"Common people" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The Master said, 'In an act of parricide or regicide, they would not follow him.' CHAP. XXIV. 1. Tsze-lu got Tsze-kao appointed governor of Pi. 2. The Master said, 'You are injuring a man's son.' 3. Tsze-lu said, 'There are (there) common people and officers; there are the altars of the spirits of the land and grain. Why must one read books before he can be considered to have learned?' 4. The Master said, 'It is on this account that I hate your glib-tongued people.' CHAP. XXV. 1. Tsze-lu, Tsang Hsi, ...
— The Chinese Classics—Volume 1: Confucian Analects • James Legge
... Chosen People of the Lord! It bred in them scorn of the Gentiles, for which there was no solvent in the Roman polity, the Roman citizenship, the Roman peace.—There must have been always noble protest-ants among them. The common people,—as the picture in the Gospels shows,—were ready enough to fraternize humanly with Gentiles and Romans; but the fact remains that at the time Judaism gave birth to Christianity, this narrow fierce antagonism ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... happiness—and they are certainly no unimportant factor—were wonderfully advanced, and the common people of Italy at this time were enjoying many comforts of life which were unknown to the higher classes in other countries. The houses were generally large and of stone, supplies were plentiful and cheap, and, all in all, it appears to have been an age of abundance. It was customary for the ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... domination over a vast part of Italy responsible for the degradation of Italian mind and manners in the seventeenth century. He declares that, because of the Spaniards, the Italian theater was then silent, "or filled with the noise of insipid allegories"; there was little or no education among the common people; the slender literature that survived existed solely for the amusement and distinction of the great; the army and the Church were the only avenues of escape from obscurity and poverty; all classes were ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... were no more, and a brooding silence took their place. Dalis, the Sarkas knew, possessed the power to mask his thoughts, for it was a power possessed in common by all the scientists of Earth. But the common people of his Gens did not posses that power. However, for the moment Sarka had forgotten an all important something: that, when people were outside the roof of the world, they were subservient to the will of a common commander to ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... There is not enough in most histories of the common people. And my father says it is only they who really matter. He has thought very deeply. It is his dream to make all other countries like America—free, peaceful, industrious—only better than America has yet become, in that poverty and inequality and injustice ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... needy by a lavish bounty; and they had a powerful auxiliary in the Madonna of the Mountain, who drew pilgrims from all parts of Italy and thus contributed to the material welfare of the state as well as to its spiritual privileges. To the common people their Virgin was not only a protection against disease and famine, but a kind of oracle, who by divers signs and tokens gave evidence of divine approval or displeasure; and it was naturally to the priests that the faithful looked for a reading of ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... idea of the nation being governed by the upper classes, and yet they used to curse them with unrestrained fury for their indifference to the needs of the common people. Gladstone was very frequently in disfavour with them: for instance, they did not altogether approve of the abolition of purchase in the army. It was considered a gratuitous interference with a person's freewill. "Why," said they, "shouldn't a commission be purchased if a man wants to ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... no more fidelity than elegance. Hawthorne's integrity as well as his exquisite—taste prevented him from falling into this error. There is not in the world a large rural population that speaks its native language with a purity approaching that with which the English is spoken by the common people of New England. The vulgar words and phrases which in other states are supposed to be peculiar to this part of the country are unknown east of the Hudson, except to the readers of foreign newspapers, or the listeners to low comedians who find it ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... for instance, in—"The men, they were there." Again, the old possessive case—"The king, his crown," conforms to the like order of thought. Moreover, the fact that the indirect mode is called the natural one, implies that it is the one spontaneously employed by the common people: that is—the one easiest for ...
— The Philosophy of Style • Herbert Spencer
... [18] The common people, who at Athens were as superstitious as everywhere else, took delight in oracles, especially when they were favourable, and Cleon served them up to suit their taste and to advance ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... deeper meaning was hidden from their simple intelligence. Moreover, they expended no store of thought on the doctor. He was old, ugly, learned—and a little "loco"—mad, if not a bit of a sorcerer, as the common people suspected him of being. The little white jacket was in reality a concession to Mrs. Gould's humanizing influence. The doctor, with his habit of sceptical, bitter speech, had no other means of showing his profound respect for the character of the woman who was known in the country ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... It is enough for you to see that all the elegance of Seville, the very archbishop included, comes to a humble convent to listen to him. And it is not only the learned people who can understand his skill that come; the common people, too, swarm to the church, and are still as the dead when Maese Perez puts his hand to the organ. And when the host is elevated— when the host is elevated, then you can't hear a fly. Great tears fall from every eye, and when the music is over a long-drawn sigh ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... learning; and the gravity of his deportment and language, with the high tone which he exerted in setting forth the authority of the church and of the priesthood, impressed them no less with an opinion of his sanctity. Even the common people, the severest critics of the conduct of their betters, had commiseration with the follies of Prior Aymer. He was generous; and charity, as it is well known, covereth a multitude of sins, in another sense than that in which it is said ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... the title-page, it is Scripture "preached and explained," and in addressing it to the people, Luther did not fail to keep in view the object upon which he set so high an estimate, when he said, "I preach as simply as possible. I want the common people, and children, ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... of Waitz-Gerland (30-40) is gathered a large mass of evidence, all of which shows that on the Polynesian islands, too, tattooing was indulged in, not for aesthetic and amorous but for religious and practical reasons. In Tonga it was a mark of rank, not permitted to common people or to slaves. Not to be tattooed was considered improper. In the Marquesas the older and more distinguished a man, the more he was tattooed. Married women were distinguished by having marks on the right hand and left foot. In some cases tattoo marks were ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... widest vistas. It 'bakes no bread,' as has been said, but it can inspire our souls with courage; and repugnant as its manners, its doubting and challenging, its quibbling and dialectics, often are to common people, no one of us can get along without the far-flashing beams of light it sends over the world's perspectives. These illuminations at least, and the contrast-effects of darkness and mystery that accompany them, give to what it says an interest that ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... this, and were generously hot to have him punished. Something of this disagreeable sort was turning up every now and then. I mean, episodes that showed that not all priests were frauds and self-seekers, but that many, even the great majority, of these that were down on the ground among the common people, were sincere and right-hearted, and devoted to the alleviation of human troubles and sufferings. Well, it was a thing which could not be helped, so I seldom fretted about it, and never many minutes at a time; it ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... national value and the estimation in which they were held are considered. The bones of Kamehameha, after being kept for a while, were so carefully concealed that all knowledge of their final resting place is now lost. There was a proverb current among the common people that the bones of a cruel King could not be hid; they made fish-hooks and arrows of them, upon which, in using them, they vented their abhorrence of his ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... rather an angry tone, to keep back. Napoleon interfered, saying, 'Respect the burden, Madam.'" In the time of the empire, he directed attention to the improvement and embellishment of the market of the capital. "The market-place," he said, "is the Louvre of the common people." The principal works that have survived him are his magnificent roads. He filled the troops with his spirit, and a sort of freedom and companionship grew up between him and them, which the forms of his court never permitted between the officers and himself. They performed, ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... not worth worrying over," replied his niece. "I am naturally indignant at being drawn into such a thing against my will, but I doubt if anyone who knows us, or whose opinion we value, will ever visit a moving picture theatre or see this film. The common people will ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... doctrine. Ever has it seemed to me a witless thing to prove the multiplication table by turning a staff into a serpent, or even into two serpents. Yet these things the thaumaturgi did, and always to the excitement of the common people. ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... sympathy, and good humor. "His Yes," says Mr. Riddle, "was most gracious and satisfactory; his No, when reached, was often spoken by the petitioner, and left only a soothed disappointment. He saw the point of a case unerringly. He had a confidence in the homely views and speech of the common people, with whom his heart ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... occasions, in a simple gown of green, covering her fair hair, however, with a cap powdered with diamonds. Furthermore, she made friends of such native Russians as were gifted with talent, winning their favor, and, through them, the favor of the common people. ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... was in Cho-sen a king named Cheng-chong. He was celebrated throughout his kingdom for his goodness. It was a habit with him to disguise himself in ordinary clothing and then to go out and mingle with the common people. In this way he was often able to discover opportunities for doing ...
— Our Little Korean Cousin • H. Lee M. Pike
... the women, whose sympathies were with the outlaw, and who resented the arrest of their husbands, fathers, and brothers, did their utmost to encourage. The police found it hopeless to get a scrap of information. The common people even refused to fraternize with them in the evenings when they were gathered round the bar-room of ...
— The Hunted Outlaw - Donald Morrison, The Canadian Rob Roy • Anonymous
... which Mr Hume considered as inseparable from the voluntary system. You may go all over the world without finding another country where religious differences take a form so dangerous to the peace of society; where the common people are so much under the influence of their priests; or where the priests who teach the common people are so completely estranged ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of the South spread into the Mississippi Valley. Hence the Natchez tribe of Mississippi had a highly developed form of sun-worship and a well-defined caste system with three grades of nobility in addition to the common people. Even farther north, almost to the Ohio River, traces of the sun-worship of Mexico had penetrated along the ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... courtesies, chivalries, and generosities of aristocratic life. This tendency was accentuated by his calling. The middle class, already steeped in Puritanism, looked upon the theatre as scarcely better than the brothel, and showed their contempt for the players in a thousand ways. The groundlings and common people, with their "greasy caps" and "stinking breath" were as loathsome to Shakespeare as the crop-headed, gain-loving citizens who condemned him and his like pitilessly. He was thrown back, therefore, upon the young noblemen who had read the classics and loved the arts. His works show how he admires ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... nobles; always loyal champions, once the martyrs, and now the hereditary assertors, of the great Guelf cause. The Cerchi, with less character and less zeal, but rich, liberal, and showy, and with more of rough kindness and vulgar good-nature for the common people, were more popular in Guelf Florence than the Parte Guelfa; and, of course, the Ghibellines wished ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... accept the national faith. They tried to force themselves to believe that there must be something true in that which had been believed by so many great and pious men of old, which had approved itself by lasting so many centuries, and of which it was by the common people asserted that absolute demonstration could be given. But it was in vain; intellect had outgrown faith. They had come into that condition to which all men are liable—aware of the fallacy of their opinions, yet angry that another should remind them ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... revelry at the castle. There had not been such doings since the marriage of the Earl's great-grandfather a hundred years before. There were huge tables, covered with rich food, standing constantly in the hall, and even the common people went in and out as they pleased, while outside on the green there was ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... Wicklow), "during our stay, that I had that wonderful escape in falling through a mill-race, whilst the mill was going, and of being taken up unhurt; the story is incredible, but known for truth in all that part of Ireland, where hundreds of the common people ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... convicted by her own confession. He maintained that, if homicide is to be committed at all, poison is preferable to the knife, and then he went on to weave a web of ineffectual casuistry in support of his view, which moved the Court to pity and contempt. He cited the Lex Cornelia, which doomed the common people to the arena, and the patricians to exile, and claimed the penalty last-named as the one fitting to the present case.[193] Then he proceeded to show that the woman had really died from natural causes; for, even granting that she had swallowed ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... mountain difficult of access 17 they trusted; but the heights of the hill I besieged and took; in the midst of the strong mountain their fighting men I slew; their corpses like rubbish on the hills 18 I piled up; their common people in the tangled hollows of the mountains I consumed; their spoil, their property I carried off; the heads of their soldiers 19 I cut off; a pile (of them) in the highest part of the city I built; their boys and maidens I dishonored; to the environs of the city Buliyani ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... Hood, who, with his merry men, hunted the forest of merry Sherwood, where he killed the king's deer and waylaid rich travelers, but was kind to poor knights and honest workmen. Robin Hood is the true ballad hero, the darling of the common people, as Arthur was of the nobles. The names of his Confessor, Friar Tuck; his mistress, Maid Marian; his companions, Little John, Scathelock, and Much, the Miller's son, were as familiar as household words. Langland, in the 14th century, mentions "rimes of Robin Hood," and ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... poesy, taste for the sciences, justness of sentiments, elegance of ear, and delicacy in all the refinements of language. A poor woman, who sold herbs at Athens, discovered Theophrastus to be a stranger, by a single word which he affectedly made use of in expressing himself.(173) The common people got the tragedies of Euripides by heart. The genius of every nation expresses itself in the people's manner of passing their time, and in their pleasures. The great employment and delight of the Athenians were to amuse themselves ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... executioner, there lay the knouts and other instruments, and with eager glances the people devoured all: they found all these preparations admirable, they rejoiced with unrestrained delight in the prospect of seeing the handsomest woman in the realm flayed with the knout. And not the common people alone, the noblesse must also be present; the great magnates of the court must also come, if they would avoid exciting a suspicion that they commiserated the condemned and revolted at their punishment. ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... in a hole, Mr. Hovstad. Let us say it is I that am the freethinker, then. I am going to prove to you, scientifically, that the "People's Messenger" leads you by the nose in a shameful manner when it tells you that you—that the common people, the crowd, the masses, are the real essence of the People. That is only a newspaper lie, I tell you! The common people are nothing more than the raw material of which a People is made. (Groans, laughter and uproar.) ...
— An Enemy of the People • Henrik Ibsen
... recognition of the Supreme Being, is French; the talk (I had almost said the chatter) about virtue and sympathy, and so forth, is French; the Whig recognition of the rights of man, joined to a kind of bureaucratical distrust and terror of the common people (a combination almost unknown in England), is French. Everybody remembers the ingenious argument in Peter Simple that the French were quite as brave as the English, indeed more so, but that they were extraordinarily ticklish. Jeffrey, we have seen, was very far from being a coward, but he ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... preference given him, consists in this; that when a ship arrives, he is allowed to go first on board, and to make the bargain, if they have any thing to barter. They are commonly good-natured men, disposed to make and preserve peace among the common people. In every other respect they live and act like the rest, get drunk, commit fornication, and, when there is, as they say, a necessity for it, murder; and are equally lazy and unclean. But they can use their tongues more ...
— Letters on the Nicobar islands, their natural productions, and the manners, customs, and superstitions of the natives • John Gottfried Haensel
... deserted grass-worn sidewalks, beside the antique houses, now closed and silent, which exhaled the evaporated perfume of the loves of other days. But it was the old quarter, more especially, that promptly received them with cordiality, this quarter of which the common people, instinctively touched, felt the grace of the legend, the profound myth of the couple, the beautiful young girl supporting the royal and rejuvenated master. The doctor was adored here for his goodness, and his companion quickly became popular, and was greeted ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... had met with a Fortune more worthy of her Birth and Virtue. Nor are the Manners, proper to the Persons represented, less justly observ'd, in those Characters taken from the Roman History; and of this, the Fierceness and Impatience of Coriolanus, his Courage and Disdain of the common People, the Virtue and Philosophical Temper of Brutus, and the irregular Greatness of Mind in M. Antony, are beautiful Proofs. For the two last especially, you find 'em exactly as they are describ'd by Plutarch, from whom certainly Shakespear copy'd ...
— Some Account of the Life of Mr. William Shakespear (1709) • Nicholas Rowe
... of enlisting the leaders in a campaign to revive the spiritual life of the common people had been disappointed, his own determination to devote his life to that purpose remained unshaken. If he could look for no help from the recognized leaders of his nation, he must somehow gain a hearing from the common people themselves. His personal contact with these, ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... among some estuaries and swamps, and in a hidden location. [9] They stored there some rice and other provisions, and weapons of little importance. The Sangleys began to gather there, especially the masses—the common people and day-laborers; for those of the parian, and the mechanics, although urged to do the same, did not resolve to do it, and remained quiet, guarding their houses and property. The restlessness of the Sangleys daily continued to become more inflamed. This, and the advices given ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... tell you that you common people must wait till we are gone. Push these people's boat out into the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Croissette. "No persuader, sirs, like fire and sword. Dragoons are quartered on every Protestant. They are destroying whatever they cannot make booty of. Some are littering their fine black horses with bales of broadcloth, silk, and cotton; others with fine Holland cloths. The common people are being driven to church at the sword's point, and conforming by shoals. The gentry give more trouble, but end ...
— Jacques Bonneval • Anne Manning
... king's mother retired, many more of the common people swarmed into the house, and all seemed highly delighted to learn that we intended to stay and ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... were matters which, however interesting, did not concern the poor charcoal-burner or his family. They were more anxious over the report that the warriors had become more reckless than ever before, and delighted in annoying all the common people; so Zella was told to keep away from the beaten path as much as possible, that she might not encounter any of the ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... for wrapping paper. When cut into coarse straws, it forms the brooms and whitewash-brushes of the country; and, as a substitute for bristles, it is made into scrub-brushes; and, finally, it supplies the place of hair-combs among the common people. ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... was born in Westminster, and received an education similar to that of the common people in England. He was by nature a pirate; for even when very young he raised contributions among the boys of Westminster, and if they declined compliance, a battle was the result. When he advanced a step farther in life, he began to exert his ingenuity at low games, and cheating all in ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... into the prayers of the Church—an honor theretofore restricted to royalty. But she had a dearer honor and an honor more to be proud of, from a humbler source: the common people had had leaden medals struck which bore her effigy and her escutcheon, and these they wore as ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... vulgar, and in many of their ordinary forms of expression. Thus it is generally believed throughout all Asia, that the moon has an influence on the brain; and when a man is of insane mind, we call him a lunatic. One of the curses of the common people is, 'May the moon eat up your brains;' and in China they say of a man who has done any act of egregious folly, 'He was gathering wool in ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... bishops and abbots[157] and clergy, noblesse and royal officials, were wholly exempt from the main incidents of taxation; for personal and land taxes, tithes and forced labour, were exacted from the common people alone. No liberty of worship, nor of thought: Protestants were condemned to the galleys by hundreds; booksellers met the same fate. Authors and books were arbitrarily sent by lettres de cachet to the Bastille or Vincennes. Yet in spite of all ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... Sharlee, seating herself and beginning with a paragraph as neat as a public speaker's, "must be able, as his first qualification, to interest the common people, it is manifest that he must be interested in the common people. He must feel his bond of humanity with them, sympathize with them, like them, love them. This is the great secret of Colonel Cowles's success as an editor. A fine gentleman by birth, breeding, and ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... all events, up here—are cooler, and I begin even to think of a light shawl for my solitary walks in the verandah just before bedtime. When the moon shines these walks are pleasant enough, but when only the "common people of the skies" are trying to filter down their feebler light through the misty atmosphere, I have a lurking fear and distrust of the reptiles and bugs who may also have a fancy for promenading at the same time and in the same place. I say nothing of bats, frogs and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... thou hast reported, either of the honesty or of the falseness of those things which are objected against thee, is known to all men. Thou didst well to touch but briefly the wickedness and deceit of thy accusers, for that the common people to whose notice they are come do more fitly and largely speak of them. Thou hast also sharply rebuked the unjust Senate's deed. Thou hast also grieved at our accusation, and hast bewailed the loss ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... against him and his methods. His advent had brought with it a new form of democracy, which cast down oligarchies and despotisms everywhere. His system destroyed and affected too many interests not to leave behind it feelings of revenge, but this revenge did not exist among the common people. Those who persecuted the common people felt his heavy hand upon them. The populace entered into his service in shoals, only to betray him when the time of trial came. He knew the risk he ran, but did not shrink from it. He hoped that he ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... of Commons, on the hustings, and at Exeter Hall? Is an educated gentleman never worsted at an election by the tone and arguments of some clever fellow, who, whatever his shortcomings in other respects, understands the common people? ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... one man said. "He and his daughter holds themselves above common people even when they don't have enough to keep body and soul together. They lives on property that ain't theirs by rights, and they don't belong in this section of the country. The father's crazy and the neighborhood will be glad to ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... cram his copper coins down the throats of the Irish people. All these objections, however, might have been got over but for the sudden appearance of an unexpected and a powerful actor on the scene. One morning appeared in Dublin "A letter to the shopkeepers, tradesmen, farmers, and common people of Ireland, concerning the brass halfpence coined by one William Wood, hardwareman, with a design to have them pass in this kingdom; wherein is shown the power of his patent, the value of his halfpence, and how ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... the drawing-rooms of all her friends. He who bore it seemed to her, after what she had heard a great personage. He was, according to his reputation, a hero of another age, a social Don Quixote, a terribly fast man of the world. He was one of those men whose lives astonish common people, whom the well-to-do citizen thinks faithless and lawless, whose extravagant passions overleap the narrow bounds of social prejudice; a man who tyrannizes over others, whom all fear, who fights on the slightest provocation, who scatters gold with a prodigal hand, whose iron ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... nature of a Roman gentleman of the Empire. As for the state of the poor under Augustus, 200,000 persons in Rome received outdoor relief. Although the rich had every luxury that desire could suggest and wealth afford, the great need of the common people was food. The city had to rely mainly on imported corn, and the price of this at times became prohibitive owing to scarcity—sometimes the result of piracy and the dangers of the sea, but often caused by artificial means owing to the merchants "cornering" the supply—and it was necessary for the ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... doubt exhibit a deficit relatively still more considerable. The decline of the national vigour less admits of proof; but it is stated by the writers on agriculture that flesh and milk disappeared more and more from the diet of the common people. At the same time the slave population increased, as the free population declined. In Apulia, Lucania, and the Bruttian land, pastoral husbandry must even in the time of Cato have preponderated over agriculture; the half-savage slave-herdsmen ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... humanity was not profound. There was always a strong vein of idealism and romance among Hohenzollerns, the vein of a Lohengrin, a Tancred, or some mediaeval knight. The Emperor, of course, never lived among the common people; never had to work for a living in competition with a thousand others more fortunate than he, or better endowed by nature with the qualities and gifts that make for worldly success; never, so far as is known to a watchful and exceptionally ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... "They are common people, such as you and me." Such people "as you and I are." The pronoun should be I, ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... fairyland. We shall see that this land has its own customs, and its own laws, entirely at variance with all those to which we are accustomed. How is this to be explained? These stories are founded really on the life of the common people, and they have come down from generation to generation, handed on by the storytellers, from a time long before the day when they were ever collected and written in books. It is the popular and social character of these stories that is so important; they ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... and when the pious farce began, took so active a part in the sport upon the naked backs of the fathers, as to inflict bodily injury, and break up the bloody entertainment. Still Protestantism has been felt in Mexico, if not embraced, and the common people look back to the happy time when the soldiers of their Protestant conquerors made money plenty among them, and when even-handed justice was dealt out alike to rich and poor, high and low. Though the foreigners laughed at the fables of the priests and ridiculed the monks, they ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... gratifying to the people. The fact was, at that time people believed in social superiority, had faith in their God, king and nobles, and though they demanded that their nobles should be punished, did not expect them to die like common people; the difference was the difference between the rope and the sabre. That very difference, however, between the two deaths—the terrible theatrical effect of the latter, made a great ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... exterior covered a warm heart. In private life he was gentle, loving, and affectionate. He was simple and homely, even to commonness. Fond of all common pleasures and enjoyments, he was anything but an austere man, or a bigot; for he was hearty, genial, and even "jolly." Luther was the common people's hero in his lifetime, and he remains so in Germany ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... are done in parables, that seeing they may see and not perceive; and hearing they may hear and not understand." Paul, in his fourteen Epistles, inculcates and avows the principle of deceiving the common people. He speaks of having been upbraided by his own converts with being crafty and catching them with guile and of his known and wilful lies abounding to the glory of God. See Romans iii. 7, and II. Cor. xii. 16. If Christ and Paul were guilty of deception, their followers ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... ten years ago, "Before the Reformation, the Church recognized the seven hours of prayer; however these may have been practically neglected, or hidden in an unknown tongue, there is no estimating what influence this may have had on common people's minds secretly." Surely you must agree that there is no estimating the efficacy of nobody's hearing services which, if heard by any body, would have been ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... smiling inscrutably. "Thank you, it's not the pink edelweiss. The scientific, the esoteric name, I've promised that I'll tell to no one; but the common people in my native country, who have heard of it, would call ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... plays of Lyly's appear at first sight to present pastoral features. There are five 'shepherds' among the dramatis personae of Mydas, but they appear in one scene only (IV. ii), and merely represent the common people, introduced to comment on the actions of the king. The names, as is usual with Lyly, except in the case of comic characters, are classical. The other play is Mother Bombie, which, however, is nothing but a comedy of low life, combining the ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... way the hedgehog builds her nest, To front the north, or south, or east, or west; For if 'tis true that common people say, The wind will blow the quite contrary way. If by some secret art the hedgehog know, So long before, the way the wind will blow, She has an art which many a person lacks, That thinks himself fit to ...
— Rhymes Old and New • M.E.S. Wright
... appearance in the world, it produced a profound sensation. It spread on all sides with great rapidity; it was at once felt to be a religion for the common people; and some individuals of highly cultivated minds soon acknowledged its authority. For a time its progress was impeded by the persecutions of Nero and Domitian; but, about the beginning of the second century, it ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... made Lloyd George the best known and most detested man in England. To hate him was one of the accomplishments of titled folk to whom his very name was a hissing and a by-word. Massed behind him were the common people whose champion he was: arrayed against him were the powers of ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... board of Aldermen set out, walking by twos, with the Mayor at their head, to consult the Wise Woman. The Aldermen were all very fleshy, and carried gold-headed canes which they swung very high at every step. They held their heads well back, and their chins stiff, and whenever they met common people they sniffed gently. ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... was a loud complaint from the common people and their wives against their fellow-countrymen the Jews. For there were those who were saying, 'We must give our sons and our daughters in pledge to secure grain that we may eat and live.' Some also there were who were saying, ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... many questions, but they got no answers, and they found neither sorcerers nor wise men, they only found two friendly little old men, who seemed to be mute and to have become a bit strange and gaga. And the curious people laughed and were discussing how foolishly and gullibly the common people were spreading ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... mercies of some Relieving Officers and some Union Houses; the other, admitting that there are such Poor, but denying that they have any cause or reason for what they do. The records in our newspapers, the late exposure by THE LANCET, and the common sense and senses of common people, furnish too abundant evidence against both defences. But, that my view of the Poor Law may not be mistaken or misrepresented, I will state it. I believe there has been in England, since the days of the STUARTS, no law so often infamously administered, no law so often openly violated, no ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... The common people now screw'd up to a pitch, and ripe for the mischief designed, and prompted by the particular agents of a wicked party, began to be very insolent: It had been whispered about several days, that the rabble would rise, and come ...
— The Jacobite Rebellions (1689-1746) - (Bell's Scottish History Source Books.) • James Pringle Thomson
... him, coarse horseplay often; an honest, hearty, broad laugh frequently, like that of a Norse god. There were coarse tastes in him, tastes of the peasant folk from whom he came, which clung to him through life, and kept him in sympathy with the common people, and intelligible to them. And withal there was a constitutional melancholy, aggravated by his weary toils, perilous fightings, and fierce throes, which led him down often into the deep mire where there was no standing; and which sighs through all his life. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... away. Not many people had talked with him at the reception; he had stood in a little space apart, and Monseigneur might have been warmer in his manner. It appeared, under the circumstances, rather agreeable to him to see the common people dispersed before his horses, and often barely escaping from being run down. His man drove as if he were charging an enemy, and the furious recklessness of the man brought no check into the face, or to the lips, of the master. The complaint ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... us? Such a step, taken by a woman of her birth, will set hundreds of tongues discussing our domestic concerns; our names will be bandied about from lip to lip; our affairs will be in all sorts of common people's mouths. Hasten, for heaven's sake, my son, and find Madeleine before ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... his birthplace the doubtful honor of the institution of the order of the Capuchins, which he declared to have been founded by Fra Paolo (Giovanni Sambi) of Chioggia. There is not much now to see in poor little Chioggia except its common people, who, after a few minutes' contemplation, can hardly interest any one but the artist. There are no dwellings in the town which approach palatial grandeur, and nothing in the Renaissance churches to claim attention, unless ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... moments something of him would come out.... I keep seeing you with him now—what a life for a young girl—what a builder, those years, for a young girl—and how brave you are. Berthe, I have it—you are spoiled for common people because you were brought up with that kind of a man. How clearly I understand last ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... he answered confidently. "It is only the quite common people who content themselves, M'sieur, with risking a franc and playing the little games. But just as M'sieur likes—" he shrugged his shoulders. "I do not press M'sieur to become a member ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... the useful things of life. The old primitive creed was indeed always upheld as a state institution on account of the enormous facilities it offered for cheating in politics, but as a spiritual system of belief it was unanimously rejected at a very early period both by the common people and the educated classes, for the sensible reason that it was so extremely dull. The former took refuge in the mystic sensualities of the worship of Isis, the latter in the Stoical rules of life. ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... when wrought upon by these moral influences, turns everything to melody and beauty! The very crowing of the cock, heard sometimes in the profound repose of the country, "telling the night-watches to his feathery dames," was thought by the common people to announce the approach of this ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... and jewels, the presents of her foster-parents and friends, was placed between Undine and Huldbrand. When the rich repast was ended, and the last course had appeared, the doors were left open, according to a good old German custom, that the common people might look on, and take part in the festivity of the nobles. Servants were carrying round cake and wine among the spectators. Huldbrand and Bertalda were waiting with secret impatience for the promised explanation, and sat with ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... persecutors, as it had moved his own. But the only response to his appeal was, "Crucify Him, crucify Him." It is to be noted, however, that these cruel words now came from "the chief priests and officers." Apparently the common people were moved: they might have yielded, if their superiors had allowed them. But nothing could move those hard hearts; indeed, the sight of blood only inflamed them the more; and they felt certain that by sheer persistence they ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... she said to herself (for sometimes she thought he might possibly be alive), 'and he were to take me to this Review, wouldn't I show that forward Mrs. Peach what a lady is like, and keep among the select company, and not mix with the common people at all!' ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... both the great parties this year are declaring against it. If the gold standard is the standard of civilization, why, my friends, should we not have it. If they come to meet us on that issue we can tell them that they will search the pages of history in vain to find a single instance where the common people of any land have ever declared themselves in favor of the gold standard. They can find where the holders of fixed investments have declared for a gold standard, but not ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... the Carolinas, the wide and pitiful difference between the residents of the cities and large towns and the residents of the country. There is no homogeneity, but everywhere a rigid spirit of caste. The longings of South Carolina are essentially monarchical rather than republican; even the common people have become so debauched in loyalty, that very many of them would readily accept the creation of orders of nobility. In Georgia there is something less of this spirit; but the upper classes continually assert their right to rule, and the middle and lower classes have no ability ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... and psychical life. On a first interview with them, especially, we receive an impression of clothes, good or otherwise, of beauty or plainness or ugliness of feature, and of correctness or uncouthness of manner. These are the common people, whether ladies and gentlemen, or simple men and women. There are, however, others, in all ranks and conditions, so instinct and replete with spirit, that we chiefly feel, when they have come in our way, that a spirit has passed by,—that a new life ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... stories we are now considering were long confined to the common people, and were preserved and transmitted solely by oral tradition. It did not occur to any one to write them down from the lips of the people until within the present century. The existence of these stories is, however, revealed by occasional references, ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... natives who taught me so much both by precept and practice. Among the influences that have helped to shape my own creed and inspire my own life, have been the beautiful lives and noble characters of Japanese officers, students and common people who were around and before me. Though freely confessing obligation to books, writings, and artistic and scholastic influences, I hasten first to thank the people of Japan, whether servants, superior officers, neighbors or friends. He who seeks to learn what ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... committee, describing the young Radical's canvass as redoubtable. Cougham he did not fear: he could make a sort of calculation of the votes for the Liberal thumping on the old drum of Reform; but the number for him who appealed to feelings and quickened the romantic sentiments of the common people now huddled within our electoral penfold, was not calculable. Tory and Radical have an eye for one another, which overlooks the Liberal at all times except when he is, as they imagine, playing the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... being described. That is a mistake. All that issues from a master is instructive, and one should not fear to show one's sketches and drawings. They are still far above the reader, and so many things are brought down to his level that the poor devil remains common. One ought to love common people more than oneself, are they not the real unfortunates of the world? Isn't it the people without taste and without ideals who get bored, don't enjoy anything and are useless? One has to allow oneself to be abused, laughed at, and misunderstood by them, that ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... were that he was proud, arrogant and cruel. Naturally, too, he was selfish and disobedient. When he was called to his lessons, he refused, saying, "I am a prince. Before many years I shall be your king. I have no need to learn what common people must know. Enough for me that I shall occupy the throne and shall rule. My will alone shall prevail. Says not the law of the land, 'The king can do ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... Shakespeare's servants. They seem to show that he sprang from servants or common people rather than from lords and masters, for he deals with them very gently. It must be understood that servants, bond and free, were born unto the same house and served it for generations; and so down to modern England, where the old nurse and the tottering old gardener often nursed and played ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... of the strange pictures we have seen upon fans and lacquered ware are presented to view. One is struck by the partial nudity of men, women, and children, the extremely simple architecture of the dwelling-houses, the peculiar vegetation, the extraordinary salutations between the common people who meet each other upon the streets, the trading bazaars, and the queer toy-like articles which fill them; children flying kites in the shape of hideous yellow monsters. Each subject becomes a fresh study. Men drawing vehicles, like horses between the shafts, and trotting off at a six-mile ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... generation. Macpherson's "Fingal," alleged to be a translation from the ancient Gaelic poet Ossian, had appeared in 1760; Thomas Percy's "Reliques of Ancient English Poetry," a collection of folk-ballads and rude verse-romances such as the common people cherished but critics had long refused to consider as poetry, was published in 1765. These two books were of prime importance in fostering a new taste in literature,—a love of natural beauty, of ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... are beginning to see the pictures in the fire yourself. Well, he shall be a knight, but he shall not wear any armor and he shall not fight, and all the rest of the people we see shall be quite common people, mere tradesmen, a goldsmith and a tailor and a toy-maker and a cobbler and the like. But whether the young man is a knight or not, he and the pretty girl ought to know better than to look at each other in that way in church, ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... superficial flocci will mark the plant. It has a wide distribution throughout the states. I found it in a number of places in Ohio and it is quite plentiful about Chillicothe. It is a favorite in Germany and it is called by the common people ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... Richard Dodge was vicar of this parish of Talland, and was, by traditionary account, a very singular man. He had the reputation of being deeply skilled in the black art, and would raise ghosts, or send them into the Dead Sea, at the nod of his head. The common people, not only in his own parish, but throughout the neighbourhood, stood in the greatest awe of him, and to meet him on the highway at midnight produced the utmost horror; he was then driving about the evil spirits; many ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... giant above all the other trees of the neighborhood and formed a kind of landmark. It was connected with the tragical story of the unfortunate Andre, who had been taken prisoner hard by, and was 5 universally known by the name of Major Andre's Tree. The common people regarded it with a mixture of ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... could not effect his purpose, he tried locking some of them in their houses, nailing up the doors, and depriving them of all communication with relatives and friends, to which end he set guards around them. Some weak-spirited persons obeyed him; but the greater number, both chiefs and common people, resisted him. The governor, seeing that so many resisted, as he had no orders to take their lives, but only to send them as prisoners to the court, sent those whom he thought best, and among them fifteen of the most prominent persons. Fearing because some of these were persons of rank, and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XXII, 1625-29 • Various
... to Vinzents Lunge the Danes held the mastery on all sides throughout our land. Three years later, when you forbade Lucia to wed the man she had given her life to, though he had deceived her,—things were far different then. The King's Danish governors had shamefully misused the common people, and you thought it not wise to link yourself still more closely to the foreign tyrants. And what have you done to avenge her that had to die so young? You have done nothing. Well then, I will act in your stead; ...
— Henrik Ibsen's Prose Dramas Vol III. • Henrik Ibsen
... that a band of 6,000 Indians are now murdering our frontiersmen at their impudent leisure, and that we are only able to send 1,200 soldiers against them, is utilized here to discourage emigration to America. The common people think the Indians are ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Father Danny, at last unable to restrain himself. "Did ye but know that this grand nation is wholly dependent on such as you, its common people! Not on the rich, I say, the handful that own its mills and mines, but on you who work them for your rich masters! ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... joy. Alas, said the men of the city, that this noble knight should thus be slain for our king's sake. And as they were thus weeping and crying, Sir Palomides that had suffered an hundred strokes, that it was wonder that he stood on his feet, at the last Sir Palomides beheld as he might the common people, how they wept for him; and then he said to himself: Ah, fie for shame, Sir Palomides, why hangest thou thy head so low; and therewith he bare up his shield, and looked Sir Helius in the visage, and he smote him a great stroke upon the helm, and after that ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... at her mother's house and in her mother's arms. There is another—a Court version of this hackney-coach story—which states that it was not the Queen, but the Prince Regent that the Princess ran away from—so that there could have been no assault on a mob-cap. But the common people of that day preferred the version I have given, as more piquant, especially as old Queen Charlotte was known to be the most solemnly grand of grandmammas, and a personage of such prodigious dignity that it was popularly supposed that only Kings and Queens, ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... there is also a similarity between certain of the Elves and Hamadryads. The Elves "not only frequent trees, but they make an interchange of form with them. In the churchyard of Store Heddinge, in Zeeland, there are the remains of an oak-wood. These, say the common people, are the Elle King's soldiers; by day they are trees, by night valiant soldiers. In the wood of Rugaard, in the same island, is a tree which by night becomes a whole Elle-people, and goes about all alive. It ...
— A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients • Edward Tyson
... not overmuch pestered with schooling. Mainly we were trained to be good Christians; to revere the Virgin, the Church, and the saints above everything. Beyond these matters we were not required to know much; and, in fact, not allowed to. Knowledge was not good for the common people, and could make them discontented with the lot which God had appointed for them, and God would not endure discontentment with His plans. We had two priests. One of them, Father Adolf, was a very zealous ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... were told to be content with a Jenny. It was absurd in Floyd to point out that forty years ago Miss Allison's father was a peanut-peddler and Miss Wallen's a professor. Forty years in this country made vast changes. Floyd was simply pelting them with some of his ridiculous theories about the common people, their rights and wrongs. Lincoln, not Washington, was Floyd's ideal of the good and great and grand type of the American, and it had spoiled him. All this was what was said to one another in excited household chat. What was written was ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... cried, when he mentioned it to her, "I should say not—you are my only child, and I certainly did not raise you to be a soldier. There are plenty of common people to do the fighting; there are men who really like it; but I have other ambitions for you—you are to ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... in Tarde's account—the statement, to wit, that Talbot was buried on the spot where he fell, whereas his body was carried from the field and taken to England. The ecclesiastical chronicler must have accepted the story in circulation among the common people, which is repeated to this day by the peasants around Castillon, who even point out a mound which they call 'Talbot's grave.' Shakespeare does not fall into this error, although he brings Jeanne d'Arc upon the battlefield, notwithstanding ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... customs, and sometimes by the reason and nature of things. The Highlands of Scotland have long been entitled by law to every privilege of British subjects; but it was not till very lately that the common people could ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... to him the higher law of the Tarykat, or "path" to perfection. The knowledge of this is not for the common people, but for those only who endeavor to obey the commands of Allah, not as external ordinances and ceremonies, but because they appreciate their justness, and who practise virtue not merely for the promise ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... severely; he remarks that there is not an ecclesiastic who does not think himself higher than the governor of a province; that they are given up to luxury, acquiring possessions, selling sacraments,—being at once ambitious, violent, and gluttonous. Aguirri—or, as he is still called by the common people, "the tyrant"—was at length abandoned by his own men and put to death. When surrounded by foes, and conscious that his fate was inevitable, he plunged a dagger into the bosom of his only daughter, that she might not have to blush before ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... baldness of the statements issuing from her sobering even his rancorous mood. "Senator Brander's child," he thought to himself. So that great representative of the interests of the common people was the undoer of her—a self-confessed washerwoman's daughter. A fine tragedy of low life all ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... hands with good men's efforts, and the cause prospered just where it was most needed—among the operatives and "the common people." One of these latter, a hawker of fish, called Richard Turner, stood, in a very amusing and unexpected way, sponsor for the society. Richard was fluent of speech, and, if his language was the broadest patois, it was, nevertheless, of the most ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Heaven is, and how it is ordered in itself, it remains to show who those are who move it. It is then to be known, in the first place, that the movers thereof are substances apart from material, that is, Intelligences, which the common people term Angels: and of these creatures, as of the Heavens, different persons have had different ideas, although the truth may be found. There were certain Philosophers, of whom Aristotle appears to be one in his Metaphysics, although in the first ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... men were in harness, looking for his landyng." [The popular feeling in favour of the earl is described by Hall, with somewhat more eloquence and vigour than are common with that homely chronicler: "The absence of the Earle of Warwick made the common people daily more and more to long and bee desirous to have the sight of him, and presently to behold his personage. For they judged that the sunne was clerely taken from the world when hee was absent. In such high estimation amongst the ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... valleys, the rocky cliffs of the mountains clothed with wood, and every thing glowing with life. Wheat, barley, a few oats, maize, potatoes, and caravansas, all grow freely here. The food of the common people consists chiefly of Polenta, or maize flour, used nearly as the Scotch peasants use their oatmeal, in cakes, brose, or porridge, which last is suffered to grow cold, and then most commonly cut in ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... given when they know that you alone have power to keep the troops in good humour. With them on your side you can laugh at the notables and the common people alike. I am about to show you what no living eyes but mine have seen, the secret store I have laid up to safeguard my son. And I will do more than that, for the mother of Kharrak Singh shall be bidden to look to you ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... human nature. Though we have our princes in every branch of literature, who are the result of and an honor to our civilization, yet for their own results in moulding the tastes, the habits, and the intellects of the common people, in contributing to their advancement, they fall far below the efforts of the veriest penny-a-liner. It is a lamentable fact of our society that while the more solid literature scarcely pays, the flashiest of so-called 'flash literature' ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the old virtues of the knightly days—loyalty, obedience, redress of wrongs, reverence of womanhood, and the application of Christian ethics to the old rude rules of decency, lifted the life of the common people to a nobler plane and ushered in ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... novel, the serial, as we should say, and at the same time a taste for the stage. The result was he created a new species, which in itself is no small achievement. He created the drama: that is, the stage-play wherein common people, and no longer kings and princes, affect us by their misfortunes. This has been called by all possible names; when it is a comedy it is described as a tearful comedy; when a tragedy, as a dramatic tragedy. This is the drama we have known in France for a hundred and fifty ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet |
