"Humiliating" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... irresistible to the man who already loved her madly; and the idea of following his divinity in a humble disguise, as many a noble knight had done of old, reconciled him to what would otherwise have seemed too incongruous and humiliating. It could not be considered derogatory to any gentleman to accompany his lady-love, be she what she might, actress or princess, and to attach himself, for love of her bright eyes, to even a band of strolling players. The mischievous little boy ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... only over the social life but also over the policy, both external and internal, adopted by their countrymen. Like most monopolists, they showed a marked tendency to abuse the advantages of their position. Science was relegated to a position of humiliating inferiority, and had to content itself with picking up whatever crumbs were, with a lordly and at times almost contemptuous tolerance, allowed to fall from the humanistic table. Bossuet once defined ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... Englishman—Delaine—and the letter that must be written him. But there, also, no evasions, no suppliancy. Delaine must be told that the story was true, and would no doubt think himself entitled to act upon it. The protest on behalf of Lady Merton implied already in his manner that afternoon was humiliating enough. The smart of it was still tingling through Anderson's being. He had till now felt a kind of instinctive contempt for Delaine as a fine gentleman with a useless education, inclined to patronise "colonists." The ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Representatives chose by ballot a committee of twenty-three members, who were joined by a committee of seven from the Senate. Their object was a last attempt to devise a plan for admitting Missouri into the Union. On the 26th, the committee proposed a conditional admission, upon terms more humiliating to the people of Missouri than it would have been to require that they should expunge the exceptionable article from their constitution; for they declared it a fundamental condition of their admission that the article should never be construed to authorize the passage of any ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... total and humiliating ignorance of the subject at issue. What, for example, were Fraunhofer's lines? McArdle had just been studying the matter with the aid of our tame scientist at the office, and he picked from his desk two of those many-coloured ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Because of the steep descent of the upper part and because the level stretch of the road made a jump too high for anyone's liking, only one or two of the boys had attempted to ski from the very top, and they had met with humiliating disaster. ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... what the real, unvarnished attitude of these fine, exhorting moralists was towards the poor. Poverty was virtually prescribed as a crime. The impoverished were regarded in law as paupers, and so repugnant a term of odium was that of pauper, so humiliating its significance and treatment, that great numbers of the destitute preferred to suffer and die in want and silence rather than avail themselves of the scanty and mortifying public aid obtainable only by ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... state that I had seen this book lying on the table when I paid my second visit to Mr. Jeffrey's room in company with the coroner. The thought that my hand had been within reach of this man's secret so many weeks before was sufficiently humiliating without being shared. ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... Lamartine and Proudhon on '48. We have plenty of French books here; only the poets are to seek—the moderns. Do you catch sight of Moore in diary and letters? Robert, who has had glimpses of him, says the 'flunkeyism' is quite humiliating. It is strange that you have not heard more of the rapping spirits. They are worth hearing of were it only in the point of view of the physiognomy of the times, as a sign of hallucination and credulity, if not more. Fifteen thousand ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... humiliating—very," sighed Mr. Rhinds. "Still, I shall be the last to offer any objection to any arrangement that seems wise to the members of the ...
— The Submarine Boys' Lightning Cruise - The Young Kings of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... exceeding our most sanguine hopes, is not sufficient for justifying the omission of a measure, deemed one of the most essential for attaining an end, I would plead in favour of our worthy brother, that by a humiliating fatality, so often accompanying the most useful discoveries, the credit of this ventilator is yet far from being firmly established in the navy. What wonder then, if Captain Cook being so much otherwise taken up, should not have had time to examine ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... kings desired war, and that with the celebration of the United States of Europe we should see the beginning of the golden age of Peace. But the events of the tremendous days from July 28 to August 4,1914, show us with humiliating distinctness that though Kaisers, Emperors, Crown Princes, and Archdukes may be the accidental instruments of invisible powers in plunging humanity into seas of blood, a war is no sooner declared by any of them, however feeble or fatuous, ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... little woman replied that it was better to make a sort of humiliating confession than to admit the full extent of his unreasoning stupidity; and the surveyor, half agreeing with her in his own mind, immediately went to his study, wrote the epistle as directed, and sent it off express by ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne
... their lords and superiors, and initiated them in the ceremonies of a court. They were called pages, valets, or varlets, and their office was to carve, to wait at table, and to perform other menial services, which were not then considered humiliating. In their leisure hours they learned to dance and play on the harp, were instructed in the mysteries of woods and rivers, that is, in hunting, falconry, and fishing, and in wrestling, tilting with spears, and performing other military exercises on horseback. At fourteen the page became ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... self-abnegation which he desires to attain.[20] But only confusion is attained by any general attempt to amalgamate masochism and foot-fetichism. In the broad sense in which erotic symbolism is here understood, both masochism and foot-fetichism may be cooerdinated as symbolisms; for the masochist his self-humiliating impulses are the symbol of ecstatic adoration; for the foot-fetichist his mistress's foot or shoe is the concentrated symbol of all that is most beautiful and elegant and feminine in her personality. But if in this sense they are cooerdinated, they remain entirely distinct ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... roguishly. "Mr. Johnson" (said I), "I do indeed come from Scotland, but I can not help it." I am willing to flatter myself that I meant this as light pleasantry to soothe and conciliate him, and not as an humiliating abasement at the expense of my country. But however that might be, this speech was somewhat unlucky; for with that quickness of wit for which he was so remarkable, he seized the expression "come from Scotland," ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... for, after some few fibs, he frankly confessed his position, and, without humiliating himself too deeply, he promised that I should be happy. He hopes, like numerous other ordinary men, to obtain some place, that of an assistant librarian, for instance, or the pecuniary management of a newspaper. Who knows but we may get ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... dressed, would away grumbling, to grind the colours in the dark, cold workroom, cudgelling his wits the while, grinding and cursing all the time, to think of some way of escaping such harsh and humiliating treatment in future. Long he sought in vain; but his mind was an active one, and one morning early a happy thought ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... suffer. Nazimaruttash, who attempted to wipe out the disaster sustained by his father Kurigalzu, experienced two crushing defeats, one at Kar-Ishtar and the other near Akarsallu, and the treaty which he subsequently signed was even more humiliating for his country than the preceding one. All that part of the Babylonian domain which lay nearest to Nineveh was ceded to the Assyrians, from Pilaski on the right bank of the Tigris to the province of Lulume in the Zagros mountains. It ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... from all present objects. I saw nothing before me, except vaguely, and in a sort of shadow. I had a hazy outline of books against the wall; and a glimmering show of papers and bundles upon the table. I sat thus for some time, lost in painful and humiliating revery. Suddenly I caught a glimpse of a packet on the table, which I did not recollect to have seen before. It bore my name. I shuddered to behold it, for it was in the handwriting of my wife. This, then, was the writing upon which she had ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... the power of their bitterest enemies; and what would become of your sisters, it would be impossible to say; but most likely they would be put under the charge of some Puritan family, who would have a pleasure in ill-treating and humiliating the daughters of such a man ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... I'll ask her," said Grace slowly. "Humiliating one's self needlessly is just as bad ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... been ashamed of her. This was a most afflicting, humiliating notion. She was delighted to see the boat from the yacht waiting to take her off. She had imagined her own dress both pretty and becoming—she knew that it had cost her months of patient embroidering. Poor Bessie! she had much to learn yet of the fitness of things, and of things ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... to be with this army, and to obliterate the remembrance of the 13th Vendemiaire and its sad victory by brilliant exploits beyond the Alps. It was also to him a humiliating and depressing feeling to become the husband of a wealthy woman, and not bring her as a glorious gift or a wedding-present the fame and ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... January, with no flourish of trumpets or beat of drums to announce the fact of their arrival to their one hundred and eighty odd schoolfellows. They were simply "new kids." But though, after the fame they had won at The Birches, it was rather humiliating at first to find themselves regarded as three nobodies, yet there was some compensation in the thought that, just as the smallest drummer-boy can point to a flag covered with "honours," and say "My regiment," so, in looking round at the many things of which Ronleians past ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... attributes of civilization in the camp, and after one brief attempt to arouse civic indignation against Van for his acts of deliberate lawlessness, he perceived the ease with which he might commit an error and render himself ridiculous. He dropped all hope of publicly humiliating the horseman and deferred his private vengeance for ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... said the Prince fell into the hands of his subjects, and in a most humiliating way, for he was caught in a trap which had been set to catch bears. Thus he was captured alive and led into the chief ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... thing happened when he tried to get out of the building—"Sorry, sir. Captain's orders"—and the baffled magnate paced up and down the waiting room between long files of light-hearted boys in blue. It was humiliating to consider that he had subscribed heavily toward fitting up the Truesdale armory, that half the officers knew him ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... the classics (for which last they deserve praise, not blame), exposed their teachers, for a time, to the censure of philologists. Viewed with suspicion by the French, they only were admitted into that nation in 1562, under the name of "the Fathers of the College of Clermont," with a humiliating renunciation of their most important privileges, but they soon united in the factions of that country, and, notwithstanding a strong suspicion of their having had a share in the murder of Henry III., under ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... periods of the world's history has it been more perceptible in literature than at present. Physical constitution and temperament have a vast and a humiliating power of deepening or lightening it, and the strength or weakness of religious belief largely affects it, yet the best, the strongest, the most believing, and the most prosperous cannot wholly escape it. Sometimes it finds ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... Kate, which had started as a spark, had now developed into a conflagration which was burning out his heart. His love for Kate was not a part of his life—it was ALL of his life. He was ready now for any sacrifice, no matter how humiliating. He would go down on his knees to his father if she wished it. He would beg Willits's pardon—he would abase himself in any way St. George should suggest. He had done what he thought was right, and he would do it over ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... betrayed something of my pleasure in my manner. My visitor said, "I am so glad you feel this way about it; we have been meaning for some time to call on you, but we were in doubt about how we should be received." Such moments are humiliating to the librarian. Great heavens! Have we advertised, discussed, talked and plastered our towns with publicity, only to learn at last that the spokesman of a body of respectable men, asking legitimate service, rather expects to be kicked downstairs than ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... world of woe," the cylinders answered, as if they had been working for centuries, "and precious little for seventy-five pounds head. We've made two knots this last hour and a quarter! Rather humiliating for eight hundred ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... little time given me to realise the extraordinary and humiliating position in which I found myself, for I was lifted up by my ankles, as if I were a fowl pulled off a perch, and jerked roughly down into the room, my back striking upon the stone floor with a thud which shook the ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the attempt at imitation, by us, of this day, of the by-gone forms of building, is a procedure unworthy of a free people; and that the dictum of the schools, that Architecture is finished and done, is a suggestion humiliating to every active brain, and therefore, in fact, a puerility and a falsehood when weighed in the scales of truly democratic thought. Such dictum gives the lie in arrogant fashion, to healthful human experience. It says, ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... it over. He kept her to that. Again it was the hunter, the quarry, and the inevitable flight. The thought of her possible escape quickened his pulses. He became infinitely more determined to make her his own. The recollection of her saying that she did not love him was humiliating, but it stirred him to deeper feelings of desire. When he thought of her—as at first—readily accepting him and his prospects, he had not formed so high opinion of her as now, being ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... have it said that there was any place he could not follow his Master. He declared that he would even lay down his life for his sake. "Wilt thou lay down thy life for my sake?" answered the Master. "Wilt thou, indeed?" Then he foretold Peter's sad, humiliating fall—that, instead of laying down ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... vassals descending to the humiliating occupation of beating the water of the moat of the castle, in order to stop the noise of the frogs, during the illness of the mistress; we elsewhere find that at times the lord required of them to hop on one leg, to kiss the latch ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... the astonishing comment that Magsie was a shallow little thing, and Rachael, hungrily kissing her boys' sweet, bewildered faces, and laughing and crying together as Mary gave her an account of every hour of her absence, felt more than rewarded for the somewhat sordid scheme and the humiliating effort. Little Gerald was in short clothes now, a rose of a baby, and Jimmy at the irresistible age when every stammered word and every ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... convinced; he never was by any one's logic but his own; perhaps because his own was totally different to all other kinds, including the painful logic of facts. He sighed deeply. "It is a strange, a humiliating condition of things," he observed to Mr. Gillat, "when a father has to ask his daughter's permission ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... Fairbridge audiences, appreciative though they were. Outside talent was never in evidence in Fairbridge. No theatrical company had ever essayed to rent that City Hall. People in Fairbridge put that somewhat humiliating fact from their minds. Nothing would have induced a loyal citizen to admit that Fairbridge was too small game for such purposes. There was a tiny theatre in the neighbouring city of Axminister, which had really some ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... emperor was coming to humiliate the haughty pope by the power of the sword." He might soon have had an army at his back, but that he was too thoroughly downcast to think of anything but conciliation, and to the disgust of the Italians insisted on humiliating ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... first thought was to extricate himself, without asking assistance from the man who had furnished him with the fun. His pride would be greatly mortified should the Kaffir get out of his pit, and find him in the other. That would be a humiliating rencontre. ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... removal of their rivals, the Dutch had little upon which to congratulate themselves in this movement. The monopoly of trade was theirs, but with the most degrading and humiliating conditions. They were obliged to give up their factory at Firando, and take a new station upon the small island of Desima, in the harbor of Nagasaki. To preserve even the most limited intercourse ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... humiliating, for it just proved we had aimed at the tree and missed it. Instead, we shot the Chinkee's inoffensive pigs. It was many a long day before that joke was forgotten against us. Moreover, amongst us we had to scrape a pound together to pay the Chinaman for his loss. I ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... be the particular period at which the wild-fowl of those regions begin to cast their feathers. Knowing this, English Chief quietly slipped off with his canoe when Mackenzie landed, and soon found a colony of swans afflicted with that humiliating lack of natural clothing, which is the cause, doubtless, of their periodically betaking themselves to the uttermost ends of the earth in order to hide in deep solitude their poverty, and there renew their garments. Judge then, reader, if you can, the consternation with which ...
— The Pioneers • R.M. Ballantyne
... occurrence of the past week had had on her spirits. Her father attended her willingly; and they took their seats in the pew, somewhat to the surprise of many, who had hardly expected to see them, after so humiliating a family development as the attempted crime of their kinsman had just been furnishing for the astonishment of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... individuals to reconciliation. Both parties had found themselves in the wrong. The one had confessedly mistaken the moral character of the revolution, and the other had miscalculated both its moral and its physical resources. The experiment was made at the price of great, almost, we may say, of humiliating sacrifices; and wise men foresaw that it would fail, at least in its direct and ostensible object. Yet it was purchased cheaply, and realized an object of equal value, and, if possible, of still more ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... last effort for the repeal of the four and a half percent duty. They therefore adopted immediate emancipation, and then, covered as they were, with the laurels of so magnanimous an act, they presented to parliament their cherished object. The defeat was a humiliating one, and it produced such a reaction in the island, as well nigh led to the rescinding of the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... birth of the boy seemed to wipe out these humiliating memories; yet Marvell found in time that they were not effaced, but only momentarily crowded out of sight. In reality, the incident had a meaning out of proportion to its apparent seriousness, for it put in his hand a clue to a new side of his wife's character. He no longer minded her ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... add that Coppenole was of the people, and that the auditors which surrounded him were also of the people. Thus the communication between him and them had been prompt, electric, and, so to speak, on a level. The haughty air of the Flemish hosier, by humiliating the courtiers, had touched in all these plebeian souls that latent sentiment of dignity still vague and indistinct in the ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... the manner in which a sudden change in his demeanour seemed to give the lie to the general admiration. Almost a worse grievance against the Court and its legal tools than their persecution is the effect it had in humiliating and degrading him for a time. Though the proceedings had been a travesty of justice, they had been invested hitherto with a scenic stateliness. Ralegh had borne himself gallantly. He had kept and left the stage with unfailing dignity. The prosecution ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... madness, an obsession. It has infected not only the general profession, but also the laity." In proof of this he adds: "A leading laryngologist in one of the largest cities came to me with the humiliating confession that although holding views hostile to such operations he had been forced to perform tonsillectomy in every case in order to satisfy the popular craze and to save his practice from destruction." He cites an instance in which a mother brought her ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... child, not telling him the actual truth, but giving him that which will satisfy—that which he can mentally digest. To say, "The fairies brought it," may be all right until the child begins to ask who the fairies are, and wants to be shown one, and then we have to make the somewhat humiliating confession ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... news had spread from the wharf like wildfire, and on their way back to the Bow and String, there came from small boys and hidden voices such exclamations as: "Look at the woman in man's clothing;" "Isn't he a beautiful man?" "Look at him blush;" and others too coarse to be repeated. Imagine the humiliating situation, from which there was ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... Winifred, "is a wholesome thing, but it's one most of the men I have met are singularly deficient in. That's why they can't be left alone but must be driven, as they are, in companies. It's their own fault if they now and then find it a little humiliating." ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... view of the coming German elections, could no longer afford to ignore them. Bismarck, 'contrary to his conviction and his will,' said Lord Ampthill, accepted a policy of colonization, which had the secondary effect of harassing and humiliating the British Liberal Administration. [Footnote: Life of Granville, vol. ii., p. 355.] Sir Charles, who realized that every such annexation meant the exclusion of British trade from an actual or potential market, fought for strong British action, but he fought against the older Liberals of ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... contempt and loathing shall sweep them forever out of sight into the abyss of infamy and forgetfulness which is appointed for the traitors to Liberty. If the question of the real will of the people of Kansas had been referred back to them for settlement, it would have been humiliating enough to have had to exult over it as a victory of Freedom. With what depth of shame, then, should we contemplate the compassing of their end by the Slavocrats, through the venal surrender of the rights so long and so manfully asserted, for so ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... as the celebrated Black Joke, for her success in capturing other slavers. To-day I accompanied the Rev. Mr. Davy on board. A multitude of slaves crowded her deck in a state of nudity. The spectacle was humiliating in every sense, and the immediate effect upon the olfactory nerves was excessively disagreeable and oppressive. We found the officer who had charge of the vessel confined to a small space in the after-part of ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... must be careful not to confirm him in the coward's code. The injustice of it he must see, see by smarting under it. If ever punishment before others is wise it is in this case; for surely he who delights in humiliating others must be humiliated. But though justice suggests this course, experience shows that it does not always work; the bully only bides his time, and, cherishing resentment, he wreaks it ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... admire the 'Rape of the Lock,' yet I must agree with most critics that it is admirable after its kind. Pope's sylphs, as Mr. Elwin says, are legitimate descendants from Shakespeare's fairies. True, they have entered into rather humiliating bondage. Shakespeare's Ariel has to fetch the midnight dew from the still-vexed ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... I will believe your words, and assume that the Princess Elizabeth may be fair without the aid of splendor in dress. We therefore accept the invitation, Woronzow. Announce that to the regent's messenger. But still it is sad and humiliating," continued Elizabeth after a pause, a cloud passing over her usually so cheerful countenance, "yes it is still a melancholy circumstance for the daughter of the great Peter to be so poor that she is not able ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... done without applying to me," said Sussex, somewhat haughtily. "I at least, ought not to have been a counsellor when the object was a humiliating reference to Leicester; and I am suprised that you, Tressilian, a man of honour, and my friend, would assume such a mean course. If you said so, I certainly understood you not in a matter ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... shackles on the feet of mankind. I have observed you looking persistently at that clock. Its face is that of a tyrant, its numbers are false as those on a lottery ticket; its hands are those of a bunco-steerer, who makes an appointment with you to your ruin. Let me entreat you to throw off its humiliating bonds and to cease to order your affairs by that insensate monitor of ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... feelings and friends were Prussian? How could he break loose with Patriotism and begin aiming at something else? It would have killed me. When he was nearly forty he could change countries and ideals—and we, at our age, can't change houses. It's humiliating." ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... recollection of events at the old country town, he found a motive for her renewal of intercourse with such a man as Mr. Vimpany, in the compassionate feeling with which she regarded the doctor's unhappy wife. There might well be some humiliating circumstance, recently added to the other trials of Mrs. Vimpany's married life, which had appealed to all that was generous and forgiving in the nature of Iris. Knowing nothing of the resolution to live ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... but sure that you will respond to the great demand I am about to make upon you, upon all the kindness which you have shown us for these many years. Herbert, your namesake, is in deep trouble—disgrace, I might better say. Never mind the details. They are sufficiently serious, sufficiently humiliating. We have managed to cover it up, to conceal what we can, but for the present at least, or until this blows over, it is impossible for him to remain at home. It has all come about so suddenly, so unexpectedly, that there has been no time to write to you to obtain your consent. But he must leave ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... the siege continued. Though famine dwelt within every house, and numbers died of starvation, the Athenians held out with heroic endurance, and refused to surrender on humiliating terms. But there could be only one end. Where famine commands man must obey. Peace must be had at any price, or death would end all, and an envoy was sent out with power to make peace on any terms he ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... extent, to sustain the dignity and credit of so distinguished a contributor. The advantages to the country of a creditable display are, in an international point of view, of the first importance, while an indifferent or uncreditable participation by the Government would be humiliating to the patriotic feelings of our people themselves. I commend the estimates of the board for the necessary additional appropriations to ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant
... important measure occurred at the very period when the power of Cimon was weakened by the humiliating circumstances that attended his expedition to Ithome, and by the vigorous and popular measures of the opposition, so there seems every reason to believe that it was principally advised and effected by Pericles, who appears shortly afterward presiding ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... ungenerous! I hope there are not many in the world to whom one might confess a fault and not be forgiven. This is indeed humiliating!" ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... on her list took her to a stylish residence on a fashionable avenue. It reminded her of the luxurious home of which she was once the petted darling, and the contrast with her present humble position was humiliating in the extreme. She stood for some moments upon the steps, waiting to gather courage ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... that my friend were happy. I should wish also that she were quiet. She should be quiet in hatred of treason, humiliating suspicions, ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... company, dog her when she goes out, and dole out to her the necessaries for the family from closets, chests and cupboards of which she [the daughter] keeps the keys! Fancy these things, and the wife submitting to them, perforce! And then understand, what is the humiliating truth, that the lady subjected to these practices is a most beautiful and accomplished favorite, delighting thousands by her public appearances, envied by all, and supposed to be rolling in ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... the MAY in 1788, the SUSANNA in 1803, and the COMMERCE in 1806, with the murder of the crews, the Admiralty warned merchants that it was CERTAIN DESTRUCTION to go up river to Bruni. For forty years this intimation was left on British charts, and British seamen followed the humiliating counsel. Not until the early forties was peace restored, after an event of the most romantic and improbable kind, the accession of an English gentleman to the throne ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... premise, that, in dwelling on this topic, I should revolt at the thought of administering to a vain, self-complacent spirit. It is mournful, it is humiliating to know, as we do, that the incense of adulation has been offered up to this sex, from the most selfish and unworthy motives, and in commendation of qualities which a true woman will regard as her lowest praise, mere personal attractions. Was it for this that the beneficent ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... for thirty-six years, was, by order of Mezzomorto, with many of his countrymen, blown from the cannon's mouth;[83] and the same thing happened to his successor in 1688, when forty-eight other Frenchmen suffered the same barbarous death. The most humiliating etiquette was observed in the Dey's court: the consul must remove his shoes and sword, and reverently kiss the rascal's hand. The Hon. Archibald Campbell Fraser, in 1767, was the first consul who flatly refused to pay this unparalleled act of homage, and ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... surrounded for years with every indulgence everything that would make a display. But we have never had any money, Miss Innes; that must have been why mother rented this house. My stepfather pays out bills. It's the most maddening, humiliating existence in the world. I would love ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... other articles that are less exposed to the daylight, and in them all is repaired. Time will enable people to distinguish what we have thought from what we have said."[122] This last is a bitter and humiliating word, but before any man hastens to cast a stone, let him first make sure that his own life is free from every trace of hypocritical conformity and mendacious compliance. Condorcet seems to make the only ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... of such powers and faculties as God has given. In this true meaning of the word, it may be safely asserted that this poor degraded class are still slaves—they are subject to the most grinding and humiliating of all slaveries, that of universal and unconquerable prejudice. The whip, indeed, has been removed from the back of the negro; but the chains are still upon his limbs, and he bears the brand of degradation on his forehead. What is it but the ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... fever from which he had recovered, he reviewed the Fanny Bolton snare, now that he had escaped out of it, but I'm not sure that he was not ashamed of the very satisfaction which he experienced. It is pleasant, perhaps, but it is humiliating to own that you ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... turned "Sordello" into prose—a superfluous task, some scoffers may exclaim. Personally, I cannot but think this craze for the exposition of poetry, this passion for "dissecting a rainbow," is harmful to the individual as well as humiliating to the high office of Poetry itself, and ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... jealousy, so humiliating to human nature, has influenced Lord Halifax, in his Advice to a Daughter, the school of art, prudery, and selfish morals, to caution her against all friendships, or, as he calls them, dearnesses, as what will make the ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... and whatever actors deserve, socially or artistically, they are sure to receive as their right. I found the other day in a well-circulated little volume a suggestion that the actor was a degraded being because he has a closely-shaven face. This is, indeed, humiliating, and I wonder how it strikes the Roman Catholic clergy. However, there are actors who do not shave closely, and though, alas! I am not one of them, I wish them joy of the spiritual grace ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... look indulgently together," he said, in his whimsically grave way, "at the humiliating spectacle of an old man's folly. I feel, at this moment, Arnold, as if I would give every thing that I possess in the world to have passed over next week, and to be landed safely in ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... terror. I ordered the two men who accompanied me to keep back, until Mr. Brown could overtake and tell her that we intended no harm; and she was easily persuaded, after a brief conversation with our guide, to allow us to come near. She presented a most humiliating specimen of our race: a figure shortened and shrivelled with age, entirely without clothing, one eye alone saw through the dim decay of nature, several large fleshy excrescences projected from the side of her head like so many ears and the jawbone was visible through a ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... riots. To Mr. Bentley baseball was as a sealed book. The tall man's justice, not always worthy of the traditions of Solomon, had in it an element of force. To be lifted off the ground by strong arms at the moment you are about to dust the home plate with your adversary is humiliating, but effective. It gradually became apparent that a decision was a decision. And one Saturday this inexplicable person carried in his hand a mysterious package which, when opened, revealed two pairs of diminutive boxing gloves. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... yet undecided, and at length a positive heel over to that; the whole of my little world within being canted to half a right angle, and a ridiculous distortion of every single thing in my bedroom was the result. The humiliating sensation of being aground on hard unromantic mud is tempered by the ludicrous crooked appearance of the contents of your cabin and by the absurd sensation of sleeping in a corner with everything askance except the lamp flame, which, because it burns upright, looks ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... for White Plains: his speech influenced the opinion of Lord Stirling and of the brigadiers-general. M. de Lafayette, placed on the other side, spoke late, and asserted that it would be disgraceful for the chiefs, and humiliating for the troops, to allow the enemy to traverse the Jerseys tranquilly; that, without running, any improper risk, the rear guard might be attacked; that it was necessary to follow the English, manoeuvre with prudence, take advantage of a temporary separation, and, in short, seize ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... Committee; but financiering by those wise lawgivers was no longer so lightsome and exuberant a task as it had been. The hour of reckoning had come; and the business proved to be chiefly a series of humiliating and futile efforts to undo the follies of the preceding two and a half years. Lincoln shared in this disagreeable labor, as he had shared in the mania which had made it necessary. He admitted that he was "no financier," and gave evidence of the fact ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... hearing three Southern ladies, wives of congressmen, thanked her for what she had said. The member from Mississippi showed a great deal of interest and really became quite waked up before the session ended. But, when we look at it in one light, there is something exceedingly humiliating in the thought that women representing the best intellect and the highest morality of our country, should come here in their grand old age and ask men for that which is theirs by right. Is it not time that this aristocracy of sex should be overthrown? Several of the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... Jephthah for help. It is a humiliating experience. Now, I suppose those half brothers of Jephthah's down in Israel, those fellows who had scorned him in his childhood, those fellows who had robbed him of his share in the estate,—I suppose they did some ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... post-office door. I knew what you were afraid of their saying: that you are altogether too companionable with Father and me; that you intend selling the land to us, after all. That is what you thought they would say and you were afraid—AFRAID of their gossip. Oh, it is humiliating! And, for a time, I really thought you were different from the ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... impatient sense of injustice we need not say that we concur most earnestly. But it cannot be too seriously considered by those who see the mischief of disestablishment, that as Sir John Coleridge also says, the English Churrh is, in one sense, a divided one; and that to pursue a policy of humiliating and crippling one of its great parties must at last bring mischief. The position of the High Church party is a remarkable one. It has had more against it than its rivals; yet it is probably the strongest of them all. It is said, probably with reason, to be the unpopular ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... must be obedience; if one has the right to command, there arises in others the correlative duty and obligation to submit. There is no question of how this will suit us; it simply does not, and will not, suit us; it is hard, painful and humiliating, but it is a fact, and that ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... forbade him to follow. Doubtless Weeks had spread his story broadcast; it was manifestly impossible for him to appeal to his recent card partners—they would believe he had deliberately imposed upon them. It was humiliating, yet there seemed nothing to do except to await the Cortlandts' return, and, if he failed to reach them by telephone, to spend the night in the open. It occurred to him that he might try to locate Stein or some other ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... but still the making an advance to France now, coupled with our constant inability to carry into effect the terms of our Convention, will be an humiliating step. ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... always extorted the supply of her wants, from her parents, by threats and importunities; but the younger could never be prevailed upon to employ the same means, and, hence, she suffered inconveniences which, to any other girl, born to an equal rank, would have been, to the last degree, humiliating and vexatious. To her they only afforded new opportunities for the display of her most shining virtues,—fortitude and charity. No instance of their sordidness or tyranny ever stole a murmur from her. For what they had given, existence and a virtuous education, she said they were ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... had books other than the Scriptures to read. Consequently we have been led by our seducers into the humiliating wickedness of calling holy only the dead, and regarding it the highest presumption to apply the term to ourselves. At the same time we are all desirous of being called "Christians," a sublimer title than "holy"; for Christ is perfect ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... victory for peace would make America not simply a world power: it would make her the world leader. Will we stop tagging at the heels of Great Britain and Germany and travel this broadening road in which we can be first? How humiliating to struggle along, a trailer in the military procession! How noble to set the daring example of living up to the belief in peace! Will we say: "See our hands; we bear no bludgeons. Search us; we carry no concealed weapons. ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... prepare in a short time for the examinations and disputations required. Yet he did not attain this object at Paris. His stay, which with interruptions lasted, first till 1499, to be continued later, became to him a period of difficulties and exasperations, of struggle to make his way by all the humiliating means which at the time were indispensable to that end; of dawning success, too, which, ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... deserving poor person who might apply to him. When the unexpected revelation had been made to him that he had no claim to the estate, he was glad that he was not quite penniless. He did not care to apply for money to Allan Roscoe. It would have been a confession of dependence, and very humiliating to him. ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... thousand slaves. Against this Englishman her anger, was great. She unceasingly condemned him, and whenever she met Dicky Donovan she delivered her attack with delicate violence. Did Dicky know him? Why did not he, in favour with Ismail, and with great influence, stop this dreadful and humiliating business? It was a disgrace to the English name. How could we preach freedom and a higher civilisation to the Egyptians while an Englishman enriched himself and ruled a province by slavery? Dicky's invariable reply was that we couldn't, and that things weren't ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... by educating the people; by teaching them their proper value in society; by instructing them in their moral and civil duties. Let them not labor under that humiliating and slavish error, that the landlord is everything, and themselves nothing; but let the absurdity be removed, and each party placed upon the basis of just ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... be governed by an aristocracy or a monarch whose executive power is dependent upon legend in the mass of the people; it is humiliating enough to be thus governed through a sort of play-acting instead of enjoying the self-government ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc
... humiliating start from her lesser, less genteel dreams. Of course this bonanza king driving up from the mine was her real father, and she a bonanza princess, happier, more fortunate than a merely political one; ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... humiliating position at a sharp command from the hunchback. Tommy did likewise and the two exchanged sheepish looks. The effects of the pink gas were wearing off once more. They were in a large hall, obviously ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... he staggered back from the window and knocked against the writing-table. He was a laughing-stock. A faint hatred against the woman whom he had to thank for this humiliating scene, began to stir within him, but his love acquitted her. He was incensed against the jesters down below, and swore to bring ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... country was brought when peace was restored. So far as the regions north of the Ohio were concerned, the war developed two phases. The first began with General William Hull's expedition from Ohio against Fort Malden for the relief of Detroit, and it ended with the humiliating surrender of that important post, together with the forced abandonment of Forts Dearborn and Mackinac, so that the Wabash and Maumee became, for all practical purposes, the country's northern boundary. ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... know that we could not so see it if we were wholly cut off from its realisation. But the clearer the vision of the ideal, the deeper must be our self-abasement when we turn our eyes to the actual. We must not escape from this sharp and humiliating contrast by mentally annihilating the self, so as to make it impossible to say, "Look on this picture, and on this." Such false humility leads straight to its opposite—extreme arrogance. Moreover, to regard deification as an ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... Eustace Cleever, and I sulked at home because they had come to see me, but had gone over to the better man; which was humiliating. They packed him into a cab with utmost reverence, for was he not the author of "As it was in the Beginning," and a person in whose company it was an honour to go abroad? From all I gathered later, he had taken ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... the role of Bandzuin Cho[u]bei and his successors was no sinecure, in addition to the exercise of the art of arranging time and place so that the inferior lords would be least inconvenienced by the necessary and often humiliating deference to their superiors in rank. The guild patron looked well to the interests of his employers—daimyo[u]—with small regard to those who shifted for themselves; which was one of the causes of grudge ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... of Christianity, even after the Vendish tribes had embraced its doctrines, did not clear up the darkness of their fate. The whole humiliating relation between masters and serfs in Germany, which still degraded the last century, was unknown to the free ancient Germans, among whom only the prisoner of war was a slave; and is derived from the period of the submission of the Vendes. The Germans indeed ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... endear to us the more the Church of England. This was perhaps the reason, besides the inherent marvel of the matter, why we passed so lightly over M. Esquiroz and his late ecclesiastical researches. It was humiliating to English pride to have to confess that a Frenchman had unveiled to the world of Paris the hitherto sacred mysteries of the perpetual curate and of ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... such a humiliating condition a prime factor or basis of terms of peace with an Army which stood shoulder to shoulder with the American forces, freely shedding its blood, and whose heroism and courage were extolled by Admiral ...
— True Version of the Philippine Revolution • Don Emilio Aguinaldo y Famy
... those papers induce another? He would like to read that poem with the calm criticism of a trained and cultivated mind; he had no desire to be whirled back into his study at Constantinople, his brain throbbing and bursting with what was coming next. He shrugged his shoulders. It was a humiliating confession, but there were forces over which he had no control; there was nothing to do but resign himself ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... wish to hear any further as to the sort of omen it was, and what it foreboded. But, somehow, a sense of fear and of sadness crept into her mood, and it was humiliating to feel that an absurd tale should disturb her beloved fancies, and should agitate her ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... reported by Governor Young to the President of the United States, and the truth slowly made its way into the eastern press. President Buchanan tacitly admitted his mistake; but to recall the troops at that juncture would be to confess humiliating failure. ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage
... that for which the Hemerlingues were waiting, following with their eyes to its last stage that heart-rending, humiliating exit which piles upon the back of the rejected one something of the shame and horror of an expulsion; then, as soon as the Nabob had disappeared, they looked at each other with a silent laugh and left the gallery, the old woman not daring to ask them ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... Johnson professed and all the services he had rendered, and solemnly affirmed his belief that he had always acted upon patriotic motives and in good faith. But he could not refrain from "deeply regretting his speech of the 22d of February," He added that it was "impossible to conceive a more humiliating spectacle than the President of the United States invoking the wild passions of a mob around him with the utterance of such sentiments as he uttered on that day." Still, Mr. Sherman thought that "this was no time ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... humiliating to be turned out of the house by a mere boy, as he still called Marcello, but he was not excessively sensitive to humiliation, and he promised himself some sort of satisfactory vengeance before long. What surprised him most was that the first quarrel should have been about ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... which she by no means suffered me to breakaway—I should most assuredly have "run amok" among the mutineers, and in all probability have been killed by them in self-defence; as it was, my anger and the bitterly humiliating conviction of my utter helplessness so nearly overcame me that I was seized with an attack of giddiness that caused everything upon which my eyes rested to become blurred and indistinct, and to whirl hither and thither in a most distracting ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... by these teasing and almost humiliating discussions, Dryden continued steadily advancing in his great labour; and about three years after it had been undertaken, the translation of Virgil, "the most noble and spirited," said Pope, "which I know ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... those—I should not like to make a guess at their number—who will marry any man, however undesirable and uncongenial, rather than be left 'withering on the stalk.' It is an acutely humiliating fact that there exists no man too ugly, too foolish, too brutal, too conceited and too vile to find a wife. Any man can find some woman to wed him. In this connection, one recalls the famous cook, who, when condoled with on the defection of a lover, replied: 'It don't matter; thank ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... undoubtedly the social superior of Dr. Derwent; admitted to the house at Queen's Gate, one might surely with all confidence present oneself in Bryanston Square. Was he not an educated man, by birth a gentleman? If he had no position, why, who had at one-and-twenty? How needlessly he had been humiliating and discouraging himself! In the highest spirits he went down into the garden to talk with Mrs. Hannaford and Olga. They gazed at him, astonished; he was a new creature; he joked and laughed and could hardly contain his exuberance of joy. When there fell from him a casual ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... respect for Antony, and but little admiration. I speak of such mad infatuation as a humiliating exhibition of human weakness. Any one under its fearful spell is an object of pity. But I have more sympathy for him than for Cleopatra, although she was doubtless a very gifted woman. He was her victim; she was not his. If extravagant and reckless ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... myself; I know he would marry you at the drop of a hat if you'd have him. I know that, and still I am crazy about him. I ain't much to blame, Harriet, if I am foolish. He made me so, an' 'most any pore, lonely girl like I am would care for a good-looking man like he is. Oh, Harriet, it is awfully humiliating to have to think it, but I believe the reason he treats me like he does is that I showed him too plainly ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... poor savage no longer grovels in the dust of his native wilderness under the influence of the white man's fire-water, and the stranger who travels through those wild romantic regions no longer beholds the humiliating scenes or hears of the frightful crimes which were seen and heard of too often in former days, and which always have been, and always must be, prevalent wherever spirituous liquors, the great curse of mankind, ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... I protested. "You mustn't let him. It's too much. You will have to tell Sir Samuel that he must find a new chauffeur at once. It hurts me like a blow to think of such a creature humiliating you. ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... Harding, who was coming to see me, had time to get behind a stable door, just before there was a fall against it of four shot corpses; and Robert barely managed to get home across the bridges. He had been out walking in the city, apprehending nothing, when the storm gathered and broke. Sad and humiliating it all has been, and the author of 'Vanity Fair' might turn it to better uses for a chapter. By the way, we have just been reading 'Vanity Fair.' Very clever, very effective, but cruel to human nature. ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... have a drink with me, Heise," said the dentist, who had an indistinct idea of the amenities of the barroom, "only," he added shamefacedly, "only—you see, I don't believe I got any change." His anger against Trina, heated by the whiskey he had drank, flamed up afresh. What a humiliating position for Trina to place him in, not to leave him the price of a drink with a friend, she who ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... been goose enough to telegraph to you, you know. You don't know how small I felt when you did not come," she hurried out, but his merry laugh cut short the humiliating confession. ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... own pride that is hurt," answered her inexorable conscience. "You wanted to pose as a Lady Bountiful. It is humiliating to let these poor people see that you are of no consequence in your uncle's house. Christ kept no carriage. It is not what you do but what you are, that proves your ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... leader of the war party returned: "Where's he been? Well, I'll tell you where he's been. And I just want you to know who done this." Here Exhibit A got behind a post. The recital of the details of his catastrophe was humiliating. But the mother continued: "Henry Perkins done this. I don't believe in stirring up neighborhood quarrels and all that, but I've just stood this long enough. My boy can't stick his nose out of the door without that Perkins boy jumpin' on him. If you can't do anything with that Perkins boy, I'll show ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... contempt. Sometimes a suspicion of the truth, so faint and so unreasonable in her own eyes, that she would not acknowledge it for a moment, flashed across her mind; and this suspicion had its keenly humiliating as well as its comforting side. Besides the confusion of thoughts regarding these things, her mind was burdened with an entirely new trouble—the sense that she was concealing something from her mother; and ...
— A Canadian Heroine - A Novel, Volume 3 (of 3) • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... that pleases me, and that is the title-'il ne faut pas s'inquieter de l'avenir.' The little King of Prussia has done well to choose this for his motto, for without it, it strikes me, his peace would be forever gone, for his future will surely be a humiliating one." ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... its internal charm on the depth of her own affections, so it should depend for its external interest on the affection she inspires. The enthusiastic tenderness of the old Countess, the admiration and respect of the King, Lafeu, and all who are brought in connection with her, make amends for the humiliating neglect of Bertram; and cast round Helen that collateral light, which Giletta in the story owes to other circumstances, striking indeed, and well imagined, but not (I think) so ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... accepted "with pleasure"—a phrase in which, for once in my frequent use of it, I spoke the truth. The prospect of going down to Deadborough served, of course, to revive the painful memory of our humiliating defeat. Looked at in the perspective of time, our enterprise stood out in all its essential folly. But I have frequently found that the contemplation of a past mistake has a strange tendency to cause its repetition; and it was so in this case. For it ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... interest about her to her friends—an interest of which she was ashamed, for she knew how little she was really doing, and that her sacrifice was one of discomfort merely. The good she did now, it was humiliating to acknowledge, was in no way proportionate to that which her influence had wrought among people ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... in a disastrously successful war with that country. On the other hand, our Indian Government had begun an un-called-for interference with the affairs of Afghanistan, which, successful at first, resulted in a series of humiliating reverses to our arms, culminating in one of the most terrible disasters that have ever befallen a British force—the wholesale massacre of General Elphinstone's defeated and retreating army on its passage through the terrible mountain gorge known as the Pass of Koord Cabul. It ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... cultivation of the arts and sciences in the reign of Augustus may have been beneficial to a few, by diverting them from the pursuit of vulgar pleasures, and opening up to them sources of more rational enjoyment; but it is a most humiliating fact that, during the brightest period in the history of Roman literature, vice in every form was fast gaining ground among almost all classes of the population. The Greeks, though occupying a higher position as to mental accomplishments, were still more dissolute ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... The government was virtually, from first to last, in the hands of the aristocracy. Still there was an important popular element, especially in the latter days of the republic, to which revolutionary leaders appealed, like the Gracchi, Marius, Catiline, and Caesar. One of the most humiliating lessons which we learn of antiquity, we are forced to own, was the signal incapacity of the people to govern themselves, when they had obtained a greater share of power than the old constitution had allowed. The republic ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... and verity, the Saviour prepares the Laodiceans for the humiliating threatenings, which are uttered against them. By that of "the beginning of the creation of God," is indicated Christ's kingship as head and governor of all; and hence the authority on which his declarations ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... United Empire Loyalists for several months before, as well as after, the Declaration of Independence, was humiliating to freemen and perilous in the extreme; and that condition became still more pitiable after the alliance of the revolutionists with the French—the hereditary enemies of both England and the colonies. From the beginning the Loyalists were ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... Federation could have been offered again, it is probable that the King of England would have been the first man to own his mistake and that of his advisers and accept them, for now the choice lay between utter and humiliating defeat and the breaking up of the Empire, and the recognition of the Federation. After all, the kinship of a race was a greater fact in the supreme hour of national disaster than the maintenance of a dynasty or the perpetuation of a particular form ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... superior and all powerful being. Yes, this is slavery, boasted American slavery, without which, it is contended even here, that the union of these States would be dissolved in a day, yes, even in an hour! Humiliating thought, that we are bound together as States by the chains of slavery! It cannot be—the blood and the tears of slavery form no part of the cement of our Union—and it is hoped that by falling on its bands they may never corrode and eat them asunder. We who are ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... imagination, and arising to his tongue after his irretrievable fall, it is impossible to avoid exclaiming, Did ambition ever conceive so wild a dream, and had so wild a vision ever a termination so disastrous and humiliating! ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... that College[231]. Mr. Bateman's lectures were so excellent, that Johnson used to come and get them at second-hand from Taylor, till his poverty being so extreme that his shoes were worn out, and his feet appeared through them, he saw that this humiliating circumstance was perceived by the Christ Church men, and he came no more[232]. He was too proud to accept of money, and somebody having set a pair of new shoes at his door, he threw them away with indignation[233]. How must we feel when we read such an anecdote ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... all flattering attention and interest as due to the favorable impression which he supposed himself to make invariably upon those whose judgment was worth anything. It is true there had been one marked and humiliating exception. But the consoling thought now flashed into his mind that, perhaps, Miss Romeyn was, as she asserted, but a mere "child," and incapable of appreciating him. The influence of the punch he had drank and the immediate ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... opinion. But you have asked for my advice, and I must not shrink from giving it. I am bound as an honest woman, to tell you that your uncle's resolution to break off the engagement represents the course that I should have taken myself, if a daughter of my own had been placed in your painful and humiliating position." ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... Mohammedans as a trading, enterprising, superstitious, warlike set of vagabonds, who, wherever they are bent upon going, will and do go; but he complains that the condition of a Frank is rendered most humiliating and distressing by the furious bigotry of the Turks; to him it seemed inconceivable that such enmity should exist among men, and that beings of the same species should trick and act in a manner so opposite. By conversing with the Jelabs, or slave merchants, he learned ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... what manner Charles II., suddenly pronouncing in favour of his nephew, the Prince of Orange, had signed a league with his old enemies, the Dutch, in order to counteract the success of the King of France and compel him to sign a humiliating and entirely inadmissible peace. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... early the emperor and queen, whose mournful humiliating dress was changed for magnificent robes, went with all their court to the house built by the intendant of the gardens, where the emperor presented the princes Bahman and Perviz, and the princess Perie-zadeh, to their enraptured ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... conflict with Russia, and had seen herself reduced to make a treaty, not only surrendering important provinces, but giving Russia the advantage of hoisting her flag in the Caspian. She had gone to war with a powerful antagonist, and been compelled to submit to humiliating concessions. Can you suppose that Persia, in that state of things, would have been ready to march against Russia for the sake of assisting Poland? In the disastrous struggle which ensued, Poland was overthrown; the suspension of its constitution followed, ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... arrival of Mr. Ward at Peking he requested an audience of the Emperor to present his letter of credence. This he did not obtain, in consequence of his very proper refusal to submit to the humiliating ceremonies required by the etiquette of this strange people in approaching their sovereign. Nevertheless, the interviews on this question were conducted in the most friendly spirit and with all due regard to his personal feelings and the honor of his country. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... he went on, after a moment: "Of course, it's humiliating to make a failure, but it's better to own it, and leave it behind you; if you don't own it, you have to carry it with you, ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... many minds that morning about going again to the meadow. It seemed so absurd, so humiliating to costume herself as for private theatricals, and to go repeatedly to keep a tryst which the other party, and that a ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... was always hazarding prophecies about the weather, which somehow never turned out according to his prediction. The vanes on the church-steeples seemed to take fiendish pleasure in humiliating the dear old gentleman. If he said it was going to be a clear day, a dense sea-fog was pretty certain to set in before noon. Once he caused a protracted drought by assuring us every morning, for six consecutive weeks, that it would rain in a few hours. But, sure enough, ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... which, humiliating though they be, partake largely of the ludicrous, others occurred of a more serious nature. Robberies in the streets were of daily occurrence, in consequence of the immense sums, in paper, which people carried about with them. Assassinations ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... earnest in all this?" was an expression mingling her clear conviction of the truth of what at first appeared so strange a proposition, and her astonishment that the necessities of their situation were such as to drive them to so humiliating a resource. ...
— Woman's Trials - or, Tales and Sketches from the Life around Us. • T. S. Arthur
... hand is held out to me in friendship. I have felt at times right lonely, Leuchtmar, and sorely sighed for you. It could not be, though, and I have learned already to submit to necessity. Necessity alone is the despotic mistress of all princes, and we nothing but her humble vassals. It is a humiliating thought, but nevertheless true. I must learn to endure mortifications, and to consider them but the price which I ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... suffered terribly. Everywhere France was aggressive. The warlike Iroquois were now so alarmed by the French menace that, to secure protection, they ceded their territory to Queen Anne and became British subjects, a humiliating step indeed for a people who had once thought themselves the most important in all the world. By 1703 the butchery on the frontier was in full operation. The Jesuit historian Charlevoix, with complacent exaggeration, says that in that year alone ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... it was never wanting. Towering as was his intellectual strength and keenness above me, indeed above the whole of the rest of the members of the Board, he did not condescend to me. The result was never humiliating. It had no pain of any sort in it. He was too spontaneous and liberal with his consideration to seem conscious that he was showing any. There were many men of religious note upon the Board, of some of whom I could ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... nothing stands out in my mind with more distinctness than the affectionate welcome I received into the homes of our representatives in Berlin. And, in passing, let me say this, I am distinctly proud of them, one and all. I say this because one hears many humiliating anecdotes of the mistakes made by the men and women sent to foreign Courts, appointed because they had earned some recognition for political services. Those of us who have strong national pride and a sense of the eternal fitness of ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell |
