"Spurned" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... soul would have chosen strangling, And death by my own resolve: But I spurned it, for I shall not live for ever; Let me be, for ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... fellowship, the only hope of salvation, lay in reconciliation with the church through the removal of the awful ban which had formed half of his inheritance. To obtain this he had repeatedly offered to sacrifice his honor and his subjects, and the offer had been contemptuously spurned.... The battle of toleration against persecution had been fought and lost; nor, with such a warning as the fate of the two Raymonds, was there risk that other potentates would disregard the public opinion of Christendom by ill-advised mercy ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... was an absorbing mystery to me. But the current moment never puzzled me. What I chose instinctively to do I knew to be right and in accordance with my destiny. I never hesitated over great things, but answered promptly to the call of my genius. So what was it to me whether my neighbors spurned or embraced me, if my way was no man's way? Nor should any one ever reject me whom I chose to be my friend, because I would make sure of a kindred spirit by the coincidence ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... I ever loved, father, and he spurned me. Do you remember that Christmas when I was in boarding-school and you were called South on business? I wanted to visit Nancy Long, but you wouldn't let me because you didn't like her father; and you got Mrs. ...
— Jerry • Jean Webster
... holding up a mirror before them in which they might see themselves, when he said, "It is not meet to take the children's bread and cast it to dogs;" and he ultimately showed them that she was better far than many who would have spurned her from their presence. So from the kindness showed to aliens by the Lord himself, we may learn not only to beware of this leaven of the Pharisees, but also to deal kindly and truly with men of every race, and make them sharers with us in ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... and how Enceladus (whom Etna cumbers now) Shouldered me Pelion with its swinging pines, The river unrecked, that did its broken flood Spurt on his back: before the mountainous shock The rank-ed gods dislock, Scared to their skies; wide o'er rout-trampled night Flew spurned the pebbled stars: those splendours then Had tempested on earth, star upon star Mounded in ruin, if a longer war Had quaked Olympus and cold-fearing men. Then did the ample marge And circuit of thy targe Sullenly redden all the vaward ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... the greatest and wealthiest of the stars of fashion. About this time, her hitherto inseparable companion made a slip with a certain amorous manager; and such was the indignation of our moral heroine on the discovery, that she spurned the unfortunate from her for ever, and actually turned the offending spark out of doors herself, accompanying the act with a very unladylike demonstration of her vengeance. B——d, her most obsequious servant, died suddenly. Poor ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... the gloom and lay in a black huddle upon the lumber amidships, until a boarding wave kindly removed it and spurned it upon the beach as it would a drowned dog. Ten minutes later the foremast went and the life-savers, dashing into the surf, took out of the rigging ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... too, had risen the serenade of the man she had spurned and insulted; and there she had come to worship the stars when Crailey bade her look to them. And now the strange young teacher was paying the bitter price for his fooleries—and who could doubt that the price was a bitter one? To ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... storm, or to turn one's back upon the sunshine, till to-day. PUNCH'S thermometer decides the question, and here we give a diagram of it. Owing a stern and solemn duty to the public, PUNCH has indignantly spurned the offers of the British Association to join in their mummeries at Plymouth—to appear at their dinners for the debasement of science. No; here in his own pages, and in them only, doth he propound his invention. But he is not exclusive; having published his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various
... could claim this as sincerely as Donaldson. He had lived conscientiously, so very conscientiously in fact that it was as much rebellion against self-imposed fetters which now drove him on to an opposite extreme as any bitterness against that society which had spurned his idealism. He had refused to compromise and learned that the world uses only as martyrs those who so refuse. The limitations of his nature were defined by the fact that he withdrew from so self sacrificing an end as that. But now if he demanded nothing more—if he was tired of this ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... prayer Senanus spurned; The winds blew fresh, the bark returned; But legends hint, that had the maid Till morning's light delayed, And given the saint one rosy smile, She ne'er had left his ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... those who spurned me without a hearing, who heaped injustice and ignominy upon me, who drove me from country to country, whereas I offered them superiority, ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... tried the old weapons against the little government at Turin. For many generations the House of Savoy had been dutifully submissive to religious control; nowhere out of Spain had heresy been treated more cruelly; yet here, too, the Vatican claim was spurned. But the final humiliation took place some years later under Urban VIII.,—the same pontiff who wrecked papal infallibility on Galileo's telescope. He tried to enforce his will on the state of Lucca, which, in the days ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... hour arrived, the dismal cart was seen slowly mounting the hill, the noisy throng was hushed into solemn silence; the wretched criminal mounted the scaffold, when again the sheriff asked him to sign his acceptance of the commutation proposed; but he spurned the paper from him, and cried ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... not known and accepted sorrow is strangely crude and untaught; it can neither help nor teach, for it has never learned. The life that has spurned the lesson of sorrow, or failed to read it aright, is cold and hard. But the life that has been disciplined by sorrow is courageous and full ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... Isidore. Yes—I spurned it.— He promised us I know not what—in vain! Then with a look and voice that overawed me, 100 He said, What mean you, friends? My life is dear: I have a brother and a promised wife, Who make life dear to me—and if I fall, That brother will roam earth and hell for ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... noble heart, In all its glowing youth, His lore had turned and spurned apart Its tenderness and truth— Let him alone to live, or die— Alone!—Yet, who is she? Some guardian angel from the sky, To bless and ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... forces from Kilkenny against the Irish. Several of the inferior chiefs hastened barefoot and with halters round their necks to implore his mercy; but M'Murchad spurned the idea of submission, and boasted that he would extirpate the invaders. He dared not indeed meet them in open combat; but it was his policy to flee before them, and draw them into woods and morasses, where they could neither fight with advantage ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Wm. R. Turner has trampled upon and spurned with contempt the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus which is guaranteed to all citizens by the Constitution of the United States and by the constitution of the State of California, and fined and imprisoned the Hon. ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... was that had come over Aloysia it is impossible to tell. The first thought is that, having risen to prominence by Mozart's tuition and assistance, she spurned the ladder that had uplifted her. But Nohl's theory that her head was turned by her admission to the favour that quickly surrounds the successful prima donna is hardly to be held, in view of the fact that in rejecting a man of Mozart's ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... horseback, touching neither food nor drink. By night she was a league beyond the foremost of them, and fell upon the King encamped in the Desert, with the loose remnant of his forces. Mashalleed, when he had looked on her, forgot his affliction, and stood up to embrace her, but Bhanavar spurned him, crying, 'A time for this in the time of disgrace?' Then ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... daughter of the river god Peneus, and with the golden one Apollo, through the heart. Forthwith the god was seized with love for the maiden, and she abhorred the thought of loving. Her delight was in woodland sports and in the spoils of the chase. Many lovers sought her, but she spurned them all, ranging the woods, and taking no thought of Cupid nor of Hymen. Her father often said to her, "Daughter, you owe me a son-in-law; you owe me grandchildren." She, hating the thought of marriage as a crime, with her beautiful face tinged all over ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... replied Pickersgill, 'if I tell you that I have as good a right to quarter my arms as Lord B. himself; and that I am not under my real name. Smuggling is, at all events, no crime; and I infinitely prefer the wild life I lead at the head of my men to being spurned by society because I am poor. The greatest crime in this country is poverty. I may, if I am fortunate, some day resume my name. You may, perhaps, meet me, and if you ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the Ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned with contempt from the foot of the throne. In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free, if we mean to preserve inviolate those ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... is she—the good ship Hankow Lin; one of the best of the old-fashioned tea-traders that as yet spurned the modern innovation of the Suez Canal, and despised, in the majesty of their spreading canvas, the despicable agency of steam! A sound, teak-built, staunch, ship-rigged vessel of 1200 tons register, and classed A1 at Lloyd's for ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... word; and they bled and blistered till they left me neither skin nor blood. However, they beat off the foul fiend, and I am bound to praise the bridge which carried me over. I am still very totterish, and very giddy, kept to panada, or rather to porridge, for I spurned at all foreign slops, and adhered to our ancient oatmeal manufacture.[60] But I have no apprehension of any return of the serious part of the malady, and I am now recovering my strength, though looking ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... subjection of the mental to the animal nature cannot long proceed without betraying the succours of reason. When the bands of morality are thus spurned, a man rapidly sins his understanding into lameness; as its better forces must needs be quickly rotted in such a vapour-bath of sensuality. In this way an overweening pride of wit often results in causing a man to be deserted by his wits; this too in matters where he feels surest of them and has ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... the laws which have established your Church—even by the recent answer of your University of Oxford to the lay address against Dr. Pusey, &c., where the Church of England is justly styled the Reformed Protestant Church. The name itself is spurned at with indignation by the greater half, at least, of the inhabitants of the United Kingdom. The judgment of the whole indifferent world—the common sense of humanity—agrees with the judgment of the ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... ourselves before the Throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hand of the Ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the Throne. In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free—if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... He flew to the wild nations of the north, the riders of wild horses, with sharp scimitars and long lances. For three days and three nights did the hoofs of his fiery steed strike fire upon the flints, which he spurned in his impetuous course, and then, as an immortal poet hath already sung, "he bowed his head and died." With the portrait of the peerless Chaoukeun in his bosom, and his mandarin garments raised up under each arm, the miscreant Suchong Pollyhong ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... on her ear unheeded: they were drowned by the storm within. Pride was the first feeling which dominated the warring elements that raged in her soul. She tore her hand from that which clasped hers with so loyal a respect. She could have spurned the form that knelt at her feet, not for love, but for pardon. She pointed to the door with the gesture of an insulted queen. She knew no more till she was alone. Then came that rapid flash of conjecture ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... incapable, had he been desirous, to have checked the career of his guide. Practised as Sir Kenneth was in horsemanship from his earliest youth, the speediest horse he had ever mounted was a tortoise in comparison to those of the Arabian sage. They spurned the sand from behind them; they seemed to devour the desert before them; miles flew away with minutes—and yet their strength seemed unabated, and their respiration as free as when they first started upon the wonderful ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... disapprove was evident. The dazzling brown eyes, with the afternoon sun glinting between their thick dark fringes, hated me for something;—was it my existence, or my advertisement? Then they wandered to Terry, and pitied, rather than spurned. "You poor, handsome, big fellow," they seemed so say, "so you are that miserable little man's chauffeur! You must be very unfortunate, or you would have found a better career. I'm ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... to tell of the fathers were better, And of how we were fashioned from out of the earth; Of how the once lowly spurned strong at the fetter; Of the days of the deeds ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... knowledge of the town, he had gained advantage over the prophet of Nazareth, who was a stranger, and had found a ground on which he might reject his claims. Simon knew the character of this woman. Believing that Jesus, as a righteous man, would have spurned her away if he had known what she was, he thought he saw in the fact of his bearing with her an evidence that he was ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... unceremoniously treated ever met the eyes of Lord Byron, I know not; but he could hardly, I think, had he seen it, have escaped a slight touch of remorse at having thus spurned from him a portrait drawn in no unfriendly spirit, and, though affectedly expressed, seizing some of the less obvious features of his character,—as, for instance, that diffidence so little to be expected from a career like his, with the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... Dolores spurned the body with her foot, and abruptly turned back, in a rage to think that she had permitted the giant slave to order her into skulking security. She halted as swiftly as she had turned; for in the aperture at the end of the passage ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... perhaps,' said Miss Dartle, with a smile, as if she could have spurned the body of the ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... and from other causes which we have already mentioned in this book. But it would be published "from Dan to Beersheba" that it had received a fair trial and, after being "weighed in the balance and found wanting," had been spurned from the county with contumely ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... military men, at the period when the battering-ram and cross-bow were chief implements in war, it is probable that the civilians would have treated the author as a wild visionary, and that the professional council, true to the esprit de corps, would have spurned the supposed insult to their superior understanding. Science and the arts, both of peace and war, nevertheless, in despite of all such retarding causes, have advanced, and probably will advance, until effects and consequences accrue which ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... they remain stationary and wait for me to attack them, I shall inflict upon them a crushing defeat at Ulm. It is time for me to make these overbearing Germans feel the whole weight of my wrath. and, as they have spurned my friendship, to crush them by my enmity. That little Emperor of Austria dares to menace me; I shall prove to him that menacing me is bringing about one's own ruin. I shall assemble my forces here ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... back over our lives, how keen will be our regret as we realize what we have missed, how we have spurned the substance of life's lasting treasures, human loves, friendships, every-day beauties, and happiness, while chasing the shadows of ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... Plutarch's marble mould, Of virtues strong and manifold, Who spurned the incense of the hour, And made the ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... into ill-repute with his Creator, and also Adam's love for her that drove him from the Garden of Eden. Brethren, God is good to mankind, ever ready to listen to his appeals. If Adam had only believed in the greatness as well as the goodness of God, he would have spurned the woman who had dared to so flagrantly disobey, instead of ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... the great end of self-perfecting. He had said: "What does it matter whether I am an architect or a printer, so long as I improve myself to the best of my powers?" He hated young men who talked about improving themselves. He spurned the Young Men's Mutual Improvement Society (which had succeeded the Debating Society—defunct through over-indulgence in early rising). Nevertheless in his heart he was far more enamoured of the idea of improvement than the worst prig of them all. He could never for ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... best," he told her, "would have resorted to little feminine ways of humbling such a blunderer as I have been: they would have spurned him for weeks; made him come to them on his knees; perhaps have thought that his brutality of a moment outweighed all his love. When I saw you coming to meet me half-way—oh, Grizel, tell me that you were ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... teachers and pupils last fall.... Through the influence of the Chamber of Commerce the employers prevailed on their employees to get vaccinated. Also to have everyone of their family vaccinated. The consequence was that the people got vaccinated by tens of thousands. Men who formerly spurned the vaccinator from their door came now to his office.... The ...
— Health Work in the Public Schools • Leonard P. Ayres and May Ayres
... of the Dresden, was a man of action. Therefore, he spurned the suggestion of having his ship interned. And his last words to the German consul, as he stepped aboard his ship and ordered that she ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... had witnessed the girl's wild impulse to follow her lover to the depths of the harbor, and her own heart gave swift interpretation. She was alive because a Northern boy, deemed incapable of anything better than selfish, reckless love-making, had unhesitatingly risked his life to save one who had spurned him. Even Mrs. Hunter's prejudice had been compelled to yield, and she to admit the young fellow's nobility, of which she was a living proof. The wretched thought haunted Mara that Owen Clancy, unblinded, had discovered for himself, what had been forced upon her, ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... moment she listened, then dragged her dress from his hand and spurned him with her foot. There was something so cruel in the gesture and the action, so full of deadly hate and loathing, that Alan, who witnessed it, experienced a new revulsion of feeling towards the Asika. What kind of a woman must she be, he wondered, who could treat a discarded ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... the veil of charlatanism with which you have enveloped yourself. The world shall at length discover the nature of the idol they have worshipped. All your meanness, all your falsehood, all your selfishness, all your baseness, shall be revealed. I may be spurned, but at any rate ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... the Earth was the like of it done In the gaze of the sun? She had pleaded and prayed to be counted still As one of our household through good and ill, And with scorn they replied; Jeered at her loyalty, trod on her pride, Spurned her, repulsed her, Great-hearted Ulster; Flung ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... and removed his beard. Instead of railing at the new school, he began to approve of it, and it soon came to the ears of the horrified Established minister, who had a man (Established) in his eye for the appointment, that the dominie was looking ten years younger. As he spurned a pension he had to get the place, and then began a warfare of bickerings between the Board and him, that lasted until within a few weeks of his death. In his scholastic barn the dominie had thumped the Latin grammar into his scholars till they became ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... surrounded with all the mockery of external homage, but incessantly exposed to the most ignominious insults, and guarded with sleepless vigilance from the possibility of escape. The name of the queen was the watchword of popular execration and rage. In the pride of her lofty spirit, she spurned all apologies, explanations, or attempts at conciliation. Inclosing herself in the recesses of her palace, she heard with terror and resentment, but with an unyielding soul, the daily acts of violence perpetrated against royalty and all of its friends. All her trusty servants were removed, ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... says the elegant Narcissus Hare, with a shiver; 'a great, grim, solemn, limping monster, that Brummel would have spurned in disgust! And he to win our ladies with their delicate loveliness! Faugh, sir! ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... trespassed on forbidden ground; and so much did the shepherd hate her from that time forward that, in order to escape from her, he determined to quit the country and go where he should never set eyes on her again. Torralva, when she found herself spurned by Lope, was immediately smitten with love for him, though she had never loved ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... a long one," I thought; for, though I was in great pain, I found, to my intense delight, that I could accommodate myself to Sandho's long swinging gallop as he spurned the soft loose earth behind him, the ascent being exceedingly slight; and we were progressing in a series of ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... sinless!" How very light dost thou take it, 36 To change thy ways! E'en of Misraim shalt thou be ashamed(170) As ashamed of Ashshur. Out of this too shalt thou come 37 With thy hands on thy head, For spurned hath the Lord the things of thy trust, Not ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... and ride!" He mouthed the order, not daring to pull up Shawnee, already past Boyd and his horses. The roan's hoofs spurned gravel from the track line now. And Boyd drew level with him and mounted one of the horses, continuing to lead the other. There was a cattle guard ahead to afford some protection from the storm churning along ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... otherwise than inconsolable, when I call to mind the agonized demeanor of the dear one on the occasion of my disowning her? When cruelly I spurned her from my presence, She fain had left me; but the young recluse, Stern as the Sage, and with authority As from his saintly master, in a voice That brooked not contradiction, bade her stay. Then through her pleading eyes, bedimmed with tears, She cast on me one long reproachful ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... present with less reverence of Protestant institutions than it did ten years ago, is due to one of these institutions in particular; viz. to the Scottish kirk, and specifically to the minority in that body. They it was who spurned all mutual toleration, all brotherly indulgence from either side to what it regarded as error in the other. Consequently upon their consciences lies the responsibility of having weakened the pillars of the ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... him from head to foot with a bitterness and contempt unutterable—a handsome six-foot animal, with his small brain filled with smaller, worn-out prejudices! The way of escape had been set before him, and he had spurned it—and her! ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... turned back, spurned but not knowing it, and the beautiful woman with red shame in her soul followed him with downcast face. In the church porch she lifted up her face as she said with her fair, false mouth: "Tom, isn't it funny how those kind ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... royal treasury. The houses of the senators were plentifully stored with gold and silver; and the avarice of Bessas had labored with so much guilt and shame for the benefit of the conqueror. In this revolution, the sons and daughters of Roman consuls lasted the misery which they had spurned or relieved, wandered in tattered garments through the streets of the city and begged their bread, perhaps without success, before the gates of their hereditary mansions. The riches of Rusticiana, the daughter of Symmachus and widow of Boethius, had been generously devoted to alleviate the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... though she now seems so coldly heartless and so rashly heedless of her fame, yet who knows what she might have been if fettered by the love of a spirit more imperious than her own? Who can tell how the great good that is within her might then have conquered the evil, and her soul have spurned its present headstrong course, and gloriously aroused itself to its sole great duty of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... we cherished illusion, and spurned at all evidence; till, at length, the passage across the bar being cut off; and the communication with Alexandria intercepted, we found that our situation was altered; and that, separated from the mother-country, we were ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... selfish even in gratitude. How strangely had it changed my feelings towards this man! I was begging the hand which, but a few days before, in the pride of my morality, I had spurned from me as ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... of an ordinary donkey, but with the build and sturdy shapeliness of a well-bred pony, they literally spurned the ground with their hoofs in their efforts to get away, for after them in swift chase came three Kaffirs, well-mounted upon sturdy cobs, ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... monks who have taken vows of modest competency (about 1000 pounds a year, derived from consols), who spurn popularity as medieval monks spurned money—and with about as much sincerity. Their great object is to try and find out what they like and then get it. They do not live in one building, and there are no vows of celibacy, but, in practice, when any member marries he drifts away ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... McGuffey gazed seaward. He was slower than his shipmates in making up his mind that the mate had really deserted them and sailed away with the fortunes of the syndicate. Of the three, however, the stoical engineer accepted the situation with the best grace. He spurned the white sand with his foot and faced Mr. Gibney and Captain Scraggs with just the suspicion of a grin on ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... bread and meat and a little mug of beer. She put the mug down on the stones of the yard, and gave me the bread and meat without looking at me, as insolently as if I were a dog in disgrace. I was so humiliated, hurt, spurned, offended, angry, sorry,—I cannot hit upon the right name for the smart—God knows what its name was,—that tears started to my eyes. The moment they sprang there, the girl looked at me with a quick delight in having been the cause of them. This ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... forcibly overcome me. He anticipated no resistance, imagining that he had an easy prey; but, at that very instant when he thought he was about to intoxicate his vile soul with the delicious draught of sensual delight, I spurned him from me as I would have spurned the most loathsome reptile that crawls amid the foetid horrors of a dungeon vault.—That was the moment of my triumph; I had led him step by step, until he felt assured of his ultimate success: ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... dazed, Fear and confusion wherever he gazed; Order insulted, authority spurned, Dread and distraction wherever he turned— Oh, the great King Splosh was a sad, sore king, With never a statesman to straighten ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... was low, near Wut-a-qut-o's brow, when at last slowly and lingeringly, and with feet that, as it were, spurned each step they made, Elizabeth took her way to the house. But no sooner did her feet touch the doorstep than her listless and sullen mood gave place to a fit of lively curiosity — to see what Winthrop had done. She turned to the left into ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... shall be.(247) To Mithila the suitors pressed Their power and might to manifest. To all who came with hearts aglow I offered Siva's wondrous bow. Not one of all the royal band Could raise or take the bow in hand. The suitors' puny might I spurned, And back the feeble princes turned. Enraged thereat, the warriors met, With force combined my town beset. Stung to the heart with scorn and shame, With war and threats they madly came, Besieged my peaceful walls, and long To Mithila did grievous wrong. There, wasting all, a year they lay, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... You were determined to make a fool of yourself. But rest easy. She is ignorant where this offer came from, and, moreover, she spurned it, as Mr. Carmichael's clerk will affirm. Oh, Gretchen is a fine little woman, and I would to God she was of your station!" And the mask fell from the regent's face, leaving it bitter and careworn. "Our presence is known in Dreiberg; it has been ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... a rival, who Did fiercely gage him to a duel, And, being luckier of the two, Defeated him with triumph cruel; Then she may have proved false, and turned To welcome to her arms his foe, Left him despairing, conquered, spurned— I cannot tell—I do ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... all within her power to avert the impending storm. Her petitions had been spurned from the foot of the English throne. Even the illustrious Dr. Franklin, venerable in years, was forced to listen to a vile diatribe against him delivered by the coarse and brutal Wedderburn, while members of the Privy Council who were present, with the single exception ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... spot where Almia's burning eyes glowed through the crevices of the foliage. Wildly galloping, cavalryman after cavalryman passed her by. The eyes of the horses flashed fire, and their nostrils were widely distended as if they smelt the battle from afar. Their powerful necks were curved; their hoofs spurned the echoing earth; and their riders, with flashing blades waved high above their heads, shouted aloud their battle-cry, while their tall plumes floated madly in the surging air. And, above the thunder of the hoofs, and the clinking and the clanking of the bits ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... crumb by crumb; Nor ever cared that still above your head The shadow grew; for that your lips were dumb. You knew full keenly you could never wed: 'Twas all a dream: the end must surely come; For not on thee her father's eyes were turned To find a son, when mighty lords were spurned. ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... waited till evening, and finding me in the little garden attached to our house, he savagely upbraided me for preferring Cuthbert's society to his, claimed me as his, by right of devotion; and when I spurned him indignantly, and forbade him to speak to me in future, he became infuriated, rushed into the cottage, and disclosed all that ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... to vice, my constitutional temperament broke forth with redoubled ardor, and I spurned even the common restraints of decency in the mad infatuation of my revels. But it were absurd to pause in the detail of my extravagance. Let it suffice, that among spendthrifts I out-Heroded Herod, and that, giving name to a multitude of novel follies, I added no ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... for the brightness of thy smile, must have eternal gloom, And for the music of thy voice, the silence of the tomb. The time is come. See how he points his eager hand this way! See how his eyes gloat on thy grief, like a kite's upon the prey! With all his wit, he little deems, that, spurned, betrayed, bereft, Thy father hath in his despair one fearful refuge left. He little deems that in this hand I clutch what still can save Thy gentle youth from taunts and blows, the portion of the slave; ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... would be he who had killed her, by his cruelty, no less surely than if with his own hand he had struck her down. He had been so dazzled by his own superiority, so blinded by his own glory, that he had ruthlessly spurned and spoiled the image of God in this fair creature, whom he might have had for his own treasure,—whom, please God, he would yet have, at any cost, to love and cherish while they both should live. There were difficulties—they ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... from roots, berries and herbs," eagerly went on the old man. "Only a dollar a bottle or six for five dollars. If them as were here before you had taken it they'd be alive to-day. But they were scoffers. They spurned me and look what ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker
... bring about this nomination, and its managers planned to make Mr. Webster Vice-President on the ticket with the victorious soldier. Such an offer was a melancholy commentary on his ambitious hopes. He spurned the proposition as a personal indignity, and, disapproving always of the selection of military men for the presidency, openly refused to give his assent to Taylor's nomination. Other trials, however, were still in store for him. Mr. ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... Our fathers were brought to the brink of ruin by their valour and devotion; we, their sons, have just passed through all the horrors of a siege, and now we are forced to plead for our lives. Outcasts from our fatherland, spurned and rejected of all, we are thrown upon your mercy; and much we fear that your ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... They think the like thoughts, talk the same language. They are led to them by the true Satanic impulse, for it is their triumph to reign in hell—their misery to serve in heaven. Flattered by the dregs and refuse of society, they endeavour to forget that they are avoided, spurned, trodden on, by any thing higher. Just when it was too late to profit by the discovery, old Brammel found out his mistake; and then he sagaciously vowed, that if his time were to come over again, he would educate his boy in a very different manner. His first attempt had certainly been ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... Havana, while he went on his way to Mexico and Vera Cruz. With my habitual extreme indifference to politics (having, in fact, always hated them), I have forgotten to say WHY we were going to Mexico. It was the eternal old story. Demands timidly made and then spurned, insufficient force for action merely increasing the insolence of our opponents, and then the necessity for sending a large and expensive expedition to finish up with. A score of war-vessels, including four frigates and two bomb- vessels, were soon ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... Confederacy propose to adjust the pending difficulties by peaceful and equitable negotiations, but Virginia used again and again the most earnest and noble efforts to prevent a resort to the sword. These overtures having been proudly spurned, and our beloved South having been threatened with invasion and subjugation, it seemed to me that nothing was left us but stern resistance, or abject submission, to unconstitutional power. A brave and generous people could not for a moment hesitate ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... in the quest of fortune, Nicholas, who had spurned all further connection with his uncle, stood one day outside a registry office in London. And as he stood there looking at the various placards in the window, an old gentleman, a sturdy old fellow in broad-skirted blue ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... my country, the hour Of thy pride and thy splendour has passed. And the chain which was spurned in thy moment of power, Hangs heavy around ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... greater sinner to be found than she? How long she had known this story! How long she had known and believed of a certainty that Jesus Christ lived and died that she might have salvation, and yet she had never in her life thanked him for it! Nay, she had spurned and scorned his gift! So much worse than though she had not believed it at all! For then at least she could not have been said to have met him with the insult ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... wider usefulness in distant fields. Oh for the presence and counsel of Bonaventure! It is true, here was Mr. Tarbox, so kind, and so replete with information; so shrewd and so ready to advise. She spurned the thought of leaning on him; and yet the oft-spurned thought as often returned. Already his generous interest had explored her pecuniary affairs, and his suggestions, too good to be ignored, had moulded them into better shape, and enlarged their net ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... to be chained to the wall. He sprang at his jailer and tried to strangle him, and gnashed his teeth, and shook his fists in impotent rage at Osmond Mounchensey. But again his mood changed, and he would supplicate for mercy, crawling on the floor, and trying to kiss the feet of his enemy, who spurned him from him. Then he fell sick, and refused his food; and, as the sole means of preserving his life, he was removed to an airier chamber. But as it speedily appeared, this was only a device to enable him ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... sensational romance of the present day, towards which, when really good, the Baron owns to having a decided leaning—it is interesting to note how brave Sir WALTER defied the existing fashion in novels of his own time, spurned the sentimental "Mordaunts," the "Belvilles," and such like played-out names of ancient chivalry, laughed at the heroine "with a profusion of auburn hair and a harp," and, like the Magician of the North that he was, boldly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 8, 1893 • Various
... but any time I want noise I'll take to a boiler-shop or a Union Station, where I can understand what's coming off. I'm for a good-mother show. Do you remember The White Slave, Jim? Well, that's me. Wasn't it immense where the main lady spurned the leering villain's gold and exclaimed with flashing eye, "Rags are royal raiment when worn for virtue's sake." Great! The White Slave had Die Walkure beaten to a pulp, and they don't get to you for ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... of the boy we both remembered. He had grown a ragged beard and a moustache that hung about his face like a neglected creeper. He was stout and bent and older than his years. But he spurned the platform with a stamping stride which even I remembered in an instant, and which was enough for Raffles before he saw ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... reptile, clasped his knees in my arms, entreating mercy and justice. But no," and the voice of Matilda grew deeper, and her form became more erect; "neither mercy nor justice dwelt in that hard heart, and he spurned me rudely from him. Nothing short of the production of him he persisted in calling my vile paramour, would satisfy him; but my ignoble parent had received from me the reward of his secrecy, and he had departed once more to the Canadas. And thus," pursued ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... of bitterness and anger; but, as he passed under the palace windows, he heard his mother weeping, and the sound softened his heart, so that his wrath died down, and a great loneliness fell upon him, because he was spurned by both father and mother. ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... tailor could furnish; and it is possible that the emphatic notice of various kinds which was drawn toward Miss Tulliver on this public occasion, threw a very strong and unmistakable light on her subsequent conduct in many minds then present. Not that anger, on account of spurned beauty can dwell in the celestial breasts of charitable ladies, but rather that the errors of persons who have once been much admired necessarily take a deeper tinge from the mere force of contrast; and also, that to-day Maggie's conspicuous position, for the first ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... of this modern youth? His father, in the romantic 'nineties, usually conquered the life of his elders, seldom complained of it, never spurned it. His son-in-the-novel is born into a world of intense sensation, usually disagreeable. Instead of a "Peter Ibbetson" boyhood, he encounters disillusion after disillusion. At the age of seven or thereabout he sees through his parents and characterizes them in a phrase. At fourteen he sees ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... Madame Hulot; he beheld her like a lily in the last of its bloom, vague sensations rose within him, but he felt such respect for this saintly creature that he spurned all suspicions and buried them in the most profligate corner ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... rank, fashion, and culture rejoiced in him. Lord mayors, lord chief justices, and magnates of many kinds were his hosts; he was desired in country houses, and his bold genius captivated the favor of periodicals which spurned the rest of our nation. But in his own country it was different. In proportion as people thought themselves refined they questioned that quality which all recognize in him now, but which was then the inspired knowledge of the simple-hearted multitude. I went with him ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... wealth. And I've tenfold more! Listen, old man! You spurned me from your door. But I did not despair. I secured a contract for furnishing the Army of the ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 3 • Charles Farrar Browne
... firmness, and my justice—those three great qualities without which no government is possible—easily satisfied these natures, still untrained and unsophisticated. But one thing, however, disquieted them. Was I brave? This is what they were ignorant of, and frequently asked of one another. They spurned the idea of being commanded by a man who might not be intrepid in the face of danger. I had indeed made several expeditions against banditti, but they had produced no result, and would not serve as proofs of ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... was a time when my cheek burned To give such scornful words the lie, Ungoverned nature madly spurned The law that bade it not defy. Oh, in the days of ardent youth I would have given my ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... The savage spurned the worthless rags, and perceiving that the shawl had already become a prize to another, his bantering but sullen smile changing to a gleam of ferocity, he dashed the head of the infant against a rock, and cast its quivering remains to her very feet. For an instant the ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... stuck it out until the war had come, and patriotism had flared, and the staunch old soldier had spurned this—changeling. ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... security, despite their infallible principles, there lurks in these higher segments a hidden fear, a nervous trembling, a sense of insecurity. And this is due to their upbringing. They know that the sages, statesmen and artists whom today they revere, were yesterday spurned as swindlers and charlatans. And the higher the segment in the triangle, the better defined is this fear, this modern sense of insecurity. Here and there are people with eyes which can see, minds which can correlate. They say to themselves: "If the science of the day before yesterday is rejected ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... Convention of 1864 declared the war a failure. The loyal people scorned the words and fought on to an unconditional victory. The Democratic Convention of 1868 declares that the war debt shall be repudiated. And their words will be equally spurned by the same honorable people." Pendleton failed to secure the nomination, which went to Seymour, on the twenty-second ballot, with Francis P. Blair, Jr., for the Vice-Presidency, but the "Ohio idea" was embodied in the platform of the party, although ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... pacified; some he silenced. He invited all to withdraw their lands and moneys from his charge, and some accepted the invitation. They spurned his parting advice to sell, and the policy they then adopted, and never afterward modified, was that "all or nothing" attitude which, as years rolled by, bled them to penury in those famous cupping-leeching-and-bleeding establishments, the courts of Louisiana. You may see their grandchildren, ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... exactions in kind, and indignantly spurned every offer of accepting money, the very idea of which, he said, shocked his delicacy of feeling. But his demands became so extravagant that the city of Lubeck was utterly unable to satisfy them. Besides his table, which was provided in the same style of profusion ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... state he lost all civil rights and forfeited all his property. No one might speak to him, feed him, or shelter him. This terrible penalty, it is well to point out, was usually imposed only after the sinner had received a fair trial and had spurned ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... Nelly. Lady Etheridge, you spurned me! you chased me from your doors! what! shall humanity in any shape be worried by your pampered dogs? when youth was fresh upon our brows, our steps light upon the green, and our hearts still more light with innocence, had then the Lady Etheridge more admirers ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... the table, any other verdict was not to be expected. But a jury differently composed, a jury of Englishmen, with their country, their liberties and their lives perilled to the last extremity by misgovernment and maladministration of law, would have spurned the law and the evidence, and relied on the great fundamental rights of humanity so flagrantly outraged by the Government that then ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... father and banishing him to the Pale, where, after passing some years in captivity, he died. He was, no doubt, urged to do this, lest by some chance the son of the baron of Dungannon should be adopted by England as the rightful heir, and made Earl of Tyrone. This title he spurned, and proclaimed himself the O'Neill, the true representative of the ancient kings of Ulster, to which office he was elected by his people, taking the usual oath with his foot upon the sacred stone. This was an open defiance of English power, and he prepared to abide ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... the margin. 'Tis well that the King should know our opinion on such matters. Know, then, you most traitorous and unnatural rebels, that this good father whom ye have spurned has stepped in between yourselves and the laws which ye have offended. At his command we withhold from ye the chastisement which ye have merited. If ye can indeed pray, and if your soul-cursing conventicles have not driven all grace out of ye, drop on your knees ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the flanks of his horse with his heels (on which there were no spurs) and at once beating the air powerfully twice or thrice with its wings it spurned the turf of Berkshire and made out southward and upward into the sunlit air, a pleasing and a ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... without love—servitude without loyalty—foulness of speech—dishonesty of dealing—grinning contempt of all things good and generous. The throne is surrounded by men whom the former Charles would have spurned from his footstool. The altar is served by slaves whose knees are supple to every being but God. Rhymers, whose books the hangman should burn, pandars, actors, and buffoons, these drink a health and throw a main with ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... prophetic manner always took me back to the Fifth-Monarchy men. He was most successful that day, bringing back horses, cattle, provisions, and prisoners; and one of the latter complained bitterly to me of being held, stating that Captain R. had promised him speedy liberty. But that doughty official spurned the imputation of such weak blandishments, in ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... be wondered that a nature as sensitive, as impetuous, and as generous as his, should put its whole force into the attempt to alleviate for others the evils of those systems from which he had himself suffered. Many advantages attended his birth; he spurned them all when balanced with what he considered his duties. He was generous ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... her husband for that he had publicly insulted her, but Herod schemes to use his influence over the Jews to further his plan to become a real monarch instead of a Roman Tetrarch. But when the pro-consul Vitellius wins the support of the people and Herod learns that the maiden who has spurned him is in love with the prophet, he decrees his decapitation. Salome, baffled in her effort to save her lover, attempts to kill Herodias; but the wicked woman discloses herself as the maiden's mother and Salome turns the dagger against ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... but given me the kind attention which a master gives to a dog, I would have followed you like a dog to the world's end, and died for you—like a dog, too," he added, in an under-tone. "But you have used me as a stepping-stone; thinking that, like such, I could be spurned aside when you were done with me. You have not thought that I am not a stone or a block, but a man, with a man's heart within me. And it is now as a man that I speak to you, because you force me to ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... raged on. But I am glad here to recall the fact that when, at a later period, one of the worst inventors of slander against Mr. Blaine sought reward in the shape of office from President Cleveland, he was indignantly spurned. ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... divided, not through our fault or failure, but by Soviet design. They, not we, began the cold war. And because the free world saw this happen because men know we made the effort and the Soviet rulers spurned it—the free nations have accepted leadership from our Republic, in meeting and mastering ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various |
