"Plebeian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... attempts to ameliorate the relations of oppressor and oppressed, and permitted no kindness to exist but in the guise of severity or the tenderness of a good man for his beast; which boasted itself an aristocracy, and was an oligarchy of plebeian ignorance and meanness; which either dulled men's brains or chilled their hearts. In the presence of this system, Harry Dudley lingers long enough to rescue a slave and to die by the furious hand of the master,—a man in whose soul the best impulse ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... afford to pay for swearing as well as e'er a justice in the county, and repeated his challenge of the wager, which our adventurer now accepted, protesting, at the same time, that it was not a step taken from any motive of pride, but entirely with a view to punish an insolent plebeian, who could not otherwise be chastised without a breach of the peace. Twenty guineas being deposited on each side in the hands of Mr. Elmy, Prickle, with equal confidence and despatch, produced a canvas bag, containing two hundred and seventy pounds, which, ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... criticism; and still others had left the earth and were floating in full azure of intoxication. Of the many wedding parties that sat down to breakfast, we soon made the commonplace discovery that the more plebeian the company, the more certain-orbed appeared to be the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... real situation of affairs had never been revealed before; who had come home triumphant to reign like the doges of old, and, only after the ducal cap was on his head and the palace of the state had become his home, found out that the doge—like the unconsidered plebeian—had been reduced to bondage; his judgment and experience put aside in favor of the deliberations of a secret tribunal, and the very boys, when they were nobles, at liberty to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... compelled by superior force. Only by the growing power of kings was an end put to fighting except between kings, or competitors for kingship; only by the growth of a wealthy and warlike bourgeoisie in the fortified towns, and of a plebeian infantry which proved more powerful in the field than the undisciplined chivalry, was the insolent tyranny of the nobles over the bourgeoisie and peasantry brought within some bounds. It was persisted in not only until, but long after, the oppressed had obtained a power enabling them often ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... outside of South Carolina as to the terrible consequences which might accrue to the Union did this noble little army assume any other than a standing character. Now that General Jackson is out of the way, and our plebeian friends over the Savannah, whom we hold in high esteem, (the Georgians,) kindly consent to let us go our own road out of the Union, nothing can be more grateful than to find our wise politicians sincerely believing that when this standing army, of which other States ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... concluded was a sign of aristocracy, and he wrote a nephew, "If Royal Gift will administer, he shall be at the service of your Mares, but at present he seems too full of Royalty, to have anything to do with a plebeian Race," and to Fitzhugh he said, "particular attention shall be paid to the mares which your servant brought, and when my Jack is in the humor, they shall derive all the benefit of his labor, for labor it appears ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... Whom the sun hath freckled. Then the Wild-Rose is a flirt; And the trillium Lily, In her spotless gown, 's a prude, Sanctified and silly. By her cap the Columbine, To my mind, 's too merry; Gossips, I would sooner wed Some plebeian Berry. And the shy Anemone— Well, her face shows sorrow; Pale, goodsooth! alive to-day, Dead and gone to-morrow. Then that bold-eyed, buxom wench, Big and blond and lazy,— She's been chosen overmuch!— Sirs, I mean the Daisy. Pleasant persons are they all, And their virtues many; ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... horrified mother, raising her hands in gestures of dismay, "You will drive me mad! A daughter of mine a school-teacher! Oh! dear, did I ever think I would raise a child to inherit such plebeian ideas. Bad as Evelyn is with all her faults she would not hurt my feelings in such ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... governed the empire almost as a sovereign, for Caesar, formerly a laborious and autocratic ruler, shrank from all business. Even before they left Alexandria the plebeian prefect could see that Serapion's prophecy was fulfilling itself. He remained in close intimacy with the soothsayer; but only once more, and just before Caesar's departure, could the magian be induced to raise the spirits ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... across the dividing line. They cannot cross it, but sometimes their daughters can. They send their daughters to the same schools with the daughters of the "four hundred," and the girls make friends with each other, and with a little skill the password may be learned and the young plebeian may find herself indistinguishable from a patrician. There are fathers and mothers who urge their daughters to make haste to occupy every coigne of vantage, and gradually advance into the heart ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... prevented or weakened. The laws that were made to adjust the pretensions of different orders were easily eluded. The populace became a faction, and their alliance was the surest road to dominion. Clodius, by a pretended adoption into a plebeian family, was qualified to become tribune of the people; and Caesar, by espousing the cause of this faction, made his way ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... it, my snobbish friend, Your family line you can't ascend Without good reason to apprehend You'll find it waxed at the farther end With some plebeian vocation; Or, what is worse, your family line May end in a loop of stronger twine ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... speech this day in council. Oh, beware, Lest in resentment of this hasty course 230 Irregular, he let his anger loose. Dread is the anger of a King; he reigns By Jove's own ordinance, and is dear to Jove, But what plebeian base soe'er he heard Stretching his throat to swell the general cry, 235 He laid the sceptre smartly on his back, With reprimand severe. Fellow, he said, Sit still; hear others; thy superiors hear. For who art thou? A dastard and a drone, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... Clodius now vowed deadly vengeance against Cicero. To accomplish his purpose more readily, he determined to become a candidate for the Tribunate, but for this it was necessary, in the first place, that he should be adopted into a plebeian family by means of a special law. This, after protracted opposition, was at length accomplished through the interference of the Triumvirs, and he was elected Tribune for ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... at the gates of the Mythe House; great iron gates, a barrier as proud and impassable as that which in these times the rich shut against the poor, the aristocrat against the plebeian. John, glancing once up ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... less fortunate negroes of the community said of them and their offspring is really not worth while. Envy has a sharp tongue, and when has not the aristocrat been the target for the plebeian's sneers? ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... structure and its adornments. It was the first theater in the United States which boasted a tier composed exclusively of boxes. This was the second balcony. The parterre was entered from the first balcony, a circumstance which redeemed it from its old plebeian association as "the pit," in which it would have been indecorous for ladies to sit. The seats in the parterre were mahogany chairs upholstered in blue damask. The seats in the first balcony were mahogany ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... already written works which are mentioned with respect by Latin authors, but they were mere annalists or antiquarians, like the chroniclers of the Middle Ages, and had no claim as artists. Sallust made Thucydides his model, but fell below him in genius and elevated sentiment. He was born a plebeian, and rose to distinction by his talents, but was ejected from the senate for his profligacy. Afterward he made a great fortune as praetor and governor of Numidia, and lived in magnificence on the Quirinal,—one of the most profligate of the literary men ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... up for the inferiority of his birth on account of the plebeian origin of his mother Tii,* by his marriage with Nofrititi, a princess of the pure solar race.** Tii, long accustomed to the management of affairs, exerted her influence over him even more than she had ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... come back to common-sense," cries she. "What were we talking of? The marriage of Maurice to this little plebeian—this little female Croesus. Well, ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... superstitious terror, blank indifference, positive unbelief. The current fancy was that the souls of the chiefs were led, by a god whose name denotes the "eyeball of the sun," to a life in the heavens, while plebeian souls went down to Akea, a lugubrious underground abode. Some thought spirits were destroyed in this realm of darkness; others, that they were eaten by a stronger race of spirits there; others still, that they survived there, subsisting upon lizards and butterflies.5 What a piteous life ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... retrograde movement; they imitate the crabs: in other words, they are launched stern foremost. Whether great or small, long or short, whether clothed in patrician copper or smeared with plebeian tar, they all start on their first voyage with their stern-posts acting the part of cut-water, and, also, without masts or sails. These necessary adjuncts, and a host of others, are added after they have been clasped to the bosom ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... by very plebeian surroundings. Being ignorant of her birth-right, her sympathies were wholly with her associates. Not that as yet they had had any occasion for active development; only the tendencies were there. In a vague, indefinite way she had heard of kings and queens, of lords and ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... Ida was holding audience in the parlor, telling wonderful tales of her various acquaintances to whose often plebeian names she added the de as she ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... having good-humouredly told me that I often expressed myself with too much freedom—a fault I was never solicitous to correct—he added: "I regret your absence much. You were very useful to me. You are neither too noble nor too plebeian, neither too aristocratic nor too Jacobinical. You are discreet and laborious. You understand me better than any one else; and, between ourselves be it said, we ought to consider this a sort of Court. Look at Duroc, Bessieres, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... "shall recite the three last chapters, or the three last lines, or the three last words, just before death, with pure mind, his soul will be saved." "Deo gratias ago," said Sechnall. Colman Ela recited it in his refectory thrice. Patrick stood in the middle of the house, when a certain plebeian asked, "Have we no other prayer that we could recite except this?" And Patrick went out afterwards. Cainnech, on the sea, in the south, saw the black cloud of devils passing over him. "Come here on your way," said Cainnech. The demons subsequently came, stating, "We went to meet ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... interested. When a pot came up it might contain no shell-fish or a half-dozen; the element of uncertainty appealed to his sporting instincts. But fishing he had stricken utterly from his list. It was too hard and too dirty. Slogging at the heavy trawls and afterward dressing the catch was too plebeian a business for ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... to the query, and that is, "An essential ingredient in London humour." For without this small but sapid fish—whatever he may really be, whether denizen of the Sardinian sea, immature Cornish pilchard, or mere plebeian sprat well oiled—numbers of our fellow-men and fellow-women, with all the will in the world, might never raise a laugh. As it is, thanks to his habit of lying in excessive compression within his tin tabernacle, and the prevalence in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 30, 1919 • Various
... of it take its place; we should have seen a three-globed gas-chandelier grow down from the parlor ceiling; we should have seen the homely rag carpet turn to noble Brussels, a dollar and a half a yard; we should have seen the plebeian fireplace vanish away and a recherche, big base-burner with isinglass windows take position and spread awe around. And we should have seen other things, too; among them the buggy, the lap-robe, the stove-pipe ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... thinking of Pierre Delarue, who had just taken honors at the Polytechnic school, and who seemed to have a brilliant career before him. This woman, humbly born, was proud of her origin, and sought a plebeian for her son-in-law, to put into his hand a golden tool powerful ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... name, a scion of one of the most illustrious of the Roman houses, who became enamoured of a damsel exceeding fair, and amorous withal—her name Agnolella—the daughter of one Gigliuozzo Saullo, a plebeian, but in high repute among the Romans. Nor, loving thus, did Pietro lack the address to inspire in Agnolella a love as ardent as his own. Wherefore, overmastered by his passion, and minded no longer to endure the sore suffering that it caused him, he asked her ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... resemblance. Whatever is remote from common appearances is always welcome to vulgar, as to childish credulity; and of a country unenlightened by learning, the whole people is the vulgar. The study of those who then aspired to plebeian learning was then laid out upon adventures, giants, dragons, and enchantments. The Death of ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... the Illustre Docteur Matheus, by Erckmann-Chatrian. How very boorish! There are two nuts, who have very plebeian souls. ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... the royal procession. The more gorgeous ones of the garden led the way, with their velvet tassels, and silken brocades, and pendants of opal and turquoise; some apparently carrying chalices filled with nectar. Then the fields and hedgerows, in their rough, rustic, plebeian fashion, with their fustian jackets and smock-frocks, said—"We shall not be behind our betters;" so their buttercups and wood-anemones, speedwell and scarlet pimpernel, the meadow violet with its modest blue, the cowslip with its burnished cells, the daisy ...
— The Story of a Dewdrop • J. R. Macduff
... whose presence seemed to them to be a sign of truth and beauty. They proposed to adapt to poetry the ordinary language of conversation, such as is spoken in the middle and lower classes, and to replace studied phrases and a lofty vocabulary by natural tones and plebeian words. In place of the classic mould, they tried stanzas, sonnets, ballads, blank verse, with the roughness and subdivisions of the primitive poets. . . . Some had culled gigantic legends, piled up dreams, ransacked the East, Greece, Arabia, the Middle Ages, and overloaded the human imagination ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... last. It was not in harmony with the state of property; it was not in harmony with the public feeling; it had neither the strength which is derived from wealth, nor the strength which is derived from prescription. It was despised as plebeian by the ancient nobility. It was hated as patrician by the democrats. It belonged neither to the old France nor to the new France. It was a mere exotic transplanted from our island. Here it had struck its roots deep, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... vertically through the soil and the water at the edges was about a foot deep. After repeated trials the best the young man's horse could do was to get his forefeet on the opposite bank. His hindfeet always landed in the water. Mr. West Pointer was way above noticing in any way a poor volunteer plebeian like myself mounted on an old plug like Don. But Don had taken in the situation as well as I, and when I said, "Come, Don, let's us try it," he just gathered himself and sailed over that creek like a bird, landing easily a couple of feet on the other side, and swung around for another try. ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... trellised band-stand for summer concerts, and a tiny pond that accommodated a few boats in summer and a limited number of skaters in winter. Perhaps, most important of all, the common divided the plebeian East Side from the more pretentious West. James Blaisdell lived on the West Side. His wife said that everybody did who WAS anybody. They had lately moved there, and were, indeed, ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... his mate; he does not blunder into heroic fooleries in the way of self-abnegation; for, if his choice is judicious, the lady will prevent him from hurting his own prospects. Whether he be aristocrat or plebeian, he knows the worth of money, and he knows how to despise the foolish beings who talk of "dross" and "filthy lucre" and the rest. Mere craving for money he despises; but he knows that the amount of "dross" in a man's possession roughly indicates his resources in the way of energy, ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... Aventine were placed the temple of patrician, and that of plebeian modesty. At the foot of this hill is seen the temple of Vesta, which yet remains whole, though it has been often menaced by the inundations of the Tiber. Not far from thence is the ruin of a prison for ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... stamped, in their opinion, a nobility on every person derived from the common stock. Indeed the difference of conditions, and the contempt with which persons of the lowest rank are treated, are owing merely to the distance from the common root; which makes us forget that the meanest plebeian, when his descent is traced back to the source, is equally noble with those of the most elevated ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... After turning round and round, with a rapidity that is quite inconceivable to an English dancer, the music changes to a slower movement, and then follows a succession of zig-zag minuets, performed by old and young, straight and crooked, noble and plebeian, all at once, from one end of the room to the other. Tallow candles snuffing and stinking, dishes changing, heads scratching, and all sorts of performances going forward at the same moment; the flutes, oboes, and bassoons ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... preacher, are entities having an objective existence in a graduated hierarchy. And it would appear that the "royal laws" are by no means to be regarded as constitutional royalties: at any moment, they may, like Eastern despots, descend in wrath among the middle-class and plebeian laws, which have hitherto done the drudgery of the world's work, and, to use phraseology not unknown in our seats of learning—"make hay" of their belongings. Or perhaps a still more familiar analogy has suggested this singular theory; and it is thought that high laws may "suspend" ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... confess his treasons in his dying moments; for in the time in which this custom prevailed, it never was even suspected but that guilt must have been the portion of the vanquished. When people of rank fought with sword and lance, plebeian combatants were only allowed a pole, armed with a heavy sand-bag, with which they were to decide their guilt or innocence. In Smithfield were also held our autos-de-fee; but to the credit of our English monarchs, none were ever known to attend the ceremony. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Volume 12, No. 329, Saturday, August 30, 1828 • Various
... said Parmalee, who had a sort of plebeian hesitancy at the thought of intruding upon aristocratic strangers. "Suppose you write her a letter and just ask her if ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... people not only interpreted and applied its own laws, but it insisted on being paid for so doing. The result was that the poorest citizens sat judging all day long, as all others were unwilling to sacrifice their whole time for a payment of six drachmas. This plebeian tribunal continued for many years. Its most celebrated feat was the judgment which condemned Socrates to death. This was perhaps matter for regret, but the great principle, the sovereignty of incompetence, ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... house turn o'er, And when he shall there written see, That one of his own ancestry Drove the monks forth of Coventry, Bid him his fate explore. Prancing in pride of earthly trust, His charger hurled him to the dust, And, by a base plebeian thrust, He died his band before. God judge 'twixt Marmion and me; He is a chief of high degree, And I a poor recluse; Yet oft, in Holy Writ, we see Even such weak minister as me May the oppressor bruise: For thus, inspired, did Judith slay The mighty in his sin, ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... the pamphleteer, as usual, bore an important part. Addison, in one of his latest political and literary efforts, defended the proposed change. He described his pamphlet as the work of an "Old Whig." It was written as a reply to a pamphlet by Steele condemning the Bill, and signed "A Plebeian." Reply, retort, and rejoinder followed in more and more heated and personal style. The excitement created caused the measure to be dropped for the session, but it was brought in again in the session following, and it passed ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... was of the people, and that the auditors which surrounded him were also of the people. Thus the communication between him and them had been prompt, electric, and, so to speak, on a level. The haughty air of the Flemish hosier, by humiliating the courtiers, had touched in all these plebeian souls that latent sentiment of dignity still vague and indistinct in ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... prim and set, Twittered and chirped through a long duet; And poor little Wren, who tried with a will, But who couldn't tell "Heber" from "Ortonville," Unconscious of sarcasm, piped away And courtesied low o'er a huge bouquet Of crimson clover-heads, culled by the dozen, By some brown-coated, plebeian cousin. ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... elaborate, and there was a butler whose majestic dignity and importance made even Edwards seem plebeian by comparison. ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... church-and-chapel-goers at home. Labour Members are in the pay of Germany and frequent infamous flats in the West-End. Liberal Cabinet Ministers—sometimes, more shame to them, of decent birth—wince consciously when reminded of the taint of their association with plebeian colleagues. These things, and many more of equal moment, I have learnt from Mr. STANLEY PORTAL HYATT, who in The Way of the Cardines (WERNER LAURIE) describes how Sir Gerald, of that famous family, captured, with reckless profusion ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... Quebec. His forehead and chin receded; his nose, tip-tilted heavenwards, formed with his other features the point of an obtuse triangle. His hair was fiery red, his shoulders narrow, his legs a pair of attenuated spindle-shanks; he was a chronic invalid. But between his fiery poll and his plebeian and upturned nose flashed a pair of eyes—keen, piercing, and steady—worthy of Caesar or of Napoleon. In warlike genius he was on land as Nelson was on sea, chivalrous, fiery, intense. A "magnetic" man, with a strange gift of impressing ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... perhaps the most beautiful collie of his generation. Groomed for a show, he made most other dogs look plebeian and shabby. That day, one may say in passing, he was destined to go through the collie classes, to Winners, with a rush; and then to win the award and cup for "Best Dog Of ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... he too had thought it "mere vanity." Love then was nowhere—neither in his heart nor in hers. . . . Ronsard, following her with his eyes as she went finally away, saw a youth keeping as close as he dared to the doorway by which she would pass. He was a mere plebeian; naturally his life was not so precious as that of the brilliant De Lorge (thus Ronsard ironically remarks); but there was no doubt what he would have done, "had our brute been Nemean." He would exultantly have accepted the test, have thought it right that he should ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... how proudly the old rooster struts along the weather-board, enjoying the discomfiture of his wives, who have been trying for this half-hour from the corn-house steps to reach the same desirable elevation. And ever and anon he crows to answer the tumultuous cackle of the plebeian fowl in the barn-yard, with whom he never mingles, save when a hawk threatens them with common danger; and then, forgetting all his aristocracy, he seeks the same sheltering apple-tree or clump of briars in the ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... of him we shall hear much. A sharp contrast to Chrysantas, the Peer, with his pointed plebeian similes. His speech important again for Xenophon's sympathetic knowledge of children and also of ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... glance unexpected imagination. I once saw him coming through a little pine grove near The Wayside with my father; it was after our return from England. He was so short, sturdy, phlegmatic of exterior, and plebeian, that I was astonished at my father's pleasure in his company, until I noticed a certain gentleness in his manner of stepping, and heard the modulations of his voice, and caught the fragrance of his humility. One or two letters of his already ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... twenty-seven thousand livres for which he received lands and castles as security.[609] Fortunately the Royal Council included a number of Jurists and Churchmen who were good business men. One of them, an Angevin, Robert Le Macon, Lord of Treves, of plebeian birth, had entered the Council during the Regency. He was the first among those of lowly origin who served Charles VII so ably that he came to be called The Well Served (Le Bien Servi).[610] Another, the Sire de Gaucourt, had aided his King ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... you know I love next, consist of a child of a year old, a tiger, a spaniel formerly attached to Lady Shelburne—at present to my Lord—besides four plebeian cats who are taken no notice of, horses, etc., and a wild boar who is sent off on a matrimonial expedition to the farm. The four first I have commenced a friendship with, especially the first of all, to whom I am body-coachman extraordinary en ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... eyes of the functionary were overflowing at the good fortune which revealed to him alone this vile Popish treason. Thus happily frustrated by himself, it would doubtless be the means of raising him from plebeian ranks to the honours of knighthood, perhaps further. His head grew dizzy at the prospect. He shook the stranger by the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... What tender friendship it produces, and what bitter enmities! How completely the society has formed itself into separate sets after the three or four first days! How thoroughly it is acknowledged that this is the aristocratic set, and that the plebeian! How determined are the aristocrats to admit no intrusion, and how anxious are the plebeians to intrude! Then there arises the great demagogue, who heads a party, having probably been disappointed in early life,—that is, in his first endeavours on board the ship. And the women have to acknowledge ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... pervaded her whole person, her eyes, whose glance could be so cold, so disdainful; and, on the other hand, I saw my father with his robust, workingman's frame, his hearty laugh when he allowed himself to be merry, the professional, utilitarian, in fact, plebeian, aspect of him, in his ideas and ways, his gestures and his discourse. But the plebeian was so noble, so lofty in his generosity, in his deep feeling. He did not know how to show that feeling; therein lay his crime. On what wretched trifles, when we think of it, ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... married the daughter of his predecessor and received the crown through her. This hypothesis explains the obscure features of the traditional history of the Latin kings; their miraculous birth, and the fact that many of the kings from their names appear to have been of plebeian and not patrician families. The legends of the birth of Servius Tullius which tradition imputes to a look, or that Coeculus the founder of Proneste was conceived by a spark that leaped into his mother's bosom, as well as the rape of the Sabines, may be mentioned as traces ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... lover has had a good sound drubbing from the enraged father, and has been kicked out of the house, and the outraged mamma has locked the young lady in her chamber, and repelled the attempted storming on the part of the desperate lover by the armed domestics of the house, and when plebeian fists have even entertained no shyness of the very finest cloth" (here the canon sighed somewhat), "then this fermented prose of miserable vulgarity must evaporate in order that the pure poetic unhappiness of love may settle as sediment You have been fearfully scolded, ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... Hard and inexorable was the fate that sent thee thither, Piercie Shafton, to waste thy wit upon country wenches, and thy valour upon hob-nailed clowns! But that insult—that affront—had it been offered to me by the lowest plebeian, he must have died for it by my hand, in respect the enormity of the offence doth countervail the inequality of him by whom it is given. I trust I shall find this clownish roisterer not less willing to deal in blows than ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... neatherd's boy nowadays to bear the name of Arthur, Alfred, or Alphonse, and for the vicomte—if there are still any vicomtes—to be called Thomas, Pierre, or Jacques. This displacement, which places the "elegant" name on the plebeian and the rustic name on the aristocrat, is nothing else than an eddy of equality. The irresistible penetration of the new inspiration is there as everywhere else. Beneath this apparent discord there is a great and a profound thing,—the ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... plebeian like Dan supposing he could ever ride a horse! He! why, even the cats and the chickens laughed when they saw him go by. Of course, he would be thrown off. Of course, any well-bred horse wouldn't let a common, underbred person like Dan stay on his back! When they gathered him up ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... be no ancienter than his book "De Cive." Such also as have got any fame in the civil government of a commonwealth, or by the leading of its armies, have been gentlemen; for so in all other respects were those plebeian magistrates elected by the people of Rome, being of known descents and of equal virtues, except only that they were excluded from the name by the usurpation of the patricians. Holland, through this defect at home, has borrowed ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... an oath, and flowers of eloquence on the lips of some soldier-boy, with a shoulder-belt strapped over his bare, shirtless chest. Sometimes, too, a gentleman made his appearance—an aristocrat of humble demeanour, talking in a plebeian strain, and with his hands unwashed, so as to make them look hard. A patriot recognised him; the most virtuous mobbed him; and he went off with rage in his soul. On the pretext of good sense, it was desirable to be always disparaging the advocates, ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... no means sure that such was not indeed his own conception of the matter, and that there did not exist in his mind some confusion as to whether the pagan demigod had a place in the Calendar or not. For he was an uncultured, plebeian fellow, and what my mother should have found in him to induce her to prefer him for her confessor and spiritual counsellor to the learned Fra Gervasio is one more of the many mysteries which an attempt to understand her must ever present ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... mother at Mossgiel: he had left her an unknown and an almost banished man: he returned in fame and in sunshine, admired by all who aspired to be thought tasteful or refined. He felt offended alike with the patrician stateliness of Edinburgh and the plebeian servility of the husbandmen of Ayrshire; and dreading the influence of the unlucky star which had hitherto ruled his lot, he bought a pocket Milton, he said, for the purpose of studying the intrepid ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Yuen Erh? What was this idea which you had resolved in your mind? wasn't it perhaps that if she played with me, she would be demeaning herself, and making herself cheap? She's the daughter of a duke or a marquis, and we forsooth the mean progeny of a poor plebeian family; so that, had she diverted herself with me, wouldn't she have exposed herself to being depreciated, had I, perchance, said anything in retaliation? This was your idea wasn't it? But though your purpose was, to be sure, honest enough, that girl wouldn't, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... one like music; it is melody to the eye as the song is to the ear; it is visible harmony. This bird cannot do an ungraceful thing. It has the bearing of a bird of fine breeding. Its cousin the robin is much more masculine and plebeian, harsher in voice, and ruder in manners. The wood thrush is urban and suggests sylvan halls and courtly companions. Softness, gentleness, composure, characterize every movement. In only a few instances among our birds does the male assist in nest-building. ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... since of modish post I have none, except one poor widowed half-sheet of gilt, which lies in my drawer, among my plebeian foolscap pages, like the widow of a man of fashion, whom that unpolite scoundrel, Necessity, has driven from Burgundy and Pineapple to a dish of Bohea, with the scandal-bearing help-mate of a village-priest; ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... to many a young lady in her teens. Hook pere was an organist at Norwich. He came up to town, and was engaged at Marylebone Gardens and at Vauxhall; so that Theodore had no excuse for being of decidedly plebeian origin, and, Tory as he was, he was not fool enough to ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... frequently the admiration, and so rarely the concomitants of the imperite vulgar. This gently compels me, who in preceding times indefatigably kept my private affections absolutely subjugated, to condescend to make my application to you in the trivial phrase of the plebeian world, and assure you that you are well, more than ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... with lions' claws, dolphins and busts of naiads. Undoubtedly it was once a king's! Chichi gravely affirmed that it had been Marie Antoinette's, and the entire family thought that the home on the avenue Victor Hugo was altogether too modest and plebeian to enshrine such a jewel. They therefore agreed to put it in the castle, where it was greatly venerated, although it was useless and solemn as a museum piece. . . . And was he to permit the enemy in their advance toward the Marne to carry off this ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... feeling for Lionel's torture, catching Mrs. Marchmont's eye, rose from the table, leaving the gentlemen to discuss the merits of bottles of no plebeian length of neck. ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... sun glanced between the trees as they passed the cottage door. Then came the Magistrate's Clerk, faultlessly attired, with florid face and glittering eyeglass, who, in an ambitious youth, finding his name too suggestive of plebeian blood, changed a vowel in it, and thereby gave an aristocratic flavour to the title of his partnership, and who acquired, with this new dignity, the taste for a monocle, a horse, and a good cigar. Following were the members of the medley—the big butcher ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... appeared at the door of the house in which the Moses family were at present interested, a man of fashionable exterior—a baronet at the very least. He had a martial air and bushy whiskers—his movements all the ease of nature added to the grace of art. The plebeian Moses felt an involuntary respect for the august presence, and, in the full gladness of his heart, took off his hat in humble reverence. We promised the reader one glimpse of the incomparable Warren de Fitzalbert. ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... his lordship changed his residence; or, since we must descend to plebeian language, was committed to Newgate, and immediately there appeared over the front of his apartment his chosen motto, as large as ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... own royal compartment on life's chessboard. To him I would push up another pawn, in the shape of a comely and wise young woman, whom he would of course take—to wife. For all contingencies I would liberally provide. In a word, I would, in the plebeian, but expressive phrase, "put him through" all the material part of life; see him sheltered, warmed, fed, button-mended, and all that, just to be able to lay on his talk when I liked,—with the privilege of shutting ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Mother of Poetry, and still produces, among the most ignorant and barbarous, a thousand imaginary Distresses and Poetical Complaints. It makes a Footman talk like Oroondates, and converts a brutal Rustick into a gentle Swain. The most ordinary Plebeian or Mechanick in Love, bleeds and pines away with a certain Elegance and Tenderness of Sentiments which this Passion ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... for handing some Royal Personage either the trowel or the mortar. Be that as it may, he had directed Mrs. Pocket to be brought up from her cradle as one who in the nature of things must marry a title, and who was to be guarded from the acquisition of plebeian domestic knowledge. ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... Head. The master, feeling that at least he paid for the necessity, ate in peace; but Saxton, who fell between the aristocracy of Devant's ideas and the Quintonite ideal, suffered cruelly from his plebeian position. Only a vague hope of city life and pleasures held him to his position. And Devant was undecided as to what he should do. Thornly had not "looked him up" after seeing Katharine. Indeed, that rigid young man had sailed, within the week, for Point Comfort, and Devant, fearing to meet Katharine ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... too well bred to do so with me. But in my anger I saw nothing but the words, "not a gownsman." Why should he see that I was not a gownsman? Because I was shabbier?—(and my clothes, over and above the ducking they had had, were shabby); or more plebeian in appearance (whatsoever that may mean)? or wanted something else, which the rest had about them, and I had not? Why should he know that I was not a gownsman? I did not wish, of course, to be a gentleman, and an aristocrat; but I was nettled, nevertheless, ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... amiddleward the courtyard upon Andrevuola's silken cloth and strewn, with all her roses, was there not only bewept by her and his kinsfolk, but publicly mourned by well nigh all the ladies of the city and by many men, and being brought forth of the courtyard of the Seignory, not as that of a plebeian, but as that of a nobleman, it was with the utmost honour borne to the sepulchre upon the shoulders of the most noble citizens. Some days thereafterward, the Provost ensuing that which he had demanded, Messer Negro propounded it to his daughter, ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... also the beginning of colonial empire. Virginia was a cavalier settlement, proceeding from the epoch of exploration and the search for gold; and New England was a plebeian and sectarian establishment, planted by men who fled from oppression. They did not carry with them very clear notions of human right; but these ripened under their oppressive rule among those whom they persecuted. There were ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... in the temple of Proserpine, at Locri, having been touched, violated, and carried out of it. The tribunes of the people, who went with the praetor and ten deputies, were Marcus Claudius Marcellus and Marcus Cincius Alimentus. To these a plebeian aedile was given, whom, if Scipio, whether he was still in Sicily or had now crossed over into Africa, should refuse to obey the orders of the praetor, the tribunes might direct to apprehend him, and bring him home in right of ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... for his riding. "There goes the minister," as he rode past at a swift canter. He had generally well-bred horses, or as I would now call them, ponies; if he had not, his sufferings from a dull, hardmouthed, heavy-hearted and footed, plebeian horse were almost comic. On his gray mare, or his little blood bay horse, to see him setting off and indulging it and himself in some alarming gambols, and in the midst of his difficulties, partly of his own making, taking off his hat or kissing his hand to a lady, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... happily for you and me, the judgment of James Buchanan, the patrician, was not the judgment of Abraham Lincoln, the plebeian. He brought his strong common sense, sharpened in the school of adversity, to bear upon the question. He did not hesitate, he did not doubt, he did not falter but at once resolved, at whatever peril, at whatever cost, ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... much warmth as if he had been baptized already; "there are thousands and tens of thousands of them in Rome, in the cities of Italy, in Greece and Asia. There are Christians among the legions and among the pretorians; they are in the palace of Caesar itself. Slaves and citizens, poor and rich, plebeian and patrician, confess that faith. Dost thou know that the Cornelii are Christians, that Pomponia Graecina is a Christian, that likely Octavia was, and Acte is? Yes, that teaching will embrace the ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... she said, "you're more like mother than I am. I'm a Jennings all over—except that, heavens be praised, I've got the Sherwood liver. I guess I'm common plebeian, like dad, too. I'm plebeian enough, anyhow, to think there's been a lot too much about marriage settlements and the consent of the emperor in all this, and not enough ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... through a tortoise-shell eye-glass adorned with diamonds and hanging from a long pearl chain. Undine was instantly struck by the opportunities which this toy presented for graceful wrist movements and supercilious turns of the head. It seemed suddenly plebeian and promiscuous to look at the world with a naked eye, and all her floating desires were merged in the wish for a jewelled eye-glass and chain. So violent was this wish that, drawn on in the wake of the owner of the eye-glass, she found herself inadvertently bumping against ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... you don't mean that,—you don't mean that you've come all the way from naughty New York to find such dreadful faults in nice, primmy New England. The very dogs here are above such things. Look at Punch there making friends with that little plebeian yellow dog." ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... the first and second centuries of the Christian era], from which Roman pride shrank contemptuously, but, by industry, shrewdness, and speculative daring, they are becoming great capitalists and landowners on a senatorial scale."[787] "The plebeian, saturated with Roman prejudice, looking for support to the granaries of the state or the dole of the wealthy patron, turned with disdain from the occupations which are in our days thought innocent, if not honorable."[788] "After all reservations, ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... tell in detail all the movements that followed. The search for Prince Charles continued with unrelenting severity. Daily, noble and plebeian officers of the defeated army were seized. The country was being scoured, high and low. Frequently the prince saw the forms or heard the voices of those who sought him diligently. But "Will Jones," the woodman, was not ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... with his distinguished manner; she did her best to please—and nothing came of it. Why? she asked herself afterward. He had held her hand and talked about "the woman who gives purpose to a man's life" and all that. (Alas, that plebeian paw ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... do for her! She smiled, considering him. The events of the night had not ruffled him; his blonde face was still mild, insignificant, plebeian. Of such men slaves are made; their part is to obey orders, to be without responsibility, to be guided, governed, and protected by their betters. Miss Gregory, sister of a Major-General, friend of Colonial Governors, aunt of a Member ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... there has been less stimulus for the more showy and striking kinds of ambition, if the rewards of a public career have been less brilliant than in other countries, yet we have shown, (and this is a legitimate result of democracy,) perhaps beyond the measure of other nations, that plebeian genius for the useful which has been chiefly demanded by our circumstances, and which does more than war or state-craft to increase the well-being and therefore the true glory of nations. Few great soldiers ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... divine, and their right to reign indefeasible. He was an Emperor. But he saw around him a mother, brothers and sisters, not ennobled; whose humble state reminded him, and the world, that he was born a plebeian; and he had no heir to wait impatient for the imperial crown. He scourged the earth again, and again fortune smiled on him even in his wild extravagance. He bestowed kingdoms and principalities upon his ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... Patrician and Plebeian in Virginia; or, The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old ...
— Mother Earth - Land Grants in Virginia 1607-1699 • W. Stitt Robinson, Jr.
... shops of a very superior description. There are grades in pawning as in everything else, and distinctions must be observed even in poverty. The aristocratic Spanish cloak and the plebeian calico shirt, the silver fork and the flat iron, the muslin cravat and the Belcher neckerchief, would but ill assort together; so, the better sort of pawnbroker calls himself a silver-smith, and ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Brahmins, fanatical, high up in the caste scale, and all the rest of the breed inferior, vicious, blood-thirsty, a horde of pirates. Even the man who first made them a power, Sivaji, had been of questionable lineage, a plebeian; and so the body corporate was of inflammable material—little restraint ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... is any connection between good blood and fine features and a noble expression. Oddly enough, his surname was an uncommon and aristocratic one. His wife, on the other hand, although a very good woman as we found, had a distinctly plebeian countenance. One day she informed us that she came of a different and better class than her husband's. She was the daughter of a small tradesman, and had begun life as a lady's-maid: her husband was nothing but a labourer; his people had been labourers for generations, ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... "Only a plebeian splutter of rage from our well-bred friend there," said Mackworth, pointing contemptuously at Kenrick, who stood with dilated nostrils, still ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... Should the base plebeian rabble Dare assail my name at Rome, Where my noble spouse, Octavia, Weeps within her widowed home, Seek her; say the gods bear witness— Altars, augurs, circling wings— That her blood, with mine commingled, Yet shall mount the ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... dogs, I found dear old Dake, the noble Newfoundland which H. gave us, look as intensely black and as grandly aristocratical as ever. He is the only high-bred dog on the river. There is another animal, by the plebeian name of John (what a name for a dog!), really a handsome creature, which looks as if he might have a faint sprinkling of good blood in his veins. Indeed, I have thought it possible that his great-grandfather was a bulldog. But he always ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... of the jackal (Canis aureus) means simply 'yellow dog,' and not a few of that animal's characteristics are seen in his domesticated representative. For the plebeian cur is shrewd, active, and hardy, and far better equipped for the real struggle of life than any ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... things when extreme political superstitions invest them, that in some royal instances even to idiot imbecility they have imparted potency. But when, as in the case of Nicholas the Czar, the ringed crown of geographical empire encircles an imperial brain; then, the plebeian herds crouch abased before the tremendous centralization. Nor, will the tragic dramatist who would depict mortal indomitableness in its fullest sweep and direct swing, ever forget a hint, incidentally so important in his art, as the one now ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... occasions, and when meek admirers had murmured, "How dreadful," she had tossed her head and had said, "But I can't help it, you know, all of my family have had tempers," and as Judy's family was known to be aristocratic and exclusive, her more plebeian friends had envied and had tried to emulate her, ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... of the chateau and estate of Frapesle near Sache in Touraine. Friend of the Vandenesses; he introduced their son Felix to his neighbors, the Mortsaufs. The son of a manufacturer named Durand who became very rich during the Revolution, but whose plebeian name he had entirely dropped; instead he adopted that of his wife, the only heiress of the Chessels, an old parliamentary family. M. de Chessel was director-general and twice deputy. He received the title of count under Louis XVIII. ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... amusing of our author's performances. The old man's merriment in Menenius; the lofty lady's dignity in Volumnia; the bridal modesty in Virgilia; the patrician and military haughtiness in Coriolanus; the plebeian malignity and tribunitian insolence in Brutus and Sicinius, make a very pleasing and interesting variety: and the various revolutions of the hero's fortune fill the mind with anxious curiosity. There is, perhaps, too much bustle ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... carry the "pundonor," or point of honor, beyond the bounds of sober sense and sound morality; disposed, in the midst of poverty, to affect the "grande caballero," and to look down with sovereign disdain upon "arts mechanical," and all the gainful pursuits of plebeian life; but this very inflation of spirit, while it fills his brain with vapors, lifts him above a thousand meannesses; and though it often keeps him in indigence, ever ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... interesting characters. Catherine Benincasa was probably the most remarkable woman of the fourteenth century, and her letters are the precious personal record of her inner as of her outer life. With all their transparent simplicity and mediaeval quaintness, with all the occasional plebeian crudity of their phrasing, they reveal a nature at once so many- sided and so exalted that the sensitive reader can but echo the judgment of her countrymen, who see in the dyer's daughter of Siena one of the most significant ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... possible lives before us, a perfect wilderness between salvation and damnation, a wilderness so vast and crowded that at last it seems as though the way to either hell or heaven would be lost in its interminable futility. Such planless indeterminate lives, plebeian lives, mere lives, fill the world, and the spectacle of whole nations, our whole civilization, seems to me to re-echo this planlessness, this indeterminate confusion of purpose. Plain issues are ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... beside her a battered metal tray held a bottle of native Chianti, two glasses and a box of cigarettes. In Pancha's world a visitor was always offered liquid refreshment and she had chosen the Chianti as less plebeian than beer and not so expensive as champagne. She had no acquaintance with either wine or cigarettes; her thrifty habits and care of her voice ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... is hardly one of the forms of high art, like the epic, the tragedy, the Pindaric ode. It is simple and not complex like the sonnet: not of the aristocracy of verse, but popular—not to say plebeian—in its associations. It is easy to write and, in its commonest metrical shape of eights and sixes, apt to run into sing-song. Its limitations, even in the hands of an artist like Coleridge or Rossetti, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... letter to his majesty, remonstrating, that he was the representative of a very ancient and honourable family, which had been allied to the crown; and requesting that, if he could not be favoured with the species of death which in cases of treason distinguishes the nobleman from the plebeian, he might at least, out of consideration for his family, be allowed to suffer in the Tower, rather than at the common place of execution; but this indulgence was refused. From his return to the Tower to the day of his execution, he betrayed no mark of apprehension or impatience, but ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... to contribute any thing in our power to the settlement of a point so obscure. What we have wished to protest against, is the spirit of partisanship in which this question has too generally been discussed. For, whilst some with a foolish affectation of plebeian sympathies overwhelm us with the insipid commonplaces about birth and ancient descent, as honors containing nothing meritorious, and rush eagerly into an ostentatious exhibition of all the circumstances which favor the notion of a humble station and humble connections; ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... scheme was more dangerous to the aristocracy of Europe than the Republican propaganda; it was more feasible and less extravagant than the hideous doctrines of indefinite liberty proclaimed by the young madcaps who assume the character of heirs of the Convention. All who knew the noble plebeian wept for him; there is not one of them but remembers, and often remembers, a ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... his person and mind were of no plebeian mould. He was a daring, venturous fellow, ready at any emergency, cool and collected in danger, had a pleasure in the excitement created by the difficulty and risk attending his nocturnal pursuits, caring ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... to book in a most uncompromising fashion; a fashion that betrays unmistakably her plebeian origin. Dysart, listening, admires her for it. Her rough and ready honesty seems to him preferable to the best bred shuffling in ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... "You simply mustn't wear those trousers around the house in nesting season. Don't you know the birds are very sensitive just now?" And we have been paying board for our cat on Long Island for a whole year because the birds wouldn't like his society and plebeian ways. ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... it when he arrived. And pluck, mingled with excitement, having had a truly bracing effect on the girls, in the absence of the peer they were nice to the plebeian. The girl in the "Young Moon," to be sure, had scarcely anything to say, but she had a peculiarly fascinating ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... a beginning. Try "Blenheim House" (all the houses here either bear ducal, naval, or frankly plebeian names, I observe). Ring: startling effect—grey-mouldy old person, with skeleton hands folded on woollen tippet, glides in a ghastly manner down passage. They really ought to put up a warning to people with nerves, as M. VAN BEERS does at his Salon Parisien. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various
... set the no less picturesque peasants sowing the seed, whose harvest is at once waving grain and a regenerated Israel. The stains of sordid traffic shall be cleansed by the dews and the rains. In the Jewish peasant behold the ideal plebeian of the future; a son of the soil, yet also a son of the spirit. And what fair floriage of art and literature may not the world gain from this great purified nation, carrying in its bosom the experience of ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... her state; but when the children began to tell their eager story, and hold up their grapes to her, she burst again into tears, and cried: 'Oh, my dear sister, if you would be warned. It is making a scandal, indeed it is! They call you a plebeian.' ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... from a plebeian origin. It was part of his commercial equipment, an asset of his boyhood spent among the peasants on the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Jean repelled at every point. Years had not refined, they had vulgarized him. His clothing careless and not quite fresh, offended her taste; in fact, his whole appearance was of that shabby genteel character, which is far more mean and plebeian than can be given by undisguised working apparel. As Jean was taking note of these things a girl, with a flushed, angry face, spoke to him. She was evidently making a complaint, and Gavin answered her in a ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... and who yielded to nothing but the cogent arguments of the whip, looked toward us with an indignant countenance, as if he meditated avenging his wrongs with a kick. The other, Pontiac, a good horse, though of plebeian lineage, stood with his head drooping and his mane hanging about his eyes, with the grieved and sulky air of a lubberly boy sent off to school. Poor Pontiac! his forebodings were but too just; for when I last heard from him, he was under the lash ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... a magazine; but long before that it was a wind-mill. Here in the old days two lovers held their tryst: a sturdy and honest young farmer of the neighborhood and the daughter of a man whose wealth puffed him with purse-pride. It was the plebeian state of the farmer that made him look at him with an unfavorable countenance, and when it was whispered to him that the young people were meeting each other almost every evening at the mill, he resolved to surprise ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... plebeian family in Genoa, of the Ghibelline party, several of whom were Doges of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... tribute; for the plebeian may boast his ancestors but he dare not paint them; and many a pioneer aristocrat hath compassed his undoing because he thus tried to put new wine into old bottles. Wishing to found a family, he proceeds to find one, and both are covered with ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... financial phase of the question was appreciated, and his prejudice was not unnatural, for unconsciously, especially at first, Mr. Hearn had treated them all as inferiors. He now was learning to know them better, however. There was nothing plebeian in Adah's beauty, and he would have been untrue to himself had he ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe |
