"Ignobly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his feet settle and his days flush; and when he wished to feel "good," as they said at American City, he had but to retrace his immense development. That was what the whole thing came back to—that the development had not been somebody's else passing falsely, accepted too ignobly, for his. To think how servile he might have been was absolutely to respect himself, was in fact, as much as he liked, to admire himself, as free. The very finest spring that ever responded to his touch was always there to press—the memory of his freedom as dawning upon him, like a sunrise ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... tried to throw a stone across the narrow part, and found I could no longer throw stones; so I sat down and rested. How thin my legs were! and how miserably clad—in old prison trousers, greasy, stained, and frayed, and ignobly kneed—and what boots! ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... with swift feet. Timid Mrs. Windemere would advance to position, look all about in dazed fashion, gather her skirts closely as if about to breast a hurricane, then with a long breath would shut her eyes tightly, and surge forward—when the gromet would either drop ignobly at her feet, or go madly flying off to right or left, perhaps hitting poor little Tegeloo on the nose. Mr. Donelson assumed an airy indifference and a careless toss, and lo! the contrary thing went whirling between his feet, aft. ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... proposed to task and sell there; in stern condemnation of the crime which has been consummated on that beautiful soil; in rescue of fellow-citizens now subjugated to a Tyrannical Usurpation; in dutiful respect for the early fathers, whose aspirations are now ignobly thwarted; in the name of the Constitution, which has been outraged—of the laws trampled down—of Justice banished—of Humanity degraded—of Peace destroyed—of Freedom crushed to earth; and, in the name of the Heavenly Father, whose ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... closed behind Adam and Eve, they had this consolation left, that "the world was all before them where to choose." Was she not a free woman—without even a guardian to trouble her with advice? She had no excuse to act ignobly!—But had she any for being unmaidenly?—Would it then be—would it be a very unmaidenly thing if? The rest of the sentence did not take even the shape of words. But she answered it nevertheless in the words: "Not so unmaidenly as presumptuous." And alas there was little hope that he would ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... the dog and the cat, 'we will stand by you, and if we are killed, it is at any rate better to die on the field of battle than to perish ignobly at home,' and they shook paws and concluded the bargain. The fox sent word to the wolf to meet him at a certain place, and the three set forth to encounter ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... resistance and bravery of men. But one lamenting ignobly, he blames in a clear comparison (I. ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... one purpose move us both, Be thy mood mine! As thou wast minded, Man's The cause our music champions: I were loth To think we cheered our troop to Preston Pans Ignobly: back to times of England's best! Parliament stands for privilege—life and limb Guards Hollis, Haselrig, Strode, Hampden, Pym, The famous Five. There's rumor of arrest. Bring up the Train Bands, Southwark! They protest: Shall we not all join chorus? Hark ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... victor must advance to triumph with blown trumpets and beaten drums; and in solitude there must follow the reaction of despair, the fear that one has disgraced oneself, seemed clumsy and dull, done ignobly. Every sensitive emotion is awake; and even the most serene and modest natures, in the grip of passion, can become suspicious and self-absorbed, because the passion which consumes them is so fierce that it shrivels all social restraints, and leaves the ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... images upon our personality, they fill our aura with beauty or ugliness according to our intents and purposes in life.'' Each evil thought or action has its pursuing phantom, each smile or kindly deed its guiding angel, we leave wherever we ignobly stand, a tomb and an epitaph to haunt us through the furnace of ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... gettin' real handy and accommodatin'," said Clorinda the next morning, when they were all in the kitchen, and Jason, ignobly arrayed in Clorinda's kitchen-belle apron, was chopping, and Minty was seeding raisins. "I expected nothin' but what I'd got to pick the white turkey, and he's fetched her in all ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... barbarous, inhuman? Can he be indeed a true lover of his kind, who would record in judgment against such a man words that have escaped him in the fervour of the pleading designed to uphold great causes dear to humanity?—who would ignobly strike the self-disarmed?—scornfully insult him who, kneeling at the Muses' confessional, whispers secrets that take wings and fly abroad to the uttermost parts of the earth? Can they be lovers of the people who do so? who ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... Perseus to stop making campaigns against them; Antiochus would have given much, his children and descendants would have given much to let them remain on European soil. But those men in view of the glory and the greatness of the empire did not choose to be ignobly idle or to enjoy their wealth in confidence, nor did the elders of our own generation who even now ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... knew what war meant to a country whose government was as rotten as its army was unprepared, whose political chiefs were as vain, incompetent, ignorant, and weak as were the chiefs of its brave army—an army riddled with politics, weakened by intrigue and neglect—an army used ignobly, perverted, cheated, lied to, ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... house would still stand, mellow and lovely, with its carved ceiling and its proud merchant's mark, when the abbey church was only a shadow on the surface of a field in hot weather and all the abbey buildings were shrunk to one ruined ambulatory, ignobly sheltering blue Essex hay wagons from ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... comes up in the rich rumble of the Rue de la Paix—with which my room itself, for that matter, seems impregnated—and which hangs for reminiscence about the embarrassed effort to "finish," not ignobly, within my already exceeded limits; an effort prolonged each day to those late afternoon hours during which the tone of the terrible city seemed to deepen about one to an effect strangely composed at once of the auspicious and the fatal. The "plot" ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... new way of putting it. What I really aim at is an absolute realism in the sphere of the ignobly decent. The field, as I understand it, is a new one; I don't know any writer who has treated ordinary vulgar life with fidelity and seriousness. Zola writes deliberate tragedies; his vilest figures become heroic from the ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... joy. Man is created to be inebriated; to be "nobly wild, not mad." Suffer the Cocoa Prophets and their company to seduce him in body and spirit, and he will get himself stuff that will make him ignobly wild and mad indeed. It took hard, practical men of affairs, business men, advanced thinkers, Freethinkers, to believe in Madame Blavatsky and Mahatmas and the famous message from the Golden Shore: "Judge's plan is right; follow ...
— The Angels of Mons • Arthur Machen
... while not actually ending in the murder he had planned, drives the boy to attempted escape and to death. The nobles rise and welcome the Dauphin, whose invasion of England proves fruitless, it is true, but the victory is not won by John, and the king dies ignobly at Swinstead Abbey. ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... said, 'Have you been living all this time in defiance of my laws, and do you now appeal to those laws for protection? You shall have those laws exercised to the full. You shall abide by what you have appealed to.' The result is I am in gaol. Certainly no man ever fell so ignobly, and by such ignoble instruments, as ...
— De Profundis • Oscar Wilde
... suspect the designs and hopes of his former comrades; and he could not, he would not believe them capable of ignobly ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... Such is life! Such is man! Such is the terrible egoism of man! And thus it was that, for the sake of wounded pride, John and Robert not only did not speak to one another for ten years, but they spoilt at least one of their lives; and they behaved ignobly to Annie, who would certainly have married either one or ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... of passion! It will not always banish from your mind, that you have acted ignobly—and condescended to subterfuge to gloss over the conduct you could not excuse.—Do truth ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... gold unlocks not, nor may flatteries ope, The portals of your heaven; that none may hope With you to watch how life beneath you plods, Save for high service given, high duty done; That never was your rank ignobly won: For this we give you praise, O Lords ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... tempted, not ignobly, but by reason of his love for her. Once, years ago, when his arduous professional studies were distracted by a momentary infatuation for a fair face, a woman had proved fickle when tempted by greater wealth than he possessed. For long he was a confirmed ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... onely and completed to the taste Of lustful apperence, to sing, to dance, To dress, and troule the Tongue, and roule the Eye. To these that sober Race of Men, whose lives Religious titl'd them the Sons of God, Shall yeild up all thir vertue, all thir fame Ignobly, to the trains and to the smiles 620 Of these fair Atheists, and now swim in joy, (Erelong to swim at larg) and laugh; for which The world erelong a world of tears must weepe. To whom thus Adam of ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... ancient critics, it might be inferred that the genius of Polygnotos, like that of Giotto, was far in advance of his technical skill. Aristotle called him the most ethical of painters, and recommended the young artist to study his works in preference to those of his contemporary Pauson, who was ignobly realistic, or those of Zeuxis, who had great technical merit, but was deficient in spiritual conception. The course will comprise four more lectures, as follows—November 17, "Greek Painters from B.C. 460 to Accession of Alexander the Great B.C. 336—Apollodoros, Zeuxis, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various
... wish to preserve the look of independence; she did not in the least pretend that she knew at present what would become of her. I forebore to touch particularly on that, however, for I certainly was not prepared to say that I would take charge of her. I was cautious; not ignobly, I think, for I felt that her knowledge of life was so small that in her unsophisticated vision there would be no reason why—since I seemed to pity her—I should not look after her. She told me how her aunt had died, very peacefully at the ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... what a treacherous jade thou art! It may be said, why did I not take copious notes in short-hand? I would have done so were I a stenographer; but I am not. I tried to acquire the accomplishment once, and ignobly failed. I could write short-hand slightly quicker than long-hand, but when written, I ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... Desolator desolate![249] The Victor overthrown! The Arbiter of others' fate A Suppliant for his own! Is it some yet imperial hope That with such change can calmly cope? Or dread of death alone? To die a Prince—or live a slave— Thy choice is most ignobly brave! ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... in no more vaticinations of Evil. I can't think what was the oracle in my Letters you allude to, I mean about the three years' duration of our lives. I have long felt about England as you do, and even made up my mind to it, so as to sit comparatively, if ignobly, easy on that score. Sometimes I envy those who are so old that the curtain will probably fall on them before it does on their Country. If one could save the Race, what a Cause it would be! not for one's own glory as a member ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... aloft in triumph, a new church was consecrated to Notre Dame de la Victoire, and a medal was struck in Paris in commemoration of the event. In Boston, the people received with dismay the news of the failure of an expedition which had ended so ignobly and involved ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... with the unmanly craving for sympathy in others, and chiefly in our literary craft, which is somewhat ignobly given to it, though he was patient, after all. He used to say, and I believe he has said it in print,—[Holmes said it in print many times, in his three novels and scattered through the "Breakfast Table" series. D.W.]—that unless a man could ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... address to the assembly, on the eve of his departure for England.[A] "Gentlemen," said he, "the resources of this noble island will never be fully developed until slavery is abolished!" For this manly avowal the assembly ignobly refused him the usual marks of respect and honor at his departure. Mr. K. expected to see Jamaica become a new world under the enterprise and energies of freedom. There were a few disaffected planters, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... to show "the triumph at the creation of light over darkness. With his pious and believing heart he could easily enter into that theme, and show with matchless power and skill the closing-in of those ancient foes, and the victory of light when darkness cowered and ignobly shrank away." The expression of delight over this victory is very well brought out, not only in the music, but also in the arrangement of the Scriptural texts, which begin with exhortations of praise, ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... degraded—so insensibly, perhaps, that we are not conscious of any part of the process, and only become aware of what has been going on when we have to face a crisis, and find ourselves prepared to act ignobly, and to justify the act with specious excuses." She glanced up at the mantelpiece. "Come," she said, "it is four o'clock, and I am sleepy. I must go ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... violent motion, of his wound, suggests to his madness its next wild fancy, that a sort of glory is in a streaming wound, such as he bore while fighting Morold, that he will meet Isolde in the same manner, gloriously bleeding, not ignobly constrained by a bandage. And prompted by some obscure instinct perhaps to relieve a torture of which his flaming brain will not permit him duly to take account, he tears the wrappings from his wound, shouting ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... vain. He promised hard to get leave from his papa and "grand-pap," and to join me after a last farewell at the Plateau. His face gave the lie direct to his speech, and his little manoeuvre for keeping the earnest-money failed ignobly. ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... 'Who would sink ignobly beneath the slow superiority of starvation, or perish under the quickly glancing steel of the barbarian conqueror's sword, when such a death as ours is offered to the choice?—when wine flows bright, to ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... prosperity of a people who once knew something of noble aspirations, but have submitted to learn from a practical age that the business of life is to make money, and the enjoyments of it what money can buy. A few are ignobly successful; the many fail, and are miserable; and the subtle anarchy of selfishness finds its issue in madness and revolution. But we need not open this painful subject. Mr. Arnold is concerned with the effect of the system ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... old Rome that he found on his return in 29,— brick-built ignobly at best, and now decaying and half in ruins, —was giving place to a true imperial city. In 28, eighty-two temples were built or rebuilt in marble; among the rest, one to Apollo on the Palatine, most magnificent, with a great public library attached. The first ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... Hetaerist officers who surrounded him, and carried him, a doomed man, to the Greek camp. Wladimiresco's death was soon avenged. The Turks advanced. Hypsilanti was defeated in a series of encounters, and fled ignobly from his followers, to seek a refuge, and to find a prison, in Austria. Bands of his soldiers, forsaken by their leader, sold their lives dearly in a hopeless struggle. At Skuleni, on the Pruth, a troop of four hundred men ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... Ole Fred if they hadn't both been drunk," she said slowly, staring at the boards of the floor, and her quick imagination showed her the two of them, fighting ignobly, all dust and sweat and ill-aimed blows. They could only hurt each other because both were too unsteady to dodge futile lungings. There was nothing of the Berserk ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... slavish state; Where the reluctant Muse, oppress'd by kings, Or droops in silence, or in fetters sings! In vain thy dauntless fortitude hath borne The bigot's furious zeal, and tyrant's scorn. Why didst thou safe from home-bred dangers steer, Reserved to perish more ignobly here? Thus, when, the Julian tyrant's pride to swell, Rome with her Pompey at Pharsalia fell, 80 The vanquish'd chief escaped from Caesar's hand, To die by ruffians in a foreign land. How could these self-elected ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... out of the window!" Besme and Sarlaboux promptly obeyed the command. When the lifeless remains lay upon the pavement of the court, Henry of Guise stooped down and with his handkerchief wiped away the blood from the admiral's face. "I recognize him," he said; "it is he himself!" Then, after ignobly kicking the face of his fallen antagonist, he went out gayly encouraging his followers: "Come, soldiers, take courage; we have begun well. Let us go on to the others, for so the king commands!" And often through the day Guise ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... should have four or six counties for his kingdom in the North. On this point the Conference for the moment disagreed, but nothing can ever undo the fact that a body of Irishmen claiming to be Nationalists had not only ignobly agreed to the Partition of their native land but, after twelve months for deliberation, agreed to surrender six counties, instead of four, to the Covenanters. And the time came when it was remembered for them in an Ireland ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... Athanase Gautherot presented himself with two assistants close behind him, one of them sallow with a mean-looking face and an expression of devouring envy in his glance, the other wearing a collar and straps drawn very tightly, with a sort of thimble of black taffeta on his index-finger—and both ignobly dirty, with greasy necks, and the sleeves of their coats ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... three years' life like a passionate ecstasy-and it was finished. He was very great and very wonderful. I am very insignificant, and shall go out ignobly. But we are the same; love, the brief ecstasy, and the end. But mine is one rose, and His all the white beauty in ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... his compatriots and traitors who joined themselves to his train, and against the very spirit of the law of nations and of civilized warfare, immersed the flourishing town of Newark (Niagara) in one continued sheet of flame, and ignobly fled with his followers into his territory. The historian laments that it is not in his power to record one magnanimous act of that recreant General, to rescue his name from that gulf of infamy to which his nefarious ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... birthday, the first after the annexation, the 24th of May 1877, the native chiefs were invited to attend, and the Union Jack was formally hoisted to the strains of the National Anthem. This same flag was within a few years ignobly hauled down during the signing of the Convention at Pretoria, and formally buried by a party of Englishmen and loyal natives. But for the time being all seemed pleased with the new state of affairs. As Mr. Haggard says, it is difficult ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... miserable for him ... each night the beak-nosed pugilist-lad and I raised a merry roughhouse in the place.... Pfeiler was our chief butt. We put things in his bed ... threw objects about so they would wake him up. One night I found him crying silently ... but somehow not ignobly ... this made me shift about in my actions toward him, and see how ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... had good reason to know, when Selina, her riven garment held out at length, avenged her discomfiture with the Greek-fire of personalities and abuse. Every black incident in my short, but not stainless, career—every error, every folly, every penalty ignobly suffered—were paraded before me as in a magic-lantern show. The information, however, was not particularly new to me, and the effect was staled by previous rehearsals. Besides, a victory remains a victory, whatever the moral character ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... of reason, is, in his eyes, a Philistine. This is why Heine so often and so mercilessly attacks the liberals; much as he hates conservatism he hates Philistinism even more, and whoever attacks conservatism itself ignobly, not as a child of light, not in the name of the idea, is a Philistine. Our Cobbett[144] is thus for him, much as he disliked our clergy and aristocracy whom Cobbett attacked, a Philistine with six fingers on every hand and on every foot six toes, four-and-twenty ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... for the fate of Balder. He, feeling no doubt of his impending death, and stung by the anguish of his wound, renewed the battle on the morrow; and, when it raged hotly, bade that he should be borne on a litter into the fray, that he might not seem to die ignobly within his tent. On the night following, Proserpine was seen to stand by him in a vision, and to promise that on the morrow he should have her embrace. The boding of the dream was not idle; for when three days had passed, Balder perished from the excessive torture of ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... about you. He asked me, if you found any thing to amuse you at Naples. I replied that you found too much to amuse you. 'I am glad of it,' said the King, 'so our family honor at least is saved.' Since, however, you are most ignobly virtuous, I have tried to turn the affair to the best advantage. I have brought about a magnificent match for you, to supersede one I have heard you were making for yourself. The lady is rich, noble, and beautiful. She is the daughter of the Duke ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... and its momentary pleasures, fight for his own hand alone, forget mercy and pity, seldom think, never reflect, and at length, sated and yet dissatisfied with all he has experienced, sink impotently and ignobly into the grave. Immanuel Kant lays it down as an axiom that the moral law must inevitably be fulfilled one day in every individual human being. It is the destiny of man to be one day perfect. What a searching change ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... who aid our fatherland— Opposed his onset, by his brother's spear, To whom, tho' dead, shall consecration come! Against him stood this wretch, and brought a horde Of foreign foemen, to beset our town. He therefore shall receive his recompense, Buried ignobly in the maw of kites— No women-wailers to escort his corpse Nor pile his tomb nor shrill his dirge anew— Unhouselled, unattended, cast away! So, for these brothers, doth our ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... when one is in perfect bodily health one can more readily resist the infection of disease. Similarly if Scottish skies were not ready and longing to pour out rain, were not ignobly weak in holding it back, they would not be so susceptible to the depressing influences of visiting ministers. This is Francesca's theory as stated to the Reverend Ronald, who was holding an umbrella over her ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... The return to nature is practically a return to barbarism. You would have all men content so long as they grew enough potatoes for their daily needs. You would have England return to the conditions of the Saxon heptarchy. Each man would squat upon his clearing in the forest, ignobly independent, brutally content. There would be no longer that struggle for life which develops capacity, that urging onward of the flood of life which cuts for itself new channels, that passion for betterment which means progress. ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... didn't work, and Scotland Yard ignobly insulted my friend Sherlaw Kombs by sending him a pass to see the ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... ended more ignobly: they had started out to attack a fierce black bear, and unexpectedly were overturned by a large-sized pig, which resented the interference with ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... considered even remotely such a possibility as that of dying in a duel. It was only that it would seem like a proper consummation of all the evil that he had suffered directly or indirectly through this Andre-Louis Moreau that he should perish ignobly by his hand. Almost he could hear that insolent, pleasant voice making the flippant announcement to the Assembly ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... when she looked on the astonishing scene that lay before her when they stepped on to the platform at Roothing station she was distracted from her astonishment by a sense that she would afterwards maintain an argument on the subject with Marion. The surroundings were ignobly ugly, as eggshells and scraps of newspaper trodden into waste ground are ugly. She was prepared to tell Marion so, though it was her own town. There had not been sufficient space to build a station with the up and down platforms ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... success is probable, strikes us as a positive evil that a very doubtful good may ensue—it is seldom properly appreciated; and the governor-general appears to have seen his error when too late, as in the following year he was himself ignobly foiled in an attack on Sackett's Harbour. We cannot understand why the attack under Sir George Prevost, in May, 1813, was more politic than it would have been in September the year preceding, under Major-General Brock; and although Captain Glegg met with ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... a minstrel desirous of doing his devoir, should, like a young knight, seek the truth of adventures where it is to be found, and rather visit countries where the knowledge is preserved of high and noble deeds, than those lazy and quiet realms, in which men live indolently, and die ignobly in peace, or by sentence of law. You yourself, sir, and those like you, who hold life cheap in respect of glory, guide your course through this world on the very same principle which brings your poor rhyming servant Bertram ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... children and over their property; but this is a false relation. Marriage is a union of equals—equal interests being involved, equal duties at stake; and if any woman has been married to a man who chooses to take advantage of the laws as they now stand, who chooses to subject her, ignobly, to his will, against her own, to take from her the earnings which belong to the family, and to take from her the children which belong to the family, I hold that that woman, if she can not, by her influence, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... profitless question. There were other considerations, the first of which was that I already had two or three recruits in use, notably a young person with big feet, in alpaca, from Kilburn, who for a couple of years had come to me regularly for my illustrations and with whom I was still—perhaps ignobly—satisfied. I frankly explained to my visitors how the case stood, but they had taken more precautions than I supposed. They had reasoned out their opportunity, for Claude Rivet had told them of the projected edition de luxe of one of the writers of our day—the rarest of the novelists—who, ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... they passed through the cemetery gates and drove to one spot where art and nature had combined to make pleasant to the living eye the resting-places of the dead, and they laid their offering of fresh wild-flowers upon the grave of one who had nobly lived and had not ignobly died. Above the mound, a block of rugged granite rose, bearing on its face the name and age and day of death of William Buckley, and ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... face I sought I thought with a thrill I had found him, By my little wiles and my coaxing caught, Or even for gold ignobly bought, With his arrows and bow ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... stor'd With goodly fruit-trees; num'rous flocks he had, And all the Greeks in feats of arms excell'd. Hear ye the words I speak, for they are true: And if my speech be wise, despise it not, As of one worthless, or ignobly born. Though wounded, to the battle I advise That we perforce repair; yet not ourselves To join the combat, or confront the spears, Lest wounds to wounds be added; but to rouse The spirits of some, who, zealous heretofore, How stand aloof, ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... civilized peoples. Extreme religionists may audaciously fancy that the judgment of God upon Franklin may be severe; but it would be gross disloyalty for his own kind to charge that his influence has been ignobly material. ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... this period, with which above all others we associate influences the most divine, "with trailing clouds of glory," those influences which are purely material are the most efficiently operative. Against the former, adult man, in whom reason is developed, may battle, though ignobly, and, for himself, ruinously; and against the latter oftentimes he must struggle, to escape ignominious shipwreck. But the child, helpless alike for both these conflicts, is, through the very ignorance which shields him from all conscious ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... it is found; but not so rare as to preclude its use for any purpose to which it is fitted. It is exactly of the consistence which is best adapted for sculpture: that is to say, neither hard nor brittle, nor flaky nor splintery, but uniform, and delicately, yet not ignobly, soft,—exactly soft enough to allow the sculptor to work it without force, and trace on it the finest lines of finished form; and yet so hard as never to betray the touch or moulder away beneath the steel; and so admirably crystallized, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... tranquillity. He was brilliantly peculiar as a schoolboy. As an old man of twenty-two, mourning over the vanished brio of youth, he carried morbidity to perfection. Only when he was travelling (as, for example, in Egypt) do his letters lose for a time their distemper. His love-letters are often ignobly inept, and nearly always spoilt by the crass provincialism of the refined and cultivated hermit. His mistress was a woman difficult to handle and indeed a Tartar in egotism, but as the recipient of Flaubert's love-letters she must win ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... that binds me to other days, and it is broken. 'The wage of sin is death,' and I am dead these long months past and fathoms deep in Hell, yet walk the earth because nor land nor sea will yield a resting-place among its honored dead to one so ignobly slain." ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... the humour most commonly lies that way, not the least punctilio of a fine man, but he is strict in to a hair, even to their very negligences, which he cons as rules. He will not carry a knife with him to wound reputation, and pay double a reckoning, rather than ignobly question it: and he is full of this—ignobly—and nobly—and genteely; and this mere fear to trespass against the genteel way puts him out most of all. It is a humour runs through many things besides, but is an ill-favoured ostentation in all, and thrives not:—and the best ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... is a lofty desire, but hard to attain through an ignobly definite creed. Dealing with the highest, most wordless states of being, the simians will attempt to conceive them in material form. They will have beliefs, for example, as to the furnishings and occupations in heaven. And ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... been allowed to hook into a circus by his parents; yet hooking in was an ideal that was cherished among them, that was talked of, and that was even sometimes attempted, though not often. Once, when a fellow really hooked in, and joined the crowd that had ignobly paid, one of the fellows could not stand it. He asked him just how and where he got in, and then he went to the door, and got back his money from the doorkeeper upon the plea that he did not feel well; and in five or ten minutes he was back among the boys, ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... to the plan. A man that lives as he likes, by impulse, by inclination, or ignobly yielding to the pressure of circumstances and saying, 'I could not help myself, I was carried away by the flood,' or 'Everybody round about me is doing it, and I could not be singular'—will never build anything worth living in. It will be a born ruin—if I may so say. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the collective character of a nation will as surely find its befitting results in its law and government, as water finds its own level. The noble people will be nobly ruled, and the ignorant and corrupt ignobly. Indeed all experience serves to prove that the worth and strength of a State depend far less upon the form of its institutions than upon the character of its men. For the nation is only an aggregate ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... with sticks and all the power of our lungs. Rest was out of the question. The leafy dyke and "bed" stood ever in need of repair; the sallies were continuous and determined. The "bed" was not made for those knightly fish to lie ignobly upon. A single fish would slip down-stream, and, gathering speed and effort, leap with the glitter of heroism in its eyes. One such George caught in his arms. Another slipped through my fingers and struck me on the shoulders, ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... hands of another, would not wind; a self-binding reaper that, in his neighbor's field, would not perform its part; and a lamp that was designed to manufacture the gas that it burned from the water in its bowl, but which dismally and ignobly failed. He had contrived and patented a machine for milking cows, which might have done all that was claimed for it if anybody—cows included—could have been induced to give it a trial, and he had fiddled around with perpetual motion until the place was a litter of broken ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... intrigue, as he knew, was already launched that might, at the last moment, sweep him from his goal. Most of the men concerned in it he either held for honest fanatics or despised as flatterers of the mob—ignobly pliant. He could and would fight them all with good courage and fair hope ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the lot outside, And kicked at nothing suddenly, and tried To act grown-up and graceful and high-bred, But dropped, k'whop! and scraped the buggy-shed, Leaving a tuft of woolly, foxy hair Under the sharp-end of a gate-hinge there. Then, all ignobly scrambling to his feet And whinneying a whinney like a bleat, He would pursue himself around the lot And—do the whole thing over, like as not!... Ah! what a life of constant fear and dread And flop and squawk and flight the chickens led! Above the fences, either side, were ...
— A Child-World • James Whitcomb Riley
... General Brown should have been removed at this critical moment, when he and the Police Commissioners were performing their herculean task so faithfully and well, is not so plain; unless it was the result of one of those freaks of passion or despotic impulse, for which the Secretary of War was so ignobly distinguished. But unlike many other blunders which the War Department committed at this time, it did not result in any evil consequences, for the fight was over. But of this fact the Secretary of War was ignorant when he made out ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... dread they turn to philanthropy. They fling from their chariots bundles of bank-notes to appease the wolves of justice. Universities grow ignobly rich upon their hush-money. They were accurately described three centuries ago by Robert Burton as "gouty benefactors, who, when by fraud and rapine they have extorted all their lives, oppressed whole provinces, societies, ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... fellows, and I have heard the garrison is not more than three hundred." But the rest of the party thought such a way of getting supper was not a very cheap one, and, grovelling knaves, preferred rather to sleep ignobly and without victuals, than dare the assault with Otto, and die, ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... this library died, and his son now sits in his saddle at Fort Simpson. If you were to wander across the court, as I did to-day, and look into the Sales Shop, you would see the presentation sword of this last-generation Carnegie, ignobly slicing bacon for an Indian customer. Sic transit ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... a skirmish at euchre, at which she was ignobly beaten, and, I must say, shamefully cheated, she was back at the piano, and it was the clock striking twelve that ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... ever known what love is, or looked into his eyes, for Eros alone of divinities is altogether a spirit, and hides in passions not of his essence if he would commune with a mortal heart. So that if a man love nobly he knows love through infinite pity, unspeakable trust, unending sympathy; and if ignobly through vehement jealousy, sudden hatred, and unappeasable desire; but unveiled love he never knows. While I thought these things, a voice cried to me from the crimson figures: 'Into the dance! there is none that ...
— Rosa Alchemica • W. B. Yeats
... first novel, and felt but little tempted to begin a second. How, besides, was he to live while he was writing another romance? One month of privation had exhausted his stock of patience. Why should he not do nobly that which journalists did ignobly and without principle? His friends insulted him with their doubts; he would convince them of his strength of mind. Some day, perhaps, he would be of use to them; he would be ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... emanate from the king as fountain head, and of believing in his right to import it everywhere. And what conclusion of a reign could be more Christian-like than his when, "exhausted by the long enfeeblement of his wasted body, but disdaining to die ignobly or unpreparedly, he called about him pious men, bishops, abbots, and many priests of holy Church; and then, scorning all false shame, he demanded to make his confession devoutly before them all, and to fortify himself against death by the comfortable sacrament of the body and blood of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... greatly; but we can not avoid the endeavor from which either great failure or great success must come. Even if we would, we can not play a small part. If we should try, all that would follow would be that we should play a large part ignobly and shamefully. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... were scattered or destroyed to the flight and pursuit of the three following days. Amidst the general disorder, Roderic started from his car, and mounted Orelia, the fleetest of his Horses; but he escaped from a soldier's death to perish more ignobly in the waters of the Boetis or Guadalquiver. His diadem, his robes, and his courser, were found on the bank; but as the body of the Gothic prince was lost in the waves, the pride and ignorance of the caliph must have been gratified with some ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... lurking similarity of thought unites them. The nearer any two of them tend to approach a recognisable type, the more magnificently is the individuality of each vindicated. The elderly middle-class woman, harassed by ignoble cares ignobly borne, driven by a lack of fortitude into querulousness, and into injustice by the selfishness of her affections, is illustrated both in Mrs. Scholz and Mrs. Kramer. But, in the former, bodily suffering and ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... out. It was impossible for Monseigneur to dispense with one of these attendants on the chocolate and hold his high place under the admiring Heavens. Deep would have been the blot upon his escutcheon if his chocolate had been ignobly waited on by only three men; he ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... is futile to discuss whether Judaism is still necessary. Can the world afford to surrender a single one of its forces for good? If there are ten millions of men, women, and children who live, and live not ignobly, by Judaism, can it be contended that Judaism is obsolete? The first, the main justification of Judaism is its continued efficiency, its proved power still to control and inspire many millions of human lives. There are more people living as Jews to-day, than ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... the story of the Borgias could certainly have much to teach the human heart in the knowledge of itself. It would be moral in its presentation of the most ignobly splendid vices that have swayed the world; of the pride and defiance which rise like a strangling serpent, coiling about the momentary weakness of good; of that pageant in which the pagan gods came back, drunk and debauched with their long exile under the earth, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... shouted truce, and pulling off their caps, declared that the small hog must have the bell tied to him also, so that like a beacon (or bacon) he might warn the cruisers of his whereabouts. This arranged, and the caps being again tied on, they recommence the game with renewed spirit. One man ignobly raised his helmet, alias nose-bag, to see where the small hog was keeping himself, and then made a rush for him, whereupon one of three umpires, a very lean man with nervous twitches, rushed at the man in a great state of excitement, and collared him amid the disapproving ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... his men, they fell while ignobly, and without right or authority, invading the peaceful home of ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various
... had not been in the regular navy, who were merely Mississippi River captains, and the like. These men were, doubtless, naturally as brave as any of the regular officers; but, with one or two exceptions, they failed ignobly in the time of trial, and showed a fairly startling contrast with the regular naval officers beside or against whom they fought. This is a fact which may well be pondered by the ignorant or unpatriotic ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... sayings and repartees of his left still upon record, which seem to show that he not ignobly accommodated himself to his present circumstances; as may appear in part from the ingenuousness of the avowal he made on coming to Leucadia, which, as well as Syracuse, was a Corinthian colony, where he told the inhabitants, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... would not play the coward's part with it! She brought herself to look it straight in the face. And what she saw was that if she could be brave enough to go herself into a more spacious country, leaving hurts behind, she must not be so cowardly, so ignobly inconsistent as to refuse the hurts coming to her through others who would dare. Through the conflict of many emotions, out of much misery, she at last wrenched from a sore heart the admission that Wayne had as much right to be "free" as she had. That if Ann had ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... had no bottom, and a gilt-clasped Bible really was the secret of England's greatness. Mid-Victorian England lay on that mahogany bed. Ideals had passed away with John Baines. It is thus that ideals die; not in the conventional pageantry of honoured death, but sorrily, ignobly, while one's head ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... breathed her last in the arms of her attendant maidens. But Diana, who beheld her fate, suffered not her slaughter to be unavenged. Aruns, as he stole away, glad, but frightened, was struck by a secret arrow, launched by one of the nymphs of Diana's train, and died ignobly and unknown. ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... ignobly driven or dragged from a field of victory. Aunt Betsy could find no excuse for Alfred. Broom corn was a necessity in the household work. Every farmer made his ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... would wait tedious Years; till Fate should bow the old King to his Grave, even that would not leave me Imoinda free; but still that Custom that makes it so vile a Crime for a Son to marry his Father's Wives or Mistresses, would hinder my Happiness; unless I would either ignobly set an ill Precedent to my Successors, or abandon my Country, and fly with her to some unknown World ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... soul,—such a soul, in whatever rank of life it were born, had one path inviting it; a generous career, whereon, by human worth and valor, all earthly heights and Heaven itself were attainable. In the lowest stratum of social thraldom, nowhere was the noble soul doomed quite to choke, and die ignobly. The Church, poor old benighted creature, had at least taken care of that: the noble aspiring soul, not doomed to choke ignobly in its penuries, could at least run into the neighboring Convent, and there take refuge. Education awaited it there; strict ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... persons of distinction; he is in the seventh heaven of exaltation if he can be quite certain it has had that honour. But suppose this factitious charm is really wanting? Suppose a volume is dirty, and ignobly so? Must one necessarily delight in dogs' ears, bask in the shadow of beer-stains, and 'chortle' at the sign of cheese-marks? Surely it is one of the merits of new leaves that they come direct from the printer and the binder, though they, alas! may have left occasional ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... the princess would merely laugh and at once achieve the task. At last there came a young man who argued with himself that she would not be able to perform this feat after she had lost her virginity. He therefore seduced her first and she then failed ignobly, merely wetting her stockings. Accordingly, she became his bride. (Kryptadia, vol. i. p. 333.) Such legends, which have lost any mythologic elements they may originally have possessed and have become merely contes, are not uncommon in the folk-lore of many countries. But in their earlier more religious ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... gallant and so gay. There is something more than ordinarily pathetic and touching in the misfortunes of the feeble in an age of iron. As civilisation advances they have means of protecting themselves, but not in a time which is all for the strongest. One son buried, like any peasant's son, ignobly in the Abbey of Lindores: the other in an English prison, at the mercy of the "auld enemy," whom Scotland had again and again resisted to the death: and his kingdom entirely gone from him, in the hands of his arrogant and ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... will help you to realise that the life which lies before you is a labourious one. Of course the labour may be shirked. Ministers have their time in their own hands; they have no office hours; and, I suppose, a minister's life may be more ignobly idle than any other professional man's. That is, if ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... are there, women for the most part, who are doomed to endure this long slavery?—who are hospital nurses without wages—sisters of Charity, if you like, without the romance and the sentiment of sacrifice—who strive, fast, watch, and suffer, unpitied, and fade away ignobly ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to the weary and care-worn; instead of slumbering idly, in the security of our mansions, when the torrent of war rolls over the land; instead of girding then our brothers for the stormy fight, bidding them GOD-speed; instead of ignobly bending before the tyrannical power of Man, thou, O! astute NEAL! wouldst have us pluck the laurel-wreath from our kinsman's brow, and bind it on our own. Thou wouldst have us rise in all the dignity of offended 'equality,' and boldly assert the holy right of 'free suffrage to all!' ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... passion for reading cheap scientific textbooks, which did not, however, add fluency nor conviction to his speech. Neither had he the abstraction of a student, for his accounts were kept with an accuracy which struck us, who dealt at the store, as ignobly practical, and even malignant. Possibly we might have expressed this opinion more strongly but for a certain rude vigor of repartee which he possessed, and a suggestion that he might have a temper on occasion. "Them red-haired chaps is like to ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... speech of Titus we may clearly see the notions which the Romans then had of death, and of the happy state of those who died bravely in war, and the contrary estate of those who died ignobly in their beds by sickness. Reland here also produces two parallel passages, the one out of Atonia Janus Marcellinus, concerning the Alani, lib. 31, that "they judged that man happy who laid down ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... of such life compelled me to marvel and admire, and I who had so lately lain at the feet of eastern sages, set up this mechanician as my god. If I looked back at all to the land of dreams, the placid figure beneath the Tree of Enlightenment took on the aspect of a fool's idol, ignobly self-manacled, ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... might have deceived the very Spirit of Truth. Colwyn esteemed himself fortunate indeed in lighting on what he believed to be the facts. Who could have imagined a situation in which whimsical Destiny had ironically stooped down from her high place to dabble ignobly in a murderer's ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... sacred cause, enthusiastically rushes upon death, or in calm composure awaits death, it is irresistibly convinced that it cannot be hurt, but will be blessed, by the crisis. It knows that in an inexpressibly profound sense whosoever would ignobly save his life loses it, but whosoever would nobly lose his life saves it. ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... became more tyrannical than ever. Bessie was so busy with little Ted that the household affairs outside of the nursery came under their exclusive control. Thaddeus stood it—I was going to say nobly, but I think it were better put ignobly—but he had a good excuse for ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... palliating circumstances that could be urged in his favor. Such were, for example, that he was a prince of the empire and as such had a right to conduct negotiations and to make peace; that he wished to give rest to a torn and bleeding Germany; that he had been ignobly treated by the House of Austria, and so forth. By laying stress upon these things and passing lightly over others, it was easily possible to save Wallenstein from the detestation that is wont to associate itself with the ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... up? Up and dressed, I mean. I can't talk seriously before I've had a bath and—and brushed my hair. You see, you've taken rather an unfair advantage of me by getting out of bed." (He paused for an answer, and still no answer came.)—"Don't imagine I'm ignobly lying down all the time, wrapped in a blanket. I'm sitting on my pillow. I know there's any amount to be said. But how do you suppose I'm going to say it if I've got to stay here, all curled up like a blessed Buddha, and ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair |
