"Canaille" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... they left their cards above, and one would have got out of the balcony, but it was not open; the other went up to fetch down his children, that were in bed: so all got clear out of the house. And no sooner so, but the house fell down indeed, from top to bottom. It seems my Lord Southampton's canaille did come too near their foundation, and so weakened the house, and down it come: which, in every respect, is a most extraordinary passage. The business between my Lords Chancellor and Bristoll, they say, ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... with high compensation," said Lord Marney; "and manufactories not so bad, with high rents; but, after all, these are enterprises for the canaille, and I hate ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... gallantry, by tracing the contrast more closely. But evil times had singularly acted upon the physiognomy even of the nobles. The age of the roturier had been the climacteric of France. Generals from the ranks, countesses from the canaille, legislators from the dregs of the populace, and proprietors from the mingled stock of the parasite and the plunderer, naturally gave the countenance, formed by their habits, to the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... molested by Bustos' Malinta troops, who forced the invaders to withdraw to Manila and reduce the extension of their outposts. This measure was followed up by a proclamation, dated January 23, 1763, in which the British Commander alluded to Bustos' troops as "canaille and robbers," and offered a reward of P5,000 for Anda's head, declaring him and his party rebels and traitors to their Majesties the Kings of Spain and England. Anda, chafing at his impotence to combat the invading party by force of arms, gave vent to his feelings of rage ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... "Down with the CANAILLE!" I retorted, sternly eyeing the ill-looking ring. "Will you set yourselves above the king's peace, dirt that you are? Go back ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... blackguard, truly a big, dirty blackguard! But it is such canaille as this that Mr. King discovers and uses for his own ends. Paris society, I know for a fact; has many such a cankerworm in its heart. Oh! it is a big case, a very big case. Poor Mr. Leroux being confined to his bed—ah! I pity ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... Fox-Moore or any ultra-oldfashioned woman was, still more incongruous showed there the relation of mistress and maid. The punctilious Gorringe was plainly horrified at the proximity to her mistress of these canaille, and the mistress was not so absorbed it would seem but what she felt the affront to seemliness in a servant's seeing her pushed and shoved aside—treated with slight regard or none. Necessary either to leave the scene with lofty disapproval, or ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... these ante-bellum homes was a privilege indeed. And something of the spirit of the canaille of the French revolution must have animated the foreign hordes, who, not content with confiscating these captured palaces, ruthlessly cut and destroyed the richness and elegance they were beholding for the first time in their commonplace lives. It was not the spirit of conquest, but of vandalism, ...
— Historic Papers on the Causes of the Civil War • Mrs. Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... "Ah, canaille!" cried the Lord of Villefranche. "You would scarce credit it, and yet it is sooth that when I was taken at Poictiers it was all that my wife and foster-brother could do to raise the money from them for my ransom. The sulky dogs would rather have three twists of a rack, or the thumbikins ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... bed; or to rise into the seventh heaven of spirituality by having my hair cut. An impudent forgery of that good man's name! If I were you, Sutherland, I would have nothing to do with such a low set. They are the canaille of the other world. It's of no use to lay hold on their skirts, for they can't fly. They're just like the vultures — easy to catch, because they're full of garbage. I doubt if they have more intellect left than just enough to ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... black; "but if we wanted literature we should never lack in these regions hosts of literary men of some kind or other to eulogise us, provided our religion were in the fashion, and our popish nobles choose, and they always do our bidding, to admit the canaille to their tables, their kitchen tables. As for literature in general," said he, "the Santa Sede is not particularly partial to it, it may be employed both ways. In Italy, in particular, it has discovered that literary men are not always disposed to ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... chance to come and find you. He'll not miss ME for an hour. That man has a natural hankering after treason against the people. Lord, Margret! what a stiff old head he'd have carried to the guillotine! How he'd have looked at the canaille!" ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... now she was obliged to endure the contact of those terrible "dames de la halle," who for hundreds of years had claimed the privilege of speaking face to face with royalty, and who now pressed around her, with jokes that crimsoned her cheeks while they were rapturously received by the canaille. ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... employment, "the scum," said Francois de Nantes, "of the Revolution and the war; 'lanterneurs' of '91, 'guillotineurs' of '93, 'sabreurs' of the year III, 'assommeurs' of the year IV, 'fusilleurs' of the year V." All this canaille lived only by rapine and murder, camped in the forests, ruins and deserted quarries like that at Gueudreville, an underground passage one hundred feet long by thirty broad, the headquarters of the band of Orgeres, ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... true history of the Graevenitz. The Land-despoiler the downtrodden peasantry and indignant burghers named her, for they hated her as their sort must ever hate the beautiful, elegant, haughty woman of the great world. They called her sinner, which she was; and she called them canaille, ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... "Sacre canaille!" he hissed through his hard-set teeth, "back to your gutters and your garbage, or follow, if you can, in silence, and learn, if ye lack not courage to look on, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... scene, the noble Marquis enraged at the blocking of his day's pleasuring belabored the chief ostler with his cane. Smartly the blows rained down on the cowering sufferer, alternate right and left in rhythmic strokes that touched each and several part of the canaille anatomy. ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... bright and try to show off before company, but why deliberately set out to make them tough? Good manners they may not be expected to acquire, but a worm with a cultivated vulgarity sounds intolerable. Imagine 150 very tough worms all crowded together in one tin! "Canaille" is the only ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... heart that "all men were liars," and she believed most of them to be voleurs, in addition. Jules, when the little train was whirling along a-metals a score of miles away from Delhi, relaxed his Zouave vigilance, and bade a long adieu to Delhi, in a vigorous grunt. "Va bane! Sacre Canaille!" ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage |
