Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Caste   /kæst/   Listen
Caste

noun
1.
Social status or position conferred by a system based on class.
2.
(Hinduism) a hereditary social class among Hindus; stratified according to ritual purity.
3.
A social class separated from others by distinctions of hereditary rank or profession or wealth.
4.
In some social insects (such as ants) a physically distinct individual or group of individuals specialized to perform certain functions in the colony.



Related searches:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Caste" Quotes from Famous Books



... of marriage for mere wealth or connection, and the facility of divorce, which made the marriage-tie almost a farce among the upper classes, had resulted, as it could not fail to do, in a great debasement of morals. A lady did not lose caste either by being divorced, or by seeking divorce, from husband after husband. And as wives in the higher ranks often held the purse-strings, they made themselves pretty frequently more dreaded than beloved by their lords, through being tyrannical, if not unchaste, or both. So at least Horace ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin

... of a shoo bownde abowte with an yerne whope, wherin is a glasse lyke a precyouse stone, they that kysse it gyf a pece of monay. Me. In soche a way I had leuer haue an almes howse of olde folkes, then a company of stronge theues. Ogy. Gratian rode vpon my lefte hande nerer the almes howse, he caste holy water vpon hym, he toke it in worthe so so, || when the shoo was proferred hym, he asked what he ment by it, saythe he, it is saynt Thomas shoo. There at he turned and was very angry, & turned toward me: what ...
— The Pilgrimage of Pure Devotion • Desiderius Erasmus

... gave him one long look that seemed to turn her violet eyes black; then she looked no more his way. She could not have told why she hated this action in him so bitterly. Perhaps she felt that he was worthy of higher things, but, if questioned, she would probably have laid it at the door of caste and country. All that she knew, for a poignant moment, was an intense longing to strike the smile from his lips with anything to hand—a wine-glass, ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley

... now over, but he did not sit down. Having declared himself in the manner that he did, he knew that he was henceforth to be a political outcast, a pariah. He had not stood up for the extension of the caste idea to the political system and knew that its ban would henceforth be upon him. Yet in spite of the dreary future which his speech had carved out for him his soul was at ease, for he was conscious of having advocated that which was best for his people. Grasping his hat ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs

... 135: Some of Scott's most intimate friends at the Bar, partly, no doubt, from entertaining political opinions of another caste, were by no means disposed to sympathize with the demonstrations of his military enthusiasm at this period. For example, one of these gentlemen thus writes to another in April, 1797: "By the way, Scott is become the merest trooper that ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... of it seem to have stood under umbrellas when God rained humor. One writer calls it "the outburst of a tremendous revolution in literature." He speaks of "smoldering flames," "the hordes that furiously fought entrenched behind prestige, age, caste, wealth and tradition," "suppression and extermination of heresy," "those who sought to stop the onward march of civilization," etc. Let us be sensible. A "cane-rush" is not a revolution, and "Bloody Monday" at Harvard is not "a decisive battle in ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard

... supporting their families and paying their rent, could spare even in three years the money and means requisite to meet the demands of such an occasion? But the simple enunciation of the fact proves at least that the attacotts were no slaves, but at most merely an inferior caste, deprived of many civil rights, and compelled to pay taxes on land, contrary to the universal custom ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... son Yakoff; measure ten times before you cut off once—there are great difficulties in the worldly service, cold and hunger, and scorn for our caste! And thou must know beforehand that no one will lend a hand to aid; so see to it that thou dost not repine afterward. My desire, as thou knowest, has always been that thou shouldst succeed me; but if thou really hast come ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... individual which flow from the hierarchic organization of society, and reserve certain offices, certain forms of occupation, and perhaps the right or at least the opportunity of education generally, to people of a certain rank or class. In its more extreme form this is a caste system, and its restrictions are religious or legal as well as social. In Europe it has taken more than one form. There is the monopoly of certain occupations by corporations, prominent in the minds of eighteenth-century French reformers. There ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse

... the final victory, when the enemy is crushed—as crushed he will be—efforts will be made to enlist our sympathy, to move us to pity. We shall be told that the unfortunate German people were merely the victims of their monarch and their feudal caste; that no blame attaches to the Germany we know, which is so sympathetic and so cordial—the Germany of quaint old houses and open-hearted greeting, the Germany that sits under its lime-trees beneath the clear light of the moon—but only to Prussia, hateful, arrogant Prussia; that the homely, ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck

... rich and the poor, the literate and the illiterate, the old and the young, the native and the naturalised. The same play, therefore, must appeal to all of these. It follows that the dramatist must be broader in his appeal than any other artist. He cannot confine his message to any single caste of society. In the same single work of art he must incorporate elements that will interest all ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton

... waif into the royal household and bring him up as their royal own, especially if this waif belongs to what is regarded as an inferior race. The tie of motherhood is the only one that could over-rule caste and override prejudice. If the daughter of Pharaoh, or more properly "the Pharaoh," were the mother of Moses, she had a better reason for hiding him in the bulrushes than did the daughter of a Levite, for the order to ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard

... raised, his right hand resting—it was noticeably podgy and squat—on the highly polished surface of the extensive writing-table, his left hand dropped, with a rather awkward negligence, over the arm of his chair. Meanwhile he gazed, as pensively as his caste of countenance permitted, at a portrait of himself, in the self-same attitude, which adorned the opposite wall. It had been presented to him by the electors of his late constituency. It was life- size and ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... principle of equality of all souls in the sight of God. Contrast the reign of caste and class in heathendom with the democracy of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... to the caste of the patient. Judging from the icy sharpness on this occasion, the patient was ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... knows why he is fighting. It is not for the ambition of a sovereign or the impatience of his heir, for the arrogance of a caste of country squires or the profit of a firm of merchants. No; he fights for the land where he was born and where his dead sleep; he fights to free his invaded country and give her back her lost provinces, for her past, struck to the heart by the shells that bombarded ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... women who wished to gamble were, at first, obliged to keep the thing secret; for if it became known they lost caste. In the reign of Louis XIV., and still more in that of Louis XV., they became bolder, and the wives of the great engaged in the deepest play in their mansions; but still a gamestress was always denounced with horror. 'Such women,' says La Bruyiere, 'make us chaste; they have nothing of ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... in the center of a broad elephant trail near the drinking hole, the warriors turned back toward their village. On the morrow they would come again. Tarzan looked after them, upon his lips an unconscious sneer—the heritage of unguessed caste. He saw them file along the broad trail, beneath the overhanging verdure of leafy branch and looped and festooned creepers, brushing ebon shoulders against gorgeous blooms which inscrutable Nature has seen fit to lavish most profusely farthest from ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... Sabbath are interlinked and associated together. Whatever the world has gained by the Sabbath, that gain is intensified and increased vastly by public teaching. It placed the Christian as far beyond the Jew, as the Jew was before beyond the pagan. It also created a sacerdotal caste. The people may have had the privilege of pouring out their hearts before the brethren, and of speaking for their edification, but all the members were not fitted for the secular office of teachers. Christianity claims the faculties of knowledge, as well as those of ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... are persecuted, all the world over, even as you were persecuted. You ought to be foremost among those who labor for equality and freedom. We have a right to count upon you in the fight against all prejudices—prejudices of race and color, of class and country, of caste and religion. The emancipated ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various

... deterioration of the people will control the condition of the country far more than revolutions in church and state. The presence of but one race in a country renders possible a real freedom, embracing the whole population, and it becomes more attainable if this people be a race of high caste; but an inferior people mingled with them, will be politically and socially subjected to them. This is the history of races ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen

... according to Herodotus, was the priestly caste of the Magi. Held in the highest honor by both King and people, they were in constant attendance, ready to expound omens or dreams, and to give their advice on all matters of state policy. The religious ceremonial was, as a matter of course, under their charge; and it is probable ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson

... conception would have agreed here—that there are no hard-and-fast lines between the classes, and the welfare and happiness of all the inhabitants is impartially considered, in contrast with Plato's scheme in the Laws, where the artisans and manual labourers were an inferior caste existing less for their own sake than for the sake of the community as a whole. [Footnote: This however does not apply to the Republic, as is so commonly asserted. See the just criticisms of A. A. Trever, A History of Greek Economic ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury

... Service and spend year after year at a desk with youths who are just starting their careers? Moreover, I have lost the trick of taking bribes; I should only hinder both myself and others; while, as you know, it is a department which has an established caste of its own. Therefore, though I have considered, and even attempted to obtain, every conceivable post, I find myself incompetent for them all. Only in ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... miniature copies of the life around him. On a farm, his play is raking, threshing, building barns, or on the seashore he makes ships and harbors. In general, he plays family, store, church, and chooses officers simply because adults do. The feeling of caste, almost absent in the young, culminates about ten and declines thereafter. From ten to fourteen, however, associations assume a new character; boys especially cease to imitate adult organizations and tend to form social units characteristic of lower stages of human evolution—pirates, ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall

... castes, with fixed occupations, existed from the earliest times. It is supposed by some to have been founded upon conquest, the first three castes being composed of a foreign race, who subdued the natives of the country and reduced them to an inferior caste. Others trace it to the fondness of perpetuating, by descent from father to son, ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR

... Hague conventions, the progress of intelligence in modern democracy had failed utterly, and once again, if this war came upon the world, not by the will of simple peoples, but by the international intrigues of European diplomats, the pride of a military caste and the greed of political tradesmen, the fields of Europe would be drenched with the blood of our best manhood and Death would make an unnatural harvesting. Could nothing ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs

... creation of a "Mining Tribunal," and towards the close of the century this was established, with a school where the sons of poor miners received gratuitous education in mining, without distinction of caste or colour. Indeed, the sons of Indian chiefs of the Philippines were brought over and instructed here, and returned later to stimulate gold mining in their native land. A special tax on miners was then imposed for ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock

... to-day. They do not come, proudly stepping to the drumbeat, their bayonets flashing in the morning sun. But wherever party spirit shall strain the ancient guarantees of freedom; or bigotry and ignorance shall lay their fatal hands on education; or the arrogance of caste shall strike at equal rights; or corruption shall poison the very springs of national life,—there, Minuteman of Liberty, are your Lexington Green and Concord Bridge. And as you love your country and your ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter

... antagonisms which would raise by the emancipated slaves mingling in the same community with their former masters, with equal civil and political rights with those who had held them as slaves; I can pardon the prejudices of race, of caste, and even of local ties; and the American people have, I think, waited with great forbearance, waited patiently for the time when constitutional rights would be respected without regard to race, or color, or creed, or party. If the time has come, as alleged in the papers before me, when ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... than this. With all its horror and shock, there comes inevitably a great joining of minds and hearts. The whole world feels the thrill of kinship and a common humanity. For the time being all conceptions of social caste and class distinction, the most unworthy thoughts of beings fashioned all in the image of their Maker, are leveled and forgotten. Indifference and selfishness disappear. Throughout the nation, throughout the world, there thrills ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall

... weak and corrupt and often cruel and tyrannical in practice, nevertheless there is a larger measure of individual freedom than might be supposed. "There are no passports, no restraints on liberty, no frontiers, no caste prejudices, no food scruples, no sanitary measures, no laws except popular customs and criminal statutes. China is in many senses one vast republic, in which personal restraints ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN

... also found that the inclusion of the native element had a serious effect upon the morality of the Socialists. There was a remarkable increase of half-caste children without the formality of marriage ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor

... wriggled on their white bellies, or lifted their pointed heads like snakes. Nearby, whitening, dead, lay the fresh-water fry, tench, for the most part, insufferably noisome, glittering with the subdued metallic luster of poisonous tropical fruit. Here, too, was a higher and lower caste in misery, for the least fortunate vendors of this section had seats, not at the tables, but on the floors, whence they were offering frogs strung on sticks with their four ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... ounces of flesh, which was the allowance operative at the time of the surrender. The food problem was made more difficult by the Indian troops, who because of their religion refused to eat flesh, fearing they would break the rules of their caste by doing so. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)

... waxing strong of the disease, nervous disease complex and torturous; to him drink is at once life and death; an article is bread, and to calm him and collect what remains of weak, scattered thought, he must drink. The woman cannot understand that caste and race separate them; and the damp air of spent desire, and the grey and falling leaves of her illusions fill her life's sky. Nor is there any hope for her until the husband unties the awful knot ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... as a native, when we sought out Mulji Singh together and found him in a back street with a hundred-yard-long waiting list of low-caste and ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy

... practice, the Pope is assisted in the temporal government of his States by the spiritual chiefs, subalterns, and spiritual employes of his Church; that Cardinals, Bishops, Canons, Priests, forage pell-mell about the country; that one sole and identical caste possesses the right of administering both sacraments and provinces; of confirming little boys and the judgments of the lower courts; of ordaining subdeacons and arrests; of despatching parting souls and captains' commissions; that this confusion of the ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About

... a purely subsidiary, derivative, and comparatively modern notion. Many, perhaps most, kinds of treachery were looked upon as praiseworthy in early times, and are still so regarded among savages. Does Mr. Wedgwood believe that Romulus lost caste by the way in which he made so many respectable Sabines fathers-in-law against their will, or that the wise Odysseus was a perfectly admirable gentleman in our sense of the word? Even in the sixteenth century, in the then most civilized country of the world, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... thought of putting it to. The love of change belongs to youth, and I meant to take a hand in things as they came along. I had a pair of strong hands, and stubbornness enough to do for two; also a strong belief that in a free country, free from the dominion of custom, of caste, as well as of men, things would somehow come right in the end, and a man get shaken into the corner where he belonged if he took a hand in the game. I think I was right in that. If it took a lot of shaking to get me where I belonged, that was just what I needed. Even my mother admits ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis

... poor servant like me, he took an opportunity of quarrelling with me and discharging me. However, as he had still some grace, he recommended me to a gentleman with whom, since he had attached himself to politics, he had formed an acquaintance, the editor of a grand Tory Review. I lost caste terribly amongst the servants for entering the service of a person connected with a profession so mean as literature; and it was proposed at the Servants' Club, in Park Lane, to eject me from that society. The proposition, however, was not carried ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... transcended even his father's dislike of them. His conception of the Church differed widely from that in which the archdeacon had been reared. To him a clergyman was a priest who belonged to a sacerdotal caste, and who ought not "to merge himself in the body of the nation." To him the Reformation was an infamous crime, and Henry VIII. was worse than the Bluebeard of the nursery. His hero was Thomas a Becket. He wrote a sketch of his life and career, which he did not live to finish. His ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... he suppose, in his foolishness, that after working day and night for twenty years in heresy and schism, on becoming a Catholic, I should sit in an easy-chair and fold my hands all the rest of my life?' But his secret thoughts were of a different caste. 'I am conscious of a desire,' he wrote in his Diary, 'to be in such a position: (I) as I had in times past; (2) as my present circumstances imply; (3) as my friends think me fit for; and (4) as I feel my ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey

... who was of the Suta caste, hearing the words of the king, proceeded with haste, and entering the abode of the Pandavas, like a dog in a lion's den, approached the queen of the sons of Pandu. And he said,—'Yudhishthira having been intoxicated ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... intermittent warfare of the Crescent and the Cross for some four centuries; and the blood-stained hand of Turkey was stretched out to save its "natural allies"—to quote Bernhardi—at Buda-Pesth and Potsdam. There was, indeed, a bond of sympathy, for in each of the enemy capitals a ruling caste oppressed one or more subject nationalities. Prussia stood for the Junker domination of the German tribes; Austria, for Teutonic government of Czechs, Slovaks, and Poles; Hungary, for Magyar dictation to Jugo-Slavs and Rumanes; and Turkey, for the exploitation or extermination of Armenians, Greeks, ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard

... than in the Kaiser's speeches, we see the spirit of the Prussian Junker at its best. It is narrow, old-fashioned, and, to democratic ears, almost grotesque. Yet, if it survives uncorrupted by the dangers to which progress always exposes a military caste, it will not be easy either to crush by defeat or ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,

... 42.) A German author, non-noble, had a liaison with a Prussian woman of rank. On her husband's death he proposed marriage, and was indignantly refused. The lady was conscious of no degradation from being his mistress, but would have forfeited both caste and self-respect ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi

... officiated as Minister of War? Do Monsignor Matteuci (Minister of Police), Monsignor Mertel (Minister of the Interior), Monsignor Berardi (substitute of the Secretary of State), and so many others, who have liberty to marry to-morrow, constitute a religious caste, sacrificing its own interests to the interests of the country, and would they become, all of a sudden, irreproachable if they were dressed differently? If we examine the share given the prelates, both priests and non-priests, in the Roman administration, we shall ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell

... sinned through worshipping the Golden Calf, there would be among them no caste of priests, the nation would have been a nation of priests, and it was only after their sin that the greater part of the people ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... the ghastly object. He groaned again, and in a few moments was dead. I bent over him with the lantern, and soon perceived from the richness of his uniform and accoutrements, as well as from the look of caste about the head and face, that I had killed an officer of high rank. He wore white gloves, which accounted for the odd look of his hands when he appeared on the threshold. I felt sorry when I realized that he was a man of consequence and authority, for had ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan

... of a general uplift of the Negroes, certain educators advocated the establishment of special colored schools. The founding of these institutions, however, must not be understood as a movement to separate the children of the races on account of caste prejudice. The dual system resulted from an effort to meet the needs peculiar to a people just emerging from bondage. It was easily seen that their education should no longer be dominated by religion. Keeping ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson

... also be remembered that the Hindu caste system is an insuperable barrier to the progress of the people toward independence. The unity of the Mohammedans of India, who are only one-fifth of the population, is in healthful contrast to the myriad caste divisions and social barriers which separate Hindus ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones

... constable was also strong within him. He was not on the best of terms with old Simon, the rector's gardener, and his late opposition to Miss Winter in the matter of the singing also came into his mind. So he resolved that the parish constable would lose caste by disregarding his neighbour's boundaries, and was considering what to do next, when he heard a footstep and short cough on the other side of the wall ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... lag remove of the human race. If the taking of the cowl does not imply a complete renouncement of the world, it is at least (in these days) a thorough farewell to every kind of useful and entertaining knowledge, and accordingly the low bestial brow and the animal caste of those almost Bourbon features show plainly enough that all the intellectual vanities of life have been really and truly abandoned. But it is hard to quench altogether the spirit of inquiry that stirs in the human breast, and accordingly ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake

... to the people of the West Indies, to the weak who had been crushed and enslaved by the strong, it came with loving smiles as deliverer and friend. By the devil-worshipper of Travancore, ignorant, degraded, friendless, afraid of malignant spirits, it was welcomed for its kindness. To the caste-ridden people of the great cities and towns, to the sudra of South India, to the Brahmins everywhere, it came as an enemy, destroying their social life, breaking up the bonds of Hindooism, smiting the gods, putting down the priesthood, ...
— Fruits of Toil in the London Missionary Society • Various

... say, in the first place, that it is my decided conviction that the Gipsies were neither more nor less, before they set out upon their pilgrimage, than a pell-mell gathering of many thousands of low-caste, good for nothing, idle Indians from Hindustan—not ashamed to beg, with some amount of sentiment in their nature, as exhibited in their musical tendencies and love of gaudy colours, and except in rare instances, without any true religious ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith

... Half-caste Portuguese slave-traders had made their way to Linyanti, and one, who pretended to be an important person, was carried about in a hammock slung between two poles, which looking like a bag, the natives called him "the father of the bag." Mpepe favoured these scoundrels, as he hoped ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston

... reasons—that a priesthood 'sees no money in' a God of this kind, and that Gods of this kind, ethical and creative, are found where there are no priesthoods—we cannot look on the conception as a late one of priestly origin, as Mr. Thomson does, though a learned caste, like the Peruvian Amantas, may refine on the idea. Least of all can such a God be 'the creation of the priests that minister to him,' when, as in Peru, the Andaman Isles, and much of Africa, this God is ministered ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang

... ignorance and weak powers of reasoning. Hence the strangest customs and superstitions, in complete opposition to the true welfare and happiness of mankind, have become all-powerful throughout the world. We see this in the horror felt by a Hindoo who breaks his caste, and in many other such cases. It would be difficult to distinguish between the remorse felt by a Hindoo who has yielded to the temptation of eating unclean food, from that felt after committing a theft; but the former would probably be ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... entertained a King. It is a matter of public concern when the Count gambles away his patrimony. An Italian noble is no object of jealousy to his fellow-citizens, but then no one gives himself less of the airs of a privileged or exclusive caste. Cavour was a popular man because, noble as he was, he would smoke a cigar or stop for a chat with anybody. The Carnival brings out this characteristic of Italian manners amusingly enough. The mask, the disguise, levels all distinctions. ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green

... to wrong her or cause her one hour of sorrow than did Adam, but the impulse of his nature brooked no restraint. Should public sentiment tolerate such a consummation of love—or passion, if it were not love? (But I believe it was, only the impassable barrier of caste forbade its public avowal.) If such a birth could be left free from odium and scorn, contempt and pity from the world, it would be a thousand times more holy, more happy, than many of those in legal marriage. It will not do for me to read romances; ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... arduous. The priests were the real governing body, and were treated with the most respectful homage. They were councilors of the king, judges of the land, and guardians of all great interests. The soldiers were also numerous, and formed a distinct caste. ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... be deemed worthy of enrolment among his country's great men. Such a man was Frederick Douglass, and the example of one who thus rose to eminence by sheer force of character and talents that neither slavery nor caste proscription could crush must ever remain as a shining illustration of the essential superiority of manhood to environment. Circumstances made Frederick Douglass a slave, but they could not prevent him from becoming a freeman ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt

... Exhibition, this is a season of intellectual activity in London. Parliament is (languidly) in session; the Aristocracy are in town; the Queen is lavishly dispensing the magnificent hospitalities of Royalty to those of the privileged caste who are invited to share them; and the several Religious and Philanthropic Societies, whether of the City or the Kingdom, are generally holding their Anniversaries, keeping Exeter Hall in blast almost night and day. I propose to give a first hasty glance at intellectual ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... are; and though there are different castes and religions composing it, the discipline of that army, and the military spirit by which it is actuated, totally do away with all such distinctions. You will never hear in India of any difference of caste or religion in that army, any more than you would in the ranks of the British army. All do their duty,—all are animated by the true feelings ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington

... some savage tribe he had a savage wife—a dozen of them perhaps—and wild, half-caste children. The girl shuddered, and when they told her that the cruiser would sail on the morrow ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... My friend X——has gained only ridicule with his candidacy. That serves him right. When a man of style debases himself to practical life, he loses caste and should be punished. And then, is it a question of politics, now! The citizens who are excited for or against the Empire or the Republic seem to me as useful as those who discuss efficacious or efficient grace. Politics are as dead as theology! They have had three hundred years of existence, ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert

... point out the origin of "Jim-jam bugs" in No. IX, and the better known modern synonym for brain, "bug-house," but it indicates the arbitrary tendency of all language to create gradations of caste in parts of speech. It is to this mysterious influence by which some words become "elegant" or "poetic," and others "coarse" or "unrefined," that we owe the contempt in which slang is held by ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum • Wallace Irwin

... Ikshaku tribe, a ruler of the earth named Sagara, endued with beauty, and strength. And that same (king) of a dreaded name was sonless, O descendant of Bharata! And he carried havoc through the tribes of the Haihayas and the Talajanghas; brought under subjection the whole of the military caste; (and so) ruled over his own kingdom. And, O most praiseworthy of the descendants of Bharata! O chief of the Bharata race! he had two wives proud of their beauty and of their youth,—one a princess of the Vidarbha race, and the other of the royal line of Sivi. And, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... parting of the ways, where it becomes the bounden duty of every earnest, fair-minded physician to cast off the manacles of professional caste and secret obligation and to advance with open mind across the wholesome confines of eternal truth. This as much in their own interest as in that of their patients. For there is disaffection in the once solid phalanx, and we find strictures ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann

... quite won her by their high-bred and distinguished manners, but she knew them to be inaccessible to her, while from others of a lower caste who would have been glad to make friends with her, she kept proudly aloof, judging them unworthy of her attention. Thus she had lived almost without friends, without other society than her father's, who was engaged in business and often away. So ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti

... of a grand seigneur. She often pondered on why a Huguenot had been permitted to bear the holy order of the St. Esprit upon his breast, but she remembered that Monsieur Gabriel had spoken of the court festivities with that sure accent which told that he had been of the caste which took part in those scenes. She never learnt his secret; to her credit, she never sought to unravel it. The Graevenitz was what the world calls wicked, but vulgarity and vulgarity's attendant, curiosity, could not touch her, and she respected the silence of her friends, though ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay

... Gascoyne was at a particularly difficult and hobbledehoy stage of her development. She was tall for her age, and rather awkward in her manners, apt at present to be slapdash and independent, and decidedly lacking in "that repose which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere". Gwen could never keep still for five seconds, her restless hands were always fidgeting or her feet shuffling, or she was twisting in her chair, or shaking back a loose untidy lock that had escaped from her ribbon. Gwen often ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil

... hope for the pardon of my sins. I am willing to live and suffer, if it is His behest. But you perceive my power to act for the cause of truth is gone. My past has taken away all good influence from my future course. Who will accept my testimony now? I have probably lost caste in my own circle, and have, doubtless, lost my power to influence it, even should I be received back to its ties. In society, I am a dishonored man. I cannot have the happiness of working for the truth,—for ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage

... the philosopher, loving and contemplating these things for purposes of his art. Only through intellectual sympathy is he a part of what he surveys. In Whitman the common or average man has grown haughty, almost aristocratic. He coolly confronts the old types, the man of caste, culture, privileges, royalties, and relegates him to the past. He readjusts the standards, and estimates everything from the human and democratic point of view. In his scheme, the old traditions—the aristocratic, the scholastic, the ecclesiastical, the military, the social traditions—play ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs

... Government, by which I mean ourselves, must look to its knitting with an alertness never before found necessary, or this time we perish. And I want to tell you, Roger, with all solemnity, that there may be a score of legitimate reasons why a young man should not volunteer, but none to caste dishonor on his endraftment. This nation merely says to its young fighting men, 'Step up, my sons!'—then, all who should fight, will; and those who should not, won't! There is no way more fair; there is no ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris

... in the South, in order to maintain her social caste, generally allows her patriotism to cool. But the Negro woman sings patriotic airs on each 30th of May as she twines wreaths of pine to lay upon the graves of those who died for her. Of course, these women who had ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton

... time it was not the fashion for a Jew to wear black shoes (Taanith, fol. 22, col. 1). Even now, in Poland, a pious Jew, or a Chasid, would on no account wear polished boots or a short coat, or neglect to wear a girdle. He would at once lose caste and be subjected to persecution, direct or indirect, were he to depart from a custom. Custom is law, is an oft-quoted Jewish proverb, one among the most familiar of their household words, as "Custom is a tyrant," is among ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various

... Plimsoll had lost caste as a leader. His moods were morose or bragging. His ascendancy was gone. The crowd clung to him like so many leeches, waiting for a split of the proceeds of the sale of horses that no one appeared eager to ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn

... The faithful half-caste foreman going his rounds cocked his ears at the sharp sound. He gave one enormous start of fear at the sight of the swift white figure flying at him out of the night. He crouched in terror, and then sprang up and clicked his tongue in ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad

... the fact is, the impression is made that he knows nothing as he ought to know. He may, perchance, with the lowest of the illiterate, be heard as an oracle, and looked up to as a Solon; but the moment he rises into higher circles he loses caste, and falls down into a rank below that with which he would have stood associated had he not elevated himself on the pedestal of his own folly. He is viewed with disgust in his fall; and becomes the object of ridicule ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate

... amusing to say the least that while she was sailing out of the harbor I was holding my first suffrage meeting in the home of Mrs. Dorsett. I held meetings on two successive days, one attended mostly by the middle class and the other by high caste Hawaiians and the "missionary set," which, perhaps, we might style their "400." My talk was in the form of a discussion and I was surprised and delighted at the fluency of all who spoke, their wide knowledge of world affairs and desire for ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various

... of reconstruction was the strong disposition of the liberated negroes to withdraw themselves from the tutelage of the churches in which they had been held, in the days of slavery, in a lower-caste relation. The eager entrance of the northern churches upon mission work among the blacks, to which access had long been barred by atrocious laws and by the savage fury of mobs, tended to promote this change. The multiplication and growth of ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... found the poor girl on the verge of tears. 'Oh, sister!' she exclaimed; 'I've been scrubbing him for ten minutes, and I can't get him clean!' It was rather dull in the ward, so I switched on the light. Then I saw the cause of Marjory's distress. The poor stoker was a half-caste." ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman

... implications. I am only using a convenient simile. You may reverse it if you like and make the disease stand for the Purbhoo, in which case the Brahmin will be the blister. Which way fits the facts best will depend upon which caste chances at the time to be nearest to ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)

... smaller material possessions, and so on—to keep it sweet and human; while at the same time it is all so gently graded, and marked by transitions so easy and natural, that no gap was anywhere to be discovered on which to found an order of privilege or caste. Now an equality like this, with the erectness, independence, energy, and initiative it brings with it, in men, sprung from the loins of an imperial race is a possession, not for a nation only, but for civilization ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... a person of one caste to be received into another, or to intermarry with any one belonging to it. If a Hindoo leaves his native land or takes food from a Paria, he is turned out of his caste, and can only obtain re-admission on the payment of a ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer

... possession of wealth and influence and of the means of obtaining them. The division of labor in the past caused the dissociation of the so-called nobler avocations from manual work, and gradually those who followed higher pursuits grew into a sort of hereditary caste which bestowed relative immunity from the worst hardships of life's struggle and formed a ruling class. To-day the masses have their hands on the principal levers for shattering this top crust of the social sphere and seem resolved to ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... —— tells me that yesterday, at dinner, the fact that Government had removed some commissioners who, not content with hanging all the rebels they could lay their hands on, had been insulting them by destroying their caste, telling them that after death they should be cast to the dogs, to be devoured, &c., was mentioned. A rev gentleman could not understand the conduct of Government; could not see that there was any impropriety in torturing men's ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... invested, and the pioneers and artificers of the Carolina Corps were busily engaged on the siege works. On the north-east side the army broke ground on the 25th of February; and on the western side, towards La Caste, fascine batteries were erected with all possible expedition. By the 16th of March, the advanced batteries were pushed to within 500 yards of Fort Bourbon, and 200 yards of the enemy's nearest redoubt. On the 20th of March, the fortress of ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis

... Papists. To a favoured few of other habits of thought, it had come to be regarded as a virtue; but the day was still far distant when men were to scorn the very word toleration as an insult to the dignity of man; as if for any human being or set of human beings, in caste, class, synod, or church, the right could even in imagination be conceded of controlling ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... him," predicted Hepson sagely. "The insult is there and it will stick. Your class, Darry, would lose caste with the fellows here if it allowed ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock

... exception of Balzac, few writers have drawn authentic pictures of nineteenth-century noblewomen in France; and his vivid portrayals are more the creations of genius than correct descriptions of a caste. ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory

... certain other traits which help a man to eminence in the branch of public service referred to. He ran to high colors, to wide whiskers, to open pores; he had the saddle-leather skin common in Englishmen, rarer in Americans,—never found in the Brahmin caste, oftener in the military and the commodores: observing people know what is meant; blow the seed-arrows from the white-kid-looking button which holds them on a dandelion-stalk, and the pricked-pincushion surface shows you what to look for. He had the loud gruff voice which implies the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... not already at least respect religion, if he does not personally practise it. The influence within the church of selling the Gospel in open market is as deadly as its influence without. It creates a caste system. Practically our pews are classified. We have a parquette, a dress circle, a family circle, and an amphitheatre. The rich and poor do not meet together. We are not one in Christ Jesus. Moreover I believe it to be as bad financially as it is morally. When an American makes a ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott

... sorrow, care, anxiety and doubt, the children of a strenuous life, had left his face singularly unscarred with their characteristic lines. For the rest, beyond that he was unusually fair, he represented in bearing and in feature a Hindu prince of high caste and noble lineage. Between him and the old man upon the divan there was no apparent resemblance. The latter was considerably darker, and lacked both the refinement of feature and dignity of expression which distinguished the younger man. Nevertheless, ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie

... be interested to hear that I have encountered another enemy—the doctor's housekeeper. I had talked to the creature several times over the telephone, and had noted that her voice was not distinguished by the soft, low accents that mark the caste of "Vere de Vere"; but now I have seen her. This morning, while returning from the village, I made a slight detour, and passed our doctor's house. Sandy is evidently the result of environment—olive green, with a mansard roof ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster

... Tubuai Lagoon she would never get out again, except under British colours. This was no idle boast, for not only were my husband's two vessels—which were then both at anchor in the lagoon—well armed, but they were manned by English or English-blooded half-caste seamen, who would have only been too delighted to fight a Frenchman, or a ...
— "Old Mary" - 1901 • Louis Becke

... begotten by just that class separation of labour which in the commonweal of the Great State will be altogether destroyed. It leads nowhither; it is a shelter hut on the road. The wider movement of modern civilisation is against class organisation and caste feeling. These are forces antagonistic to progress, continually springing up and endeavouring to stereotype the transitory organisation, and ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells

... This is what happened in the temperate and sub-tropical regions of the Western Hemisphere, in Australia, in portions of northern Asia and southern Africa. In other places the conquest has been purely political, the Europeans representing for the most part merely a small caste of soldiers and administrators, as in most of tropical Asia and Africa and in much of tropical America. Finally, here and there instances occur where there has been no conquest at all, but where an alien people is profoundly ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt

... friendship between an impulsive little girl in a fine New York home and a little blind girl in an apartment next door. The little girl's determination to cultivate the acquaintance, begun out of the window during a rainy day, triumphs over the barriers of caste, and the little blind girl proves to be in every way a worthy companion. Later a mystery of birth is cleared up, and the little blind girl proves to be of gentle birth as well as ...
— Dorothy Dainty at the Mountains • Amy Brooks

... over to England, with the changing conditions, "gentleman" was used to describe persons lower and lower in the social scale, until, when it crossed to this country, its significance became lost in an indiscriminate application to all citizens[27]. A flavor of its caste significance still remains in the traditional "high sense of honor" characteristic of our military service. It was a distant step for a slave and freedman to become an officer ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward

... he who could not select from the lot a hat to match his peculiar style of masculine beauty. And, furthermore: damned was he who so far forgot tradition and local custom as to purchase his "every-day" hat elsewhere. He might buy his Sunday hat in Bakersfield or Los Angeles and still retain caste, but his every-day hat—never! Such a proceeding would have been construed by Donna's admirers as a direct attack on home industry. In fact, one made money by purchasing his hats of Donna Corblay. If she never accepted less than one dollar for a hat, regardless of age, color, original ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne

... and rice, but our men, whose baggage was astray on the mountains, were without food for twenty-two hours, positively refusing to eat our food or cook fresh rice in our cooking pots! To such an extent has Hindu caste-feeling infected Moslems! ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)

... that personal ownership and use of things, such as weapons and tools, which involves no class or caste domination, and is an integral feature of all forms of Communism, first appears in the ownership of man by man. Slavery, strange as it may seem, is directly traceable to tribal Communism, and first appears as a tribal institution. When one tribe made war upon another, its efforts were directed ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo

... opened, and colleges founded. Several hundred newspapers, about half published in the native dialects, are sowing Western ideas broadcast among the people. The introduction of European science and civilization is rapidly undermining many of the old superstitions, particularly the ancient system of caste.] ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... Mrs. Garrow called on my mother I do not remember. Somebody had given them letters of introduction to us, but I forget who it was. Mr. Garrow was the son of an Indian officer by a high caste Brahmin woman, to whom he was married. I believe that unions between Englishmen and native women are common enough. But a marriage, such as that of my wife's grandfather I am assured was, is rare, and rarer still a marriage ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... were coming on, and the School agreed, wonderingly, that Dirty Dick's had a chance of being cock-house. The fact that the Manor has lost caste brought about this possibility. Boys just under fifteen found room at the Manor when other houses were full. All the Manorites in the Shell and Removes were fellows who had come to Harrow rather over than ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell

... I have thus deliberately put politics on one side, it is strictly relevant to my purpose to observe that Sir William is essentially and typically a Whig. For Whiggery, rightly understood, is not a political creed but a social caste. The Whig, like the poet, is born, not made. It is as difficult to become a Whig as to become a Jew. Macaulay was probably the only man who, being born outside the privileged enclosure, ever penetrated ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell

... great a degree hitherto. Under the new system "young gentlemen" were sent to sea as "King's Letter Boys"—midshipmen—to learn the ways of the navy and to grow up in it as a preparation for command. This was an excellent reform but it resulted in making the navy the property of a social caste from that day to this, and it made promotion, for a century and more, largely subject ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott

... fine young fellow of the "Brahmin Caste," who teaches school while preparing for a profession.—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Elsie ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... womenfolk kindly, but never as their equals. Over and over again German women have told me they envied the wives of Englishmen, and I should say that it is impossible for an English woman to be in Germany without feeling, if she understands what is going on around her, that she has suddenly lost caste. She is "nothing at all" because she is a woman: to be treated with gallantry if she is young and pretty, and as a negligible quantity if she is not. That perhaps is a bitter description of what really takes place, but after reading Herr Riehl, and hearing that his ideas are still widely accepted ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick

... native of India it meant even a severer punishment than to the European, for to be sent across the "kala pani," or "black water," in a convict ship or "jeta junaza," or "living tomb" as they called it, meant, especially to a man of high caste, whether of the right or left hand section, the total loss to him of all that was worth living for. He could never be received in intercourse again with his own people, and so strong are the caste ideas of ceremonial uncleanness that it would be defilement to his friends and ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair

... fundamental respects the opposites of each other, and we can only account for it by an antagonism of thought beginning with the early framers of their respective institutions. New England abolished caste; in Virginia they still talk of "quality folks." But it was in making education not only common to all, but in some sense compulsory on all, that the destiny of the free republics of America was practically settled. Every man was to be trained, ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... slavery in Maryland, our author escaped into the caste-slavery of the north, in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Here he found oppression assuming another, and hardly less bitter, form; of that very handicraft which the greed of slavery had taught him, his half-freedom denied him the exercise for an honest living; ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass



Words linked to "Caste" :   social class, socio-economic class, animal group, Hinduism, class, bugology, entomology, colony, stratum, position, Hindooism, status, jati



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com