"Underling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... my friend coldly, are the spiritual superiors of dogs. The dog is a flunkey, a serf, an underling, a creature that is eternally watching its master. Look at Quilp at this moment. What a spectacle of servility. You don't see cats making themselves the slaves of men. They like to be stroked, but they have ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... for the theatre. The next morning I placed the whole sum in the Funds, and I now had in all about fifteen thousand francs a year. This fortune enabled me to give up book-keeping at night, and also to resign my place at the Mont-de-piete, to the great satisfaction of the underling who stepped into my shoes. My friend died in 1827, at the age of sixty-three, after founding the great banking-house of Mongenod and Company, which made enormous profits from the first loans under the Restoration. His daughter, to whom he subsequently gave ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... a gentle, even rapid voice, a little hesitating now and then, more, through the greater part of this long utterance, as if he were thinking to himself than addressing another. Neither his tone nor manner were those of an underling, but Dorothy's startled nerves had communicated their tremor to her modesty, and with a gentle 'No, sir, I thank you; I must be ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... Probably, said I to myself, he knew their castles to be impregnable, but, with the curiosity of youth, I desired to form an opinion of my own. I therefore lodged as a wayfarer at every castle to I could gain admittance, making friends with some underling, and getting a bed on occasion in the stables, although often I lodged within the castle itself. Thus I came to the belief, which I bring to you, that assisted by twenty fearless men I can capture any castle on the Rhine with the exception ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... underling of the theatre found us out and brought us, "by Mrs. Siddons' desire," to the best places the house ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... suppose, than that nicknames are the fashion in the army. To call a man simply by his honest name seems commonplace; but to christen him the "Owl" if his eyes are big, or "Old Tongs" if his legs are long, or "Step-and-fetch-it" if he suffers himself to be made the underling and cats-paw of his comrades,—that ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... thinned her tall and magnificent form, or entirely destroyed, though they had completely subdued, the quiet beauty of her face, which must once have been strikingly like that of her niece. She had been in youth the underling of her family, as her elder brother had been the tyrant; and it was perhaps a fitting sequel, that at this period of her life she should have become, to some small extent, a pensioner on his bounty, as well as a peacemaker in ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... across the countenance of Jennings, but he turned away from his underling so that he might not betray the satisfaction he felt. "Mrs. Herne is Maraquito's aunt," he ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... all their savings to bury her, and the next week, by some peculiar fatality, he had a falling out with the night editor of his paper, and was discharged. This sank deep into his sensitive soul, and he swore he would be an underling no longer—which foolish resolution was directly traceable to his hair, the color of which, it will ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... poised slantwise on his head, and converses in a strange nasal brogue with the cook, is not Mr. de Souza, "baker of superior first and second sort bread, and manufacturer of every kind of biscuit, cake," &c., but a mere underling. My intercourse with the head of the firm is confined to the first day of each month, when he waits on me in person, dressed in a smart black jacket, and presents his bill. Also on Good Friday he sends me a cake and his compliments, but the former, if it is not intercepted by the ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... unavoidably flow therefrom. 1. By this means, grace, and justification by grace, would be rejected; and that would be a foul business; it would not be reckoned of grace. 2. By this, God would become the debtor, and so the underling; and so we in this ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... ground-floor room. 'Twas hard upon tierce when he awoke, and the front door was then open; so, making as if he had just come in, he went upstairs and breakfasted. Not long afterwards he sent to his wife a young fellow, disguised as the priest's underling, who asked her if he of whom she wist had been with her again. The lady, who quite understood what that meant, made answer that he had not come that night, and that, if he continued to neglect her ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... could presage, And in Times long and dark Prospective Glass Fore-saw what future dayes should bring to pass, Your Son, said she, (nor can you it prevent) Shall subject be to many an Accident. O're all his Brethren he shall Reign as King, Yet every one shall make him underling, And those that cannot live from him asunder Ungratefully shall strive to keep him under, In worth and excellence he shall out-go them, Yet being above them, he shall be below them; 80 From others he shall stand in need of nothing, Yet on his Brothers shall depend ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... to congratulate the despised underling with pompous insincerity, whereat Louis admonished him scowlingly to beat it back to his trial balance or he'd bounce a letter-press on ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... language he employs when speaking English to Lebeau is that suited to the role of a dapper young underling of vulgar mind habituated to vulgar companionships. I feel it due, if not to Graham himself, at least to the memory of the dignified orator whose name he inherits, so to modify and soften the hardy style of that peculiar diction in which he disguises his birth and disgraces ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... he was hiding somewheres, but he would have it that he'd beat it down th' escape," said the gum-chewer, with the sombre triumph of the underling whose sound advice has been overruled by those above him. He shifted his wholesome (or, as some say, unwholesome) morsel to the other side of his mouth, and for the first time addressed Archie directly. "Ye're ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... written: 'Even leprosy may be cured, but the enmity of an official underling can never be dispelled,' and the malice of the persistent Ming-shu certainly points to the wisdom of the verse. Is the person of Kai-moo known to you, and where is the prison-house you ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... as a Christian he could not possibly look on while religion perished, and as an Englishman he would not stand aloof while his fatherland was being ruined.[288] He had never wished to be anything else than a subject—but 'only of his Queen, not the underling of an unworthy and low vassal.' So far as men saw, he stood in connexion with both the parties opposed to the prevailing system. He was prayed for in the churches of the Puritans: Cartwright was one of his friends; the Scotch doctrine, that the Supreme Power, if it showed ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... stale, musty goods as fresh, or of your washy French wines for the true Hainault vintage. I would have you to understand that my friend here and I are men who meet with some consideration in the world, though we care not to speak our names to every underling. Deserve well of us, therefore, or it may be the worse ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... quite on general principle, it being one of the cook's small tyrannies to exact religious observance from her underling, and one of Olga's Sunday morning's indulgences to oversleep and avoid the mass. Olga took the accusation meekly and without reply, being occupied at that moment in standing between Katrina and the extra ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... percentage on the whole assessment, etc.; besides extortion, confiscation, and forced sales. And woe to the new citizen of the great French republic if he failed in paying more servile homage to its officers, from the prefect down to the lowest underling, than had ever been exacted by the princes![12] Such was the liberty bestowed by republican France! Thus were her promises fulfilled! The German Illuminati were fearfully undeceived, particularly on perceiving how completely their hopes of universally revolutionizing Germany were frustrated ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... ambition; he never sat in the House of Peers, he never pushed his way to the council board, he never held quite the highest rank in any naval expedition, he never ruled with only the Queen above him even in Ireland. He who of all men hated most and deserved least to be an underling, was forced to play the subordinate all through the most brilliant part of his variegated life of adventure. It was only for a moment, at Cadiz or Fayal, that by a doubtful breach of prerogative he struggled to the surface, to sink again directly ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... his underling were on the ground before that stubborn citadel answered the reiterated summons; but at last there came the sound of bolts withdrawn. An iron bar dropped from its socket with a clang that echoed long and loud in the empty hall, the door ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... praise came from the sergeant-major who acted as chief clerk to General Bramble. He was a much-beribboned old warrior with a head like a faun and three red hairs on top of it. He had the respectful familiarity of the underling who knows he is indispensable, and he used to come in at all times of the day and criticize the ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois
... little, sleek, fat clerk of the name of Chaucer, who was so apt at rondel, sirvente, or tonson, that no man dare give back a foot from the walls, lest he find it all set down in his rhymes and sung by every underling and varlet in the camp. But, my soul's bird, you hear me prate as though all were decided, when I have not yet taken counsel either with you or with my lady mother. Let us to the chamber, while these strangers find such fare as pantry ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle |
