"Fawning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... belongs to virtue, is to be carefully distinguished from the mean spirit of cowards and the fawning assent ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... the tsar about this; why disquiet our father sovereign? It will be enough to give information about his flight to the Secretary Smirnov or the Secretary Ephimiev. What a heresy: "I shall be tsar in Moscow!"... Catch, catch the fawning villain, and send him to Solovetsky to perpetual penance. But this—is ...
— Boris Godunov - A Drama in Verse • Alexander Pushkin
... that a beast might make a man. Then Percivale perceived that, and cast down his shield which was broken; and then he did off his helm for to gather wind, for he was greatly enchafed with the serpent: and the lion went alway about him fawning as a spaniel. And then he stroked him on the neck and on the shoulders. And then he thanked God of the fellowship of that beast. And about noon the lion took his little whelp and trussed him and bare ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... what have we not seen—what have we not heard! What brazen, unblushing faces! What cringing, and bowing, and fawning! What scoundrel smiles, what ruffian frowns! what polished lying! What hypocrisy of patriotism! What philippics, levelled in the very name of liberty, against her sacred self! What orations on the benefit of starvation—on the comeliness of rags! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... courage for a young man to stand firmly erect while others are bowing and fawning for praise and power. It takes courage to wear threadbare clothes while your comrades dress in broadcloth. It takes courage to remain in honest poverty when others grow rich by fraud. It takes courage to say "No" squarely when those around you say "Yes." It takes courage to do your duty in silence ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... working people who have themselves contributed to its funds—if its management were intrusted to people who could by no possibility know anything about it, instead of being invested in plain, business, practical hands—if it hoarded when it ought to spend—if it got by cringing and fawning what it never deserved, I might possibly impress you very much by my indignation. If its managers could tell me that it was insolvent, that it was in a hopeless condition, that its accounts had been kept by Mr. Edmunds—or by "Tom,"—if its treasurer had ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... any, available halls for these meetings. The only resort was the colored churches. Those under the auspices of white denominations had members who objected to their use for such a purpose. Craven and fawning, content with the crumbs that fell from these peace-loving Christians, who deprecated the discussion of slavery while they ignored the claim of outraged humanity, these churches were more interested in the physical excitement of a "revival" than in listening to appeals in behalf of God's poor and ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... Betty, and she patted one on the head and put her arm on the neck of the other. Soon they were fawning about her and jumping on her and licking her hands. She felt thoroughly happy now. Her headache had quite vanished. The dogs, the darlings, were her true friends! There was a little piece of grass quite close ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... he was supposed to be a renegade Jew, and that nobody knew whence he came nor who he was. These deficiencies or drawbacks Lizzie recognised. But it was nothing against him in her judgment that he was a greasy, fawning, pawing, creeping, black-browed rascal, who could not look her full in the face, and whose every word sounded like a lie. There was a twang in his voice which ought to have told her that he was utterly untrustworthy. There was an oily pretence at earnestness in his manner which ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... being intended not for a man who wishes to win the heart and hand of an honest girl, but for a libertine who has no money to buy the favors of a wanton, and therefore must rely on flatteries and obsequious fawning. ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... to the description and the enumerating of my features, he was more obnoxious than I can express. Peering across the table to see whether my eyes were brown or black, or my hair black or brown, he never lost an opportunity to make a fawning remark before writing it down. He described my teint as pale; I felt pale, and think I must have looked very pale, for he said: "Vous etes bien pale, Madame. Voudriez-vous quelque chose a boire?" Possibly he may have meant to be kind; but I saw BORGIA written all over him. I refused ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... henceforrard, as I shall, for a bwoy. Ax God for a bwoy—ax wi'out ceasin' for a son full o' Clem. Our sorrows might win to the Everlasting Ear this wance. But, for Christ's sake, ax like wan who has a right to, not fawning an' humble." ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... constant, he will change. And kindest glances coldly meet, And all the time he seems so strange, His soul is fawning at ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... great distance from the temple. She had not left the precincts of the place when a person in the robes of a Brahmin fearlessly approached her, and patting her head, offered her something which he held in his hand. She took it, and fawning on him, followed as he led the way to a distant part of the ruin. Here was a high tower with some winding steps leading to the summit. The Brahmin, for such he was, began to ascend, the tigress still following. When on the summit, the stranger ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston
... comrades twenty and two with him. And in an open space in the wood they found the palace of Circe. All about were wolves and lions; yet these harmed not the men, but stood up on their hind legs, fawning upon them, as dogs fawn upon their master when he comes from his meal, because he brings the fragments with him that they love. And the men were afraid. And they stood in the porch and heard the voice of Circe as she sang with a lovely voice and plied ...
— The Story Of The Odyssey • The Rev. Alfred J. Church
... not the earth and the sun a little colder? Had not the moon crumbled a little? And had not the eternal warmth, unperceived save of a few, drawn a little nearer—the clock that measures the eternal day ticked one tick more to the hour when the Son of Man will come? But the greed and the fawning did go on unchanged, save it were for the worse, in the shop of Turnbull and Marston, seasoned only with the heavenly salt of ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... back, and as I did not obey quick enough for his fancy, a most horrible change came over his tallowy face, and he ordered me in with an oath that made me jump. As soon as I was back again he returned to his former manner, half fawning, half sneering, patted me on the shoulder, told me I was a good boy and he had taken quite a fancy to me. "I have a son of my own," said he, "as like you as two blocks, and he's all the pride of my 'art. But the great thing for boys is discipline, sonny—discipline. ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a moment when without warning boy and puppy instantaneously pass into the consciousness of manhood. With the young canine it comes with the first deep-throated defiance of the intruder, the instinct that the wriggling, fawning days are over and that the moment to attack and accept attack has arrived. With the human puppy the change is more elusive. To some it comes with the first clinging splendor of long trousers, to others with the first hopeless love, when at the ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... aristocratic "repose." They would appear to have studied "attitude" from the pages of the London Journal, coquetry from barmaids—the commoner class of barmaids, I mean—wit from three-act farces, and manners from the servants'-hall. To be gushingly fawning to those above them, and vulgarly insolent to everyone they consider below them, is their idea of the way to hold and improve their position, whatever it may be, in society; and to be brutally indifferent to the rights ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... overestimated their forebearance or friendship for him, or their zeal for the public service. Always highly conscientious in his purposes and independent in his thoughts it was but natural that he should scorn "to crook the pregnant hinges of the knee where thrift may follow fawning." Not always as patient and conciliatory with his equals as a less virile or rugged nature would have made him, he occasionally aroused antagonisms and made enemies, as such characters always do, ...
— Heroes of the Great Conflict; Life and Services of William Farrar - Smith, Major General, United States Volunteer in the Civil War • James Harrison Wilson
... the fawning, neck-craning, many-shaded mob of political henchmen and obsequious petitioners into the sacred hushed precincts of Panama police headquarters. A paunched "Spigoty" with a shifty eye behind large bowed glasses, vainly striving to exude dignity and ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... of all knowledge in the last thirty years. No one who had not seen it since the time of Isabel II. would recognise it now, and even then much had been done since Ferdinand VII. had come back from his fawning and despicable captivity in France—where he had gloried in calling himself a "French prince"—to act the despot in his own country. The Liberal Ministers who, for short periods, had some semblance of power during the regency of Cristina had done a little ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... words more than things. They are prejudiced against it upon this account, because they suppose it justles out all truth and sincerity? whereas indeed its property is quite contrary, as appears from the examples of several brute creatures. What is more fawning than a spaniel? ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... infamous desperadoes that infest Rome at present, closed around the doomed Caesar. Then Metellus Cimber knelt down and begged that his brother might be recalled from banishment, but Caesar rebuked him for his fawning conduct, and refused to grant his petition. Immediately, at Cimber's request, first Brutus and then Cassias begged for the return of the banished Publius; but Caesar still refused. He said he could not be moved; that he was as fixed as the North Star, and proceeded to speak ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... fashion, and received a shower of congratulations from every quarter. Mucianus, who had been waiting for this, administered the oath of allegiance to his eager troops, and then entered the theatre at Antioch, where the Greeks ordinarily hold their debates. There, as the fawning crowd came flocking in, he addressed them in their own tongue. For he could speak elegant Greek, and had the art of making the most of all he said or did. What most served to inflame the excitement of the province and of the army, was his statement that Vitellius had determined ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... solved, the difficulty for Lady Davenant in a fair way to be ended. She had felt an instinctive aversion to the fawning tone of the diplomatist, whom she had suspected of caballing against Lord Davenant secretly, and it was now proved that he had been base beyond what she could have conceived possible; had been in confederacy with this boy, whom he ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... straightened himself. Rag sprang upon her fawning and caressing; she shoved him aside roughly, for the dog was at that moment but the scapegoat for his master; Rag cowered at ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... a hero or divinised mortal, adscript to the college of the greater gods, and invested with many of their attributes, we may next ask the question, why this artificial cult, due in the first place to imperial passion and caprice, and nourished by the adulation of fawning provinces, was preserved from the rapid dissolution to which the flimsy products of court-flattery are subject. The mythopoetic faculty was extinct, or in its last phase of decadent vitality. There ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... fashionable, fawning, seducing hypocrite!" burst from Percy, in a tone of renewed passion. "No! the gall he has created within me cannot yet be turned to sweetness; forget him—that at least is impossible, when Caroline's coldness ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... matter. It will serve as a good antidote against the conjectures of the allegorizing school if we remember that these commentators of the Empire were for the most part Greek freedmen, themselves largely occupied in fawning upon their patrons. They apparently assumed that poets as a matter of course wrote what they did in order to please some patron—a questionable enough assumption regarding any Roman poetry composed before ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... suffered by these people at the hands of their native rulers, they come legitimately by the attitude and language of fawning and flattery, and one must remember this in mitigation when passing judgment upon the native character. It is common in these letters to find the petitioner furtively trying to get at the white man's soft religious ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... has floated victoriously on many a gallant fight by sea and land, but never do its silver stars glitter more bravely or its blood-red stripes curve more proudly on the fawning breeze than when it floats above the school-house, over the daily battle against ignorance and prejudice (which is ignorance of our fellows), for freedom and for equal rights. It is no mere pretty sentimentality that puts the flag there, but the serious recognition of the bed-rock ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... flattering distinction the chief artists and men of letters, and also sought to quicken the activity of the University of Pavia. Political clubs and newspapers multiplied throughout Lombardy; and actors, authors, and editors joined in a paean of courtly or fawning praise, to the new ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... succeeded, and brought him nearer to the desired goal, for not a soul in the quarter ventured to doubt the word of this saintly individual. His fawning manners and insinuating language varied according to the people addressed. He adapted himself to all, contradicting no one, and, while austere himself, he flattered the tastes of others. In the various houses where ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... printed—in this slightly larger type. Woe to the Honourable Adam B. Hunt, who had gone to New York to see whether he could be governor! Why didn't he come out on the platform? Because he couldn't. "Safe" candidates couldn't talk. His subservient and fawning reports on accidents while chairman of the Railroad Commission were ruthlessly quoted (amid cheers and laughter). What kind of railroad service was Kingston getting compared to what it should have? Compared, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... little way in the water and, stooping, soused their bags and, lifting them again, waded out. The dog yelped running to them, reared up and pawed them, dropping on all fours, again reared up at them with mute bearish fawning. Unheeded he kept by them as they came towards the drier sand, a rag of wolf's tongue redpanting from his jaws. His speckled body ambled ahead of them and then loped off at a calf's gallop. The carcass lay on ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... off her chain, and place The veil once more about the sinner's face, And lead her to her house in peace!" he said. "The law is that the people stone thee dead For that which thou hast wrought; but there is come Fawning around thy feet a witness dumb, Not heard upon thy trial; this brute beast Testifies for thee, sister! whose weak breast Death could not make ungentle. I hold rule In Allah's stead, who is 'the Merciful,' And hope ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... envy soon scoffed down his shame; And with a smile, designed for fawning, But like hell's daybreak sickly dawning, His ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... flowers at the sun's bidding that made the Marigold such a favourite with the old writers, especially those who wrote on religious emblems. It was to them the emblem of constancy in affection,[157:2] and sympathy in joy and sorrow, though it was also the emblem of the fawning courtier, who can only shine when everything is bright. As the emblem of constancy, it was to the old writers what the Sunflower ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... dear. I have re-christened him on purpose to avoid it. Even his name humiliates me. How completely the fawning old wretch took me in—with all my knowledge of the world, too! He was so nice and sympathetic—such a comforting contrast, on that occasion, to you and your husband—I declare I forgot every reason ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... tariff. They called on God to avenge the Mexican War; then they grabbed this slavery matter to give them a moral push into power. They elected a President, but were afraid to formulate a platform. All the while they had played with England, skulking and running and fawning upon England, when our vital interests were at stake, and siding with England on the canal and on Oregon. They are better than other men! They are more holy! They are pure, just, broad! They love God! They are the only Christians! There is only one evil and that is slavery! But there are many gods, ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... brief reign of Edward VI., Sir Henry Sidney had been nicknamed "the only odd man and paragon of the court." The same stanch virtues that made him "odd" in Edward's time rendered him a man apart at the fawning, flattering, ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... to smile, to imitate the admirer, the suppliant, the fawning complaisant; he expects a command, receives it, starts off like an arrow, returns, the order is executed, he reports what he has done; he is attentive to everything; he picks up something that has fallen; he places a pillow or a footstool; he ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... the beauties; it must be able some day to create Juliet, Desdemona, Ophelia. The latter assumes all the absurdities, all the infirmities, all the blemishes. In this partition of mankind and of creation, to it fall the passions, vices, crimes; it is sensuous, fawning, greedy, miserly, false, incoherent, hypocritical; it is, in turn, Iago, Tartuffe, Basile, Polonius, Harpagon, Bartholo, Falstaff, Scapin, Figaro. The beautiful has but one type, the ugly has a ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... of lordly pow'r. When SEYMOUR insolently dar'd invade, Manors by your possession sacred made, From feasts you deign'd to grace, you wip'd his name, And gave him o'er to infamy and shame: And when, tho' late, he made a bold appeal To arms, from frowning Peers and fawning zeal, And dar'd attempt with sacrilegious sword, To offer equal combat to a LORD, Sudden your noble limbs your coursers bore, From Berkshire's hills to Avon's distant shore: And eager to preserve from foul disgrace, ...
— An Heroic Epistle to the Right Honourable the Lord Craven (3rd Ed.) • William Combe
... last moment, discovering that she could not dissuade Rosalind from her mad decision to stay at Blakeley's ranch, Agatha had accompanied her. The private car was now returning, bearing the man who had poetically declared to his fawning Board of Directors: "Our railroad is the magic wand that will make the desert bloom like the rose. We are embarked upon a project, gentlemen, so big, so vast, that it makes even your president feel a pulse of pride. This project is nothing more nor less ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... life, This Syrus with his golden promises Has fool'd me hither charmingly! Ten minae He gave me full assurance of: but if He now deceives me, come whene'er he will, Canting and fawning to allure me hither, It shall be all in vain; I will not stir. Or when I have agreed, and fix'd a time, Of which he shall have giv'n his master notice, And Clitipho is all agog with hope, I'll fairly jilt them both, and not come near them; And master Syrus' ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... whole pack were upon him, jumping and fawning, and licking the hands which had never dealt them aught save kindness. It was only Rover, however, who was this time wanted, and leading him to the door, Hugh pointed toward the gate, and bade him see what was there. Snuffing slightly at the storm, which was not over yet, Rover ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... He touched his hat to me, and called for a glass of whiskey. I gave him the sele of the evening and entered into conversation with him in English. In the course of discourse I learned that he was the postman, and was going his rounds in his cart—he was more than respectful to me, he was fawning and sycophantic. The whiskey was brought, and he stood with the glass in his hand. Suddenly he began speaking Welsh to the people; before, however, he had uttered two sentences the woman lifted her hand with ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... fear and dwindles danger. The wild beast attacks the solitary man, but shrinks from the unison of men together. Around the home-fire, that lowly fawning deity, it means the multiplication of the warmth and even of the poor riches of its halo. Among the ambushes of broad daylight, it means the better distribution of the different forms of labor; among the ambushes of night, it stands ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... something of your sloppy record," he continued, still shaking him; "I know about your lap-dog fawning around Miss Seagrave. It is generally understood that you're as sexless as any other of your kind. I thought so, too. Now I know you. Keep clear of me and mine, Dysart.... And that will be ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... the law took this stand the success of the undertaking became assured and it is interesting to see how quickly the very men who jeered loudest at the enterprise now came fawning and begging to have a part in it. Other steamboats were added to the line and soon rival firms began to construct steamboats of their own and try to break up Fulton's monopoly of the waters of the State. For years costly lawsuits raged, and in defiance of ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... games, its chariots, its public places—lupanaria. Wandering through that city of the dead, that dreadfully selfish time, through those godless intrigues and feasts, through those crowds, pushing, and eager, and struggling—rouged, and lying, and fawning—I have wanted some one to be friends with. I have said to friends conversant with that history, Show me some good person about that Court; find me, among those selfish courtiers, those dissolute, gay people, some one being that I can love and regard. There is that strutting little sultan, George ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in fawning accents, "Thank you, miss, I be well enough to get about. I was a-telling 'em about you— and, to be sure, it is uncommon good of a lady like you to trouble so much about ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... traitorous uncle and your toothless friend. Smile you, Queen Elinor? laugh'st thou, Lord Sentloe? Lacy, look'st thou so blithe at my lament? Broughton, a smooth brow graceth your stern face; And you are merry, Warman, at my moan. The Queen except, I do you all defy! You are a sort[171] of fawning sycophants, That, while the sunshine of my greatness 'dur'd, Revelled out all my day for your delights; And now ye see the black night of my woe O'ershade the beauty of my smiling good, You to my grief add grief; and are agreed With that false Prior ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... Books and knowledge and wise discourse, and the amenities of it, and the cordial of friendship, are like words in a strange tongue. To the hard, smooth surface of his soul, nothing genial, graceful, or winning will cling; he cannot even purge his voice of its fawning tone, or pluck from his face the mean, money-getting mask which the child does not look at without ceasing to smile. Amid the graces and ornaments of wealths, he is like a blind man in a picture-gallery. That which he has done he must continue ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... incredulously,—his face crimsoned with a sudden rush of enraged blood and then paled again, and changing his former insolent tone for one both fawning and propitiatory, ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... thou bearest with thee, thou shalt well know that his eyes shall be opened, and thy father shall see the light of heaven and shall joy in thy sight. Then ran the dog that followed him and had been with him in the way, and came home as a messenger, fawning and making joy with his tail. And the blind father arose and began offending his feet to run to meet his son, giving to him his hand, and so taking, kissed him with his wife, and began to weep for joy. When then they had worshipped God and thanked ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... the banquet spread— The board that groans with shame and plate, Still fawning to the sham-crowned head That hopes front brazen turneth fate! Drink till the comer last is full, And never hear in revels' lull, Grim Vengeance forging arrows fleet, Whilst I gnaw at the crust Of Exile in the dust— But Honor makes ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... I was, and struck the man between the eyes, partially stunning him. He stepped down from the platform at once, and, cringing and fawning and weeping and attempting to embrace my feet, led me round to the burrow which ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... my metaphor what a character of our mistaking friend might an angry enemy draw and expose! particularizing that unnatural conjunction of vices and follies, so inconsistent with each other in the same breast: Furious and fawning, scurrilous and flattering, cowardly and provoking, insolent and abject; most profligately false, with the strongest professions of sincerity, positive and variable, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... The powerful then began fawning on the lower class. Everyone went after the working-men. People intrigued for the favour of being associated with them. They ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... not obey quick enough for his fancy, a most horrible change came over his tallowy face, and he ordered me in, with an oath that made me jump. As soon as I was back again he returned to his former manner, half-fawning, half-sneering, patted me on the shoulder, told me I was a good boy, and he had taken quite a fancy to me. "I have a son of my own," said he, "as like you as two blocks, and he's all the pride ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... harsh tones of the prison-clock. A few minutes after, we heard the sound of bolts drawing, and bars unfastening. The jailer entered—drunk, and much disposed to be insolent. I thought it advisable to give him another bribe, and he resumed the fawning insinuation of his manner. He now directed us, by passages which he pointed out, to gain the other side of the prison. There we were to mix with the debtors and their mob of friends, and to await his joining us, which in that crowd he could ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... in a ghastly smile. Her eyes stood wide open, the whites only showing. Six wounds were upon her, three in the belly, which was greatly swollen, two in the bosom, one in the neck. The last had bled profusely, and the dogs kept fawning ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... Stalky moved behind these manifestations. There were hope and the prospect of revenge. He would embody the suggestion about the nose in deathless verse. King threw up the window, and sternly rebuked Rabbits-Eggs. But the carrier was beyond fear or fawning. He had descended from the cart, and was stooping by ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... fawning publican he looks? I hate him, for he is a Christian: But more, for that, in low simplicity, He lends out money gratis, and brings down The rate of usance here with us in Venice. (E) If I can catch him once upon the hip,[24] I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him. He hates our sacred ...
— The Merchant of Venice [liberally edited by Charles Kean] • William Shakespeare
... led him away from the throne than when he approached it. As he made his way out of the banqueting hall, a score of noblemen, captains of thousands, over-eunuchs, and more trailed at his heels, salaaming, fawning, congratulating, offering all manner of service. Not on the days following his victory at the Isthmia had his head been in such a whirl. He hardly heard the well-meant warning which Artabanus, the shrewd old vizier, gave as he passed the door of the ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... was appreciated at last, and nothing could exceed the kindness of both Mr. and Mrs. Hastings, the latter of whom treated her more like a sister than a servant, while even Eugenia, who came often to Rose Hill, and whose fawning manner had partially restored her to the good opinion of the fickle Ella, tried to treat her with a show of affection, when she saw how much she was respected. Regularly each day Dora went to the handsome library where she recited her lessons to Mr. Hastings, who ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... the duet was his own. It is easy to imagine the success of the piece under these conditions. When the encore was over, Rossini took me to the dining-room and made me sit near him, holding me by the hand so that I could not get away. A procession of fawning admirers passed in front of him. Ah! Master! What ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... me some of yours," said Lawrence, in a fawning tone; for he thought it easier to coax than to work—"you'll give me some of your good ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... sees the "ugly human shapes and visages" which men had worn in the old bad days float away through the air like chaff on the wind. They were no more than masks. Thrones are kingless, and forthwith men walk in upright equality, neither fawning nor trembling. Republican sincerity ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... the above, a fawning timeserver, who sponges on the wealthy. She especially toadies to Miss Alscrip "the heiress," flattering her vanity, fostering her conceit, and encouraging her vulgar affectations.—General Burgoyne, ...
— 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.
... picture danced before my eyes—the portrait of the Callan of the old days—the fawning, shady individual, with the seedy clothes, the furtive ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... clearly shown to be one of the leading delinquents. Mr. Craggs, the father, Postmaster-general, and James Craggs, the son, Secretary of State, were likewise involved. Both were remarkable men. The father had begun life as a common barber, and partly by capacity and partly by the thrift that follows fawning, had made his way up in the world until he reached the height from which he was suddenly and so ignominiously to fall. It was hardly worth the trouble thus to toil and push and climb, only to tumble down with such shame ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... nothing but a poor, pitiful rabble," said Gotzkowsky with a smile; "and for this very reason the Russians are despised all over Europe. Toward the high and mighty they behave like fawning hounds, and toward the low and humble they ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... snow-smothered pond which a score of red-mittened children were trying frantically to clear with huge yellow brooms. Out from the crowd of loafers that hung about the station a lean yellow hound came nosing aimlessly forward, and then suddenly, with much fawning and many capers, annexed itself to the Young Electrician's heels like a dog that has just rediscovered its long-lost master. Halfway up the car the French Canadian mother and her brood of children crowded their faces close to the window—and thought they were watching ...
— The Indiscreet Letter • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... given of this miscreant by the robber chief indicates his appearance. He was somewhat below the medium height, and though not stoutly built, revealed strongly knit shoulders, and muscles enduring as twisted steel. He had a fawning air, a dark, rolling eye, and ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... afraid of meeting an aristocrat, in the vulgar sense of the word. You will see one who, once perhaps as unknown as yourself, has risen by virtue and wisdom to guide the destinies of nations—and shall I tell you how? Not by fawning and yielding to the fancies of the great; not by compromising his own convictions ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... distress'd.' 'The case is plain,' the monarch said; 'False glory hath my youth misled; For beasts of prey, a servile train, Have been the flatterers of my reign. You reason well: yet tell me, friend, Did ever you in courts attend? 80 For all my fawning rogues agree, That human heroes ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... country, the hills, the goatherds. Not for her home in the Vicolo: this everlasting love-making with its aftertaste of stale sugar had turned her sick of Padua. The whole city, to her mind, reeked of bergamot; she guessed a fawning lover at every street corner, a pryer at ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... usual confident air. He professed to be dumfounded at the accusation; he was the victim of a dreadful mistake; he tried, with a ghastly smile, to reassert his old dominion, calling Skiddy "old man" and "old chap" in a shaky, fawning voice, and wanting to take him below "to talk it over." But the little consul was adamantine. The law must take its course. He was sorry, terribly sorry, but as an officer of the United States he had ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... so think I—by Jove, I would despise the man, who could but wish to rise again to earth, unless we were to lord there. What! sneaking pitiful in bondage, among vile money-scrapers, treacherous friends, fawning flatterers—or, still worse, deceitful mistresses. Shall we who reign lords here, again lend ourselves to swell the train of tyranny and usurpation? By my old father's memory, I'd rather be the blindest mole that ever skulked in darkness, the lord of one ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... suffered a single stripe to appear on his jacket. With as good blood in his veins as the best of them, and with a sense of the wrongs inflicted upon his country by the government whose abettors they were, he could never bring himself to stoop to the fawning and servility through which the lower grades of rank are attainable, only in the service; and thus, it was that, from first to last, he was viewed with an eye of suspicion by his superiors, who regarded him ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... cut in the rock or laid upon the crumbling sods. She took me to the stables, and I saw the horses, her pony and the blooded colt in training for her: her dogs had followed us about, leaping and fawning upon her and smelling suspiciously at me. Mr. Raymond disliked animals, and it was to the stables or the gardener's cottage that the child came to pet her hounds, her sheep-dog and her snowy Pomeranian: not even Beppo, the Italian greyhound, was domesticated ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... what right has the dog come to be regarded as a "noble" animal? The more brutal and cruel and unjust you are to him the more your fawning and adoring slave he becomes; whereas, if you shamefully misuse a cat once she will always maintain a dignified reserve toward you afterward you can never get her full ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... truth about Washington. In the lapse of time historical research, while removing the sacred halo of Washington, has revealed beneath it a stronger brain than was then known to any one. Paine published what many whispered, while they were fawning on Washington for office, or utilizing his power for partisan ends. Washington, during his second administration, when his mental decline was remarked by himself, by Jefferson, and others, was regarded by many of his eminent contemporaries as fallen under ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... found Holknecht, who had been my chemical assistant in the early days of my work in Berlin. Holknecht had seemed to me a servile fawning fellow and when I received my first promotion I had deserted him quite brutally for the very excellent reason that he had known the other Armstadt and I feared that his dulled intelligence might at any time be aroused ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... emphasis, as clearly as barking could say it, "Acrid-quack, avaunt!"' But once when 'a tall, irregular, busy-looking man came halting by,' that wise, nervous little dog ran towards him, and began 'fawning, frisking, licking at the feet' of Sir Walter Scott. No reader of reviews could have done better, says Carlyle; and, indeed, that canine testimonial was worth having. I prefer that little anecdote even to Lockhart's account of the pig, which had a romantic affection for the author ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... ascertain our position, when, as he came up from his cabin where he had gone to consult his chronometers and work out 'the reckoning,' as you sailors call it, that that black devil the 'marquis' mounted the poop with a simpering and fawning air. ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... Government Clerks.] In 1840, retired, he clerked for a justice of the peace of the Pantheon municipality, and lived in Thuillier's house, rue Saint-Dominique d'Enfer. He was a bachelor and had all the vices which, however, he religiously concealed. He kept in with his superiors by fawning. He was concerned with the villainous intrigues of Cerizet, his copy-clerk, and with Theodose de la Peyrade, the tricky lawyer. [The ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... discolored with tobacco. The eyes were light green, with the space which should have been white suffused with yellow and red. It was one of those gifted countenances which could change in a moment from a dog-like fawning to ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... sure," the little man answered; "and it's aiblins just as well for you, dear lad"—in fawning accents—"that I dinna." He began rubbing and giggling afresh. "It's a gran' thing, Wullie, to ha' a dutiful son; a shairp lad wha has no silly sens o' shame aboot sharpenin' his wits at his auld dad's expense. And yet, despite oor facetious lad there, aiblins we will ha' a ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... credit and consequence, they will be left more fully to the disposal of a chief governor, who can never fail of some worthless illiterate chaplain, fond of a title and precedence. Thus will that whole bench, in an age or two, be composed of mean, ignorant, fawning gownmen, humble suppliants and dependants upon the court for a morsel of bread, and ready to serve every turn that shall be demanded from them, in hopes of getting some commendam tacked to their sees; which must then be the trade, as it is now too much in ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... (Ep. xlviii ad Eudox.): "If Mother Church requires your service, neither accept with greedy conceit, nor refuse with fawning indolence"; and afterwards he adds: "Nor prefer your ease to the needs of the Church: for if no good men were willing to assist her in her labor, you would seek in vain how we could ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... as a Congressman's wife, whose important social status was beyond question. She was so thoroughly imbued with this sense of her indisputable superiority that she readily mistook Flossy's affability for fawning; whereas that young woman's ingenuous friendliness was the result of a warning sentence from Gregory when Selma and her husband were seen approaching—"Keep a check on your tongue, Floss. This statesman with a beard like a goat is likely to have a ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... too late the temper of the old man, she turned her harshness into gentleness, and respectfully waited on him whom she had rebuffed and railed at with bitter revilings. The angry hostess changed her part, and became the most fawning of flatterers. She wished to check his anger with her attentiveness; and her fault was the less, inasmuch as she was so quick in ministering to him after she had been chidden. But she paid dearly for ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... fawning, they but showed their lower natures. He had not called forth the power for good, from these the necromancy of his personality had touched. He had conjured evil, he had pandered ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... was speaking to another person, who seemed to be a servant or valet, and who was very polite and fawning ...
— Frank Merriwell's Nobility - The Tragedy of the Ocean Tramp • Burt L. Standish (AKA Gilbert Patten)
... when you go? Besides, if you could, it would all melt where you're going." This hoarding of wealth, this craving for it, is only another form of luxury, the luxury of growing rich. Some like to be thought rich, and called rich, and treated with a fawning respect on account of their riches; others love to hide their riches, but to hug their money in secret, and seem to enjoy the prospect of dying rich. I was engaged in a singular case some time ago, in which an ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... his master's loss and his present sufferings. He would walk slowly by the fisherman's side, and whenever he paused in his unsteady aimless ramble along the beach, Nep would thrust his nose into his hard brown hand, or, rearing on his hind legs, embrace him with his shaggy fore-paws, fawning and whining to attract his notice, and ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... possession, however unjustly acquired; that if twenty different usurpers should succeed one another, they would recognize the last, notwithstanding the allegiance they had so solemnly sworn to his predecessor, like the fawning spaniel that followed the thief who mounted his master's horse after having murdered the right owner. They also denied the justice of a lay-deprivation, and with respect to church government started tire same distinctions ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... thou oft hast bid the world attend, Fond to forget the statesman in the friend; For Swift and him, despised the farce of state, The sober follies of the wise and great; 10 Dext'rous, the craving, fawning crowd to quit, And pleased to 'scape from ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... man, whose travail, pain, and toil Was ever prest to save my friends from force of foreign spoil; And see my just reward, look on my recompense: Behold by this for labours past what guerdon cometh thence! Not by my fiercest foes in doubtful fight with us, But by my fawning friend[91] I was confounded thus. One word of his despite in question call'd my name; Two words of his untrusty tongue brought me to open shame. Then was I banished the city, court and town; Then every hand that held me up began ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... to denying or even repeating what he said; far less to justify myself. Yet I should like to mention, in passing, that his coarse gibe concerning my fawning on a rich man is the most unjust of all his ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... all is the ring of sturdy honesty and independence. He uses the same tone to general and to private soldier alike; extending the same degree of courtesy to each. No one ever heard of "old Stannard's" fawning upon a superior or bullying an inferior; to all soldiers he is one and the same,—short, blunt, quick, and to the point. Literally he obeys the orders of his chiefs, and literally and promptly he expects his own to be obeyed. He has his faults, like the best of men: he will growl at ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... the people of the frightful visitation which was about to befall humanity. Nature herself made the people anxious and uncomfortable. There were showers of falling stars, it rained blood in various places, death-headed moths flew about in the evenings, wolves, tame and fawning like dogs, appeared in the village and let themselves be beaten to death before the thresholds ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... the flood street at the edge of the ships. Only the billow slow licking his lips, Like a dog that lay crouching there watching for me; Growling and showing white teeth all the night, Reaching his neck and as ready to bite— Only the waves with their salt flood tears Fawning white ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... enough for him, anyhow. I noticed that he had a woman's hands when he touched my neck, with his coaxing, fawning ways, the mean, effeminate little hound. (Lowering his voice with thrilling intensity.) But mark my ...
— The Man of Destiny • George Bernard Shaw
... some from the poor fellow—and now see! He's as friendly with you as you could wish. They do say that dogs know when people are all right. Look at him trying to get into your lap again." And indeed the beast was again fawning upon me in the most abject manner, licking my hands and seeming to express for me some hideous admiration. Seeing that I repulsed his advances none too gently, ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... instructions for his treatment, so terrible as to make future tourists to America tremble:—"Seize him fearlessly by the throat, and once strangle him into involuntary silence, and the British lion will hereafter be as fawning as he has been hitherto spiteful." He then informs his countrymen that the English "cannot appreciate the retiring nature of true gentility ... nor can they realize how a nation can fail to be blustering except from cowardice." Towards the conclusion ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... couchant—it is pain To see thee whose heart beats are God's decrees, And vital breathings are infinities, Now check thy heart and hold thy breath to gain The smile and plaudit of a depths with bane In finger tips, while fawning on ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... is very visible, veil it as we may. The American who has not had it forced upon his attention in innumerable ways—by the undisguised empressement of those among his compatriots who frankly spend their whole time running after persons with titles, entertaining them and fawning upon them in every possible manner, no more than by the intensely American Americans who profess supreme disregard for all precedence and distinctions established by society, and yet never fail to let you know, quite accidentally, that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... him; his eyes were fawning and rested on the ground. He thought of nothing but land; he was land-greedy, like an animal that sought to escape its padlock. The other cotter had bought a slightly larger piece of land than he, a marsh that would feed one cow more; ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... on and asked questions, was more than Pallas Athene herself could do, though she looked out forever from the windows of her Acropolis over the Blue AEgean. The sea is capricious, fickle, angry, fawning, violent, savage and wanton; it caresses and raves in a breath, and has its moods of silence, but Esther's huge playmate rambled on with its story, in the same steady voice, never shrill or angry, never silent or degraded by a sign ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... spoke against him. But; instead of fawning on them, excusing himself, entreating their mercy: he was ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... behaviour and carriage is easy, unaffected, unformal, and genteel, as well acquiredly as naturally so, if possible; who shall not be dogmatical, positive, overbearing, on one hand; nor too yielding, suppliant, fawning, on the other; who shall study the child's natural bent, in order to direct his studies to the point he is most likely to excel in; and to preserve the respect due to his own character from every one, he must not be a ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... how easy a topic it is to dwell on the faults of departed greatness. By a revolution in the state, the fawning sycophant of yesterday is converted into the austere critic of the present hour. But steady, independent minds, when they have an object of so serious a concern to mankind as government under their contemplation, will disdain to assume the part ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the policy of the State. The government had just ability enough to deceive and just religion enough to persecute. The principles of liberty were the scoff of every grinning courtier, and the Anathema Maranatha of every fawning dean. In every high place, worship was paid to Charles and James, Belial and Moloch; and England propitiated these obscene and cruel idols with the blood of her best and bravest children. Crime succeeded to crime, ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... I have great contempt. They are neither black nor white, neither good nor bad, neither to be admired nor hated. They are all things, at all times; they are always fawning on the great Arabs, and always cruel to those unfortunates brought under their yoke. If I saw a miserable, half-starved negro, I was always sure to be told he belonged to a half-caste. Cringing and ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... old harridan of whom Manhattan stood in fawning fear, bluntly informed her that she'd better look out for her boy if she didn't want to ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... ended in victory for freedom. John Brown, whom the world calls a fanatic, perished on the scaffold at Harper's Ferry in a vain attempt to liberate the slaves, and while editors vacillated and quibbled, and fawning time servers applauded, Thoreau, from his hermitage in the New England woods, paid eloquent tribute to the man who dared to die for the truth. Away in the West a figure was looming up, a gaunt, homely figure, born in ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... cause to prosper. This sin is most frequent when the opponent is a prominent man or an enemy. For a man wants to revenge himself on his enemy: but the ill will of a man of prominence he does not wish to bring upon himself; and then begins the flattering and fawning, or, on the other hand, the withholding of the truth. Here no one is willing to run the risk of disfavor and displeasure, loss and danger for the truth's sake; and so God's Commandment must perish. And this is ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... a scene! Yon rosy mists on high careering,— The Moorish cavaliers who fleet With hawk and hound and distant cheering,— The dipping sail puffed to the gale, The prow that spurns the billow's fawning,— How can they fade to dimmer shade, And how this day desert ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... dare talk to me in 'ifs'? Philip de Commines, when you were little in your own eyes, when you were the humble fetcher and carrier to that Bully of Burgundy whom I crushed, when you were the very hound and cur of his pleasure, fawning on him for the scraps of life, I took you up, I!—I! Now you are Lord of Argenton, now you are Seneschal of Poitou, now you are Prince of Talmont, and I have made you all these, I!—I! and you answer ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... meant little. But presently his careless eyes, that might almost have seemed to be asleep, so much were the lids lowered, suddenly grew alert again. A man appeared on the bridge—a lank, lean, yellow-skinned man, with a face that seemed carved out of old ivory, with furtive eyes and a fawning mouth. The new-comer was gorgeously, over-gorgeously, dressed, and his every movement affected the manners of a grand seigneur. He carried a tall cane with a jewelled knob, on which his left hand rested affectionately, as if it pleased him, even in this form, to handle and control costly things. ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... years of peace. It certainly has achieved more for truth and humanity and God than the score of years which preceded it. As a nation, we had become almost despicable. Such supple, yielding slaves of 'Democratic' demagogues; such cringing, fawning, knee-bending, hand-kissing agents of the diabolical, traitorous Slave-Power; such apologists and supporters of Wrong; such pusillanimous, weak-hearted advocates of the unpopular Right; such slaves to Cotton ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... ingratiate himself into a good deal of favor among the dalespeople. There was then an insinuating smoothness in his speech, a flattering, almost fawning glibness of tongue, which the simple folks knew no art to withstand. He seemed abundantly grateful for some unexplained benefits received from Ralph. "Atweel," Wilson would say, with his eyes on the ground,—"atweel I lo'e the braw chiel as ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... not sleepe, but wast the wearie night 470 In secret anguish and unpittied plaint, Whiles you in carelesse sleepe are drowned quight. Her doubtfull words made that redoubted knight Suspect her truth: yet since no' untruth he knew, Her fawning love with foule disdainefull spight 475 He would not shend; but said, Deare dame I rew, That for my sake unknowne such griefe unto ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... feet soft streaming, Gentler grown its murmurs be, And with greeting full of fawning ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... the sea called to her, an imperious and yet caressing voice in the night. She stirred restlessly. Down there on the shore-line, where she had met him, the rocks would glint with silvery reflections, the water would come fawning to one's feet, the wind would pounce upon one like a rough lover. She stirred restlessly. The small bedroom seemed to hold her like a cage. And again the sea called, ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler |
