"Rabble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in Duke Street was cordial, both on the part of my uncle and on the part of my aunt; the first being a good-hearted person, though a little too apt to run into extravagance on the subject of the rights of the rabble. I was pleased with the welcome I received, enjoyed an excellent hot supper, to which we sat down at half-past eight, my aunt being fond of town hours, both dining and supping a little later than my mother, as being more fashionable and genteel. [9] As I was compelled ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... friend or two more; as I did, after I arrived, last night, though I was compelled to leave them my sleigh and horses to bring them over, which accounts for my begging a passage with you. So, you see, that if this beggarly rabble offer to make any disturbance, I shall be prepared to teach them the cost of attempting to put down the ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... poured by six guns into the camp. The rajah sent messenger after messenger to Forde, urging him to return; and he himself, with his frightened army, hurried towards Condore. Forde had, indeed, retraced his steps immediately he heard the fire of the guns, and soon met the rajah's rabble in full flight; and, uniting with them, marched back ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... army-forms. I can't nurse, though I daresay I could if I tried; but I hate amateurs. No amateurs in my show, I assure you. For my job I flatter myself I'm trained. A woman can't knock about the waste spaces of the earth by herself, head a rabble of pack-carrying savages, without gaining some experience in organization. In fact, when I'm not at my own hospital, which now runs on wheels, I'm employed as a sort of organizing expert—any old where they choose to send me. Do you think ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... in a nightmare. From time to time would come a rush, a stampede, of deer or tapirs, along the strip of beach between the water and the cliff. The toiling men would draw aside till the rabble went by, then fall to ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... their former size. One sees shopkeepers, but a short time back doing capital business, walking about idle in the streets, with their shops closed; armed policemen at every corner are necessary to prevent a savage rabble from committing outrages, and many people avoid going near the town at all. All this is the result of William O'Brien's speech in Tipperary and the subsequent action of the National League. The town and whole neighbourhood were perfectly quiet till one day Mr. O'Brien descends ...
— About Ireland • E. Lynn Linton
... essentially, a sordid, stupid, and wretched herd; or than they could be in any other country, where an archbishop held the place of an universal bishop, and the vicars and curates that of the ignorant, dependent, miserable rabble aforesaid; and infinitely more sensible and learned than they could be in either.——This subject has been seen in the same light by many illustrious patriots, who have lived in America, since the days of our ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... Kemnisius, Osiander, Bale, Mornay, Fox, Usher, and many others relate. In the mean time, he that shall but see their profane rites and foolish customs, how superstitiously kept, how strictly observed, their multitude of saints, images, that rabble of Romish deities, for trades, professions, diseases, persons, offices, countries, places; St. George for England; St. Denis for France, Patrick, Ireland; Andrew, Scotland; Jago, Spain; &c. Gregory for students; Luke for painters; Cosmus and Damian for philosophers; ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... a name in Yerba Buena. A gringo engineer named Fremont with a rabble of adventurers had overthrown the valiant Vallejo at Sonora and declared a California Republic. He had spiked the cannon at the Presidio. And now a gringo sloop-of-war was in the bay, some said with orders to reduce the port. Almost simultaneously an English frigate came and there were rumors ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... winter. For some months messages came to her at about nine-day intervals, all of the same tenure. Towards mid-winter, on a mild fair day, she risked a third expostulation with her hirelings. On an apologetic and humiliated rabble ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... soul) queen of a Castle, which for seven years was beset by a rabble rout. Arthur and sir Guyon were conducted by Alma over this castle, which though not named is intended to represent the human body.—Spenser, The Faerie ...
— 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.
... entertainment. He lodged as much by accident as he dined, and passed the night sometimes in mean houses which are set open at night to any casual wanderers; sometimes in cellars, among the riot and filth of the meanest and most profligate of the rabble; and sometimes, when he had not money to support even the expenses of these receptacles, walked about the streets till he was weary, and lay down in the summer upon the bulk, or in the winter, with his associate, in poverty, among the ashes of ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... the thriving'st calling, The only saint's-bell that rings all in: A gift that is not only able To domineer among the rabble, But by the law's empowered to rout, And awe the ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... up, and they returned to town. The fame of wicked Dodge never interfered with the transaction of business, its iniquity catering largely to the rabble. ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... man? I didn't pay much attention. Never met Kasker before, you know. Isn't he like most of the rabble, thinking what he's told to think and saying ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)
... is amusing enough to observe how he designates men as great as himself. When he mentions the learned Hyde, he places him "at the head of a rabble of lying orientalists." When he alludes to Peters, a very learned and ingenious clergyman, he passes by him as "The Cornish Critic." A friend of Peters observed that "he had given Warburton 'a Cornish hug,' of which he might be sore as long as he lived." Dr. Taylor, the learned editor of ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... of opposing conditions and rabble protest and doleful prophecy and the assurance of certain perils, we turned our faces toward the unfriendly land of the sunset skies, the open ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... not able to do business hurriedly with his rabble subjects, did not appear again until this morning, and then, instead of proceeding at once to work, hinted he should like to have the presents I had brought from Aden for him, as the best method of showing our feelings to one another. This was not so easily concluded. I portioned ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... been long in the crowd before loud cries announced the king's arrival. A carriage had been sent to meet him, and the gigantic Porthos, who stood a head above the entire rabble, soon announced that he saw the royal equipage approaching. D'Artagnan raised himself on tiptoe, and as the carriage passed, saw Harrison at one window and ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... tide was full about noon, and with the tide came in the English ships. Knowing the anchorage, they came right into the river's mouth, in a long, ominously silent line. The mixed rabble of Le Loutre crowded low behind their breastworks; and hundreds of eager eyes on Beausejour strained their sight to catch the first flash ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... worst, when surprised in the glare of daylight and mobbed by a furious rabble of little birds, an owl looks a helpless fool indeed, though this is not the proper moment to judge of the bird's possibilities under happier circumstances. Why these small fowl should bully it at all is one of those woodland problems that no one has yet solved. The first, and obvious, ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... their spiritual opportunities are infinitely greater; for their eye and fancy are fed with visions of human greatness, and even if they cannot improve their outward estate they can possess a poetry and a religion. It suffices to watch an Oriental rabble at prayer, or listening in profound immobility to some wandering story-teller or musician, to feel how much such a people may have to ruminate upon, and how truly Arabian days and Arabian Nights go together. The ideas evolved may be wild and futile and the emotions savagely sensuous, yet they ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... He, too, promenaded his incertitudes, to use a self-revealing phrase of Chopin's. An aristocrat, he knew that in the country of the idiot the imbecile always will be king, and, "like many a one who turned away from life, he only turned away from the rabble, and cared not to share with them well and fire and fruit." His Kingdom of Green was consumed and became grey by the regard of his coldly measuring eye. For him modern man is an animal who bores himself. Laforgue ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... cabriolet horse, in the streets of Paris; for such was the charge on which the man stood committed. I mentioned the affair to a friend, and he said that the police was good only for political offences, and that the government rather leaned to the side of the rabble, in order to find support with them, in the event of any serious movement. This, you will remember, was the opinion of a Frenchman, and not mine; for I only relate the facts (one conjecture excepted), and to do justice to all parties, ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Bootsey, and when he insisted that the Mongol had tangled him up in his pig-tail, the aroused populace with great difficulty restrained its desire to demolish the amazed heathens. At last, however, they were permitted to go, followed by a rabble of urchins, and Bootsey proceeded on his way ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... head; "These old Italian tales," he said, "From the much-praised Decameron down Through all the rabble of the rest, Are either trifling, dull, or lewd; The gossip of a neighborhood In some remote provincial town, A scandalous chronicle at best! They seem to me a stagnant fen, Grown rank with rushes and with reeds, Where a white lily, now and then, Blooms in the midst of noxious ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... open war against Marx himself, three-quarters of the members of the International would turn against me, and I would be at a disadvantage, for I would have lost the ground on which I must stand. But by beginning this war with an attack against the rabble by which he is surrounded, I shall have the majority on my side.... But, ... if he wishes to constitute himself the defender of their cause, it is he who would then declare war openly. In this case, I shall take the field also and I shall play the ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... barricade of urns and teapots, with countenances that seemed to say, "If you want anything, you must ask for it. We are here under protest, and we very much wonder how our people could ever have invited such rabble!" ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... one's daughter. One's daughter should be fresh and fair; she should be innocent and gentle. With the manners of the present time she is liable to become so dusty and crumpled. Pansy's a little dusty, a little dishevelled; she has knocked about too much. This bustling, pushing rabble that calls itself society—one should take her out of it occasionally. Convents are very quiet, very convenient, very salutary. I like to think of her there, in the old garden, under the arcade, among those tranquil virtuous women. Many of them are gentlewomen born; several ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... and demanding the previous question. Then came the solution of the mystery. In dignified yet rapid flight a huge owl dropped from a limb on the other side of the stump, and with a flight as silent as the grave winged her way into the deeper woods followed by that rabble of noisy, cawing crows. It seemed strange that the owl did not turn upon her tormentors; she who had talons long, strong, and sharp; a beak that could easily make its impression upon a pine stick; but her reputed wisdom here led her ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... cherishing of long acquaintance. But in Washington—except so far as the small number of residents is concerned—its whole purpose and meaning are anomalous: each Administration brings a new following, each Congress has a new rabble at its heels; friendships are accidents of the day, diplomacy is carried on by dining; every party has a political purpose, every civility a double meaning. Nevertheless, the sparkle of wit, the kindling of enthusiasm, are not absent from it; on the contrary, there is more of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... them, and had otherwise prejudiced the community in Oxenford's favor. Hunter had learned also that the junior member of the stage firm had collected a crowd of hangers-on, and being liberal in the use of money, had convinced the rabble of the village that he was an innocent and injured party. The attorney for Esther had arrived, and had cautioned every one interested on their side of the case to be reserved and careful under every circumstance, as they had a bitter fight ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... in the midst of the surging crowd might be distinguished sundry honest citizens still in plain clothes indeed, but carrying along with them bayonetted muskets, thereby inspiring the rabble with peculiar valour, the common people always imagining in such cases that the national guard with its bayonets is quite equal to ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... madame?" was the greeting she received from a handsome, auburn-haired boy of twelve, who, as she entered the apartment, was sitting upright in his bed. "Laporte tells me that the rabble are in ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... picture which Tacitus draws of Vitellius, fallen from empire, prolonging his ignominy from a wretched love of life, delivered over to the merciless rabble; tossed, buffeted, and kicked about; constrained, by their holding a poinard under his chin, to raise his head, and expose himself to every contumely. What abject infamy! What low humiliation! Yet even here, says the historian, he discovered some symptoms of a mind not wholly ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... had passed through the Altstrasse before to-night, but the surroundings had had no particular interest for him then. Now they arrested his attention. What plots might not have birth and grow to dangerous maturity in such surroundings, among such people as these? The rabble had overrun these deserted mansions; might it not one day hammer at the doors of the palaces by the citadel yonder with demands not to be gainsaid? What manner of man was this De Froilette, what ends had he in view, that he should ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... look at a laurel;— Apollo, I say, being sick of their rioting (Though he sometimes acknowledged their verse had a quieting Effect after dinner, and seemed to suggest a Retreat to the shrine of a tranquil siesta), Kept our Hero at hand, who, by means of a bray, Which he gave to the life, drove the rabble away; And if that wouldn't do, he was sure to succeed, If he took his review out and offered to read; Or, failing in plans of this milder description, 300 He would ask for their aid to get up a subscription, Considering that ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... threatened to proceed to acts of personal violence, which Carbajal, far from deprecating, seemed rather to court, as the speediest way of ridding himself of life. *35 When he approached the president's quarters, Centeno, who was near, rebuked the disorderly rabble, and compelled them to give way. Carbajal, on seeing this, with a respectful air demanded to whom he was indebted for this courteous protection. To which his ancient comrade replied, "Do you not know me? - Diego ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... women shriek; With flint, with shaft, with staff, with bar, The hardier urge tumultuous war. At once round Douglas darkly sweep The royal spears in circle deep, And slowly scale the pathway steep, While on the rear in thunder pour The rabble with disordered roar With grief the noble Douglas saw The Commons rise against the law, And to the leading soldier said: 'Sir John of Hyndford, 'twas my blade That knighthood on thy shoulder laid; For that good deed permit me then A word with these ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... utterly destroyed both churches and chapels. They have left nothing standing but the four bare walls. The lowest rabble! And this it is that damages our good cause. We ought rather to have laid our claims before the Regent, formally and decidedly, and then have stood by them. If we speak now, if we assemble now, it will be said that ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... could be more appalling to the stoutest heart, than the situation of Mrs. Boardman and her helpless family! Forced to flee from her frail hut, by bullets actually whizzing through it, and to pass through the town amid the yells of an infuriated rabble, her path sometimes impeded by the dead bodies of men who had fallen in the conflict: driven from the shelter of the government house, again to fly through the streets to the wharf-house; and there, with three or four hundred fugitives ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... own particular grouch against them started at Ripilly-sur-Somme. They, being skilled Royal Engineers, were clearing undergrowth and putting up huts in Ripilly woods for a division due to arrive, and my scorned rabble were unloading the huts in sections from barges at Ripilly canal wharf and loading them on to lorries for transport to the woods. Chaucer and his Royal Engineers were living on the spot—Ardennes waving o'er them ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 21, 1919. • Various
... the conception is rare. If he feels a little brisk the morning after the pill, he sends the letter that makes us famous! We go down to posterity with heightened characteristics, to say nothing of a contemporary celebrity nothing less than our being turned inside-out to the rabble. I confess I don't desire to have my machinery made ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... said Rebecca, warningly. "Ef we should lose the man in all this rabble o' folks we would not find him ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... provided that same intellect and genius were not willing to become its instruments and eulogists; and provided we once obtain a firm hold here again, we would not fail to do so. We would occasionally stuff the beastly rabble with horseflesh and bitter ale, and then halloo them on against all those ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... dreaded to meet, Laura Romeyn, regarding him with a pale, frightened face, as if he were a monster, a wild beast, nay, worse, a common thief on his way to jail—he stopped abruptly, and for a second seemed to meditate some desperate act. But when he saw the rabble closing on him, and heard the officers growl in surly tones, "Move on," a sense of helplessness as well as of shame overwhelmed him. He shivered visibly, dashed his hat down over his eyes, and strode on, feeling at ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... he suggested a journey to England. Emigration now was the only real safety, and Mademoiselle Marny had unpleasantly draw on herself the attention of the Paris rabble. No doubt, within the next few days her name would figure among the "suspect." She would be safest out of the country, and could not do better than place herself under the guidance of that English enthusiast, ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... King without his leave, and then he had them watched of spies. The Parliament was held at Salisbury that Michaelmas, whereto all men were forbidden to come in arms. Thither, nathless, came the said Mortimer, with a great rabble of armed men at his heels. My Lord of Lancaster durst not come, so instead thereof he put himself in arms, and sent to expound matters to the King. He was speedily joined by all that hated the Mortimer ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... addressing the rabble, "as I lay a prisoner in the fort during the night, it came to me that we are all wasting our lives in our present manner of living. Sooner or later we are sure to be captured and hanged. I've thought it ...
— The Boy Allies with Uncle Sams Cruisers • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... for art a hereditary trait? the son of a celebrity? then his essays in design were unworthy of his name. Abashed, inclined to despair, having a glimpse of a tumultuous rabble shouting: "At last he is here!" before the ruddy guillotine on a raw morning, a pale, prim man between the executioner's aids, the young Clemenceau listened to the girl, who probably resembled the Lovely Iza, but looked at the dead woman at ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... enemies were to be her judges. The thick ploughman from Saatzig, who had stolen her rents from the farm-houses at Zachow; item, the arch-cheat Sparling, who robbed his Prince every day—such rabble—burgher carls—secretary fellows, and the like—no; she would never enter. She was the lady of castles and lands; besides, her advocate was not here, and she had engaged one at Stargard;" finally she pushed the ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... is very gloomy; the rabble armed—keeping the Government in awe—failures in all directions, and nothing but ruin and misery. This is too gloomy a letter for a birthday, and the Queen must apologise for it. The Prince wishes to be kindly ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... grace to prize; And, with licentious babble, He blazed the secrets of the skies Through all the human rabble, And fed the greed of tattlers vain With high celestial scandal, And lent to every eager brain And wanton tongue a handle Against the gods. For which great sin, By righteous Jove's command, In hell's black pool up to the chin The thirsty king doth stand: With-parched throat he longs to ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... lifting his hat in grave gesture. "I feel like a condemned coward, my name a byword for the rabble, being here in such comparative safety, when, in honor, I should ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... ye, Ivan, though ye be my son, never mair shall I call ye so, if ye join the rabble that young scamp has got together, and never mair shall ye darken the doors of Dunmorton if ye gae wi' him. Noo choose between that young ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... covering their nakedness by pooling their rags, were a musical rabble. Kevin MacHenery, carrying a saber captured from one of the BSG-OCS-men, shouted to a tuba-player, the bell of whose horn had been dimpled by a hard-cored snowball. "Play the National Anthem," he yelled. The player, chilly and ...
— The Great Potlatch Riots • Allen Kim Lang
... infamous rabble, about two hundred in number. With a few exceptions, they consist of escapados from the Barbary shore, from Tetuan, from Tangier, but principally from Mogadore; fellows who have fled to a foreign land from the punishment due to ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... expression to the mob that they had nothing to fear from them, and the artillery men coolly directed their pieces against the palace. Axes and iron bars were immediately leveled at the doors, and they flew from their hinges; and the drunken and infuriated rabble, with clubs, and pistols, and daggers, poured, an interminable throng, through the halls and apartments where kings, for ages, had reigned in inapproachable pomp and power. The servants of the king, in terror, fled in every direction. Still the crowd came rushing and ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... superstition and enthusiasm. They taught them to believe that they were the distinguished favorites of Heaven; that celestial doctrines had been revealed to them, too holy to be communicated to the profane {34} rabble, and too sublime to be comprehended by vulgar capacities. Princes and legislators, who found their advantage in overawing and humbling the multitude, readily adopted a plan so artfully fabricated ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... of the French article becomes at last as irritating as the refrain of a popular song. The poor "Indiens Galibis" struck me as really more interesting—a group of stunted savages who formed one of the attractions of the place and were confined in a pen in the open air, with a rabble of people pushing and squeezing, hanging over the barrier, to look at them. They had no grimace, no pretension to be new, no desire to catch your eye. They looked at their visitors no more than they looked at each other, and seemed ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... names for all the best cats; there were ten that were named. The other seven, Jim called "the rabble;" but of the ten he had named, Jim grew to be very proud. He thought they were ...
— The Hunter Cats of Connorloa • Helen Jackson
... Bull Run, July 1861] was the bitterest time we have had yet some, even in this quiet village, did not sleep a wink. Confound sensation newspapers and newspaper correspondents that fellow who writes is enough to drive one mad. The "Evening Post" is the wisest paper. But it is too bad that that rabble of civilians and teamsters should have brought this ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... what to do; and they went together over to the convent and sought audience and ghostly counsel of the prior. "We are going to have done with all popish ceremonies," said they, "and drive out the whole rabble-rout of papistry, monks, priests and all: then we mean to send for gospel ministers to introduce the true Christian Reformation." It is pleasant to imagine the expression of Bonivard's countenance as he replied to his ardent friends: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... said stolidly, "and I am her servant. To-morrow, if she gives me leave, I will clear away this rabble which clamours outside the walls. I must begin to ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... Madame d'Etampes had the insolence to tell the King: "I believe that devil will sack Paris one of these days." The King answered with some anger that I was only quite right to defend myself from the low rabble who put obstacles in the way ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... were willing to help destroy their own orders; an aggressive, discontented, and patriotic bourgeoisie, full of new political and social ideas, and patriotically anxious to reform France; and a vast unorganized peasantry and city rabble, suffering much and resisting little, but capable of a terrible fury and senseless destruction, once they were aroused and their suppressed rage let loose;—these were the main elements in ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... speak thus to me? As for thy saying, 'Thou shalt look upon the champions of the Muslims,' by the Messiah, thou sayst that which is not true; for I saw your army, when it reached our country, these two days ago, and I did not see that your ordinance was that of kings, but beheld you only as a rabble of men collected together. And as for thy saying, 'Thou shalt know who I am,' I did not show thee courtesy of any intent to honour thee, but out of pride in myself; and the like of thee should not say this to the like of me, even though thou be ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... years of usurpation, military despotism of a day's growth, or presumptuous wealth accumulated by robbery, hypocrisy and insidious assassination. Instead of leading in the reformation of leviathan wrongs, the ministry waits for the rabble to applaud before it commends.[1] It was not in this manner that the great Christ set the world in motion, sowed broadcast the dynamite which uprooted long-established infamies, and prepared the way for the ultimate redemption of the world from ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... Had the acute-angled rabble been all, without exception, absolutely destitute of hope and of ambition, they might have found leaders in some of their many seditious outbreaks, so able as to render their superior numbers and strength ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... transparent at the neck. Round her throat she had a slender chain with a locket to it. She was brown as a berry, but she looked as though the hot weather dealt gently with her. As she sat down by me and took Dido's head into her lap, to the great discomfort of a rabble of jealous dogs who sat round watching her and whining, it struck me that her eyes were the very colour of the dog's ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... longings, only tended, by diverting me from my living outward idol, to turn my thoughts more than ever inward, and tempt them to feed on their own substance. I passed whole days on the workroom floor in brooding silence—my mind peopled with an incoherent rabble of phantasms patched up from every object of which I had ever read. I could not control my daydreams; they swept me away with them over sea and land, and into the bowels of the earth. My soul escaped on every side from my civilized dungeon of brick and mortar, ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... explained his remote antecedents only after he had got Colonel Graeme's private ear. The colonel has kept it quiet. 'Don't want a rabble of psychologists and soul-pokers worrying him ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... sense of this phrase, of which I am wonderfully fond. The dissemination of the royal opinion will at any time create a majority in that house, to divert the odium from the person of the monarch. Twenty-two bishops, thirteen lords of the bed-chamber, and all the rabble of household troops, will at any time compose an army. They may not indeed cover an acre of ground, nor would I advise your lordship to distribute them into a great number of regiments. Their countenances are not the most terrific that were ever beheld, and it might be proper to ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... bitter and servile experience of centuries, are striving toward unity as the blessing above all others desirable, we are to allow a Union, that for almost eighty years has been the source and the safeguard of incalculable advantages, to be shattered by the caprice of a rabble that has out-run the intention of its leaders, while we are making up our minds what coercion means! Ask the first constable, and he will tell you that it is the force necessary for executing the laws. To avoid the danger ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... to a stop. 'Now, to think of these vagabonds,' said he, 'attracting the young rabble ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... Seraphina. "And yet she used to be faithful—almost a mother. Misericordia! Senor, there is no one in this unhappy place that he has not bought, corrupted, frightened, or bent to his will—to his madness of hate against England. Of our poor he has made a rabble. The ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... devoted their time to intrigues rather than to prayers. No small part of the revenues of the clergy was wasted in the dissipations of these ecclesiastic courtiers. They were imitated in their vices by a rabble of priests out of place, to whom the title of abbot was given in politeness, the little abbes of French biography and fiction. These men lived in garrets, haunted cheap eating-houses, and appeared on certain days ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... amidst that crowd, as I have said, there were a score or so of gentlemen of the Court, who—with scant regard for the right or wrong of the case and every regard to conciliate this giver of suppers—came to range themselves beside and around us, and thus protected me from the murderous designs of that rabble. ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... building, while huge flakes of flaming materials came driving on the wind against the adjoining prison, and rolling a dark canopy of smoke over all the neighbourhood. The shouts of a furious mob resounded far and wide; for the smugglers in their triumph were joined by all the rabble of the little town and neighbourhood, now aroused and in complete agitation, notwithstanding the lateness of the hour, some from interest in the free trade, and most from the general love of mischief and tumult natural to ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... breath-catching though safe-guarded dip and flight of Adventure, the magic carpet that transports you to the realms of fairyland, though its journey be through but a few poor yards of space. He no longer saw a rabble, but his brothers seeking the ideal. There was no magic of poesy here or of art; but the glamour of their imagination turned yellow calico into cloth of gold and the megaphones into the silver trumpets ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... on the other hand, were amply supplied with every kind of store and weapon, and could bring a great force to blockade us, though that force was composed of a timid and undisciplined rabble. ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... scarce a verse, a page, a newspaper, but is writ in imitation of English forms; our very manners and conversation are traditional, and sometimes the life seems dying out of all literature, and this enormous paper currency of Words is accepted instead. I suppose the evil may be cured by this rank rabble party, the Jacksonism of the country, heedless of English and of all literature—a stone cut out of the ground without hands;—they may root out the hollow dilettantism of our cultivation in the coarsest way, and the new-born may begin again to frame their own ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... copse he lay, When dawn had brightened into day, For when one moment there was seen, His red cap glancing 'mid the green, A fearful cry arose— "Here lurks a Dane!" "The Dane seek out" With knife and axe, the rabble rout Made the copse ring with yell and shout To find their dreaded foes. And Edric feared to meet a stroke, Before they knew the tongue he spoke. Hid 'mid the branches of an oak, He heard their calls and blows. Of food he had a simple store, And when the churls ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... into ridicule, with even greater bitterness than usual; and turning to her husband and to his father, she exclaimed impatiently that she could not understand how they allowed her to follow her mean and degrading pursuits, to mix with the refuse of the rabble, and draw down upon the whole family not only merited disgrace, but intolerable inconveniences. She was going on in this way, and speaking with great violence, when all of a sudden she turned as pale as death, a fit of trembling came over her, and ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... standing armies, to which the duties of the citizen-soldier were now consigned; and the soldiery thus acquired not only the power but the right of electing the emperors, the best of whom, in fact, after Augustus, were generally soldiers. The ruling nation became a city rabble, the vices of which were but little tempered by the fitful intervention of the enfranchised communities of Italy. Of this rabble, political adventurers bought the consulships, which led to the government of provinces, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... vultures and by wolves, And none shall heap the earth-mound o'er your clay. Where skulketh now the strength of Tydeus' son, And where the might of Aeacus' scion? Where is Aias' bulk? Ye vaunt them mightiest men Of all your rabble. Ha! they will not dare With me to close in battle, lest I drag Forth from their fainting frames ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... was contrary to all accepted notions of order and decency that a protected king should be used as a political instrument by a turbulent tribune. Memmius had impeached no one and had given no notice of a public trial; yet he intended to bring Jugurtha before a gathering of the rabble and ask him to blacken the names of the foremost men in Rome. It was exceedingly probable that the grotesque proceeding would lead to a breach of the peace; the sooner it was stopped, the better; and, although it was unfortunately ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... the beautiful daughter of Mihil O'Connor, the rope-maker, first met Hardress Cregan, a young gentleman fresh from college; and on the same night, as she and her father were returning homeward, they were attacked by a rabble of men and boys, and rescued by the stranger and his hunchbacked companion, Danny Mann. A few days afterwards Danny Mann visited the rope-walk, and had a long conversation with Eily, and from that time the girl's character seemed to have undergone ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... a camp meeting. We had a great many tents and a large turnout for a new country, and, perhaps, there never was a greater collection of rabble and rowdies. They came drunk and armed with dirks, clubs, knives, and horsewhips, and swore they would break up the meeting. After interrupting us very much on Saturday night, they collected on Sunday morning, determined on a general ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... done all that the friends of enlightenment and religious liberty could wish; but if ever there were a set of foolish ones to be found under heaven, surely it is the priestly rabble who came over from Rome to direct the grand movement—so long in ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... fitted, and mortised together, and a building fit for use begins to rise. Knowledge also is for use, and not primarily for storage. That simple acquisition and quantity of knowledge are not enough is illustrated by the analogy of an army. Numbers do not make an army, but a rabble. A general first enlists raw recruits, drills and trains them through a long period, and finally combines them into an effective army. Many of our ideas when first received are like disorderly raw recruits. They ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry
... expulsion of King Superbus, would have acted to the greatest injury of the public weal, if, through the desire of liberty before the people were fit for it, he had wrested the kingdom from any of the preceding kings. For what would have been the consequence, if that rabble of shepherds and strangers, runaways from their own peoples, had found, under the protection of an inviolable sanctuary, either freedom, or at least impunity for former offences, and, freed from all dread of regal authority, had begun to be distracted by ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... unmolested for a while," replied Osterberg. "The place was visited early by the rabble soldiery and they took all that was worth taking, so now I don't suppose ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... as the wild rabble past, Each flow'r droop'd its beautiful head; The groves became dusky, and moan'd in the blast, And Virtue ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... crowd was curiosity, not sympathy. Notwithstanding all that had passed before their eyes, there was but little sympathy in the hearts of that rabble. ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... servants: Khudhr and Ablahad seized the arms which were girded about them, slashing furiously with their daggers, to cut the straps of their guns and pistols. The turbans were torn from their heads, and appropriated among the rabble. Similar violence was about to be shown us, when these operations were suddenly interrupted by the appearance, from the castle, of ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... she unbound her hair and tossed the heavy mane out of her eyes and over her shoulders. "Would that we lived in days when women might do and dare somewhat for those they loved, or for their country! I should love to have to hold this house against a rabble ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... she rose and moved a few paces, then arrested her steps, and looked around her. She had lost all clew to her way homeward, and she saw with horror, in the distance, the hateful timbrel-girls, followed by the rabble, and weaving their strange dances ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... promised freedom to whatever slaves of the colony would enlist on his side, and fortified the little town. The crews of some English ships in the harbor assisted him; and in the sequel these tars were the only ones of his rabble that stayed by him. The neighborhood was alarmed, fearing any kind of enormity, and messengers rode through the woods post haste, and swam the rivers, in the sultry September weather, to find and recall their defenders, and summon ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... us not rove; let us sit at home with the cause. Let us stun and astonish the intruding rabble of men and books and institutions, by a simple declaration of the divine fact. Bid the invaders take the shoes from off their feet, for God is here within.[217] Let our simplicity judge them, and our docility to our own law ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... of this sect by George Whitfield, in 1738, they were first covered by the heavens, equally exposed to the rain and the rabble, and afterwards they occupied, for many years, a place in Steelhouse-lane, where the wags of the age observed, "they were eat out by the bugs."—They therefore procured a cast off theatre in Moor-street, where they continued to exhibit till 1782; when, quitting ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... The Northern rabble arms for greed; The hireling parson goads the train— In that foul crop from, bigot seed, Old "Praise God Barebones" howls again! We welcome them to "Southern lands," We welcome them to "Southern slaves," We welcome them "with bloody ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... these men because they were so few. When were the good and the brave ever in a majority? Would you have had him wait till that time came?—till you and I came over to him? The very fact that he had no rabble or troop of hirelings about him would alone distinguish him from ordinary heroes. His company was small indeed, because few could be found worthy to pass muster. Each one who there laid down his life for the poor and oppressed was a picked man, culled out of many thousands, if not millions; apparently ...
— A Plea for Captain John Brown • Henry David Thoreau
... little fit we are for it," wrote Pepys, who as Secretary of the Navy knew the whole position. There was the utmost difficulty in obtaining men for the ships that were being got ready for sea. The pressgangs brought in poor creatures whom the captains described as a useless rabble. There were hundreds of desertions. Happily the Dutch preparations were also backward, and England had ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... the first glimpse he'd had of Bedford Forrest—the officer sitting his big gray charger in the midst of a battle, whirling his standard to attract a broken rabble of men, knitting out of them, by sheer force of personality, a refreshed, striking force. Now Drew found himself facing quite a different person—a big, quiet, soft-spoken man who eyed ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... may never return. However, I have had diligent search made for you. All the houses of bad repute have been examined, and their inhabitants questioned. But there are so many camp-followers and other rabble at present in the town that a hundred men might disappear without our being able to obtain a clue. I doubted not indeed that your body had been thrown in the river, and that we should never hear more of you. ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... jingling of spears and scabbards; some lancers who had beaten the moors that night were coming up the street. Half a company of soldiers of the line, escorted by carabineers, came in from the country, climbing the steep street, driving before them a rabble of young men, disarmed, wounded, lame, with their hands tied behind them, the remnant of those who had met at the tomb of Asdrubal in the night just passed. They had been surprised, seized, surrounded ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... like manner. One in particular is worth mentioning. It was a monument in the new building erected to himself by Sir Humfrey Orme in his lifetime. Two words on the inscription, "Altar" and "Sacrifice," are said to have excited the fury of the rabble, and it was broken down with axes, pole-axes, and hammers. So this good old knight "outlived his own monument, and lived to see himself carried in effigie on a Souldiers back, to the publick market-place, there to be sported withall, ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... their side, were not slow to defend themselves. Burke, with his usual fairness, has stated their case for them when he tells how they painted in the strongest colors the licentiousness of the rabble and that contempt of all government which makes it necessary to oppose to a violent distemper remedies not less violent. This is, of course, the excuse of every overbearing authority, which, having aroused irritation by its own mismanagement, can conceive of no better way of allaying ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... unquestionably to arrive at a status of contract. Hitherto the principle that seems to have been accepted by organized labor, at least in America, is that of being organized for purposes of offence, not for defence; like a mob or rabble which can attack united, but retreats each for himself; which demands, but cannot give; which, like a naughty child or person non compos, is not responsible for its own actions. Still there is, as yet, no legislation aimed at or permitting a definite ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... and cheated into trust; Whilst a black piece of phlegm, that lays about Dull menaces, and terrifies the rout, And cajoles it, with all its peevish strength Piteously stretch'd and botch'd up into length, Whilst the tired rabble sleepily obey Such opiate talk, and snore away the day, By all his noise as much their minds relieves, As caterwauling of wild cats frights thieves. But Rabelais was another thing, a man Made up of all that art and nature can Form from a fiery genius,—he was ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... by these statesmen uncommon in that day. It was entertained by a very considerable number of men throughout the East and South, who looked upon the pioneers in general as renegades and vagabonds forming a "lawless rabble" on the outskirts of civilization. To them the first settlers were "lawless intruders" on the public domain, "land robbers," "fugitives from justice," and "idle and profligate characters." Squatters, they held, were those "who had gone beyond the settlement and were wholly reckless of the laws ...
— History of the Constitutions of Iowa • Benjamin F. Shambaugh
... also are those brutal soldiers, alike stupidly ready, at the word of command, to drive the nail through quivering flesh or insensate wood. Men are those scowling priests and infuriate Pharisees. Men, also, the shifting figures of the careless rabble, who shout and curse without knowing why. No visible glory shines round that head; yet how, spite of every defilement cast upon him by the vulgar rabble, seems that form to be glorified! What light is that in those eyes! What mournful beauty in that face! What solemn, mysterious sacredness investing ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... however, a man climbed the ugly fence and dropped down on the other side. Then he ran for the shelter of the long lines of cars standing on the siding. A crew of men recruited from the office force of the railroad was trying to make up a train. The rabble that had gained entrance to the yards were blocking their movements by throwing switches at the critical moment. As Sommers came up to the fence, the switching engine had been thrown into the wrong siding, and had bunted up at full speed ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... arts by which a thousand live, Where Truth may smile, and Justice may forgive. But when, amid this rabble-rout, we find A puffing poet, to his honour blind: Who slily drops quotations all about Packet or Post, and points their merit out; Who advertises what reviewers say, With sham editions every second day; Who dares not trust his praises out of sight, But hurries into fame with all his ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... night with the village rabble. He joined the Presbyterian choir, and the Temperance Society, and went to Bible Class every Sunday afternoon. And the time that was left from these engagements, she suspected, he spent ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... heartless that I can look upon such things with no pang of self-reproach? I wish that I were old and ugly, fortuneless and an outcast—or dead. Then I would not be compelled to prostitute my beauty and my talents to conspire with a rabble of scoundrels and convicts who discuss murder and assassination as if they ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... a volume than a preface, but so much as to repeat the contents of their cruel sufferings; from professors as well as from profane, and from magistrates as well as the rabble: that it may be said of this abused and despised people, they went forth weeping, and sowed in tears, bearing testimony to the precious seed, even the seed of the kingdom, which stands not in words, the finest, ...
— A Brief Account of the Rise and Progress of the People Called Quakers • William Penn
... the needy villain's general home, The common sewer of Paris and of Rome. Here malice, rapine, accident conspire, And now a rabble rages, now a fire; Their ambush mere relentless villains lay, And here the fell attorney ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... have no difficulty in beating back that rabble!" exclaimed Tony. "We must first pick off the fellows with firearms, and the others ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... and, spurning curb and rein, The felon crowns, and all our work is vain. My sceptre trembles, and all insecure Totters my crown,—a prey for every boor. Then, swift, Severus hears the welcome news, The jaundiced mind of Decius to abuse. Shall I, the rabble's lord, ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille
... him that, instead of courting this absurd sort of popularity it would be more advisable to rely on the nobility and the higher classes of society. "Gentlemen," replied he, "you may say what you please, but in the situation in which I stand my only nobility is the rabble of the faubourgs, and I know of no rabble but the nobility whom I have created." This was a strange compliment to all ranks, for it was only saying that they ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... sufferer. How often have we seen it in our public prints, that woman occupies a false station in the world! and some have gone so far as to say it was an unnatural one. So long has she been regarded a weak creature, by the rabble and illiterate—they have looked upon her as an insufficient actress on the great stage of human life—a mere puppet, to fill up the drama of human existence—a thoughtless, inactive being —that she has too often come to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... frequent travel, and I saw a large part of the civilized human world. We lived in sunny Madrid, fragrant with acacias and carnations, with its subtle dangerous atmosphere, its elegantly indolent culture, its desolate surroundings; - in restless Marseilles, full of crime and rabble, where we never felt safe; - in orderly, methodical, soberly bourgeois Berlin, where they strive so sagaciously and diligently for culture; - in blithe and beautiful Paris, where they still live on happily in ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... magnificence of her ancestral home. She had loved at once the fine old chateau with its lichen-covered walls, its fine portcullis and crenelated towers, she had wept over the torn tapestries, the broken furniture, the family portraits which a rough and impious rabble had wilfully damaged, she had loved the wide sweep of the terrace walls, the views over the Isere and across the mountain range to the peaks of the Grande Chartreuse, but above all she had loved this sombre ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... paynims* cursed olde rites! *pagans Lo! here what all their goddes may avail! Lo! here this wretched worlde's appetites! *end and reward Lo! here the *fine and guerdon for travail,* of labour* Of Jove, Apollo, Mars, and such rascaille* *rabble Lo! here the form of olde clerkes' speech, In poetry, if ye ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer |
