conscious of but little connection with heaven; the vision shows him a path from his very side ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... increase the general welfare by occupying higher positions; and, lastly, it promotes morality and refinement, by teaching men to discipline themselves, and by leading them to see that the highest, as it is the only permanent, content is to be attained, not by grovelling in the rank and steaming valleys of sense, but by continual striving towards those high peaks, where, resting in eternal calm, reason discerns the undefined but bright ideal of the highest Good—"a cloud by day, a pillar ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley

... accompanied by a bitter laugh, and produced a decided effect on the grovelling George, who slowly raised himself upon his hands, and, lifting his head, looked his ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard

... Cicero in the book I have been quoting, "pervading all nature (pertinens per naturam cuiusque rei), can be understood as Ceres on the land, as Neptune on the sea, and so on, and may be and should be worshipped in all these different forms;" not in superstitious fear and grovelling spirit—the mental attitude which Lucretius had condemned years before this treatise was written—but with pure heart and mind, following the one and true God in all his various manifestations.[780] Thus the Stoic Pantheism, in spite of its ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... galvanizing dead creeds into a semblance of vitality; and strange superstitions creeping out of their lurking-places, and gaining influence in a luxurious society whose intelligence was an ineffectual safeguard against the most grovelling errors; and a dogged adherence of formalists and conservatives to ancient ways, and much empty profession of barren orthodoxy; and, beneath all, a vague disquiet, a breaking up of ancient social and natural ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata

... more there need to tell, I have so fenced and fortified him well, That his pure mind on nought Of gross or grovelling now can brook to dwell; Modest and sensitive, in deed, word, thought, Her captive from his youth, she so her fair And virtuous image press'd Upon his heart, it left its likeness there: Whate'er his life has shown of good or great, In aim or action, he from us possess'd. Never ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... those I loved were lost through my fault, by my hard treatment. I see it now, but I thought then they were alone to blame. I once had wealth, but it was dissipated almost, not all, and I feared lest the remainder would be lost; then I became what you have known me, a wretched, grovelling miser. I had a daughter, she was young and fair, and as bright as you are, but she desired to live as she had been accustomed to, not aware of my losses, and I stinted her of everything except the bare necessaries of life. ...
— Ned Garth - Made Prisoner in Africa. A Tale of the Slave Trade • W. H. G. Kingston

... and grovelling about my feet, and still imploring. Imploring what? The man's death? I could not quite get the bearings of the thing. But Hugo ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... expostulate, to beseech, to enumerate the consequences of thy act—what end can it serve but to blazon thy infamy and embitter our woes? And yet, O think, think ere it be too late, on the distresses which thy flight will entail upon us; on the base, grovelling, and atrocious character of the wretch to whom thou hast sold thy honor. But what is this? Is not thy effrontery impenetrable, and thy heart thoroughly cankered? O most specious, and most ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown

... over his friend Eabani, grovelling on the bare earth." The selfish fear of death struggled in his spirit with regret at having lost so dear a companion, a tried friend in so many encounters. "I do not wish to die like Eabani: sorrow has entered my heart, the fear of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... that, completely relaxed, demoralised as she had never been, Mrs. Wix suffered her wound to bleed and her resentment to gush. Her great bitterness was that Ida had called her false, denounced her hypocrisy and duplicity, reviled her spying and tattling, her lying and grovelling to Sir Claude. "Me, ME!" the poor woman wailed, "who've seen what I've seen and gone through everything only to cover her up and ease her off and smooth her down? If I've been an 'ipocrite it's the other way round: I've pretended, to him and to her, to myself and ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James

... heads. [2331]Budaeus records, how that, at Lewis the Twelfth his death, tam subita mutatio, ut qui prius digito coelum attingere videbantur, nunc humi derepente serpere, sideratos esse diceres, they that were erst in heaven, upon a sudden, as if they had been planet-strucken, lay grovelling on the ground; ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... name was like a lightning flash upon a dark night. I had heard of the vagaries of a woman's love, but was it possible that this spirited woman loved that poor creature whom I had seen grovelling last night in a frenzy of fear? But now I remembered also where I had seen the name Sibylle. It was upon the fly-leaf of his book. 'Lucien, from Sibylle,' was the inscription. I recalled also that my uncle had said something to ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle

... heroes stricken in the field; True sons of England, who, unmov'd, Could hear their fears, their interest plead; Led by no lure they disapprov'd, Stooping to no unsanction'd deed! Spirits so finely tun'd, so high, That grovelling influences die Assailing them! The venal mind Can neither fit inducement find To lead their purpose or their fate— To sway, to probe, or stimulate! What knowledge can they gain of such Whom worldly motives may not ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham

... minds over the deadly nature of that accident. It must have been a pretty sight, the fierce industry of these beggars toiling on a motionless ship that floated quietly in the silence of a world asleep, fighting against time for the freeing of that boat, grovelling on all-fours, standing up in despair, tugging, pushing, snarling at each other venomously, ready to kill, ready to weep, and only kept from flying at each other's throats by the fear of death that stood silent behind them like an inflexible and cold-eyed taskmaster. Oh ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... they say that; but, I pray you, have mercy on me.' The poor, distorted figure threw itself down, grovelling at the Landhofmeisterin's feet. ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay

... different to the one she had contemplated. She fancies he is kneeling as once before by the same sofa, murmuring again those wild, impassioned words. She bends to grasp his hands and raise him from the grovelling adoration to her own level. They are just a man and woman—soul to soul, clay; ah! yes, of the ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham

... not half grown, opened formidable jaws and long claws. Gerard, in a fury of excitement and agitation, flung himself on it, and delivered a tremendous blow on its nose with his axe, and the creature staggered; another, and it lay grovelling, with Gerard ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... to assert that in Heaven there will be factories working women and children for starvation wages; coal-mines and private property in land, dividing the population of Heaven into two classes, one revelling in riches and luxury, destructive of soul and body, the other grovelling in poverty, also destructive of all that is best in life? If not, how can they consistently support the system which inevitably produces that state of things ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... Mr. Hastings, not behaving like a good, fair colleague in office, not to let them know that he was going on in this career of receiving bribes, and to deprive them of their share in the glory of it: but they were grovelling creatures, who thought that keeping clean hands was some virtue.—"Well, but you have applied some of these bribes to your own benefit: why did you give no account of those bribes?" "I did not," he says, "because it might have excited the envy of my colleagues." To be sure, if he was ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... held in the surface like a pennant on an air-blast. In a few minutes the icy flood had robbed me of all sensation in my limbs, and showed how impossible was the plan, so I gave the signal to haul me in; which they did, nearly cutting my body in two with the rope. And if ever there was a grovelling fire-worshipper, it was my frozen self when ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton

... and all the paths were grey, And Menelaus from the mountain-side Came, and through palace doors all open wide Rang the wild dirge that told him of the thing That Helen, that the Queen had strangely died. Then on his threshold fell he grovelling, ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang

... nothing else. He will go to the tree, and watch for him to come out. The wasps will get accustomed to his motionless figure, and leave him unhurt; till the new fancy will rise in his mind that he is a favourite of this wasp-king: and at last he will find himself grovelling before the tree, saying—"Oh great wasp-king, pity me, and tell your children not to sting me, and I will bring you honey, and fruit, and flowers to eat, and I will flatter you, and worship you, and ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley

... amusement—the opportunity's too good to be lost! What exhilaration there is on seeing a human soul imbruted and grovelling hopelessly in the dirt or rather to have a body before you, without a soul for the time being—a coarse animal mass, swinish as those whom the wand of Circe smote, but with the human intelligence quenched besides, ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar

... not take this liberty, how mean, how grovelling and flat, would be their verse! As suppose ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... to try to grovel in the dust before him, but he wouldn't see me. It's no good grovelling in the dust of the front steps for the benefit of a man who's in bed on the second floor, so I withdrew in more or less good order. I then got the present idea. Mark how all things work together for good. ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... often followed under fire), who had been sent from camp to make terms with the troops, recognised one of the spies, just as execution was about to be done upon him—and the wretch, with horrid outcries, grovelling and kneeling at Colonel Warrington's feet, besought him for mercy, and promised to confess all to him. To confess what? Harry turned away sick at heart. Will's mother and sister never knew the truth. They always fancied it was ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray



Words linked to "Grovelling" :   wormy, submissive, cringing, groveling



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