"Abject" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... softness in her glance, that stirred my heart until I trembled with the intensity of the passion that I must needs conceal. And even while I was feeling that I must tell her all, and have done with it, tell her that I was her abject slave, and she my goddess, my queen; that in the face of such a love as mine no man could have any claim upon her; even then, there arose the still, small voice that began to call me an unfaithful steward and to remind ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... were furious, and represented to the Pope that he himself was the character intended by Simplicio, the philosopher whose opinions get alternately refuted and ridiculed by the other two, till he is reduced to an abject state of impotence. ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... Constable the idol of the Free Companies. But he had a taste for simples and much skill in them; and when Madame had once seen Badelon on his knees in the grass searching for plants, she lost her fear of him. Bigot, with his low brow and matted hair, was the abject slave of Suzanne, Madame St. Lo's woman, who twitted him mercilessly on his Norman patois, and poured the vials of her scorn on him a dozen times a day. In all, with La Tribe and the Carlats, Madame St. Lo's servants, and the Countess's following, they numbered not far short ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... began to paddle the canoe away. This, however, I soon replaced in its former position, and then took his paddle away to prevent further accidents. There sat the captain of the fragile vessel in the most abject state of terror. We were close to the shore, and the water was not more than three feet deep, and yet he dared not jump out of the canoe, as the rushes were again brushing against its sides, being moved by the hidden beast ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... into that room, it would not have caused more consternation. The four philosophers fell to the floor, the chief was terrified, the audience looked on in abject terror, while the officers rushed from their post with drawn weapons. All this occurred instantly, and I realized that my words never before had such an effect. In a moment the chief was at my side and, looking ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... perfectly qualified to decide on the comparative merits of the Common Side in the King's Bench prison and of Mount Scoundrel in the Fleet. Even the poorest pitied him; and they well might pity him. For if their condition was equally abject, their aspirings were not equally high, nor their sense of insult equally acute. To lodge in a garret up four pair of stairs, to dine in a cellar among footmen out of place, to translate ten hours a day for the wages of a ditcher, to be hunted by bailiffs from one haunt ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Wait till she has been fed a little and freed from fear. That fair type recovers itself very quickly. You won't know her in a week or two, when that abject fear has died out of her eyes. She'll be too happy and smiling ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... suddenly trying to sit up, but finding the attempt resulted only in the partial movement of a finger somewhere in the distance. "Have I really—surely, surely, I was not so abject as ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... have been impossible. Then she would either have seen none of these things, or, having seen them, she would have dared greatly. She was too cool, too clear-sighted, perhaps, for a heroine of romance. The single virtue that has fed vampire-like on the blood of the others, the abject attitude of the heart, the moral chicanery of sex—she would have ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... traffic do not usually disturb the placidity of the bullock, but if he once gets frightened and loses his head, he gives way to unmitigated panic. The first appearance of the motor-car, which is now almost as common in parts of India as it is in England, reduced many bullocks to a state of abject terror. Fortunately most mishaps with bullock-carts are not very serious in their results. The cart is not easily broken, and is quickly righted. But having occasion to travel in a public motor-car through a country district ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... well demand it, if such a feeling held a place within your breast. I might well demand your pity, Flora Bannerworth, for never crawled an abject wretch upon the earth's ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... Drawbaugh, and opened up a noisy newspaper campaign. To secure public sympathy for Drawbaugh, it was said that he had invented a complete telephone and switchboard before 1876, but was in such "utter and abject poverty" that he could not get himself a patent. Five hundred witnesses were examined; and such a general turmoil was aroused that the Bell lawyers were compelled to take the attack seriously, and to fight back with every ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... among these men; he had admired Nathan's book, he had reverenced the author as an immortal; Nathan's abject attitude before this critic, whose name and importance were both ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... of observation of the travelled lady I have before quoted, yet I must add that my estimate of this people, in my own small way, is antagonistic to hers. To me they are only a very little removed from savages. Their women seem to be in abject slavery to the men, and are treated by them in the most shameful manner. An instance, which came under my own observation, will perhaps shew this. Whilst on shore fishing, I had wandered away from the main party to where I saw a native engaged at work on an upturned canoe. Up the beach was ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... was disappointed and said, I had determined not to consult the Jews in this matter at all, because their abject condition in the world did not leave them any good quality. You should have said, he told the Jew, that you believe in him who created the world and governs it; who made man and provides for him. Every religionist defends ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... says, meekly. "Do." His tone is of the most abject. There is a perceptible trembling about his knee-joints. "Is this the 'air noble'?" he says to Olga, in an undertone. "Have ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... Fred, grimly humorous, as he took the chair from the dealer. His movements were graceful, yet curiously abject, slinking. ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... the whole world, has never yet become acquainted with his own soul? There are multitudes of men all about us who are entirely missing the real life, men who have not learned even the a, b, c of true living. Slaves they are, abject slaves to their temporary material accumulations. Men who thinking they possess their wealth are on the contrary completely possessed by it. Men whose lives are comparatively barren in service to those about them and to the world at large. Men who when they can no longer hold the body,—the ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... much excuse, though no justification. She had had many of the disadvantages and scarce one of the benefits of poverty. She had heard constantly from childhood the most worldly and greedy talk, the commonest expression of abject dependence on the favors of Mammon, and thus had from the first been in preparation for marrying money. She had been taught no other way of doing her part to procure the things of which the Father knows we have need. She had never earned a dinner; had never ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... elaborate edifice, half dazed by its expensive and gaudy trappings, we step at once into an atmosphere of abject poverty and want. The surroundings of the chapels and cathedral of Guadalupe are in strong contrast with the interiors. This is undoubtedly the dirtiest and most neglected suburb of the capital, where low pulque shops and a half-naked population of beggars ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... service of mankind. After this, when Frode sent ambassadors to ask for the hand of his daughter, he answered, that he must take heed not to be spoiled by his thriving fortunes, or to turn his triumph into haughtiness; but let him rather bethink him to spare the conquered, and in this their abject estate to respect their former bright condition; let him learn to honour their past fortune in their present pitiable lot. Therefore, said Handwan, he must mind that he did not rob of his empire the man with whom he sought alliance, nor bespatter her with the filth ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... violent hands upon himself, merely because he had discovered that the emperour read books in the morning to prepare himself with questions for his literary society at night. Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse, sued in the most abject manner for an Olympic crown, and sent a critic to the galleys for finding fault with his verses. Had not these men a sufficient degree of sensibility to praise, and more than a sufficient desire for the sympathy of ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... shame were dreadful for Joan to see, because she felt sorry for him, and divined that behind them would rise the darker, grimmer force of the man. And she was right, for suddenly he changed. That which had seemed almost to make him abject gave way to a pale and bitter dignity. He took up Dandy Dale's belt, which Joan had left on the bed, and, drawing the gun from its sheath, he opened the cylinder to see if it was loaded, and then threw ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... Priest from an enemy to a friend (understanding nothing of what had happened), crouched far into the rear overcome with genuine awe and reverence for the guardian of their god in his new character. Threats had driven them to rebellion while kindliness now made of them abject slaves. They stood ready to obey his slightest wish—not with cravenness, but with quick reversion to the faith of their ancestors. But he acted as though he did not see them—as though, in fact, he saw ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... their voices would be forcibly heard, and the Turkish rule beneath the British uniform would be quickly overthrown. The Cypriote, down-trodden for centuries, is like sodden tinder that will not awaken to the spark: he is what is called "easily governed;" which means an abject race, in which all noble aspirations have been stamped out by years of unremitting oppression and injustice; still, like the Cyprian ox, he ploughs the ground. It is the earth alone that yields the ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... moved from side to side with that curious movement which only dogs use to express their gladness. Then the strange, three-legged beast went further. Down he threw himself full length upon the floor and grovelled effusively, whining and scraping the boards in a perfect fervour of abject delight. ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... from a state of affluence to that of penury. An illustration of this proposition was afforded in the family of Mr. Wheelwright. It appeared that after the change recorded in the last chapter, from a condition of the most abject misery, to that of comparative comfort, the Doctor's lady, elated by her prosperity, began to take airs upon herself, and her carriage was such as to excite the jealousy of her neighbors up stairs. The consequences were a speedy and open rupture, so that occasional hostilities ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... McArthur's position, indebted to Mr. Keepum; but so it was. It is very difficult to tell whose negroes are not mortgaged to Mr. Keepum, how many mortgages of plantation he has foreclosed, how many high old families he has reduced to abject poverty, or how many poor but respectable families he has disgraced. He has a reputation for loaning money to parents, that he may rob their daughters of that jewel the world refuses to give them back. And yet our best society honor him, fawn over him, and bow to him. We so worship the ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... speaking little Spanish; the two sailors, of whom one was an Italian; and one of the soldiers, were quartered in the glebe barn—the rest in one of Sir Thomas Enville's barns. Two of the soldiers were Pyrenees men, and spoke French. All of them, except the Moor and the Italian, were possessed by abject terror, expecting to be immediately killed, if not eaten. The Italian, who was no stranger to English people, and into whose versatile mind nothing sank deep, was the only blithe and cheerful man in ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... establishment may be expected to do with a subject people on a footing of settled and long-term exploitation. At the outset, in both instances, the policy of frightfulness was dictated by a well-advised view to economy of effort in reducing the subject people to an abject state of intimidation, according to the art of war as set forth in the manuals; whereas latterly the somewhat profligate excesses of the government of occupation—decently covered with diplomatic parables on benevolence and legality—have been dictated by military convenience, ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... true, that destroyed his courage, but not the less was he a man of fear, not the less he felt himself a coward. Again he got into a damp brake and lay down, in a minute or two again got up and went on, his fear growing until, mainly through consciousness of itself, it ripened into abject terror. Loneliness seemed to have taken the shape of a watching omnipresent enemy, out of whose diffusion death might at any moment ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... engrossed in his, he might have seen how little she cared for all that money could do or undo. He did not observe her enough to see how variable her moods were in those days, and how often she sank from some wild gaiety into abject melancholy; how at times she was fiercely defiant of nothing at all, and at others inexplicably humble and patient. But no doubt none of these signs had passed unnoticed by his wife, to whom ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... vexed the Red-Sea coast, whose waves o'erthrew Busiris and his Memphian chivalry, While with perfidious hatred they pursued The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld From the safe shore their floating carcases And broken chariot-wheels. So thick bestrown, Abject and lost, lay these, covering the flood, Under amazement of their hideous change. He called so loud that all the hollow deep Of Hell resounded:—"Princes, Potentates, Warriors, the Flower of Heaven—once yours; now lost, If such astonishment as this ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... and there found Dr. Rush and Dr. Glentworth, who was later to be the physician of Mr. Washington. My aunt, preceding me, had taken possession. Mr. Warder was reduced to a condition of abject obedience, and for a month and more my aunt hardly left her girl-boy's pillow. Indeed, it was long before I was let to see him, and then he was but a spectre of himself, with not enough blood to blush with. Our officers very promptly left for New York the day after our fight, and we heard ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... beinge made a Privy Counsellour, and Officer at Courte, but his first attempts were so prosperous that he contented not himselfe with beinge secure from his power in the Country, but rested not till he had bereaved him of all power and place in Courte, and so sent him downe a most abject disconsolate old man to his Country, wher he was to have the superintendency over him too, by getting himselfe at that tyme made L'd President of the North. These successes, applyed to a nature too elate and arrogant of it selfe, and a quicker progresse into the greatest ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... restlessly; they were the only pleasant things that happened to him, and made him forget the humiliation of his poisoned and disfigured face. He was disgusting to himself; when he touched the welts on his forehead and under his hair, he felt unclean and abject. At night, when his fever ran high, and the pain began to tighten in his head and neck, it wrought him to a distressing pitch of excitement. He fought with it as one bulldog fights with another. His mind ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... abject terror, two things struck Puffin. One was that the Major looked at the open door behind him as if meditating retreat, the second that he carried a Gladstone bag. Simultaneously Major Flint spoke, if indeed ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... his fancy and the sheen of Byzantine brocades and the quaint paraphernalia of bygone days inspired his apocalyptic words. His language in those telegrams and letters was highfaluting and bombastic. And I read other communications of his—mostly abject appeals for help—devoid of dignity and manliness, when the gloom of dissipated illusions was made unbearable by fear of dethronement and death. And the figure cut by the Tsarlet, who addressed those humble prayers—mostly to ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... man, alone, In abject poverty, with hand Uplifted o'er a block of stone That took a shape at his command And smiled upon him, fair and good— A perfect work of womanhood, Save that the eyes might never weep, Nor weary hands be crossed in sleep, Nor hair that fell from crown to wrist, Be brushed ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... his spirit. It was a wavy harvest morning in a village of the north. A golden wind was blowing, and little white clouds flying aloft in the sunny blue. The church was full of well known faces, upturned, listening, expectant, critical. The hour vanished in a slow mist of abject misery and shame. But had he not learned to rejoice over all dead hopes, and write Te Deums on their coffin lids? And now he stood in dim light, in the vapour from damp garments, in dinginess and ugliness, with a sense of spiritual squalor and destitution in his very soul. He had tried to pray ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... sudden seizure, and confused, was completely cowed. In an abject tone he whined out, "Spare my life, sir, and I will ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... buttoned in military fashion to the throat, for painful reasons; and yet it showed much that it pretended to conceal. The bottom edges of the trousers, ragged like those of an almshouse beggar, were the sign of abject poverty. The boots left wet splashes on the floor, as the mud oozed from fissures in the soles. The gray hat, which the colonel held in his hand, was horribly greasy round the rim. The malacca cane, ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... see a man more abject and fawning than Marcus Regulus has been since the death of Domitian? His misdeeds were better concealed during that prince's reign, but they were every bit as bad as they were in the time of Nero. He began to be afraid that I was angry with him and he was ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... old rascal Earl of Ridgeley. I had not seen him since the trial, when I was but a lad. In the meantime vice had eaten out of him such manliness as had ever been in him. Rascaldom was still stamped on him, but he was now in a state of abject terror. He and his son were indeed, as Jane puts it to this ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... be a beggar from house to house, in the most abject state of poverty. His companions in mendicity were his brother John and his cousin Julien. He had been given lodging out of charity in a neighbouring village, but before his apprehension he had been absent for ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... knowing little of the needs of the other departments, will naturally take the word of its administrative head, especially since he desires the same freedom. This was actually the case in Sacramento, Cal., where the commission plan was tried for fifteen years and given up as an abject failure. Says the Hon. Clinton White of that city: "In almost every instance, the board soon came to the understanding that each man was to be let alone in the management of the department assigned to him. This resulted in there being in fact no tribunals exercising a supervisory power ...
— Elements of Debating • Leverett S. Lyon
... to me in the very hour of my father's and brother's arrest! With the remembrance in your mind of their bound and abject forms lying before you guarded by police; knowing too, that they deserve their ignominy and the ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... far and away the most unworthy. The voices and the concert of voices of angels and men be to Thee; the concert of all thy saints in heaven and of all Thy creatures in heaven and on earth; and of me, beneath their feet an unworthy and wretched sinner, Thy abject creature; my praise also, now, in this day and hour, and every day till my last breath, and till the end of this world, and then to all eternity, where they cease not saying, To Him ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... stranger had turned his head and was looking at us—never shall I forget the infinite pathos of his expression at that moment. There was something in the face which betrayed misery and dejection so abject that for days afterwards the look haunted me. Again I saw the lips move, ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... generation of freedom. Indeed, it speaks well for the intrinsic merit of the race, that although public opinion freely admits that the natural outcome of bondage is a cowardly, thieving, brutal, or abject specimen of humanity, even in the darkest hours of slavery, there were many, many, high-born souls who, if necessary, at the price of life itself, maintained their integrity, rose superior to their surroundings, taught these same ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... who, musing on the wickedness and tyranny of those whom the inscrutable wisdom of Providence had intrusted with the government of the world, fell asleep, and awoke to find himself the very monarch whose abject life and capricious violence had furnished the subject of his moralizing. Endowed with irresponsible power, tempted by passions whose existence in himself he had never suspected, and betrayed by the political necessities of his position, he became gradually guilty of all the crimes and the luxury ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... most abject manner to relinquish this one point, and remonstrated to him that the czar, his present master, would look on it as the utmost indignity offered to himself in the person of his ambassador: he assured him he hated Patkul, ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... years in India, shipwrecked Robinson Crusoes far from native Hull, cadets going out hopelessly forever, emigrants, convicts, missionaries, and all other absentees, voluntary or involuntary. Tirades upon abject poverty, wanton affluence, poor laws, mendicancy, and Ireland; not omitting some thrilling cases of ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... come into the world, and barefooted she proposed to perform her pilgrimage; and her clean shoes and change of snow-white thread stockings were to be reserved for special occasions of ceremony. She was not aware, that the English habits of comfort attach an idea of abject misery to the idea of a barefooted traveller; and if the objection of cleanliness had been made to the practice, she would have been apt to vindicate herself upon the very frequent ablutions to which, with Mahometan scrupulosity, a Scottish damsel of some condition ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... courtesy and chanting of the weird words. The final "dosh!" held, in its low, fierce tone, all the significance of abject adoration. With that "dosh" had the child Priscilla wooed the favour and recognition of the god. It was a triumph ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... in him its true spirit stands reflected. Certainly his equal has never been. In him are unquestionably prefigured the very flower, the very quintessence, of holiness on earth—the most pious servants of God. On the other hand, that poor, wretched, abject male counterpart of Cinderella, Abel, well represents the obscure little brotherhood, the Church of Christ. She must yield to Cain the lord the distinction of being everything before God, of being the recipient of ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... and then continued, in a lower tone, half speaking to himself, "And, yet, did I not promise my dear wife on her death-bed—did I not promise it on the holy cross—that our child should not undergo such a fate? Ten years of suffering—ten abject years—have not sufficed to realize my promise; and now, at last, a feeble ray of hope struggles into my sombre future—" He grasped the notary's hand, looked wildly but earnestly into his eyes, and ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience
... referred to the judge advocate at an early stage in the proceedings, had laid proof after proof before the court, and left the case of the defense at the last without a leg to stand on. And then Nevins dropped the debonair and donned the abject, for the one friend or adviser left to him in the crowded camp, an officer who said he always took the side of the under dog in a fight, had told him that in its present temper that court, with old Turnbull as one of its leaders, would surely sentence him to a term of years ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... beneath. The fires on the banks of the stream were dying down; all that could be seen there was masses of men moving confusedly to and fro; it was not even possible to tell if the movement across the river was still in progress. Never had the shades of night veiled such depths of distress, such abject ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... prompt kindness of the British governor. A slight prolongation of the voyage would have rendered her as helpless as if peopled by a phantom crew; and she must have been blown before the wind until dashed to fragments on the rocks on some uninhabited part of the coast. The extremity of abject powerlessness had unquestionably been reached when the wide entrance to Port ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... timidly, for of course she knew that she had to cross that room under fire of criticism; but on the whole she was less abject than she might have been, for at the moment she was thinking of Dr. Cautley. He had actually accepted her kind invitation, and that fact explained and justified her; besides, she carried her Browning in her hand, and it made her ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... receive that promise, and an abject apology, it is a case of j'y suis, j'y reste, my child," ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... Even the depth and devotion of her own love could not persuade her to realise the passionate earnestness of mine. It was still more in vain to remind her that such a concession must entail the dishonour that man fears above all perils; would brand me with that indelible stain of abject personal cowardice which for ever degrades and ruins not only the fame but the nature of manhood, as the stain of wilful unchastity ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... Cromwell went on slowly, varied by visits to his relatives in Scotland, travels on the Continent, and interviews with distinguished men. His mind at this period (1842) was most occupied with the sad condition of the English people,—everywhere riots, disturbances, physical suffering and abject poverty among the masses, for the Corn Laws had not then been repealed; and to Carlyle's vision there was a most melancholy prospect ahead,—not revolution, but universal degradation, and the reign of injustice. This sad condition of the people was contrasted in his mind with ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... quite correct in giving one of the reasons for Le Mierre's departure to Jersey. He told everyone how he was bothered by the spirit of Blaisette; but he did not add that abject terror of small-pox made him decide to spend some months with well-to-do relations in Jersey, which was quite exempt from ...
— Where Deep Seas Moan • E. Gallienne-Robin
... said; "you might know I shouldn't change. I've got one or two little jobs to see to about Bouncing's funeral. That woman's half a little cat and half an abject fool. Still, you can't help feeling a bit sorry for her. I dare say I can get things done by lunch-time; then I'll drive over the Fluella. I'll put up at the Kulm; but don't bother to write till you've got something settled. I'm not going to mess about saying good-by to people. You can ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... aspect of a servant who, by dint of displaying her self-esteem and self-respect even in her garb, reflects in her person the honor and the pride of her masters. From day to day she sank nearer to the level of that abject, shameless creature whose dress drags in ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... them,' said Ah Moy, deeply contrite. 'Carried away by excitement, your abject slave considered but lightly what he then so foolishly said, and now so fervently regrets—and—and—let's drop this powwow, Quong Lee. I have no time for it! I tell you, man, I ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... saw, by the abject nature of this petition, how completely the spirit of these misguided men was broken; with his wonted magnanimity, he readily granted their prayer, and pardoned their offences; but on one condition, that their ringleader, Francisco Porras, ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... companion in that solitary exaltation," said Philip de Comines. "The Duke of Burgundy, though he claims not at present the title of an independent king, desires nevertheless to be freed in future from the abject marks of subjection required of him to the crown of France—it is his purpose to close his ducal coronet with an imperial arch, and surmount it with a globe, in emblem that his dominions ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... had been spilled on it, covering a space three feet in diameter, and running out in various directions, in little streams two or three feet long. At the same time, let me say, with that strict justice I force myself to mete out to those whom I dislike, that the island is in a condition of abject submission. There is not much chance of mutiny. The men go to their work without a murmur, and slink to their dormitories like whipped hounds to kennel. The gaols and solitary (!) cells are crowded with prisoners, and each day sees fresh sentences for fresh crimes. It is ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... personage, being mine own when I am concealed within a certain recess prepared for me by thy lamented predecessor, whose mistress I was in youth, and whose coadjutor I have been in age. I am now ready to minister to thee in the latter capacity. Be ruled by me; exchange thy abject superstition for common sense; thy childish simplicity for discreet policy; thy unbecoming spareness for a majestic portliness; thy present ridiculous and uncomfortable situation for the repute of sanctity, and the veneration ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... espoused the cause of the parent State, and who dreaded on that account the vengeance of their countrymen. Before they had embarked, they had, as Washington informs his brother, publicly declared that 'if they thought the most abject submission would procure them peace, they never would have stirred.'"[106] (Letter to John Augustine Washington, March 13th, 1776, as printed ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... last he reached the country which had been the aim of his journey. He had to encounter then a savage king's determined hostility to the white man, and he had to keep a sharp eye on his followers who, in abject terror of the tribe he meant to visit, took every opportunity to escape into the bush. The barbarian chief sent him a warning that he would have him killed if he attempted to enter his capital. The rest of the story Alec told with an apologetic air, as if he were ashamed ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... the hoped-for cooeperation, and the danger of merging the individual in the mass to such degree as to paralyze energy, heroism, and genius; but these objections were urged in a way that brought out her originality and generous hopes. There was nothing abject, timid, or conventional in her doubts. The end sought she prized; but the means she questioned. Though pleased in listening to sanguine visions of the future, she was slow to credit that an organization by "Groups and Series" would yield due incentive for personal development, ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... soon found out that you were absolutely indifferent to her. And when a woman finds that out about her husband, she either becomes dreadfully dowdy, or wears very smart bonnets that some other woman's husband has to pay for. I say nothing about the social mistake, which would have been abject, which, of course, I would not have allowed, but I assure you that in any case the whole thing would ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... world they had entered; and when her two little boys died one after the other, there was almost a sense of relief mixed with the bitterness of her sorrow, as she reflected on the father she could not have taught them to respect, and on the abject evil and misery from which she could ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... or twisting the wrong way, or threatening to snap in sunder, or refusing to allow his fingers to slip the knot, or doing something that was dreadfully uncomfortable, and productive of perspiration; and two or three times he was reduced to the abject necessity of asking his friends to string ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... my abject slaves before I am done with them," he remarked cheerfully, and relying on their ignorance of English he explained fully what he proposed to do. Not only would he repeat the tricks that had already proved so successful, but he planned to ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... trial. The letters of the latter show that scarcely one of them but contains the outline of some rainbow-chasing scheme, full of wild optimism, and the certainty that somewhere just ahead lies the pot of gold. Only, now and then, there is a letter of abject humiliation and complete surrender, when some golden vision, some iridescent soap-bubble, had vanished at his touch. Such depression did not last; by sunrise he was ready with a new dream, new enthusiasm, and with ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... his eyes to hers. There was something almost pathetic in the worshiping light which shone there. He was, as he had always been, her abject slave. ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Throned on a crumbling column by the wall, Beneath a ruined arch of ancient fame, Mocking the desolation round about, Blotting with his effacing fingers out The inscription, razing off its hero's name— And lo! the ancient mistress of the globe, With clasped hands, a statue of despair, Sits abject at his feet, in fetters bound— A thousand rents in her imperial robe, Swordless and sceptreless, her golden hair Dishevelled in the dust, for ages gathering round! ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... with a supplicating look, face to face with Israel. And if anything had been needed to fix Israel to his purpose of withdrawing for ever from the service of Ben Aboo, he must have found it in this pitiful spectacle of the Kaid's abject terror, his quick suspicion, his base disloyalty, and rancorous hatred of his own master, ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... feelings were increased when poor Mrs Henderson exhibited symptoms of a similar character. As for Gaunt, he was thoroughly alarmed; for not only did the feeling of feebleness increase, but he also found himself gradually becoming the victim of a blind unreasoning terror for which the term "abject cowardice" afforded but a very inadequate description. And to this very unpleasant sensation was added that of a morbid sense of touch, so acute that even the very pressure of his clothes became almost ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... during the long summer months. In those days her eyes had filled with tears of pity for herself. They were dry now, for the suffering was real and the pain was in her bodily heart. Yet she was so strong, and she feared Paul Griggs with such an abject fear, that she played the comedy when she could not make him ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... if they do not positively reach, are so frequently near to reaching the normal poor, are, no doubt, the severest of the trials to which humanity is subjected. They threaten life,—or, if not life, then liberty,—reducing the abject one to a choice between captivity and starvation. By hook or crook, the poor gentleman or poor lady,—let the one or the other be ever so poor,—does not often come to the last extremity of the ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... trail, and everything seems to conspire toward a pleasant trip. To prove it, Luck found another telegram waiting for him in Albuquerque. This was from Martinson, and might be interpreted as an apology more or less abject. Certainly it was an urgent request that he return immediately to Los Angeles and to his old place at the Acme, and produce Western ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... furious with the sculptor Hanel, who had never ceased insisting upon the expedience of bolting the house to prevent an entry of the revolutionaries. All the women without exception were joking about his abject terror at the sight of some men armed with scythes who had appeared in the street In this way Sunday passed like ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... social organization that rested on the masses an immovable weight. That narrow Nile Valley, the cradle of the arts and sciences, the scene, perhaps, of the greatest triumphs of the human mind, is also the scene of its most abject enslavement. In the long centuries of its splendor its lord, secure in the possession of irresistible temporal power, and securer still in the awful sanctions of a mystical religion, was as a god on earth, to cover whose poor carcass with a tomb befitting his state hundreds of thousands toiled ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... into a side street, when whom should I strike against but her false swain! It was my fault, but I hit out at him savagely, as I always do when I run into anyone in the street. Then I looked at him. He was hollow-eyed; he was muddy; there was not a haw left in him. I never saw a more abject young man; he had not even the spirit to resent the testy stab I had given him with my umbrella. But this is the important thing: he was glaring wistfully at the post-office and thus in a twink I saw that he still adored my little ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... ourselves," rejoined Mrs. Woffington. She rose slowly, with her eye on Vane. He cast a look of abject entreaty on her; but there was no pity in that curling lip and awful eye. He closed his own eyes and waited for the blow. Sir Charles threw himself back in his chair, and, chuckling, prepared for the explosion. Mrs. Woffington saw him, and cast on him a look of ineffable scorn; and then she held ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... the writer's progress in going over the tribes of Germany, those tribes growing less and less free as he advances eastward: already under more subjection than the foregoing tribes, but not yet in such abject slavery, as some we shall soon reach, sc. in the next chapter, where see note ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... her. Sometimes she received them in the presence, and sometimes in the absence of her husband, as accident, not arrangement, directed. They approached her with all the agitation and tenderness of the most ardent lovers. Amongst the number, was a certain celebrated orator. This man was her abject slave. A glance from her expressive eye raised him to the summit of bliss, or rendered his night sleepless. The complacent husband of Madame G——regarded these men as his most beloved friends, because they enlarged ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... foregoing remark conclude that Dic was selfish in his lack of pain at parting from Rita. He also lacked her fears. Did the fear exist in her and not in him because her love was greater or because she was more timid? Had her abject surrender made him over-confident? When a woman gives as Rita did she should know her man, else she is in danger. If he happens to be a great, noble soul, she makes her heaven and his then and there. If he is a selfish brute, she will find another place of ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... compensation for the expenditures he made for the relief of the early settlers of California. His death occurred at Washington, D. C., on the eighteenth day of June, 1880, and his remains were laid at rest in Litiz, Pennsylvania. The termination of this grand, heroic life, under circumstances of abject poverty and destitution, forms as strange and mournful a story as can be found in the ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... his mere words; but the scope of his argument, and the intended sense of his expression, was, that if the Vagrant Act were to receive the extensive construction contended for, the most illustrious subject of the realm might be degraded to the condition of the most abject and worthless, for an act in itself indifferent—and which, until the times had assumed a character of affected rigour, was considered rather as a proof of good society than as an offence against good order. ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... catastrophe. It is the deep and fierce revenge of Oedipus that makes the passion of the whole. According to a sublime conception, we see before us the physical Oedipus in the lowest state of destitution and misery—in rags, blindness, beggary, utter and abject impotence. But in the moral, Oedipus is all the majesty of a power still royal. The oracle has invested one, so fallen and so wretched in himself, with the power of a god—the power to confer victory on ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the drunkard is insane, and when not drunk he is an abject slave. His appetite controls him, soul and body; he will sacrifice his property, his reputation, and the comfort of wife and children to gratify it. If, gentle reader, you have witnessed the struggles which some have witnessed of men striving earnestly to break loose from that ...
— Personal Experience of a Physician • John Ellis
... faithful wife and a kind nurse to her distressed partner. The first perception she caught of the meaning of my communication, lighted up her eye, even in the midst of her wringing pains; and, starting up, she cried, that she would be the most abject slave to my will, and obey me in all things, if I could assure her of the blessing of being able to act as nurse and comforter to her husband. Now I saw my opportunity. On the instant I called up and despatched the waiting-maid to my home, with directions to my ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton |
